Nick D'Agostino was the automotive sales manager at Wiseco, the piston maker, when he talked with host Reid Lunde in 2015. He ran Wiseco's automotive segment and answered for its results. At the time Wiseco sat under a holding company, Performance Motorsports International, which was owned by the publicly traded Dover.
Before Wiseco, Nick worked shipping and receiving at a piston company, built engines at night and ran his own engine shop, which he opened with $3,500 from one job. He brought that small-shop view to a manufacturer's sales desk.
This conversation is about pricing and customer value. Nick explained why price-driven sales build no loyalty, how a manufacturer polices pricing, why proof beats advertising, and why you should never try to sell into a community you have not joined. He also told the story of how he got into the business.
From a neighbor's fence to the piston business
Nick grew up in suburban Detroit in a family of construction tradesmen. He was the oldest of 27 grandchildren, and his father owned the family company. Around age 10 or 11 he would hang on the fence watching a neighbor, a backyard mechanic, work on a rough 1965 Plymouth Satellite. The neighbor finally invited him over and taught him everything from oil changes and brake jobs to helping build the 440 that went into that car.
He built a 1993 Dodge Dakota with a 318 from a Chilton manual while working at Pep Boys. That job ended when he raced a customer in front of the store. He was fired, but he won $100, which he pointed out was more than he made at $8.50 an hour. He enrolled in construction management to please his father, hated it, sketched manifolds on his folders, and finally went home to tell his dad he had dropped out.
I can't teach passion. I can teach you anything technical about the piston business.
Nick said he tells that to the people he interviews. Passion is the one thing he cannot train.
Starting an engine shop on one job's pay
Around 1999 or 2000, Nick's first job in performance was shipping and receiving at Diamond Pistons. He mopped the shop and packed boxes by day and built engines at night for a local performance shop. A salesman there bought that shop and hired Nick full time. It folded in about two years. Nick had just bought a house and was left holding three paychecks that were worthless.
His hometown had five marinas, and he had built a drag motor that a customer put in a boat. That got attention. He was hired to build a pair of supercharged 502s for a 40-plus foot Fountain boat. The customer fronted the money for parts. The two engines were worth more than Nick's house, and the night before delivery he slept in his kitchen next to the garage door to guard them.
He was paid $3,500. About $2,400 of it went to first and last month's rent on a building, and he moved his tools in. He said he did not have money for lunch the day he opened. He was 23 or 24. Looking back, he said he would not change it. Without financial backing he had to fight and hustle, and that habit carried him the rest of his career.
Proof sells better than ads
When Nick ran his own shop, he spent thousands of dollars he did not have on business cards, ad space and forum sponsorships. He said the best promotion was being at the racetrack with customers' cars performing. A buyer does not want to hear that a piston will hold 1,400 horsepower. He wants to see dyno sheets and a handful of racers running that power with the brand on their fender.
He pointed Reid to Simon Sinek's "Start With Why" talk and said it could have saved him $10,000 or $20,000. His takeaway was that a customer is buying the passion and care behind a part or a tune as much as the part itself. Plenty of shops can do the tune. The difference is whether the customer felt he got value, felt the person on the phone cared, and came away inspired.
Nick said that excited kid with a 14-second Honda buying his first cams is a customer for life if you get excited with him. He reminded listeners that everyone was once the guy with too many questions, and a brush-off answer sends that customer elsewhere, or into a project that goes wrong.
Price buyers are not loyal
Reid asked about the race to the bottom, where sellers undercut each other until they disappear and another one pops up. Nick said that as a manufacturer, he often saw sellers with a good product who simply did not know how to sell it, so they dropped the price.
If someone buys from you because they're the lowest price, there's no loyalty that comes from that.
A customer who buys because you talked him through the package and told him you ran it in your own car is a relationship. Nick said people do business with people they like.
Policing price was part of his job. Reports of pricing violations came straight to his desk, and he spent about six hours a week going through pricing. He said the honor system did not work, and online sellers were very good at reporting each other, so he had invoices from just about everybody. After enough reports he had uncomfortable talks with certain resellers. If a reseller was hurting the brand's image or integrity, he said, he was probably not interested in doing business with them. Wiseco was reviewing a new program to address the problem.
For new sellers, his advice was simple. Do not look up the lowest price on eBay and go under it. Selling at less margin just means making less money.
Join the community before you sell to it
Brand awareness, Nick said, comes from showing up. A great product at a great price will still sit on the shelf if nobody knows about it.
Don't try and sell into a community you aren't part of.
Wiseco showed diesel parts at SEMA in 2013 and said plainly it was going to try diesel. Nick admitted he knew nothing about diesel. Before sponsoring a single diesel event, the team visited somewhere between 12 and 20 diesel shops in person to introduce themselves. They did the same in drag radial racing, where Nick had spent about two and a half years building relationships, including at Donald Long's events at South Georgia Motorsports Park. He was proud that Wiseco pistons were in the fastest cars on 275 radials.
Running a segment like an owner
At Wiseco, each segment manager owned a piece of the business. Nick answered for automotive on profit, dollars and units. He noted that selling more units for less money was a call he had to defend. Every August he forecast the next year's numbers for the board. If the business ran $40,000 or $50,000 short, he had to go find it, and he said that is when you remember your hustle.
He admitted he was very hands-on and fought the urge to micromanage. He still talked to about a dozen accounts himself, from 4,000 horsepower Pro Mods to a guy upgrading a stock engine. He also said he hired out what he was not good at. He could barely weld and had never rebuilt a transmission, because he had a great transmission guy. He credited his success to networking and relationships more than anything he did alone.
He pointed to the president of Performance Motorsports International, who started on the Wiseco shop floor at 17, went to night school and worked his way up. Nick said anyone who claims you cannot do that anymore is usually being lazy.
Key takeaways
- Competing on price builds no loyalty. Win customers by caring about their project and talking them through it.
- Results at the track and on the dyno sell better than ad space.
- Get to know a community in person before you try to sell to it.
- Do not undercut the market to make a sale. Lower margin just means less money.
- Know your weak spots and hire them out. Relationships get more done than one person can.
- Treat the beginner's questions as a chance to earn a customer for life.
Protecting your margins with My Shop Assist
Nick's point was that margin comes from value and relationships, and that you have to watch your numbers to protect it. My Shop Assist gives small manufacturers and builders the tools to do that. Track parts and inventory, order materials on purchase orders, clock labor to each job and task to see the real cost of what you make, and export to QuickBooks. Text messaging keeps customers in the loop, and online payments make it easy for them to pay. See how it works for performance parts manufacturers.
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