While our story began separately many years before we met, James and I became colleagues and friends while working together at the industry leading CRM company, Dealersocket.
You can think of Dealersocket as the Microsoft of the automotive retail space. They offer a wide variety of product offerings and some of the best technology out there.
I started off in the RevenueRadar department working with big groups like Penske, Ken Garff, & Larry H Miller to help them get the best return from their data mining initiatives.
James was in the field, visiting dealers as a CRM consultant before he was tasked with launching the maiden Independent Dealer team.
Thats when our paths crossed. I had reached my ceiling with RevRadar and this new team would need experienced reps who could help dealers get the most ROI out of their fancy new tools.
We quickly became friends. I think James was just happy that he didnt have to chase me down to get me to do my job. We developed mutual trust and respect while navigating the challenges of offering products to a completely new niche.
One thing that most managers ran into at Socket was that 75% of our book of business wasnt even scratching the surface of their CRM, and were almost never available to put in the time to make sure they were getting the best ROI possible. In fact, their hands off approach was costing them money. The other 25% had the will and desire, but still lacked the time resources necessary. Time is a very precious commodity in automotive…
The bottom line was that we were spending a lot of time managing expectations, when we could have been helping people sell more cars. But with the amount of clients we were responsible for, it was almost impossible to ever give one dealer enough attention.
Lots of changes were happening at Socket during this time, and James and I both found ourselves considering other employment options. We were both offered lucrative, salaried positions within big dealer groups to be their CRM Admins. This sparked an idea…
We have all the best practices, experience and knowledge to help dealers sell more cars by properly leveraging their CRM… We also know exactly how to maintain these live environments so that they dont fall into disrepair… Dealers need that, even if they dont know it…
And so Advanced CRM Solutions was born. Our vision was to help dealers get the most ROI from their CRM, while taking all of those administrative headaches off their plate.
Since then we have worked with dozens of dealers from Franchise, to Independent, to Buy Here Pay Here stores.
But this was just the beginning… We discovered that dealers need help with a lot more than just CRM. For example, every single dealer loses money due to poor sales person follow up. As an industry tens of millions of dollars a year (if not more) are lost due to poor or inadequate follow up processes.
We launched Advanced BDC Solutions with a similar mindset… Offer the best possible service, based on best practices, utilizing the best technology to provide the best results… All for much less than the dealer could do it by themselves, and again without all the headaches.
ABS became popular very quickly, largely due to our innovative approach and lightning fast response times, but also because there is a real shortage of decent 3rd party BDCs out there.The final component we needed to add to the portfolio was marketing. Independent dealers especially, are behind the curve when it comes to digital marketing. So we acquired a marketing company called Drop Visionary Branding and quickly began deploying effective marketing initiatives for our regular clients. Im especially proud of a BHPH campaign we did that pushed a clients sold units up by about 30 cars per month… Month after month, after month.
But our success was not limited to automotive. Along the way we were approached by business owners from various other industries that needed CRM and Marketing support. By following the universal best practices and staying true to our vision of delivering the most value possible we were able to deliver great returns for our non automotive clients as well.
In conclusion, we started out as 2 guys who were passionate about helping dealers sell more cars, and we have grown into a group of companies that now offers a diverse and unique set of services to help push your business to the next level.
We pride ourselves on value and transparency. We know there are a lot of vendors out there, but there are very few who will work as hard for you, as we will!
