Introduction
Meet Dominick Bickus, VP of Sales and Marketing at Paramount Lead Solutions, a company specializing in helping car dealerships boost their sales and customer experience.
Dominick shares valuable insights on the importance of sales training, lead conversion, and building strong customer relationships in the automotive industry.
He also discusses effective client acquisition strategies, including direct sales, cold calling, and in-person visits, emphasizing the power of word-of-mouth referrals in this industry.
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Welcome to today’s episode. Let’s talk about today’s guest. We have Dominic from Paramount Lead Solutions, VP of Sales and Marketing. How are you doing today, Dominic?
Dominick Bickus: I’m doing great, Ernesto. How are you?
Ernesto: I’m doing great. It’s great to have you on today’s show, and we’re excited. I’m sure our listeners are tuning in to know a little bit more about what Paramount Lead Solutions is all about. So in your own words, let’s kick it off with that. What is it all about?
Dominick Bickus: Yeah, first and foremost, thank you for having me here. Happy new year to you and to all the listeners. Our company, Paramount Lead Solutions, we are a sales and marketing organization working within the automotive industry.
So what do we do? We help dealerships sell more cars, engage with more customers, and improve the overall customer experience, customer satisfaction, and the customer journey for dealerships.
One of our mission statements here is: the key to converting leads lies not in the technology or leads themselves, but in the talent of the staff working those leads.
So we’re a big proponent of sales and turning marketing efforts into direct results. Great marketing and a poor sales team can make marketing look bad. And the opposite is true too: a great sales team and poor marketing can make marketing look great. At our core, it’s about turning marketing efforts into direct results for our clients.
Ernesto: Definitely. You just put that pin on that coffin, right? Marketing and sales is what drives the company, but if they don’t get along, it could be troublesome sometimes. To help everyone listening understand the company: would it be fair to say your vertical segment is only dealerships?
Dominick Bickus: We work solely in the automotive industry. It’s all new car dealerships. We don’t work with—although we have a few here and there—really it’s new car dealership franchises.
We’re a bit more focused within the economic class. We’ve worked with a few BMWs and Mercedes and Audis, but primarily it’s your Chrysler, Dodge, Jeep, Rams, your Nissans, your Kias, your Fords, your GMs. That’s our main target.
And the problem we help solve? A lot of it lies in lack of training and lack of knowledge within departments on converting leads into actual results. Then it’s lack of execution and lack of results. Those are some of the main problems we address through our products and services.
Ernesto: Definitely. Then what would you say is a top client acquisition channel for you guys? How do people usually get in contact with you?
Dominick Bickus: It’s funny—it’s a great question, and I’m going to differ from a lot of other participants that have been on this podcast.
The majority of our business has come from:
Word of mouth and referrals
Centers of influence through relationships with manufacturers
Direct sales from the team that I help manage
Marketing, our website funnel, SEO—that hasn’t been a large component. It’s been more direct sales: picking up the phone, cold calling dealerships, getting the general manager, getting the owner.
We also do cold visits. I’ll land in Nashville or Naples, Florida—which I’m heading to tomorrow—and we’ll walk into five dealerships, ten dealerships.
That process can be lengthy, but sometimes you meet someone and four hours later you’re in contract negotiation. We’ve found that in-person strategies and facing the decision maker works best. We know where to find them—they have physical locations—so we face it head-on.
Ernesto: Definitely. I think that’s one of the best strategies. And as far as your website, I’m here on ParamountALS…
Dominick Bickus: ParamountALS.com. Yeah—Paramount Advertising and Lead Solutions. Paramounttools.com.
Ernesto: Perfect. What role does a website play for client acquisition?
Dominick Bickus: It’s funny—I often view ourselves as a bunch of cavemen crawling out of the ice ages.
If we were having this conversation five years ago, we just had a website so someone could Google our name and find us.
Recently, we built out a new website with products, services, and customer testimonials. It’s a great tool for people to verify who we are after an interaction.
