Most managers only get a glimpse of how their teams talk to customers unless they’re physically shadowing or reviewing calls.

Curious to know from the group
How do you currently see what’s actually happening in your store’s sales or service conversations?

We've been having a great internal conversation recently about whether dealerships should spend ad dollars on their own name. Some say it’s a waste of money because you’ll show up organically anyway; others swear it’s a mandatory line item.

Here’s the breakdown of why this is such a polarizing topic in the industry:

The Argument FOR Bidding on Your Own Dealership​

• Defense Against Conquesting: If you don’t bid on your own name, your competitors definitely will. When a customer searches for "City Ford," the first thing they might see is a "Huge Sale at Metro Ford" ad. Buying your own name keeps your brand at the top of the page.
• Controlling the Narrative: Brand searches usually mean the customer has already put you on their shortlist. They are looking for your reputation, hours, or specific inventory. An ad allows you to direct them to a specific landing page (like a Current Specials page) rather than just your homepage.
• Dominating Real Estate: Search engine users are click-happy and often don't distinguish between Ad and Organic. Having both gives you more above-the-fold space on mobile devices, pushing competitors further down the screen.

The Argument AGAINST Bidding on Your Own Dealership​

• The "Cannibalization" Effect: If you already rank #1 organically for your name, you are essentially paying for clicks you may have received for free.
• Opportunity Cost: Every dollar spent on your own name is a dollar taken away from high-intent Make/Model keywords for your inventory. If someone searches "2026 SUV for sale," that’s a live buyer you might miss because your budget was spent on someone who already knew who you were.
• The "Google Tax": Many feel that bidding on your own name is just paying a tax to search engines to protect what you’ve already built.

The Bottom Line​

In many ways, having competitors bid on your name is a backhanded compliment—it means you’re a big enough threat that they want to poach your traffic. Whether you choose to defend that territory or pivot those dollars toward specific vehicle intent depends entirely on your local market's aggression.

Interior photos vs. exterior photos -- which are more important?

I've noticed dealers seem to put a higher priority on exterior vehicle photos rather than interior photos. They're putting all of their exterior photos at the beginning of their scroller. I'm trying to understand why.

I recently purchased a vehicle and found myself buzzing through exterior photos just to examine the interior of the car.

Please give some opinions!

Something that I never paid attention to until working with new clients, is the number of dealers that solely use manufacturer marketing services. Using a manufacturer's service is better than nothing but when all of your competition in your DMA is using the same service, wouldn't it be time to look for something different to stand out? I scoped out competition in a certain metro market and every single website looked exactly the same, paid search exactly the same, social posts..... the same. When will manufacture marketing programs allow for more customizable options? Personally, I am not complaining because it helps my company easily take market share. But when Manufacturers require that their dealers participate in their cookie-cutter marketing strategies, aren't they just asking their competition to conquest their market share?

The shift to EVs is here and for car dealerships that means rethinking their VDPs. EV buyers are looking for more than just photos and prices. They need details like range, incentives, and charging options and so on. So, how do your EV VDPs do? What are they missing? What things worked (or not) for you?

I have been a field engineer for a dealership and now building an app for digitalizing the standards & SOPs for service and fixed ops

Simple poll!

Where are you getting your healthiest leads from lately?

1: Facebook / Social Media
2: PPC / Google Ads
3: Third-Party
4: Other - Leave a comment.

Alright I have heard over and over that dealer principles/owners and managers are inundated with people pitching them shit day in day out.
As a future vendor in Aus myself I have been asking myself what strategy ill use to take my product to dealerships.
So what avenue do you respect and give the time to?
In person - I have heard of vendors going to the same dealership every day for weeks before getting a few minutes of their time!
Email - Blend in with the masses of others pitching their ideas...Do you guys even read them ?
Phone - Whats in place to prevent sales calls coming through to you all day?
Mail - I suspect this avenue to be the most respectful...effectiveness im not sure.
Viral - Have a product good enough for dealerships to refer it to others...wait for the call dont make the call!

