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Rank the CRMs

I'm currently evaluating what's available. I intend to talk ALOT more about this at some point but my biggest gripe is that they're all......kind of awful....with the exception of drivecentric. But as far as the majority of the offerings - if you want to ACTUALLY communicate with the customer in a way that consumers have grown to expect (treated them as humans instead of users across departments) and can use the data to fuel marketing....good heavens the state of affairs of crms are wild. so you're either spending 845049053 dollars + the cost of the cdp to be able to use the data. OR you're in 1999. And here we are.
 
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Valuable feedback Dan. I’ve been elead using on and off (mostly on) for over 25 years, back when it was just an ILM. However, this is NOT an endorsement.
Geez you got me trying to think now....the years all roll together now.....I guess it was only ILM for the many many years the Hathcock's started and owned them right? (Miss those cookies)
 
My overall point was the landscape for crm in automotive is extremely grim, otherwise
In the B2B side of the world, many of us are on the verge of building custom CRMs for our own teams. If I had stock in Salesforce or HubSpot, I'd be dumping it tomorrow.

We do not have the walled gardens to get past, so this is an easier endeavor for us. We also have developers and full AI coding accounts... and some of us have built CRMs before.

Automotive retail CRMs are still hand-holders. The benefit is in printing paperwork and desking deals. Management drives follow-up and customer entry.

The future automotive CRM sticks to those benefits while removing the rest ;-)

....someone may or may not be thinking about this :hidepc:
 
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Reactions: Lindsey BOOM Shaker
In the B2B side of the world, many of us are on the verge of building custom CRMs for our own teams. If I had stock in Salesforce or HubSpot, I'd be dumping it tomorrow.

We do not have the walled gardens to get past, so this is an easier endeavor for us. We also have developers and full AI coding accounts... and some of us have built CRMs before.

Automotive retail CRMs are still hand-holders. The benefit is in printing paperwork and desking deals. Management drives follow-up and customer entry.

The future automotive CRM sticks to those benefits while removing the rest ;-)

....someone may or may not be thinking about this :hidepc:
TRUE! THAT!
 

✨ AI Highlights

A 12-store dealer group on elead/CDK is weighing a switch and asks the community to rank automotive CRMs, with VinSolutions, DealerSocket, and newer options like Tekion and DriveCentric entering the conversation. The dominant takeaway is that the automotive CRM landscape is broadly disappointing — most platforms lag far behind modern consumer communication expectations, and at least one industry insider hints at building a purpose-built alternative leveraging AI. The thread suggests elead still has muscle-memory loyalty and a strong desking tool, but Tekion's data and reporting capabilities represent where the category needs to go.

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