This transcript was generated with the help of AI and may contain some errors.

Garrett Johnson [00:00:00]:
Believe in people and putting people first, like it was a thing I had to test out for many years. Am I doing right by having that be a leading philosophy in my life? If I would have known and had some more confidence, concrete foundation, and knowing that was going to be the best tool for analyzing problems and decision making, I think I could have ended, accelerated my own personal progress in career. The companies I’ve worked with, the companies I’ve grown that much more quickly.

Kyler Mason [00:00:35]:
Whether you’re going to market through dealers, distributors or some other partner channel. The mediated sale is complex. We call it B2B2X.

John Gough [00:00:43]:
But the leaders in the industry are the ones who are making it look simple. I’m John Gough.

Kyler Mason [00:00:48]:
And I’m Kyler Mason. And this is Why You Win. Presented by Element Three.

John Gough [00:00:53]:
Garrett Johnson is the VP of Sales and CX for the Americas at Zero Motorcycles. His career has taken him to seats on all sides of the B2B2X ecosystem and given him a unique perspective on how OEs and dealers win together. And Garrett is a motorcycle guy. He’s also a people person. And in this convo you’ll hear about how everything in his life has taught him that if you want to succeed, you should bet on people. I hope you enjoy the conversation. Garrett, thanks for coming on the show today. We’re really excited to have you.

Garrett Johnson [00:01:24]:
Yeah, thanks for having me.

John Gough [00:01:26]:
You and I met a little while back at a power sports show and here in the office, we’ve been really excited about the brand for a while and we think a lot about Zero Motorcycles. Can you talk to us about your role right now and what you’re thinking about these days?

Garrett Johnson [00:01:43]:
Yeah, sure. So know my current role as a vp, leading our sales and CX teams on the north and South American continents is all about growing this brand, growing our distribution network, and growing our retail reach. Really excited about a lot of the things we’re doing in the sales distribution channel side of the biz right now, but also, as expected, being a motorcycle person myself, really excited about a lot of the new product as well.

John Gough [00:02:12]:
We talked a second ago about a show that you were at just a couple of days ago, right? In Texas.

Garrett Johnson [00:02:17]:
Yeah. So, yeah, we’re just at MotoGP. That was a combined kind of fun trip for myself and my son, but also I had a big portion of my team there doing a demo activation as a part of that event. And you know, it’s one of the larger events in North America where you’re getting a bunch of motorcycle enthusiasts all into one space. So it was a great way for our brand to get in front of a ton of potential customers.

John Gough [00:02:41]:
I mean, one of the fun things about working in these industries is you meet so many people who are just like, they get to live their dream every day at their at work. Sometimes it’s, you know, it’s work, but it’s also like, oh, by the way, I’m working on. The thing that I always wanted to do growing up is that. Is that you. Are you like motorcyclist from, from birth?

Garrett Johnson [00:02:59]:
You know, not from birth. I got into it a little bit later. Definitely didn’t have the leg up that my kids have starting out. You know, like as soon as they can handle a balance bike, it’s time to get on a motorcycle. I started in my late teens, coming just out of high school. But it was one of those things where I was kind of searching at that time, you know, going to university, figuring out what the heck I wanted to do with my life. And I started writing and it kind of just, you know, lit a fire that I love this and can I make it a career? And I’ve been in the industry really ever since.

John Gough [00:03:33]:
And you’ve been both dealer side and OE side now, right?

Garrett Johnson [00:03:37]:
Yeah, I’ve kind of worked all over the place in the industry. So I started out in manufacturing, distribution side and then moved into the dealer side of the biz. Did that for a good number of years, bit over a decade, and then now am in the OE side really based here in the Americas, leading more sales and CX function.

Kyler Mason [00:03:59]:
You went straight to Zero after the dealer side, right?

Garrett Johnson [00:04:04]:
Yeah, I went right to Zero. It was, you know, coming out of COVID and really kind of still in the midst of COVID trying to decide I was ready for a change and figuring out where I wanted to go. And for me it’s always been about impact. So at the dealer side, I wanted to make an impact to my local market. Felt like I achieved that in some very big ways. And Zero was a piece of that as well. I actually had Zero in the dealership for just over a decade before making the move. And so when I started to look, there just happened to be an opening at Zero.

Garrett Johnson [00:04:39]:
And I thought, man, I know a lot of people there. This is going to be a big part of the future of the power sports industry. Seems like the natural next step to continue on that path of wanting to make a sizable impact on this industry I love.

John Gough [00:04:54]:
Your appreciation. I would have said love maybe a second ago for Zero from the dealer Side is not something we always hear from dealers talking about the OEs that they represent. And so I want to, I want to hear more about that. What was it about Zero when you were on that side of the fence that made you feel like that would be a good spot to end up? What were they doing?

