DealerCards

Heard this story at a conference yesterday and had to share it because the lesson here applies to every business not just car dealers. A Mercedes dealership cut their entire ad budget, started donating to nonprofits in the communities around them, and grew to $30 million a year in profit. Then they got acquired, the giving stopped, and they dropped to $5 million almost overnight. When you genuinely care about people and give without expecting something back it comes back to you in ways you can't even put a number on.

Would you believe me if I told you your dealership could be losing over a million dollars a year? I break down the numbers in this one so you can see exactly what I'm talking about. Most stores are sitting at 15% repeat and referral when the relationship driven stores are at 45. That gap is worth over a million dollars a year and it's coming from business that's already right there waiting for you.

If you're in leadership at a dealership and you're counting on your sales team for all of your long term follow up you're leaving real money on the table. Most of them won't be around long enough for it to matter and the ones who are aren't consistent with it. The ones that end up losing the most are the owners and leaders playing the long game who never put anything in place to protect it.

Have you ever thought about reaching back out to a customer and then life just gets in the way? It happens to everyone. But when there's no consistent process in place to stay in touch after the sale it's quietly costing your dealership hundreds of thousands of dollars a year. That's the exact problem we built DealerCards to solve.