When evaluating a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) provider for your dealership, you focus on features, AI-powered functionality, and integrations.
But long-term success often comes down to a different question:
What happens after implementation?
Will your team have access to ongoing guidance? Or will you be left to figure it out on your own?
The reality is technology alone doesn’t improve performance. The dealerships that get the most from their CRM combine powerful tools with consistency, accountability, and expert guidance.
That’s why it’s important to understand what kind of ongoing strategic support comes with your CRM investment. And what separates a true strategic partner from a provider who provides only software support.
How VinSolutions Supports Ongoing Dealer Success
Every VinSolutions customer is paired with a dedicated performance manager whose extensive auto retail experience makes them uniquely qualified to help dealerships identify opportunities and improve processes.
Their role is to provide regular optimization guidance and expertise designed to help you get more value from your CRM investment.
What is a VinSolutions Performance Manager?
A VinSolutions performance manager is an automotive retail expert who proactively works with your dealership to drive success with VinSolutions CRM. Performance managers are client advocates that support adoption, review usage, answer questions, and guide process optimization.
Think of your performance manager as a strategic partner that guides you through tough challenges. Their top priority is your dealership’s performance.
VinSolutions performance managers are true partners that hold you and your team accountable so you can realize your full potential.
Expect them to work with your team regularly to help identify opportunities and map VinSolutions capabilities to the way your dealership sells, follows up, and manages customer relationships.
A performance manager may help your dealership:
- Understand where CRM usage is strong and where adoption may need attention
- Review reporting and utilization data to identify areas for improvement
- Optimize workflows around dealership goals and customer engagement
- Support new learning as your team, tools, and processes evolve
- Create accountability around action plans for better performance and follow-through
- Identify and flag issues that may be overlooked by your staff
- Implement industry best practices, strategies that drive sales, and winning formulas based on real dealer success.
Dealership performance is never static. Teams change. Processes drift. Goals shift. Customer expectations keep moving. A performance manager helps your dealership keep improving how it uses VinSolutions.
Dealer perspective
“I couldn’t speak enough about Kristen, our Performance Manager. She’s our biggest asset at VinSolutions. Almost every week, she teaches me something in the CRM that I didn’t know before.”
Laura Schiffer, Sales Manager, Clay Subaru
Technology Alone Doesn’t Drive Performance
An automotive retail CRM can help your team organize customer information, manage follow-up, and identify areas where performance can improve. Powerful technology needs consistent usage, clear processes, and dealership buy-in to create value. VinSolutions performance managers give each member of your team guidance that aligns to their roles.
After a CRM goes live, your team still needs to build habits around how they use it. Salespeople need to follow the process. Managers need visibility into activity and outcomes. Leaders need to understand where the store is making progress and where the team may be overlooking opportunity.
Performance managers help dealerships move from “we have the tool” to “we can get the most out of the tool and optimize performance for the dealership.” You may have access to strong reporting, but if no one is reviewing the right signals or connecting those signals to action, opportunities get missed.
Performance managers help bridge that gap by bringing a clear point of view to CRM usage and dealership processes. They can help your team look at what is happening inside the CRM, understand what the data may be showing, and decide what to do next.
The goal is better adoption, strong accountability, and a clear path from insight to action.
How Performance Managers Help Dealerships Get More Value from VinSolutions
Support doesn’t stop after implementation. Your performance manager helps establish a strong foundation for success, then works alongside your team to improve adoption, optimize processes, and drive results over time.
Before the meeting: Find the opportunity
Before every conversation, performance managers review reporting, utilization data, account history, and other signals to identify potential opportunities for improvement. Rather than starting with a blank agenda, they arrive prepared with insights, questions, and recommendations.
During the meeting: Tell the story behind the numbers
Performance managers use data to identify what’s driving performance. Low lead performance, for example, may point to a response issue, an adoption issue, or a process issue rather than a sales issue. The goal is to move beyond the numbers and focus on actions that improve outcomes.
After the meeting: Turn recommendations into action
A productive meeting ends with clear next steps. That may include a process adjustment, best-practice recommendation, accountability measure, or another action designed to keep progress moving forward.
Between meetings: Keep momentum moving
Improvement happens between conversations. Following through on commitments, communicating progress, and staying focused on dealership goals helps turn recommendations into results.
Across the team: Bring the right expertise to the table
Performance managers draw from shared team knowledge, extensive automotive retail experience, and subject matter expertise to help address challenges from multiple perspectives. That means the guidance you receive is backed by collective experience.
For many dealers, the biggest difference is knowing there is someone they can call for guidance, answers, and strategic support.
“Having a personal touch, somebody you can always ask questions, get information, help, is something that really sets VinSolutions apart.”
Ben Jordan, Internet Sales Director, Mears Mazda Volvo
“Our Performance Manager will dig deep into the data and really ensure we’re getting use out of VinSolutions.”
Greg Jensen, COO, Kocourek Automotive Group
“Our Performance Manager, Jason, has really been a partner to our company.”
Liz Borches, CEO and President, Carter Myers Automotive
Frequently Asked Questions About VinSolutions Performance Management
A VinSolutions performance manager is a dedicated strategic automotive retail expert who helps your dealership optimize CRM usage, improve adoption, and turn VinSolutions insights into practical action and results for your dealership.
Performance managers conduct monthly calls with dealerships after install training to help optimize processes and usage, answer questions, and support ongoing improvement.
Yes. Performance managers help dealership teams use VinSolutions capabilities more consistently, identify where usage may need attention, and support ongoing learning as teams and processes evolve.
Yes. VinSolutions performance managers support ongoing guidance through regular calls, quick tip videos, webinars, and workshops designed to help dealerships continue to improve their use of VinSolutions.
After implementation and install training, your performance manager continues working with your dealership through regular calls, performance reviews, process optimization, and ongoing guidance to help your team get more value from VinSolutions.
Software support typically helps resolve specific product function questions or issues. A performance manager provides ongoing strategic guidance to help your dealership optimize how it uses VinSolutions, improve adoption, and connect CRM insights to dealership processes.
Yes. Performance managers help dealerships review usage, reporting, and workflow patterns to identify where processes may break down and where the team can take action to improve.
Technology Is Powerful. Expertise Makes It Profitable.
VinSolutions gives dealerships powerful technology. Your performance manager helps your team turn that technology into results.
That is the difference between simply having a CRM and continuously improving how your dealership uses it to get results.
With a dedicated Performance Manager, your dealership has a partner who can help review performance, support adoption, guide process improvement, and keep your team focused on the next right move.
Because better performance comes from technology, expertise, and action working together.
Take a self-guided demo of VinSolutions, the AI-powered CRM with exclusive Cox Automotive Data and performance managers that help you turn powerful capabilities into practical progress, one improvement at a time.