Garrett Johnson [00:05:15]:
Yeah, I think to be clear, there are ups and downs as there are with every oem, right? So I went through some of the best and the worst with Zero. Obviously being a young company, lot of growing pains and seriously new technology and being a leader in that space is not easy. I think it was still that even after a decade with the brand, through those ups and downs, representing them through my store, they still represented that bit of like the art of the possible within the industry. Like there’s still so much opportunity within the EV motorcycle space. And I see that as something that is really unique to Zero. No one else has done it as long as they have.

Garrett Johnson [00:05:58]:
No one else has made the impact they have. And being a part of that and getting a sense as a dealer to know what was coming down the line just felt like the right fit. Like, man, I could really help this brand move to the next level. And, and that’s really what’s exciting me. As much as I love the motorcycles and I absolutely do huge part of my life every single day, I do love the business of it as well, and I love a challenge. And so with that, Zero represented that to like the challenge of taking it to the next level, going from being somewhat of a niche EV brand to going truly mainstream.

Kyler Mason [00:06:37]:
So when you hopped over to Zero, what was your first assignment? What was your first role?

Garrett Johnson [00:06:42]:
Yeah, I started out with Zero as a Director of Dealer Marketing. So the two main tasks of that were to increase, you know, brand awareness, mind share within the dealer network, and causing that to lead to more retail, but it also internally meant creating a much tighter sync between the sales organization and the marketing organization, so that you have these two key groups always pointing in the same direction and always going full throttle. And there was a lot of challenges to that initially, but having the experience I had with the brand and being able to take my knowledge of the motorcycle dealer side of things into account, it really was a natural fit to start out with the brand.

Kyler Mason [00:07:26]:
Tons of our, our clients, relationships, listeners have this challenge. What’s some of the secret sauce in there where, where you saw problems in, say, alignment and efficiency between sales and marketing and how did you go about solving that? What, what, what’s some of the playbook there.

Garrett Johnson [00:07:45]:
Honestly, a big part of it is about just communication, coordination, right? So many times as a company grows, you tend to get silos, and those silos are just working on their own projects, thinking they know what the best direction is. And we start to put up walls to outside input, even within a single organization. So breaking down those barriers via communication, sharing feedback, and building relationships. For me, I’m all about relationships and relationships with my team, adjacent teams with my dealers and distributors, and getting those people all together to find common ground in either work experience or just what they love outside of work so they get to know each other better and understand that we’re all in it together and that we are all working ultimately towards the same goal and likely have things to learn from one another. So it was really about organizing meetings, process flows, and getting these two teams to understand and communicate more openly so that we could really be working on the same goals together.

Kyler Mason [00:08:54]:
You hopped from, you know, dealer to zero. Was there anything where you were like, this has been a pain in my ass this whole time. I’m going to fix this right now.

Garrett Johnson [00:09:03]:
I think voice of the dealer is one of those things. And that’s where, you know, even in my current role, the reason customer experience is a real part of that is because of my own personal passion, right? It’s all about the customer. And as an oem, you have two customer sets. You’re responsible to your dealers first and foremost as your business partners, but you’re also responsible to the end consumer that’s buying your product, the product you’ve designed and manufactured. And so taking customer experience into account, I think a lot of OEMs just turn and burn the same ideas and aren’t constantly challenging themselves as to what’s going to be different and move the needle for us in particular. And that’s how I always looked at the dealership. That’s how we took a dealership that was a very underperforming store and turned it into a leader in North America in the brands we represented.

Garrett Johnson [00:09:57]:
And I just wanted to bring that same philosophy of openness and focus on the customer to zero. And with that, that’s how I was ultimately able to build those bridges between sales and marketing and other internal teams to find that success.

John Gough [00:10:12]:
Is there like a moment or a person or a story that stands out to you, and you’re thinking about, like, taking that communication and fixing it.

Garrett Johnson [00:10:22]:
Amazingly, there weren’t any really huge battles. I think the team understood the problem and wanted to tackle it. They just needed someone to come in and represent A fresh approach. And I don’t, I don’t come from that kind of corporate world traditionally, even when I worked in the kind of the manufacturing, product sourcing, etc. Before having the dealership, it was for a very small company. So the whole corporate organization and standards was very new to me. And I figure when you’re entering that corporate world, there’s two ways you can go. You can just meld into that and have that become a part of your Persona, or you can challenge it and always assume that it can be done better.

