We've been collecting compensation data from 500+ franchise and independent dealerships across the US. Figured this group would find the 2026 numbers useful — whether you're benchmarking your own pay, hiring, or negotiating.

Here's the summary across every major dealership role:

General Manager

Base: 75K–75K–135K
Total comp (with bonus): 135K–135K–280K
Top metro: New York Metro (200K–200K–290K), Los Angeles (195K–195K–285K)
Multi-rooftop GMs earning 20–30% higher than single-store

Finance Manager (F&I)

Base: 46K–46K–82K
Per-copy bonus: 160–160–320/deal
Total comp: 100K–100K–220K
AFIP-certified F&I managers earning 12–18% more than non-certified

Car Salesperson

Entry level (0–1 yr): 54K–54K–78K total
Mid-level (2–5 yr): 76K–76K–116K total
Senior/top performer: 119K–119K–194K total
Luxury franchise salespeople averaging 25–40% higher than mainstream

Sales Manager

Base: 65K–65K–95K
Total comp: 120K–120K–200K
Compensation heavily tied to department gross — which is where override visibility becomes a factor

Service Advisor

Entry level: 42K–42K–56K
Senior (5–10 yr): 74K–74K–98K
Key variable: hours per RO and CSI bonus structure

Service Manager

Base: 55K–55K–80K
Total comp: 85K–85K–140K
Fixed ops absorption rate directly affects bonus

BDC Manager

Base: 45K–45K–65K
Total comp: 70K–70K–110K
Bonus tied to appointment-set rate and show rate

Parts Manager

Base: 48K–48K–68K
Total comp: 65K–65K–100K
Gross margin and inventory turn are the main bonus drivers

Dealer Principal / Owner

Single point: 300K–300K–800K total (salary + distributions)
Multi-rooftop: 500K–500K–2M+
Biggest variable: how much gross leaks through undocumented overrides before it reaches the bottom line

Regional breakdown: Northeast and West Coast run 15–25% higher than Midwest and Mountain states across every role. Southeast sits in the middle but has the fastest-growing comp in the country right now.

One pattern we keep seeing in the data: The GMs and F&I managers at the top of these ranges almost always work at stores with structured override policies. When desk decisions are visible, gross holds, and compensation tied to gross follows. The stores where GMs are stuck at the low end of $135K almost always have an override visibility gap — they can't manage what they can't see.

Full data with regional tables, city-level breakdowns, and experience-tier splits for all roles: DealerInt — Automotive CRM & Desking Software for Car Dealerships

Curious how your store's comp stacks up. Anyone willing to share whether these ranges match your market?

Does anyone here have a vendor they like for acquiring vehicles with no obligation to buy? we have tried a few vendors, but havent found one that specializes in this.

Hi everyone,

I’ve been working on a small tool to help automate posting vehicles to Facebook Marketplace, and I wanted to share it here to see if it might be useful for anyone managing inventory online.

One thing I noticed is that a lot of dealerships still manually copy vehicle listings from sites like CarGurus when posting to Facebook Marketplace. That usually means copying:

• Title
• Description
• Mileage
• Price
• Downloading and uploading photos

If you're posting multiple vehicles, it becomes pretty repetitive.

So I built a Chrome extension that extracts the listing details from CarGurus and prepares the Facebook Marketplace listing automatically.

The goal is simply to remove the copy/paste workflow and speed up the listing process.

Current capabilities:

• Extracts vehicle details from CarGurus listings
• Pulls vehicle images automatically
• Prepares the Facebook Marketplace listing form

Right now it supports CarGurus, and I'm planning to add support for other sites depending on demand.

The extension is free to use, and I’d really appreciate feedback from anyone who lists inventory on Facebook Marketplace regularly.

Chrome Web Store:
Facebook Marketplace Auto Poster - Chrome Web Store

If anyone has suggestions or other inventory sites they'd like supported, I'd love to hear them.

Hi everyone,

I recently came across a topic that I thought was worth discussing. As you all know, digital marketing agencies offer various services, including content writing and SEO optimization. While humans often perform these services, some agencies now use AI technology to automate the process (entirely).

This got me wondering, as a business owner, would you be upset if the digital marketing agency you hired is using AI to write your content and SEO pages instead of handwriting them like you pay for? While AI-generated content can be cost-effective and efficient, some may argue that it lacks the personal touch and creativity that comes with human-generated content. I'm not talking about using it to generate ideas and clean up copy - I mean direct copy and pasting from top to bottom.

So, I'd love to hear your thoughts. Do you think AI-generated content is a fair substitute for handwritten content? Would you be upset if your digital marketing agency used AI to generate your content and SEO pages? Let's discuss!

Wondering what people have seen for best practices for having separate pages for service and sales.

I know Google allows a dealership to have separate pages for each, and it seems brands that have a GMB category of a car dealership (even if they have service shop and auto repair as additional categories) do not rank on the Map Pack for service shops.

I wonder about cannibalism between pages when they have the same address, and potentially the same phone number, and same incorporated entity. What needs to safely be separated and not separated? What have you seen for cannibalizing your total ratings given that they will be spread across more than one GMB page now.

I'm seeing things across social media that ELeads has been hit with a cyber attack. Can anyone in here confirm this?? The site is currently down.

7% of buyers report purchasing entirely online
7% of buyers report purchasing entirely online
7% of buyers report purchasing entirely online
7% of buyers report purchasing entirely online
7% of buyers report purchasing entirely online

According to the latest Cox Automotive Car Buyer Journey Study: Report Summary 2025
ONLY 7% of buyers report purchasing entirely online.

ALL that damn work during the Covid years, manufacturers shoving online buying services down our throats and making it MANDATORY to have on our dealer websites. Company after company scrambling to capitalize. Acquisitions to have a solution to for dealers.

