About Pinnacle

Built by operators.
Tuned by coaches.

Twenty-six years of dealership operating experience. A small team of people who've run stores, coached floors, and built the tech that holds it all together, pointed straight at your continued success.

The Pinnacle Story

Owner-operated. Floor-tested. Every visit.

Pinnacle was founded by Joe and Julie Cox more than twenty-six years ago, on the belief that real dealership performance is built in the lane, not in a slide deck. That belief still runs the company.

Every Pinnacle engagement is run by people who've actually carried a bag, run a desk, managed a BDC, or led a store. We don't send consultants who learned the business from a textbook. We send operators who've lived the failure modes our process is built to fix.

What's grown is the operating system around that floor work, the assessments, the carry-forward Action Plans, the BDC on Demand bench, the coaching alerts, the engagement intelligence. What hasn't changed is the rule that started the company: every recommendation gets walked, watched, and proven on the floor before it ships.

26+
Years of dealership operating experience, single-point stores, multi-rooftop groups, and OEM partnerships.
Owner-Operated
Founded and still run by Joe & Julie Cox. No private equity. No quarterly margin pressure.
Floor First
Every coach has run a department before joining Pinnacle. Every recommendation is walked on the floor before it ships.
Cornelius, NC
Headquartered just outside Charlotte. Coaches deployed across the U.S. and Canada.
The Pinnacle Leadership Team

The people running the playbook.

Operators, coaches, engineers. Every member of this team has either run a dealership, coached one back to performance, or built the technology that holds the operating system together.

Matt Lowery
Matt Lowery
President

Matt Lowery is a U.S. Army Ranger and combat veteran who brings real-world operational discipline into dealership performance and culture. Matt's rapid ascent to General Manager, delivering double-digit net growth along the way, launched a consulting career focused on helping dealerships build stronger leaders, tighter operations, and higher-performing teams.

Antonio Lawing
Antonio Lawing
Vice President, Business Development

Antonio Lawing is the heartbeat of the Pinnacle family. Going on fifteen years in, Tone started as a sales rep, worked his way up through management, and now runs all of Pinnacle's sales and marketing across both sides of the house: the events, sales, and mail business and Pinnacle Dealer Services alike. An accomplished leader and an ADG Finance Top-of-Class graduate, he built his name on one rule, inspect what you expect. Want more leads, or help working the ones you already have? Call Tone. Off the clock, he is a devoted husband of more than fourteen years and a proud family man.

Matt Gray
Matt Gray
Vice President of Dealer Development

Twenty-plus years of automotive expertise, formerly an OEM Program Director and MasterClass Facilitator. Matt leads Pinnacle's dealer development practice, translating manufacturer-level program work into store-level execution that actually moves the numbers on the board.

Justin Hill
Justin Hill
Revenue Officer

A robust history of leadership and sales excellence in the automotive industry, most recently as Director of Enterprise Sales at Better Car People. Justin leads Pinnacle's revenue strategy, pairing the right dealers with the right capability mix and making sure every engagement earns its keep.

Holly Markette
Holly Markette
Customer Experience Officer

Customer experience expert Holly Markette translates the same award-winning customer experience strategies that earned her national attention on ABC's Nightline into measurable results for automotive retailers. For more than a decade, she has advised dealerships and OEM programs for Subaru, Nissan, Acura, Honda, and GM. Holly also created the industry's first dealership- and BDC-specific DISC behavioral assessment, reflecting Pinnacle's core philosophy that engagement is the product.

Michael Markette
Michael Markette
Technology Officer

A pioneer in automotive engagement intelligence, Michael Markette has spent more than 20 years helping dealers and OEMs measure, understand, and improve the customer experience. From creating the original CallRevu platform to building large-scale engagement analytics like FordDirect's mystery shop program, his work has consistently focused on one question: What really happens when a customer reaches out?

What backs the work

Credentials, not promises.

Our practice is built on operating depth and OEM-grade rigor, not slide decks. Here's what dealers actually buy when they buy Pinnacle.

100%
Operator-led coaching team. Every Pinnacle coach has run a dealership department before joining.
5,000+
Direct mail and engagement campaigns developed across staffed and non-staffed dealer programs.
OEM-Grade
Cross-OEM experience spanning domestic, import, and luxury franchise environments.
Written
Every recommendation lands as a prioritized Action Plan, not a slide deck. Tied to specific people and behaviors.

Let's diagnose your store.

One conversation, one written assessment. We'll show you where the engagement gaps are, before any engagement is signed.

Talk to a Strategist Take the 3-Minute Assessment