Garrett Johnson [00:11:07]:
And that tends to be. My approach is like, everything can be done better, even our successes. Love to celebrate a success, but the first thing that comes into my mind after a success and say with building these bridges of communication with sales and marketing is like, okay, awesome, we did it. What can we do better? Like, what is the next thing? Where can we innovate next? And I think just the energy I was able to bring to that even in that small world of dealer marketing and this connection between sales and marketing was able to energize a lot of the. My teammates in order to want to have a fresh perspective and think about things differently. Not take any status quo and assume that’s how we should be doing it.

John Gough [00:11:52]:
Yeah, it’s hard to get outside of the bottle. And so it’s like very useful to have somebody who’s been on the other side come in and say, hey, like, maybe you don’t know this, but this is how this actually the experience on the other side of the fence feels. What can we do? How can we think differently? And it’s, it’s useful to say to yourself, how do I think differently? And sometimes it’s sort of world bending or mind breaking to get somebody actually to say to you, like, let me, let me show you the world. Let me, let me take you out on the other side of the glass, so to speak. At that show that you and I were at together, I was talking to a dealer development rep at a, at one of the big OEMs and they were singing from their songbook about all of the great materials that they produced and training that they produced for the dealers and how exceptional it was. And they were reading me the whole, the whole thing. And later that day I was talking to one of their dealers and I mentioned, like, oh, yeah, like, isn’t that great that you all have access to that? And just like a full, the fullest eye roll I’ve ever seen in my life. Like, yeah, like, that would be cool if any of that actually worked and I could actually get access to the videos they produce.

John Gough [00:12:57]:
And, and, and I had no skin in the game, so it was easy for me to laugh about it. But those communication breakdowns that you’re talking about are very real. And, and when they’re not working there, they make a huge difference, a huge business impact for both sides.

Garrett Johnson [00:13:14]:
Massive impact for sure. And I think for me, that’s really the human element of it, right? Like, it’s really easy to look at all these different sales and marketing tools and think you’re just going to change the world by turning one of those on. It still comes down to the people. Everything comes down to people. And whether you’re working on that retail side as a dealer or you’re an OEM interacting with your dealer network, the people have to matter the most. And we’re obviously always looking to innovate and use new tools.

Garrett Johnson [00:13:47]:
And I think about a lot of businesses, you know, jumping on the bandwagon of AI and oh, we’ve got to do it because it’s the hot new thing. It’s like, okay, but are you doing it because it’s a new piece of technology that you feel like you have to use to stay up to speed? And are you doing it at the sacrifice of the human connection? Because ultimately it is the relationships that make or break any business. And that comes at a very human level. Regardless of your sales channels, regardless of your marketing tools, it’s the human connection that matters the most. And that’s what I’m always wanting to constantly improve. Even as we dive into some of these new technologies and utilize them in our space, it’s okay. Does that buy us more time for a higher quality human connection? And if not, I’m probably less interested in it.

Kyler Mason [00:14:38]:
It seems like a pretty big part of your values. Is that a you thing? Is that a zero thing? Like how? Tell me more about that.

Garrett Johnson [00:14:45]:
I think it’s definitely continuing to grow as a part of the company culture at zero, for sure. But it’s been a very me thing, I think in business is I’ve always found that those human connections outperform anything else that we’re possibly doing. We may think we have the best new sales program or the best new marketing program. And that’s true as a dealer as well. But I found that all of the success I’ve had has come from taking a step back and looking at how this affects the actual people involved in the equation. And that’s really where I found the success in the, in the dealer world. And it was about looking at a business that was struggling, not performing in terms of sales volume, but most importantly not performing in terms of their customer satisfaction. You know, taking a business that is two stars on Google, like that’s your first thing to tackle.

Garrett Johnson [00:15:41]:
That’s your customers telling you they’re dissatisfied. So don’t focus on sales, don’t focus on marketing. Just purely focus on the customer in front of you in the moment and give them the best quality service you possibly can and the business will come. And sure enough, it does, time and time again.

John Gough [00:16:02]:
You and I had a conversation. I think this is like part of who you are baked as a person. Communication is a big part of your life, right? If I got this right, your wife is a teacher at a secondary school for kids with hearing impairments, is that right?

Garrett Johnson [00:16:16]:
She works at a school that’s actually a multi-age, it’s a K through 8 school, but they are also for the kind of northern Seattle, western Washington area, the deaf and Hard and hearing center as well. And so communication plays a huge role in her work and what we do in the community. And it is, I think even going further back than that with my family. I grew up in a way that like communication was key and I never wanted to, even as a kid, be communicated to as a kid because I witnessed all of these adult interactions and everything else going on and I felt like I had something to contribute and say. And anytime I was treated as a kid, I felt like my contribution was being pushed aside. So it was very early on, even with my own parents, that we came to an understanding of I want to be able to communicate with you as a peer, but I also understand and respect that that comes with responsibility on my side to act as a peer if I want to earn that. And that’s definitely something I think that’s carried through to my business life.