"Digital Retailing" wasn't just the new buzzword in the industry, TOTAL - from beginning to end online vehicle purchasing was going to revolutionize how dealers sold vehicles and how consumers were going to save time buying their next vehicle from a dealership.

BUT DID IT?



Dealers scrambled to offer a solution to this new wave of online BUYERS. BUT in many cases it proved to be a nuisance, became a commodity of the tech bundle and another standard service the OEMs forced upon us.

Most of us gave it an honest effort to make it work but seems as if MOST of us in the business and on the dealer side already KNEW how it was going to end.

Here we are, 5 years later and only 7% of buyers report purchasing a vehicle entirely online.

What happened - Are you surprised?

The data is clear: Your mobile website speed directly impacts your dealership's bottom line. It's something that we've heard legacy platforms and third-party add-ons debate. We proved them wrong.

We built an Auto Dealer Search Intelligence Platform which captures local SERP results across metro regions. In our first analysis, the 2026 Automotive Mobile PageSpeed Study, we captured 250,000 local search results across 250 U.S. markets. The results are a wake-up call—92% of local dealership domains are currently failing Google’s mobile performance standards, despite a proven correlation between passing Pagespeed standards and ranking.

Why This Matters: Visibility, Volume, and Value​

Our research confirms a definitive strong statistical relationship (with a 0.05% margin of error) between technical performance and your organic success:

• Visibility: Mobile performance explains nearly 87% of the variance in ranking positions. URLs in the #1 spot are 1.4x more likely to have a "Good" PageSpeed score compared to those in position #10.
• Volume: Fast mobile speeds drive the higher rankings that exponentially amplify traffic. The #1 spot captures 22x the clicks of the #10 spot—more than positions #3 through #10 combined.
• Value: Better PageSpeed scores strongly correlate with capturing high-intent, high-CPC traffic. Improving speed concentrates your share of the most lucrative shoppers, increasing the economic profitability of your organic presence.

Download the report... no registration necessary!

If you and AI did something awesome, share it here.

Among all my spam I receive on a daily basis I was just delivered a second or third message about Hammer Corp's "Hammer AI" - whatever that is.

Is anyone using AI in the dealership or dealership software that is actually benefiting their sales?

I saw recently that both Edmonds and CarGurus are using AI to assist shoppers with a chat bots to answer questions:

I love the new AI as far as work flow time savers when it comes to generating content that is not intended for search engines.
But is anyone using AI technology in a creative way to build technological tools or increase lead volume?

First, thanks to @Jeff Kershner and @Alex Snyder for setting this up, DealerRefresh has been one of the better places to get real feedback and actually connect with dealers.

We've been running Carvia.ai on dealer VDPs and wanted to share a deal here since this seemed like the right place for it.

The short version: we put an Carvia on your VDP that interprets the vehicle from the VIN — trim context, what's actually included, ownership outlook, buyer fit- answering the question "Should I buy this car?" Answers the questions that otherwise send buyers off your page to Google, gpt, Reddit, etc. More time on page, better lead quality, more leads.

You can see it live here: 2017 Chevrolet Cruze LT Alliance OH | Lavery Automotive Sales and Service 1G1BE5SM7H7146334 - scroll below the gallery.

As a deal for this community: 30% off the first year. Lightweight install, no rebuild required.

DM me or drop a reply if you want to talk through it.

I’ve been working on an AI tool that learns how a dealership buys stock and generates a daily shortlist of vehicles from across multiple auction platforms. The goal is to reduce the time spent trawling through listings and instead surface the small number of cars that are most likely to be good buys based on your past purchases and current market data.

It goes a bit beyond basic filters — it applies rules at a make/model level, looks at things like mileage vs age, condition, pricing vs market, and ranks everything into a daily “top picks” list.

Roughly how much time are you spending each day going through listings? Do you think it would realistically save you time, or would you still want to go through everything yourself?

More details on how it works here:
Vehicle Recommendation Engine | Boring Automation

Hey All,

I built a tool, CarShots.ai, that allows dealers to use AI to get professional photoshoots done in minutes. We’re using a mix of custom algorithms and new models that make it act more like Photoshop. This allow us to generate images that retain all details and realism. In addition, you can create any type of PhotoBooth or scenery and add branding.

Would love feedback - What would you want to see? Also happy to run some real listings for anyone. Quick example below where we took a bad dealer lot photo for a BMW M5 and in seconds turned it into something great:

**Attention All Dealers**


We are looking for ways to improve upon our business. As a Facebook Marketplace Listing Tool intended for use by RV/Car Dealers we value the feedback received by people within the industry.

Some of the current features that we have are

- AI Description Generator
- Add Variables to Title (Trim Level, Miles)
- Auto Pilot Feature (post 7 cars with a single click)
- Banner Creator and Overlay
- Photo Cropping

We would love feature recommendations!

If you’ve ever tried posting cars on Facebook Marketplace, you know how repetitive it gets… copy-pasting specs, uploading photos, switching tabs, etc.

I got tired of doing it manually, so I built a Chrome extension to speed things up.

Right now it works with CarGurus (US + Canada) and basically:

• Detects vehicle listings on CarGurus search pages
• Lets you pick one or multiple cars
• Automatically grabs details + photos
• Opens Facebook Marketplace and fills in the listing for you

So instead of doing everything manually, it cuts down most of the busy work.

I originally made it for dealers/flippers, but it also works if you’re just reselling cars on the side.

Still early — I’m planning to add more sites (Carvana, dealer websites, etc.), but wanted to get feedback first.

If anyone wants to try it or suggest features:
Facebook Marketplace Vehicle Listing Tool - Chrome Web Store

Also curious — what sites do you usually pull inventory from? I can prioritize integrations based on that.