Those of you familiar with the path of "Internet Sales" over the last 20+ years, whether Retail or Vendor, probably have a single KPI that sits atop your reporting: Internet Lead Close Percentage. This one metric has been the center of debate among the "nerd" department in dealerships for decades. I'm not going to get into the typical retail arguments that sway topics of Internet close rates like, "That's not a Good lead, they didn't buy, don't count it," or "That's an Internet lead because they called from AutoTrader," or my favorite, "Can you delete this lead, they're unrealistic about their trade".

But let's talk about a particularly elusive math puzzle that still baffles many: Sold from Leads or Sold in Timeframe. In full disclosure, I've been calculating Internet Close rate by the latter since 2001. Internet Leads Sold in timeframe divided by Lead count within same timeframe. I didn't even know of the "Sold from Leads" math until I joined a dealer group with Ford stores in 2010. Some "Internet god" in a suit and tie from FordDirect would come with Internet Close Rates for our month. His numbers never matched ours PLUS prior months seemed to change ongoing. It took a couple of visits before he and I figured out we were doing different math. FordDirect, at the time, was using and defending "Sold from Leads". I think they've since shifted to "Sold in Timeframe"? Ford "Internet god", you still out there?

Breaking it down...

Sold from Leads (old FordDirect, VinSolutions option, DriveCentric Standard Reporting default are the ones I know)
10 Leads in October
1 Sold from those 10 Lead names = 10% Close Rate

10 new Leads in November plus still working the 9 names from October that didn't buy
1 Sold in November but it was one of the October names
0 Sold from those 10 Nov names = 0% Nov Close Rate BUT
October Close Rate is now 20% because 2 names in the October lead bucket of 10 sold.

Sold in Timeframe
10 Leads in October
1 Sold from those 10 Leads = 10% Close Rate

10 Leads in November plus still working the 9 from October that didn't buy
1 Sold in November but it was one of the October names
1 Sold in November (doesn't matter how old it is) and had 10 Leads in November = 10% Close Rate
October Close Rate stays 10% (and will never change) and now November Close Rate is 10% as well.

In the Sold from Leads example, past Internet Close Rates can change. Imagine reviewing salesperson performance and coaching a rep based on their 10% close rate at the end of Oct. In November, they now show a 0% for month end. How do you coach that? "You sold one but it didn't count on your KPI this month. You were at 0% in Nov but good job on getting Oct to 20%!"

This entire topic has been revived in my mind because I learned that DriveCentric actually has Sold from Leads as their core math on their Standard Internet Report. I'm 5 of 7 stores into a CRM change (and very happy about their CRM overall). Their language for Sold from Leads is "Fixed" and their language for Sold in Timeframe is "Rolling". Thankfully, we CAN have them flip that switch within their custom reporting to "Rolling". VinSolutions provided both equations within reporting and you could just select the one you want but their default on Coaching Dashboards was Sold in Timeframe.

So, dear Internet Sales enthusiasts, what's your poison? Sold from Leads or Sold in Timeframe? If you're out there bragging about your Internet Close Rate in peer groups, make sure you know what mathematical sorcery you and others are using so you can be on the same page.

@Alex Snyder and @Jeff Kershner I tried to launch this as a Poll but no go....?

Hi there! I'm doing research on the feasibility of developing a new SaaS for car dealers. Perhaps you can spare a few minutes of your time? I am sure this will definitely help the automotive industry in the difficult times ahead.

The essence of the product in terms of marketing is as follows: You order promotional materials from a contractor together with other dealers that are not your direct competitors. The script of the materials can be yours or someone else's, but you like it. Thus, you have the same concept of promotion with other participants within a specific advertising campaign, but you order only selected types, formats and sizes of promotional materials. At the same time, savings can reach up to 10 times the nominal cost of developing advertising materials.

Would you be interested in such a product? It will be enough to answer Yes or No, but if you have a few minutes of free time, I will be grateful to you for completing a short survey at the link.

What are your priorities for marketing in today's economic climate?

Does your store have a process to collect options? Is there a person assigned to do it, or, does the software you use do it automatically?

Who is everyone liking, not liking, etc?

Let me know!

How much do you spend on attracting one car buyer?

less than $50
$50-100
$100-200
$200-300
$300-400
over $400

Thanks in advance!