John Gough [00:17:21]:
And I can see how that translates for you in terms of understanding being able to say what you want, being able to say what matters to you, being able to say what’s working and not working at home and in work and to your children. It’s just got to permeate everywhere. And I think the best business environments are the ones that reflect our personal values. And sometimes that feels a little cheesy when you read it in the business book. But I mean, I think you’re also kind of a living testament to that.

Garrett Johnson [00:17:53]:
No, I think it is, it’s very true that I could never be happy somewhere in business that didn’t share my values and respect My values right And I do see that, you know, when you really believe in yourself in certain areas of your life, you want to be able to share that and you want to be able to positively influence people. At least I hope it’s positive for most people to that end. And all of us widening our perspectives and understandings of other human beings is, is critical to that. And so I hope, you know, that’s an impact I can continue to have for the rest of my career and with my kids and just kind of everything in life.

Kyler Mason [00:18:35]:
Yeah, so we talked about, you know, you hopped from dealer side to zero. We talked about your like initial responsibilities. Let’s fast forward to now. Like what does the organization expect from you today with your current role, current responsibilities, what does like in plain terms, if you had a kick ass year and you were celebrating that, what would you be describing?

Garrett Johnson [00:18:55]:
For me and, and the KPIs that I manage for the company, you’d be looking at very basics from the sales side of wholesale and retail success on major units, vehicles that we sell. You’d be looking at wholesale success and sell through in the after sales side of the business, our P and A. And you’d be looking at high customer satisfaction scores, right? Improvement to NPS reduction in meantime to repair for the CX and technical side of the business that I lead. But ultimately my role encompasses basically all of our outward facing business operations for north and South America. So everything from sales, after sales, customer support, technical support for our dealers and distributors, everything that falls under that outward is what I’m responsible for. So our successes and those key KPIs are the real measure of my performance.

Kyler Mason [00:19:51]:
Cool. So that’s what you’re going after. What are you banging your head against the wall about right now? What’s super hard?

Garrett Johnson [00:19:56]:
Right now, quite frankly is the economy and tariffs in particular are a real hot button right now. And something that you always know is there but, but the amount that it is affecting the day to day of business right now is just something completely new. Like it is the new Covid as far as impact to business over these last few years. And so in particular, because the volume of the business in my markets is in the US and Canada, the situation with Canada right now is a constant bang ahead against the wall situation. And every day hoping for good news because we want to be able to support our dealers and ultimately the end customers there in the best way possible. And the last thing you want to do in the EV world is have to look at, you know, price changes because of things like tariffs. We are already dealing with a more expensive technology based on scale. And so any implication of that could lead to price increases is a very negative one for us.

Garrett Johnson [00:21:03]:
Luckily, we’re not having to make any of those moves at this time and only time will tell what impacts may come to fruition based on how long this is drawn out throughout this year and into next.

Kyler Mason [00:21:14]:
John and I were actually in a conversation the other day talking to another company that’s impacted greatly by the tariffs. They’ve set up some daily operations with I think functional leadership to have really important conversations about what’s going on, what’s changing, what are we going to do about it, how are, how are you guys reacting to and managing through just the uncertainty right now?

Garrett Johnson [00:21:37]:
Same situation. I mean, because you’re not only looking at what your current business is, right? But we’re long term planners so we have to look at the long term products that haven’t even been released yet. What is the impact potentially going to be? What shifts do we need to make? What do we, you know, ab test internally to understand what changes will we make? I’m very fortunate to have an amazing team internally at Zero that is really locked in on everything tariff government related. So we get conversation happening daily about it in terms of us making decisions. But then we also get an amazing download a couple times a week from some of those team members that are in it with the government space that know how to get through all the particulars of the tariff implications and give us the feedback and they’ve really got, you know, their finger on the pulse of what the expected changes are, both short and long term to help us with that planning. So it’s absolutely a daily conversation and then we tend to look at it twice a week or so as far as start of the week, end of the week.

Garrett Johnson [00:22:46]:
What has changed this week, if anything and if nothing, what decisions have we made internally based on the current status and what does that mean for the coming weeks? Business and additional conversations that need to be had.

Kyler Mason [00:23:02]:
That’s crazy. The speed of change in communication. This is an impossible question. I’m asking anyway with all this uncertainty like how is the winning company going to win in your competitive space?