But where our website has lacked is client acquisition. I can count on one hand the amount of clients we brought in directly from our website through organic search or SEO. Most of the legwork is done by my sales team.
We won’t lose a deal because of our website, but I can’t say we’ve gained deals just from online presence and the time/resources spent on it.
Ernesto: Definitely. Let’s switch gears a bit, Don, and talk about you as a leader. As VP of Sales and Marketing, what are some key tasks you focus on day to day?
Dominick Bickus: Great question. I don’t run ads. I don’t run campaigns. I’m focused on sales—bringing in new clients and revenue.
I help with marketing more from a strategic standpoint: devising strategy, creating new product offerings.
Day to day, I manage a team of sales reps here in the office—five account executives—responsible for managing relationships, bringing in new relationships, and cultivating the ones we already have.
Most of my energy is on bringing in new business, maintaining relationships, and refining our products. Training has become a product for us and is gaining more steam, so I’ve been involved in rolling that out too.
Ernesto: Awesome. Let’s jump into our next section: rapid fire questions. Are you ready for them, Don?
Dominick Bickus: I’m ready.
Ernesto: First off, what is the last book that you read?
Dominick Bickus: Success Cybernetics was the last book I read by Ewell Stanley Anderson. It’s an older book published in the 1960s.
I don’t read fiction ever. I’m big into personal development—Tony Robbins, Grant Cardone, that kind of content.
Success Cybernetics talks about the power of thought, belief systems, and how our brain is wired like a computer—your thoughts and beliefs shape your reality. I strongly urge listeners to check it out.
Ernesto: Awesome. What is one single thing your company is focused on the most right now?
Dominick Bickus: Twofold. Number one: refining our products and services—quality control of deliverables.
Number two: continuing to grow our footprint and grow our brand. The automotive industry is ripe for disruption. COVID accelerated progress quickly, and disruption is still happening.
We’re focused on defining the customer journey. Calling out the elephant in the room: when consumers think about buying a car, they don’t get excited—it’s often nails on a chalkboard.
We specialize in making that process—from “I need a car” to connecting with the right dealer, product, and price—easier and more streamlined for consumers.
Ernesto: Definitely. If there were no boundaries in technology, what’s one thing you’d want fixed for your role in sales or marketing?
Dominick Bickus: A chat GPT-like interface I can speak to, recap a meeting, and it summarizes notes, sends a follow-up email, and sets reminders like “call Ernesto next Tuesday.”
Basically, streamlining the process from manually taking notes, inputting them, writing emails, and setting reminders. With the pace of automation, I don’t think we’re too far off.
Ernesto: Definitely. Technology keeps advancing—each year there’s a trend. Let’s see what 2024 has in store. If there’s one repetitive task you could automate, what would it be?
Dominick Bickus: That same thing—the note taking and inputting into CRM systems, logging activities and actions.
We have a project in our office: “Eliminate the mouse.” The goal is to stop salespeople from clicking boxes all day and instead enable automations that lead to more conversations, more meaningful conversations, and more time with customers versus backend tasks.
Ernesto: Great. Lastly, what’s one piece of advice you’d give yourself if you restarted your journey as a marketer today?
Dominick Bickus: Start making video content earlier. Start now. Don’t worry about perfection or being an expert.
It’s repetition—swings of the bat. People learn by doing, failing, and trying. Don’t wait until the time feels right because it never will. You have to act and participate.
Ernesto: Definitely. You make the time right. Great advice, Don. Thanks for being on the show. Last word: if someone forgets everything, what should they remember about your company?
Dominick Bickus: We help deliver instant and guaranteed results for car dealerships.
There’s a lot of gray area and a lot of companies focused on marketing and technology—and those are important—but it’s not a problem of leads or marketing.
It’s what you do with those opportunities to turn them into revenue-producing results. That’s what we focus on.
Ernesto: Definitely agree. Thank you so much. And to our listeners, thanks for tuning in. Looking forward to our next episode at Pathmonk Presents. Thanks a lot, Don.
Dominick Bickus: Thanks so much, Ernesto. It was a pleasure.