Auto Remarketing is recognizing the 2023 Women in Remarketing honorees in the April edition of the magazine and will be posting Q&As with each of these outstanding leaders on the website.

Next up is Jeanine Matus-Cunningham, national commercial accounts manager at BSC America.

What is the top trend you’re watching in remarketing/wholesale automotive this year?

The “new normal” post-COVID is something I think everyone is keeping a close eye on right now. Before COVID, we all had a general idea of what the different seasons would bring. Tax season, spring, summer and then going into the holidays, we all had a general idea of what to expect.

COVID tossed all of that up into the air. As things are settling into a new normalcy, we are trying to predict seasonal expectations. We also need to keep an eye on the trend for off -lease units coming back into the fold. We’re seeing off-lease vehicles hitting the auction lots again. Inventory numbers are still low in comparison to pre-COVID numbers, and with the second-quarter quickly approaching, it’ll be interesting to see how those inventory numbers look. I think we’re all waiting to see what the trend will be for the remainder of 2023.

What do you enjoy the most about the remarketing business, and what would you change?

I’m a people person! For me, it’s the relationships that I’ve built that I enjoy the most. The relationships with my co-workers, with my vendors, and with my clients. You spend more time with your work associates than you spend with anyone else. You need to enjoy it! I have made some incredible, lifelong friendships through our industry.

Being from the auction side of the industry, I always say we do not own or sell a product. It’s our customer service that we have to off er. Get to know the people you work with. Be sincere. We all work better together as a team.

What piece of career advice would you have for someone new to the industry?

Soak up every bit of knowledge that the people surrounding you have to offer. You can read books, search the internet, learn how to use a computer, but the people around you that have spent years, sometimes decades doing this can teach more than you could ever learn from any book.

Learn as much as you can, even about different departments, or different fields in our industry and opportunities will open up for you. Learn everything you can, but remember you’ll never know everything as our industry is always evolving. And last, but not least, have Fun! This is such a fun business we’re in, don’t lose sight of that!

Describe a time you were either a mentor or a mentee and the value you found in the experience.

I have been, and still consider myself a mentee. I was so fortunate to have started my path in auction management under my boss Cindy Mitchell. I had a background in retail management, and of course I thought I had a pretty good idea of how to manage people. Cindy took me under her wing, teaching me the ins and outs of our business. From how to manage and train employees with different personalities to how to relay expectations to our outside departments to get the proper end results for our clients.

She taught me that how I say things are just as important as the things I say, to inspect what I expect, and that I can’t change what other people do, but I can change how I let it affect me.

Cindy has been a mentor to me in both my professional and in my personal life. This has been an invaluable experience to me, and I can honestly say that I would not be where or who I am today without her. I hope in the future that someone will feel that I have been able to be the same for them.