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Dealership Sales · The Variable Ops Engine
Dealership BDC automation: answer every up in 60 seconds and work every unsold to day 30
The leads are already bought. What decides whether they become appointments is the first minute, the evenings and Sundays, and days 4 through 30. Everborn builds the system that covers exactly those, on top of the CRM and DMS you already run.
Who it is for
Built for the general manager or dealer principal, with the GSM and BDC manager in the room. We do not replace VinSolutions, eLead, DealerSocket or DriveCentric, and we do not replace your BDC. We make sure the parts nobody gets to actually happen.
Where the store's day goes
The save-a-deal meeting starts with yesterday's unsold. The BDC spends the first hour making confirm calls. The desk is pencilling deals and the floor is taking ups, so the internet lead that came in at 11 waits. By 6pm the BDC has gone home, and the evening, when shoppers fill out forms, gets answered tomorrow.
The cost of that shows up in Foureyes' study of more than 8 million opportunities from H1 2025: 12.4% closed in days 1 to 3, and 2.3% in days 4 to 7. Nearly three-quarters of sales happen in the first three days, and the rest of the curve belongs to whoever is still following up.
How a deal moves, and where we sit
Up → contact → appointment → show → demo → trade appraisal → desk → F&I → delivery → review and first service.
Your CRM and DMS stay the systems of record. We run the first touch, the confirmations, the unsold cadence and the sweeps of the sold base.
The Variable Ops Engine and what comes off your plate
Launch: every lead answered, every call returned. First touch in under 60 seconds, round-robin with a claim window, missed-call text-back, booking tied to the desk calendar, source tagging, a post-delivery review request, a daily recap to the GM and a weekly funnel report. Every automated word is vehicle, availability, appointment or trade-appraisal language. In California, a written reply that names a vehicle also carries its total price.
Growth: Launch plus The Variable Ops Engine
The named block of ten deliverables in the Growth package, built for Dealership Sales.
- The Unsold Board
Floor, phone and internet ups that don't buy enter a 30-day cadence: heavy on days 1-3, daily to day 7, tapering to day 30, stopping on reply.
- Be-back recovery
A written-but-unsold guest gets a manager-visible sequence and a save-a-deal task. Payment language never enters an automated touch, and any vehicle price shown is its total price.
- Equity mining sweeps
The sold base swept against the 36-to-54-month trade window, first touch at month 30, candidates surfaced as dated tasks. The number is given in person.
- The Lease Maturity Board
Every maturing lease enters a 90/60/30-day pull-ahead sequence, so nothing matures unworked and defects to another store.
- Service-to-sales conquest
RO and service-appointment events fire a trade-appraisal offer and a walk-to-the-desk task for the service drive.
- Owned-list re-activation
Orphan owners and prior customers in the DMS get a campaign on a calendar.
- Appointment show-rate stack
Confirm, reminder, day-of and no-show recovery, with show rate by rep and by source.
- The owner's report by source
Ups, set, shown, sold, close rate and cost per sale by lead source, plus response time by rep.
- The Not-Approved-Today lane
The salesperson hands a partner counter card in person; the customer self-refers by QR. No message mentions a decision, score or tier.
- After-hours coverage
An AI assistant answers, qualifies and books in the evening and on Saturday morning, fenced from payment, credit and approval language, then hands off to the BDC. In California, any vehicle it names carries its total price.
Full Engine: Growth plus the partner program and the operating system
Partner lanes for credit unions and community banks, insurance agents, body shops, independent repair and fleet programs; a recruiting funnel for salespeople and BDC agents; the daily save-a-deal list, end-of-month push list and aged-lead sweep; manager alerts; and the monthly automation think-tank.
The money desk: sign-up, billing and commissions
The package each item starts in is shown under its name.
| What it is | What it does |
|---|---|
| Owner-routed onboarding Growth | Every new customer gets the welcome from their own salesperson: the salesperson's name, email and own booking link, so follow-up lands in that salesperson's queue. One message per customer, never a duplicate. |
| Commission ledger Full Engine | Pay plans and spiffs calculated from DMS deal data, counting money actually collected rather than deals written, under your own plan rules (splits, payout timing, chargebacks), with a monthly statement per salesperson and a needs-attention list. |
The sold base is the cheapest up you'll get
J.D. Power notes many customers trade in within three to five years while loan terms stretch to six or seven, and 84-month loans were 12.8% of sales in March 2026. That is why the nurture runs 36 to 48 months, spikes at month 30 and at lease maturity, and wakes up on every service visit. Partner referrals from credit unions, insurance agents and body shops are tracked per partner with statements of referrals, appointments and deliveries. Any cash bird-dog program is yours, written and reviewed by your counsel for your state, and never paid to the buyer of the referred deal.
Follow-up length and the never-list
How long it runs. 36 to 48 months, anchored to the trade cycle, with spikes at month 30, at lease maturity, and on any service-drive event. J.D. Power notes many customers trade in within three to five years while loan terms now stretch six to seven, so a 12-month nurture ends just before the customer is in market.
Blocked in every template. Automated copy is vehicle, availability, appointment and trade-appraisal language only. No monthly payment, down payment, term, APR or 0% financing. No approved or pre-approved. Nothing about credit. No trade allowance as a firm number. No customer PII emailed in the clear, and MFA and per-user roles on the CRM under the Safeguards Rule. The FTC's CARS Rule is never cited as if it were in effect; it was vacated in 2025 and withdrawn in 2026. California's CARS Act is a separate state law, covered below.
