Thanks for the great feedback Mike and Craig. Joe thanks for the ebay thread. Jerry, you are right and Subi at Joyce Koons Honda Buick already got me started in the search. I'll look into InfusionSoft and Highrise and looked at an open source CRM called Sugar CRM today.
I agree that my model is different, that is the point, and I really like the idea of playing up the the broker or anti-large dealer, especially as I play up testimonials and great content from my first sales. Seems like the way to start in the very least.
I think that I certainly do have the time/skill to develop a rich Wordpress site and train on something like Lynda.com to understand how to make the site do what I want to do. My startup co-founder who is non-technical like me even is having some pretty good success with other solutions like Wix.com that non-developers can easily add widgets to. Then I don't see any problem with manual inputs to Autotrader, C/L, etc and very high quality photos and unique videos for each car. I don't really need to worry about scaled C/L problems like ghosting and should be able to rather quickly replicate the photos/description manually for the site and all of the distributor sites, even if its a short term pain.
Specifically for Mike and Craig, are there any good templates/package providers that you could recommend to look into for a Wordpress site/blog? We bought a WP template before but did not build the site.
Now that I am understanding the scale (and cost) of the vendor packages and who they're built for, I have to agree that there will be too much overhead for tools like IOL that I won't even fully utilize. At the very least I have the numbers in the spreadsheet for the financial projections for a fully developed vendor site if/when I need it with larger inventory or multiple locations.
For the final piece, the issue of SEO and automotive SEM and proactive chat, I will continue to look into piecemeal options on those, since I view the vital piece of my model to be able to find not only enthusiasts (I learned there are plenty that suck up clicks) but enthusiasts that are in the market. Thoughts on this piece? I will contact the vendors to see if chat for instance can integrate on a wordpress site.
Thanks,
Glen