Garrett Johnson [00:23:15]:
That is a difficult question, but I think you almost just answered it. Having to be constant change and that’s really it. Whether you know, outside of zero, looking at where you’re manufacturing goods, where’s your country of origin, how flexible can you be into pivoting where you’re producing and distributing your products? Right now I don’t have warehousing in certain markets now it’s. I’m exploring warehousing in markets because that may be a way to make a difference of the impact of tariffs and what’s going on in the trade world right now. So it’s really about just making constant change and being willing to adapt. I think any company that just tries to completely hold steady is going to fall behind one way or another and have a massive financial impact to their performance.

Kyler Mason [00:24:11]:
Is that a part you’re talking about warehousing? Is that actually. Is that a responsibility you picked up or is that something that, like, typically would fall under your domain or you just, like, everybody’s doing what they’ve got to do?

Garrett Johnson [00:24:23]:
No, it’s all about the impact. And again, this is like that cross collaboration between departments, no silos, right? Like, obviously, we have a logistics team and an operations team that handles all of our warehousing and everything else, you know, from vehicle production up to getting it into a warehouse for my team to sell. But I need to sell the stuff and the pricing has a huge impact on it. These tariffs have a huge impact. So those ideas should not just be siloed to one team. No one should be just looking and saying, you’re responsible for this. Give me a solution. That’s not a way to move forward.

Garrett Johnson [00:24:57]:
Everyone has to be a positive part of the solution. Everyone should be bringing ideas to the table and you never know where your next great idea is going to come from. And I think that’s really important also for building up your teams. For all I know, it’s going to be one of my after sales team members that comes up with the ultimate solution that changes everything for motorcycle sales and distribution. If I don’t give them that opportunity and they don’t feel empowered to share their ideas and ask their questions, I’m shortchanging myself and Zero Motorcycles as a whole. So it’s really about being that open collaboration. So when I talk about warehousing, I talk about different distribution channels. It’s coming from a somewhat selfish place in that I need to make sales numbers, I’ve got to sell product to drive revenue for a company, but it’s for the greater good of everyone involved.

John Gough [00:25:50]:
And you’ve got to be able to be to your point earlier. You have to be so agile in responding to these things. And it reminds me of there’s a American fighter pilot who trained fighter pilots for a long time and his name was John Boyd and he had something called the Ooda Loop, which was observe, orient, decide, act. And it was his instruction to people who live in these life and death environments that if you can get through that cycle of observe your environment, orient yourself to what’s going on, just make a decision and then take an action faster than your competitor or your enemy combatant or anybody else. That’s how you win, is that ability to cycle through that decision and make choices better than anybody else, faster than anybody else. And so it sounds like, and I think you guys are doing this, that there’s like a cadence of the conversation that doesn’t just leave itself in conversation. There also is like a lot of action and willingness to act on a very regular basis to stay ahead.

Garrett Johnson [00:26:52]:
Yeah, decision paralysis is a very real thing for many, many companies. And you’ve got to be really careful to not let yourself get to that point. And don’t get me wrong, like you need to be cautious, right? You can also be as an overall organization making a decision in the silo of your interpretation of what is going on. You also need to be doing research just like we do gather data from the government and economists to understand what they think is going to happen next in this trade situation. We need to be looking at our competitors, both those that are bigger than us and smaller than us, and see what they’re doing as well. Because that great idea, that great response is going to come from somewhere and you don’t want to be caught on your heels.

Garrett Johnson [00:27:37]:
And so thinking that you’re always just the best and staying within that silo is a problem, even if you’re quick to make the decision. So you got to be flexible on it. You got to be agile, take the data in and then be willing to commit ultimately to what you’re doing. Because the buying cycles and the business decision cycles are continuing to get shorter, they’re not longer. You don’t have years to make changes and make decisions and you don’t even have months in a lot of times. These days. We’re down to days and sometimes hours. There are critical decisions that need to be made and you need to have leaders that are willing to do that and then own it, absolutely own that decision and live it going forward.

Garrett Johnson [00:28:18]:
Because that confidence speaks volumes to your teams being able to then move forward with that decision and implement it.

John Gough [00:28:26]:
I’ve heard only great things about the leadership at Zero and the ways that they’re making decisions. I know you care a lot about connecting and communicating with dealers and people who are in different businesses, but really a real part of your sales channel when you’re making these like real time Decisions. How do you make sure that everybody is on the same page and on board with what’s going on?

Garrett Johnson [00:28:50]:
Yeah, I think you’re never going to get to a point where everyone is on board, right? You’re always going to have some pushback and some naysaying, but you have to look at that kind of the greater good of the impacts for the group that you’re trying to satisfy. And for me, that’s really been through empowering my team and making sure that when we need to gather data, we need to gather input. Not housing that within myself or one or two key people, but empowering the entirety of my team to ask questions. You know, my. My technical support team is on the phone with dealers every single day. Ask other questions.

