Dealership Metrics and Benchmarks

Nearly every dealership measures something. Far fewer measure the thing that would change a decision. Answered calls look healthy while quality calls collapse. Appointment count rises while show rate falls, so the board looks better and the month does not. Cost per lead drops because the leads got worse. A number is only useful if there is a version of it that would make you act differently, and most of the standard dealership reporting is built out of numbers that cannot fail.

This library collects what we have published on measurement, drawn from across the other hubs — BDC KPIs, show-rate arithmetic, the cost of a missed lead, direct mail attribution, service advisor numbers. Because measurement is a thread that runs through every channel rather than a channel of its own, most of these articles are parented in the library for their subject and appear here as pointers. That section is marked.

It is also the thinnest library on this site relative to how much there is to say, and we would rather tell you that than pad it. Benchmarks by store size, a proper cost-per-sale walkthrough and a marketing attribution primer are written and queued. In the meantime the profit evaporation assessment turns ten answers into an estimate of monthly loss, and the virtual store assessment goes through the same ground in more depth.

Still looking? The frequently asked questions answer the short version of most of this, what dealers say covers the results side, and Auto Industry News is everything we publish in date order. Or start with the full resource index.