Which Stellantis program would you recommend for hosting a CDJR dealerships website?

I'd also like some feedback for each one as well with your dealerships experience with them!

In the past month, we've seen 4 different dealerships' business pages become unpublished or "restricted" for seemingly no reason at all on Facebook. When they have been restored, support has been unable to give any explanation as to what triggered the restriction. Only in one instance did a support rep actually state that the unpublishing of the page was done in error.

It is taking days, and more often than not, weeks to get this reviewed by Facebook support. To add insult to injury they have been restricting access to their support chat feature, which is making it nearly impossible to check in on the review status or even submit a support ticket to combat the restriction.

On top of that, the rollout of Facebook's New Page Experience is completely revamping and restricting page role functionalities. It used to be that if you were given admin access to a page, even on an Agency level, you would have the ability to go to bat for your client's business page, but now they are eradicating that policy. So even after you escalate it to support they are now stating that the Owner or Admin of the page (or as I like to call it the "True" Admin of the page, one who is not an admin on an agency level but is an individual admin to the page via their personal FB profile) has to get involved and make the request to have the page republished.

I'm going on a tangent here, but my concern remains that with all of the layoffs from the past week, I can only imagine this will get worse.

Has your dealership experienced this issue? How quickly did you get it resolved? What measures did you have to take to get the restriction overturned?

Pricing on windows ? With inventory being low, should dealers advertise prices on windows ? Or is that weak? I think it’s weak. I can’t over allow or mark up the price of vehicles.

I started selling cars in 2012, and a lot has changed since then from a consumer behavior standpoint... but one thing hasn't. The dealer's obsession with more leads. Sure... more opportunities to do business are great, but processing and answering them with a rigorous follow-up schedule is expensive and can be fruitless.

A while back, many vendors came out with products designed to engage customers and capture their information... oftentimes with techniques like dangling the golden "trade value" or "soft pull preapproval" carrot in front of the customer to get the lead. Heaven forbid we run into one of the "do you want $500 more dollars off your trade" exit intent popups on the website, but dealers still use them.

Customers are savvier now and are filling out these forms at a rate much lower than in previous years... because they are getting the data they want, and they are smart enough to understand their information is the currency... but it doesn't make them anymore / less likely to buy a car.

The data says:

- Most low intent leads don't answer the phone or respond
- To continue to pressure customers with high-touch follow-up strategies on low intent forms is internally inefficient (and costly)
- Thank you pages and dead ends in the digital process slow down deals - you have to reengage the customer if your human response takes longer than 10 minutes

So... what's the point? Should we focus on quality transactional interactions instead?

Are low intent forms even worth it... Or should CTA's lead the customer somewhere more meaningful?

Is there still a place in the dealers' digital strategy for old-fashioned short-form lead gen as part of a higher-funnel marketing strategy?

Would love to know your thoughts!

Some of you fight more with one or other depending on their physical presence.

I see Vroom parking cars in the same shopping area my office is in. Those cars are right next to a high-traffic Starbucks! Dealer row is miles from here. And neither Vroom nor Carvana have showrooms in Vermont.

Their approach is brilliant and makes it very obvious they're competing with every dealer, whether you're in sleepy Vermont or not

Question to the Refresh audience:
Before COVID, generally speaking, how much loss would you expect from selling an aged unit at wholesale?*
-$500
-$1000
-$1500
-$2000

Also, Did you have a rock-hard aged policy where you flushed any VIN over XX days old?

I'd like to compare what you think vs what I've found out so far.

*add in related costs like transportation, auction fees, etc

If you were limited to only two Classified vendors for 2021, which would you choose thinking of USED performance?

I had a rule of "2" but have since added a 3rd in order to expand our USED reach. I need to look at perhaps backing it down to 2 again since adding the 3rd increased our cost per sale (didn't give the ROI anticipated). I look at leads but also VDPs, site referrals, calls, map views, etc. when making decisions between. Our merchandising is going through a refresh (photo training rolling back out soon) and we are pricing competitively in the markets.

List the two and why. Bonus points on why you don't pick the others. Am I missing a geographic player in your market? List them if they're better than the rest. Thanks!

Since most are virtual and less expensive, what do you think?