Built for California's CARS Act (SB 766)
From October 1, 2026, California dealers must show a vehicle's total price in ads and in the first written reply about it, keep their written sales messages for two years, and give used-car buyers a 3-day right to cancel. For California stores, the system is set up around those rules.
| What the system does | How |
|---|---|
| Tracks | Whether the first written reply that names a vehicle, or any price or payment, carried that vehicle's total price. Live listings without a total price, and ads for sold units still up after 48 hours. On used cars at or under $50,000: the 3-day cancellation deadline from the signing date and your closed days, the odometer at signing and the 400-mile limit, and the restocking fee (1.5% of the price, $200 minimum, $600 maximum, plus $1 a mile over 250 miles up to $150). |
| Reminds | A 48-hour refund timer on any cancellation, the listing fixes, and the itemized receipt with the date and time the customer cancelled. |
| Filters | A first reply about a vehicle carries its total price from your inventory feed, or waits for a person. Every template and assistant draft is checked for "pre-approved", "guaranteed approval", government or military endorsement, a rebate-reduced price shown as the total price, an add-on called required, and wording that discourages cancelling. |
| Keeps and reports | Every written sales, finance and lease message kept for two years, a copy of the first written reply ready when a customer asks in writing, and a CARS Act report for the GM. |
The system tracks, reminds and reports; the dealer and its counsel make compliance decisions. Not legal advice. Two questions stay with your counsel: whether the doc fee sits inside the advertised total price (California excludes it; the FTC's September 2026 guidance says include it), and how 2-4 unit business deals are treated under the fleet exemption.
Three fixed packages
Launch
$3,500 build + $697/mo
Every lead answered, every call returned
Tracked number, consent-capturing forms, a reply in under 60 seconds, missed-call text-back, booking, a 5-day drip, review requests and weekly reporting.
Growth
$6,500 build + $1,197/mo
Launch plus The Variable Ops Engine
Adds The Variable Ops Engine, onboarding, payment links, long-term nurture, list re-activation, retention, an after-hours assistant and the owner's report.
Full Engine
$9,500 build + $1,697/mo
Growth plus the partner program and the operating system
Adds credit union, insurance, body shop and fleet partner lanes with referral statements (any bird-dog pay is set by your counsel), alerts, written procedures, a recruiting funnel and the monthly automation think-tank.
Same prices in every industry. Half the build fee at signature, half on delivery; month to month after 90 days. Each monthly includes a $197 platform license (take it off if you already pay for the platform). Free week-one compliance review for regulated industries. Your accounts and data are yours and export any time. The system we build runs in your accounts, and you keep the right to use it even if you cancel.
Websites and search add-ons
Starting points, confirmed in your written quote. Sites are built and hosted on the platform your monthly already covers. We never guarantee rankings or traffic.
| Add-on | What it is |
|---|---|
| Bundle: Online Presence Starter $1,800 | Core site, Local SEO foundation and social profile set-up ($2,200 separately) |
| Bundle: Online Presence Complete $3,200 | Full site, Local SEO foundation, brand kit and social profile set-up ($4,000 separately), first month of Local SEO growth free |
| Website build: core site $1,200 | Up to 6 pages, lead capture and booking wired to the CRM, compliance and disclosure pages, mobile, basic on-page SEO |
| Website build: full site $2,400 | Up to 15 pages: services, locations, team or rep pages, recruiting, blog set-up |
| Website redesign or migration $900 | Existing site rebuilt or moved, with redirects kept |
| Local SEO foundation $750 | Google Business Profile optimization, citations, on-page SEO and schema, Search Console and analytics |
| Google Business Profile set-up $250 | Set-up and optimization, standalone |
| Local SEO growth $350/mo | Two articles a month, weekly Business Profile posts, citation and review monitoring, a rank and traffic report |
| Website care plan $49/mo | Hosting, updates, backups, uptime, compliance-page upkeep, small edits |
Also available: additional pages ($350 per 5), brand kit ($600), social profile set-up ($250), accessibility review and fixes ($450), Google Ads account build ($600). Other one-time add-ons bought with the build are 15% less; monthly add-ons and bundles don't get that discount.
Snap Credit Fix, a California credit repair company, runs on a system I built for them.
Chris Magee, Everborn Productions
Dealership Sales questions
We already have a CRM. Why add this?
VinSolutions, eLead, DealerSocket, Reynolds FOCUS, Dominion and DriveCentric are strong systems of record, and each has drip capability. We sit on top of the CRM and make the first 60 seconds, the nights and days 4 through 30 actually execute.
My BDC already does this.
Ask three questions: what is our response time on a lead submitted at 8:40pm on a Saturday; what share of 45-day-old unsold ups got a touch on day 12; what is our close rate on days 4 through 7? Foureyes' H1 2025 study found 12.4% closing in days 1-3 and 2.3% in days 4-7. If your BDC covers all three, you don't need this.
I'm not letting a robot text my customers about payments.
Agreed; that is the design constraint. Automated copy carries no payment, term, down payment, APR, approved or credit language, because Reg Z and Reg M triggering terms need disclosures a text cannot carry, and carriers screen loan-marketing language in dealer campaigns. Your counsel reviews every template before go-live.
What about the Safeguards Rule?
The CRM holds contact, appointment and vehicle-interest data, with MFA and per-user roles, and no customer PII goes out by email in the clear. We act as a service provider inside your information security program and sit for your vendor review.
This is another monthly bill on a stack I'm drowning in.
NADA Data 2025 puts average dealership advertising at $586,246 a year, about $739 for every new vehicle sold. This decides whether those paid-for ups are answered in seconds. If appointment set rate and show rate don't move inside 90 days, cancel it.
Book a build call
Tell Chris what your team still does by hand. You will get a straight answer on which package fits, or whether none does.
Email [email protected]
Call (916) 541-3415
Chris Magee · Sacramento, CA · serving clients across the United States