If you are a subscriber to my free newsletter, you might recall my NADA summaries which included a look at the new entrants to automotive CRM platforms. One of the biggest surprises was when Cars Commerce and Del Grande Dealer Group (DGDG) announced a partnership to sell a customized version of Salesforce CRM, developed by DGDG. Since the announcement, I’ve not spoken with anyone who is considering that path. I’m hoping conference attendees might get some more details on their rollout strategy during DMSC (Scottsdale, April 26-28th).
Another exciting announcement was from a new company called DealerCX which was founded by Gary Graves and Jack Behar. These are industry veterans who sold their company TotalCX (formerly InteractiveTel) to CallRevu. When I visited the DealerCX booth at NADA, I was struck by Gary’s confidence in pursuing a well-established market (I called him crazy) and his insights into what the future of CRM platforms and customer communications would look like.
Where is the CRM marketplace today? If you did not download a copy of the 2026 Automotive CRM Survey, grab a copy today and see what 450+ dealers had to say in Dealership CRMs Must Evolve or Get Left Behind
Dealers will be challenged in new ways as they seek to build a more effective tech stack.
Reimagining CRM: let’s discuss three statements
Three points Gary Graves made to me during my NADA interview have inspired me to have a discussion here and also at DMSC about the future of CRM platforms and customer communications. In fact, there is controversy building which questions the belief that CDPs and CRMs should be separate platforms.
#1 – The sale is not the finish line.
It took me a minute to understand Gary’s perspective, and it actually struck a chord. Most CRMs which dealers use today were built for a specific purpose: to manage and close leads. When the lead was sold or marked dead, the task was closed and the sales associate moved on. There was a narrow focus on the value of each consumer: buy or go away.
Gary believes that dealers are waking up to the fact that the CRM should be working off a master customer record which allows communication with consumers throughout their complete lifecycle. This challenges the current tech stack which dealers use today. Basically, it could be described as a CRM plus: an equity mining tool, a service marketing tool, a recall/retention marketing partner. Service CRM is becoming a hot topic because dealers are awakening to the realization that their CRM does not allow them to see all touchpoints of their customers in one place.
#2 The same customer should not become five different people inside your dealership.
Every dealer I talk to has a version of this problem. The lead in the CRM, the shopper on the website, the person in the service lane, and the customer in F&I are often treated as separate records in separate systems. Gary’s perspective is that the real cost of disconnected tools is not the subscription fees or the six open tabs. It is that the customer’s story gets fragmented across departments, and no one in the dealership has the complete picture. His operating standard is simple: “One customer. One record. Zero gaps.”
When I speak to dealerships who have invested in Customer Data Platforms (CDP), it is common for me to hear that their CRM is holding them back from clean, actionable customer data. Gary would argue that is because most CRMs were built around departments, not around the customer. It will be interesting to see whether new entrants who start from a customer-first architecture can challenge established CRM market share leaders who are trying to retrofit that capability.
#3 AI only works when it can see the whole customer. This will be a hot topic at DMSC because every tech company selling software to dealers has their own AI strategy. But Gary raised a point that stuck with me:
If your customer data is fragmented across six tools, your AI is making recommendations based on partial truth.
It does not matter how smart the model is if it cannot see the full relationship. His vision is that AI should augment dealership employees, not replace their judgment. As he put it at NADA, “AI should be subtle; like handing someone a tissue right before they sneeze.”
Dealers should be paying attention to the inherent risks when AI handles more of the communication, but no one is clearly accountable for the customer outcome. What happens then? Speed without accountability is not transformation. Dealers should also be mindful that multiple siloed AI engines, each with their own opt-in and opt-out systems of record, may create compliance exposure that is difficult to unwind.
Join us at DMSC
There are many excellent keynote presentations and panel discussions planned for DMSC, so take a minute to review the agenda. One of the reasons why DMSC is so popular is that often the senior leaders and CEOs are the ones presenting. Dealers can have meaningful conversations to impact change directly by speaking with the leaders of tech companies.
I’ll be moderating a great panel with Gary Graves , Ben Chodor , Michelle Goedken, and Earl Brown as we discuss a modern approach to customer communications. The stakes are high and the opportunities are clear, so join me to learn more about the partners you will need in order to achieve your business goals.
