2 OEMs, 1 Campus, 1 CRM ADF, 0 Attribution, 100% Headache: A Friendly Help Request

[jmaco3]

Looking for help from anyone who has dealt with a similar setup.

I have a client with a Ford building and a Chevrolet building on the same campus. Both stores share one VinSolutions CRM and one inbound ADF destination. They do not want to pay for a second CRM / ADF setup, so all inbound leads for both stores are flowing into one shared location.

New-vehicle reporting is workable because I can separate most of it by “New” + OEM make.

The real issue is used/pre-owned reporting.

Used leads from third-party providers, website forms, marketplace sources, etc. all come through the same ADF path. Once they land in VinSolutions, it becomes difficult to tell which store the lead was actually intended for, especially when both stores share inventory and providers.

Questions for the group:

Has anyone successfully managed two OEM rooftops on one VinSolutions CRM?

How are you separating used-lead attribution by store?

Are you using source names, lead comments, inventory make, assigned teams, custom fields, provider-level routing, or another workaround?

Can VinSolutions report on anything passed through ADF comments or custom lead data?

My only idea so far is to create two separate forwarding paths outside of VinSolutions, likely through Google Sheets / Apps Script or a webhook. Each third-party provider would receive either a Ford-specific or Chevy-specific endpoint. That endpoint would then forward the lead into the shared VinSolutions ADF while adding a clear store identifier in the comments.

The concern is that we have been told custom reporting may not be able to use anything outside the default reporting fields. If that is true, comment-based tagging may help with visibility, but not actual attribution reporting.

Appreciate any real-world advice on what has worked, what failed, or what you would do differently.

 

[Richard_Lloyd]

How are you using stock #'s of the units?

I guess I'm a little lost on "who owns the car". If the used unit being retailed was acquired as a trade-in on a chevy deal, does that mean it's only the chevy side's unit to sell?

First idea is a unique identifier in the stock # i.e. 1234C (Chevy) vs 1234F (Ford) and maybe workaround that way? C leads go to this distro team, F to the other?

 

[jmaco3]

How are you using stock #'s of the units?

I guess I'm a little lost on "who owns the car". If the used unit being retailed was acquired as a trade-in on a chevy deal, does that mean it's only the chevy side's unit to sell?

First idea is a unique identifier in the stock # i.e. 1234C (Chevy) vs 1234F (Ford) and maybe workaround that way? C leads go to this distro team, F to the other?

That is where it gets tricky — there really is not a clean “who owns the car” rule here.

Both rooftops sell from the same shared used inventory, and the sales staff cross-sell freely whether they sit in the Ford building or the Chevy building. Used inventory is not treated as Ford-owned vs Chevy-owned in practice.

The stock number identifier idea is a great one, and I see exactly where you are headed with distro/reporting by Ford vs Chevy team. In my case, that would have been too easy. They are basically shark-tank available to both sides.

The issue is their DMS stock process has been in place for 20+ years, so changing stock number structure unfortunately would not be realistic.

 

[Richie K]

Have you tried using the dashboards of your 3rd party lead sites? From there you should be able to see all leads coming in and which vehicle the customer is inquiring about. I don't use VinSolutions so I have no idea what the platform looks like.
Maybe if you can pull the lead info from the 3rd party dashboard you can create an Excel spreadsheet to keep up with them. That's a lot of extra work, but maybe it'll help.

 

[jmaco3]

Have you tried using the dashboards of your 3rd party lead sites? From there you should be able to see all leads coming in and which vehicle the customer is inquiring about. I don't use VinSolutions so I have no idea what the platform looks like.
Maybe if you can pull the lead info from the 3rd party dashboard you can create an Excel spreadsheet to keep up with them. That's a lot of extra work, but maybe it'll help.

That is definitely an option, and I appreciate the thought.

For this specific use case though, I think pulling everything from the third-party dashboards or maintaining a separate spreadsheet would be too much manual lift for what we are trying to solve.

I do not work inside the store day-to-day, so the goal is not really to create another process for someone to manage manually. This is more of a small attribution cog we need automated as part of a larger MMM/reporting model we are building for them.

Ideally, I am trying to find out whether there is any workable solution inside VinSolutions itself, or at least something that can be passed into VinSolutions in a way that is reportable later. Comments would help with visibility, but if Vin cannot report against them, that still leaves us stuck from an attribution standpoint.

The third-party dashboards may end up being a backup validation source, but I am hoping there is a cleaner CRM-side answer before we go down the route of stitching provider exports together externally.

 

[Ryan Everson]

Separate lead sources are the best way to handle this, but it's still not perfect with how VinSolutions handles duplicate leads.

For example:

• TradePending - Store A
• TradePending - Store B
• TradePending - Group Site

If the vendor can’t modify the lead source name directly, you can still accomplish the same thing by using an intermediary email address. That email address would parse the lead, transform the ADF/XML into the desired format, and then forward it to the CRM lead import email address.

Where you may run into issues is with certain OEM programs that require leads to be sent directly to them first. In those cases, they usually handle the scrubbing, validation, etc. before delivering the lead to the CRM import address, so there isn't really a way to customize the lead source or insert an intermediary step.

The only truly perfect solution would be telling them to stop being cheap and pay for separate CRM rooftops But usually most dealers decide the imperfect solution is better than potentially doubling the expense just for reporting / lead routing perfection.