Garrett Johnson [00:29:27]:
How is this going? Oh, we saw this brand has that new program. What’s that doing for you? And getting that feedback loop working for you and having as many voices out there gathering input as possible. And I find it’s really empowering for dealer partners as well to actually feel heard, and they should be heard. So reach out before you make a decision and gather some of that data. It’s not necessarily going to change your decision. Even if what they say is contrary to the decision you’re making, at least you understand their point of view and can be sensitive to. To how you roll out that decision and the impacts it’s going to have on their business, because you listened before rolling it out.

John Gough [00:30:10]:
You were talking about making people feel heard, making sure they feel heard. I think, Garrett, that that is the thing that people want more than anything is just to know that they are not expected to sit down and shut up in any of these environments, whether that’s as an employee in your business or as a. As a sales channel or a sales partner. The fact that you are behaving consistently with your values and saying out loud, listen, I want to hear what you have to say. And doesn’t mean I’m going to go with you every time, but I am going to listen to you every time. It makes a huge difference in people’s willingness to stay in the fight with you. It might be bloody, and it’s not going to be easy for a little while yet, but hopefully they’ll stick around because they know you care.

Garrett Johnson [00:30:54]:
Yeah, I think a big part of that is just that people use the word partner very differently than I perceive the definition. I think in this industry, right. We always hear OEMs want to say, oh, dealers and distributors, they’re our partners in this business, and then continue to simply dictate every single term of the business to those partners. I don’t see that as a partnership. A partnership has to have give and take both ways. And when something is a potential negative that has to happen, it’s a decision that must move forward. Having open conversation about it, where you’re explaining it. I was actually just listening to another podcast this last week that kind of covered this in the terms of OEM dealer side of things.

Garrett Johnson [00:31:43]:
And it was always, well, you need to do this number, because this is what I need. And then the dealer comes back and says, well, no, this is the number I can do. And say, well, no, you’re going to do this number because I can hold you accountable for X, Y, Z. Like, that is not a partnership. Be honest about, you know, if you need a dealer to go above and beyond, explain to them why. Share with them. Like, hey, we’ve got to hit this target because. And it’s critical for XYZ reason.

Garrett Johnson [00:32:11]:
Share the background, be more open in your business with them. Again, break down barriers, break down the silos between these partners and have open communication. It can do absolute wonders. And I’ve worked with OEMs over the years as a dealer that were horrible at that. And quite frankly, a lot of times led to me terminating them from my dealership. And then I’ve worked with brands that were absolutely fabulous about that, and they were willing to listen and more importantly, explain themselves and their perspective as to why they were asking for something to be done or an order to be placed when maybe from my point of view, it didn’t seem practical at that time.

Kyler Mason [00:32:51]:
So if that’s one big pillar of how you win with the dealer, what else is in that equation? Because you said, you know, there’s. There’s other manufacturers that are doing that really well. How does zero continue to win in that space and differentiate in addition to what you were saying?

Garrett Johnson [00:33:06]:
Well, I think it goes back to what I said about always looking at what others are doing and then taking it to the next level, right? I always look at the past as your ability to quickly disseminate tons of information in a very short period of time. Like, I don’t need to know everything in detail. Have lived the life of dealers in the 70s and 80s to understand what happened in the 70s and 80s. I can take those learnings in a very short period of time and have that help me evolve my own approach. And I think that that has to happen more in real time, and it is happening in real time. For those of us that are paying Attention and listening where we’re looking at what’s working the best.

Garrett Johnson [00:33:49]:
But just because it’s working the best doesn’t mean I just copy it. I don’t just mirror it. It’s I look at that and go okay, they did this and they found this success. How can I tweak it to make it even more successful in my instance of that in Zero’s instance And how we are going to deploy a similar idea, take it all a step further. I think about like one example in the dealer side of things that has to do with drawing in more consumers to a brand and it has to do with the social space. And there are tools out there now for OEMs, right. To be able to post on dealers social media accounts on their behalf. And when you see most OEMs doing it like it sounds like a great idea, you’re going to be out there in front of those that dealer’s customers more often.

Garrett Johnson [00:34:33]:
But where they fall flat is they post the exact same content to every single account nationwide. And consumers very quickly realize that’s what’s happening and they lose interest, they no longer pay attention. So an approach I’ve taken to that with my team and with Zero is having an actual full time person, a headcount in Zero that’s responsible for that and it’s creating content unique to that specific dealer, their market, the inventory they have on hand in the given moment so that it can remain fresh. And that even falls into like the language, the copy language, right? Everyone’s going to have their OEM copy playbook that doesn’t work, that doesn’t feel local, that doesn’t feel invested from that going out on a dealer’s social media channel. So change it, make it feel more organic from the dealer so that you’re actually able to engage more customers and keep it interesting. And it’s been working.

