First off, I'm a dealer and not a Vin Solutions employee and I've never bragged about being years ahead. This whole thread reeks of self promotion and a lot of iMagic setting themselves up to win. Lets see:

1) Your customer runs the forum and will be a moderator.
2) You came up with the process for the "Bakeoff" and your customer agreed that that's the way to do it
3) No suggestions by anyone else have been answered except to basically act like a two year old saying NaNaNaNa
4) The same customer will be hosting the whole thing on his forum

Come on guys this is not a contest. It feels like the old south with a hanging jury!

If I was Vin Solutions, and I'm not, I would NEVER get involved with this and I'd advise them to walk away and just continue to grow as a company and make the constant updates and changes we see on a weekly basis.

This tit for tat does no one any service and it should end.

How's your glass house?

And as usual when the heat gets too much try to take it off topic. You guys at VIN bragged about being years ahead, we all just want you to prove it.

I for one had never heard of this guy, Richard Keith Latman, until this forum. I feel I can read people pretty well and I just didn't like anything about this guy just from the entries on this page so I did what I usually do. I researched. I won't get into the whole legal thing as I wasn't there and I don't know what happened but it certainly seems like it was more than hiding a ring according to the News Sources I read from 2007. What really struck me was his personal blog. If iMagic is the greatest CRM/ILM on the planet I wouldn't do business with this guy. Everybody I've spoken to or communicated with whether on blogs or email or phone from Vin Solutions has been a complete gentleman. This guy comes across, on his own blog, as a complete A-Hole. I guess his glass house has been boarded up with sheet metal otherwise he'd have nowhere to live!

Well, there better be a sale before this dual of vin and imagiclab. Nobody will want VIN Solutions after we show the World how far they are really behind

This all comes off as a staged set-up for a dog & pony show for VIN to pitch itself for a sale within the next 90 days.

Is Sean simply the closer brought in to make the deal happen?

Honest question from a non-user.

This is sofa king great!

Bonfigli... nice job.

Jeff... maybe I should help you moderate.

Richard i agree no more posts it is going nowhere.

I am a well paid poster folk!

Where are your employees?

Do they continue to keep their competitive edge while not at the brick and mortar?

do they continue to listen to car dealerships' concerns and the challenges that they are facing in march 2010?

i'll wait for one of them.

or even a satisfied customer. LOL

Ahhh and here comes the VIN paid poster folks.

Christian get your boss Sean to show up and we'll go against every "profit performing" piece you have. We'll easily match up against everything you have and then school you about a thing or two. You've obviously never seen DealerCRM.

I am not responding again, this is turning to a waste of time. It's put up or shut up time

Only problem is, who are the other companies that will demo alongside imagic? Vinsolutions' CRM is just one piece of the profit performing machine.. Everyone adds a customer, and sends out emails. Vinsolutions will have to dumb down a demo to just show CRM.

I hope someone records this for those of us that can't watch this play out live? Will you be taking questions from people not actually participating live?

Moderators? 4 people in a room? What will they discuss? Politics and exchange pie recipes? Sean would never agree to this!

You are going to let this be recorded and edited? Never going to happen.

If something like this were ever to go down, it would have to be live, in a dealership, a prospective client. The better tool walks out with a check in hand for full boat.

Putting Sean in a room with 4 people would be like caging up a lion in the wild. It would be like me throwing you the keys to a Ferrari with no engine.

Guys I will make my schedule available any days but the 24th but I need to know. This "I am in a meeting" stuff doesn't cut it. Last I checked the Internet was available "down south" or wherever Sean is. He wasn't too busy to claim he was "years" ahead and he wasn't too busy to accept the dual....

Come on Sean, let's do this.

Richard Keith Latman
Chief Executive Officer

iMagicLab LLC
www.imagiclab.com

A CRM duel! Sounds fantastic, especially since my hometown is the aforementioned, Weehawken, NJ.

HA! Can't wait to watch.

But having someone affiliated with one of the contestants no matter how small a role is just not fair play. I agree that if the point of the Bakeoff is to see which program would benefit dealers more then it must be judged by impartial dealers at a live event and other CRM vendors need to be included. (Not Higher Gear or Autobase though) The problem with this whole thing is that the people setting it up are also the people judging and the people running the forum so there will always be the feeling of impropriety even if there isn't any.

Move it over to a more impartial forum like Auto Dealer Monthly or Kain or ADM and let good dealers without affiliation with either program judge. I'd love to see an impartial contest but there's no way for it to be impartial this way!

That has already been considered Mitchell. Jeff is with neither company nor has ever been. I, however, am an iMaigcLab client and because of that will be taking a side role to Jeff on this one.

Just to play Devil's Advocate, and to make sure there is no favoritism, which CRM do you and Jeff use? If you use either Vin Solutions or iMagic Labs you need to remove yourself or selves as the judges and get impartial judges that use neither program! People tend to vote with what they're familiar with so get some Higher Gear or Autobase users to judge the programs fairly!

Thanks,

Mitchell

Just to maybe give VinSolutions a hand on scheduling, I'll throw these dates out:

March 25th - 29th

....anywhere in there works for me. If travel is required, then I suggest the weekend of the 27th. I've already got my vacation time approved

Alex - Who says the car business isn't fun!

Arent you all glad I asked the question that started this amazing tangent? -mb

Shawn & Sean - the stage has been set. It will be 1 person from VinSolutions, 1 person from iMagicLab with Jeff & me as the moderators. It will just be the 4 of us for the first go. If this works out well (which it will) then we've created a forum for future vendor vs. vendor shoot-outs. To do it at a conference or to include more than 2 CRM companies will complicate things so much that the audience (your clients) will not benefit.

Jeff, Keith, and myself are just waiting to hear from you guys as to when this best fits your schedule. The ball is in the VinSolutions court.

this needs to be at a live event maybe Digital Dealer or the like. That would ensure a fair format and would allow more vendors to participate. Then the judges are the dealers and that is the whole point right?

Sean is in some important meetings today and through the rest of the week. I am sure he will reply as soon as he has a minute.

I am thinking maybe a March CRM Madness with brackets and the whole deal. Maybe Dick Vitale can moderate!

I worry about it getting very confusing. One on one is the way to go. Hey maybe we can do a CRM Playoff system? THAT would be fun.

No matter, I can't even get a follow up from the company that's YEARS ahead of us. Sean?

I would love to see some more of the big names get involved. Come on Dealer Socket, eLead, CarResearch lets put everyone to the test.

Ed you are right... Sean? Anybody home? Are we doing this?

Richard Keith Latman
Chief Executive Officer

iMagicLab LLC
www.imagiclab.com