Garrett Johnson [00:35:34]:
We’re actually seeing that our posts are becoming some of the highest engaged posts for those dealers. Even though that’s really coming from my central team at Zero on behalf of that dealer.

Kyler Mason [00:35:46]:
Especially from a dealer perspective, like that’s money they don’t have to spend. It’s engaging with their audience in a way that is probably in some cases better than they can do it because you can dedicate the capacity to do it. So that’s, that’s super cool. Did you or have you received any resistance and, and like actually getting in and posting on behalf of a dealer through their channel?

Garrett Johnson [00:36:07]:
There’s always some resistance to start. I think the big Difference is you kind of, you know, you just hit it on the head as far as the cost, right? Most other OEMs are passing on some portion of the cost to their dealer network for these types of programs. We are not. We see this. You asked about how is zero doing things differently to rise above. We’re absorbing that cost.

Garrett Johnson [00:36:31]:
We see it as a part of our responsibility in dealer marketing to provide that service. And especially being a smaller brand that is fighting for more space in the dealers, more mind share from the dealer staff, we have to invest. And that is one of the small ways that we are investing by absorbing that cost completely on behalf of our dealers.

John Gough [00:36:52]:
It’s funny that you frame it that way as because we are small, we have to go do this. We’ve recently talked to one of the biggest RV manufacturers and they have a very same philosophy about. It is our obligation to support our sales channel partners by providing them resources and assets that they don’t have to buy from us. And different people choose to do that different ways and fund it in different ways and apply those resources. And there are plenty of good ones. It’s not this or nothing, but I do think that there is a pretty consistent bit of feedback from the dealers about the OE’s willingness to put their money where their mouth is and enter the danger, enter the ecosystem with us. In that partner mentality, it buys a lot of goodwill and frankly, market share.

Kyler Mason [00:37:40]:
Speaking of market share, what is your take? Zero’s take on your responsibility to, to grow the market versus steel share among the available market? Do you guys, do you guys talk about things like that in those terms internally? Like what does that look like?

Garrett Johnson [00:37:56]:
Absolutely, right? Because again, when it goes back to your long term planning, you have expectations. And for us it’s a little bit different too because we’re not just looking at market share and the total tam. In order to come up with those numbers, we have another metric we have to consider which is EV adoption in this space. So that’s something that’s a little bit more unique to us. I feel very fortunate that Zero does two things incredibly well in allowing us to build the space. We attract more new buyers as far as a volume of our sales than other OEMs, than ice OEMs as just a pure percentage of the sales. And that’s really exciting because it means for dealers we’re bringing in new customers who would not have come into their dealership otherwise.

Garrett Johnson [00:38:45]:
The other area that we’re really great at performing in is bringing people back to motorcycling. So people that, you know, used to ride, they rode ICE their whole life and they got out of it for one reason or another. You know, a lot of times, obviously, family and career changes cause those decisions to be made, but when they decide to come back to it, they’re interested in doing something different and approaching it differently. And both of those things have also led to zero outperforming in terms of age demographics as well. Our average age buyer is fully a decade younger than the average ICE motorcycle buyer. And that’s a big thing for our dealers because we’re also priming them for additional revenue stream, right? That buyer is going to be with them longer with our brand than what they will be with an ICE brand.

Garrett Johnson [00:39:37]:
I always feel like the best way to grow is to differentiate yourself. And when you don’t have real competition, that’s really hard to do. You’re just held to account for exactly what you do and that’s it. So we need competitors. You know, a lot of people messaged me when things started to go south and word about Energica going out of business, going bankrupt, hit the market this last fall and they’re like, oh, this is so good for you. No, it’s not. We need people like that to succeed so that we can show why we’re the better option in that space. You know, we bring better value, we’re building a better product, we have a better customer experience.

Garrett Johnson [00:40:22]:
I love to be able to differentiate against the competition, and that’s hard when you don’t have that. So we’re very excited about that competition coming into the place.

Kyler Mason [00:40:32]:
It’s probably even worse because now you’ve got dealers or like there’s doubt that’s introduced to the dealers, to the consumer. Like, why is this happening? Is this a risky move to consider ev? I could see how that’s even. Even worse than what you’re describing.

Garrett Johnson [00:40:47]:
Yeah, no, it makes a. It makes a huge impact and it is something that we have to battle with. So I’m looking forward to some healthy competition. I know that our teams, all the way from product through sales, are ready for that and are going to be able to keep us ahead of the curve and really allow Zero to become the brand it already is in the EV space, but a real major player in motorsports globally, and we’re definitely headed there. I think you guys have seen at AIMExpo, you got to see some of that new product and a hint of some of the other future product coming. We are entering markets that are going to greatly increase our reach and Very excited to see that happen and bring legitimacy to some of those spaces as well that have been a little bit of the Wild west with some of the product that’s been out there in those competitive spaces. We bring that legitimate piece of being an EV industry leader to it and we’ll help grow the space for everyone.

John Gough [00:41:47]:
That was one of the themes of conversation at that show was not just growing, not just the EV versus ice, but growing power sports broadly as a market and I guess industry concern or fear that the adoption rate among young people hasn’t been there in the way that it was 20 or 30 years ago. If the answer is partially, at least our buyers in EV are younger, we’re going to open the market that way. I think that’s interesting. Are there other things that, that zero or that you all are, whether it’s you, dealers, you, the oe, you, the industry as a group are thinking about what are you doing about, about that problem?

Garrett Johnson [00:42:30]:
Again, we are lucky that we outperform in that place. But I think what we’re doing is just that we’re bringing new product that is very exciting to young consumers and taking advantage of the successes that have happened over the last few years with some of the competitive competitors. Particularly if you think about our new X Line product being, you know, off road, centric, lightweight and most importantly inexpensive. So it’s a lower barrier to entry and it’s, it’s different, it doesn’t come with the same maintenance constraints that an ICE vehicle does. So you’re finding a lot of people moving off of like e-bicycle into the e-moto space. And I think dealers on a whole have potentially underestimated the size of that market, just even the Emoto market. And that’s where we’re really excited to again bring a regular brand name with a history to that space with a traditional dealer network, with a traditional support infrastructure so that it’s not in the shadows any longer. We’re bringing it to the forefront.

John Gough [00:43:39]:
That product launch cycle for you all has been kind of long though too, isn’t it? Like we, we see some OEs bring product to market and their new thing either in a big reveal all in one moment or you know, within like a six or nine month timeframe is the new, the new thing. You guys are showing stuff at these shows and you’ll have to remind me about the unit name, but it’s the second year in a row that you’re saying this is what’s coming next. Still not available to buy, is that right?

Garrett Johnson [00:44:07]:
No, there’s Nothing that we’ve shown for a multi year cycle. So this November at EICMA we launched our new X Line. But more importantly, we launched what we’re calling our All Access initiative, right. Which was our commitment to bring six vehicles under $10,000 USD to the market within 24 months of that time frame. The first two of those vehicles are our new dirt bikes in our new X Line with the XB and the XE and those are going to be out in market in early summer. So that’s from first announcement to the public to out there is around a nine month delivery right now. We have shown our new Neutrino concept which is more of a smaller format motorcycle urban mobility piece that will also be in that sub $10,000 category. And we did show, choose to show that a little bit early because we do believe in gathering feedback, right.

Garrett Johnson [00:45:04]:
Having open communication. So we build that concept and share it and then gather as much feedback as we possibly can. And that feedback may be just about the space in general, like are we headed the right way? But it may be down to ergonomics or color selection. You know, there’s so many different things that we can understand and then also understanding about price point, right? Where are we going to meet those young buyers where this is a practical and easy purchase decision for them and that’s a really important part of all access overall.

John Gough [00:45:40]:
Garrett, you, you’ve given us gold all throughout this and talking about where you started and your values and what you, what you see as next and also what’s really hard today. I want to know if you were able to give some advice to let’s say your younger self 10 years ago about what, what’s about to happen and now this young Garrett is entering this ecosystem today with you. What are you going to tell him?

Garrett Johnson [00:46:08]:
That’s a good question. But I think the biggest thing is just for me would be telling myself back then believe in people and putting people first. Like it was a thing I had to test out for many years. Like am I doing right by having that be a leading philosophy in my life if I would have known and had some more confidence, concrete foundation and knowing that was going to be the best tool for analyzing problems and decision making. I think I could have accelerated my own personal progress in career. The companies I’ve worked with, the companies I’ve grown that much more quickly.

John Gough [00:46:50]:
That is a great answer to how do you win?

Garrett Johnson [00:46:53]:
Yeah, you don’t win without people. That’s it. You do not win without people. You need them to love it. Buy it, ride it and do it all over again on repeat, Rinse and repeat. Absolutely.

John Gough [00:47:06]:
Why You Win is presented by Element Three, a marketing firm focused on modernizing go to market strategies for manufacturers that sell through complex distribution channels. We help leaders solve problems across demand generation, sales channel support and brand development.

Kyler Mason [00:47:23]:
If you’d like more from myself or John, connect with us on LinkedIn. And for more from Element Three, visit elementthree.com. That’s elementthree.com.