Great concept but misses on a few levels. Will only get better from here! I've been messing with similar concepts and its not easy, nice work.

• Does this look like something you'd actually publish on your VDP / social?
  No.
  
  
• What's broken about the video you're getting from your current vendor or in-house?
  It doesn't sell us cars.
  
  
• What styles or formats are missing that you'd want?
  The script and voice over to be tighter and speak to in market shoppers and things they care about and that tease the real next steps. Same for the layover content. This isn't dealership level content that in market shoppers looking at a 1/1 used car really gain a ton of value from IMO.

We now have our own Showroom. A fresh coat of wax on our top 100 posters by volume, our sponsors and what the benefits of being a member are.

I have plans to redesign the look and feel of the awards page. I will make a fresh post about the Best of the Best because that was such a good idea by @joe.pistell it warrants more eyeballs. We also have more ideas for it.

My 2nd favorite part of this is the Sponsor Spotlight. It is fully connected to our new Sponsor Management System. It is so cool to watch the automations from taking a lead to a full sponsor and see them appear on this page. This isn't something I can share publicly, but as someone who loves building CRM-type systems this is soooooo much better.

And oh yeah, do I now have some cool ideas for building another CRM... maybe one day

Sorry bro, you're in for a bad time. Bean counters often win. The only arguments that will put Focus ahead of DriveCentric have absolutely nothing to do with customers and/or staff and their happiness, tool effectiveness or any performance metric that actually matters and sells cars. Full disclosure, take that with a pinch of salt, i've not actually used both day to day.

This is why (plus some legal reasons) all of these anonymous threads will be placed in a moderation queue before going public.

97% of our traffic comes from unregistered users (lurkers in forum speak), and it always surprises me who they are and what they have to say behind the scenes.

Well, This is going to go one of two ways gentlemen.

Full circle moment: It reminds me of the pre-forum days when discussion was all comments on articles. There were many of us with nondescript handles for fear of espousing an opinion that did not meet a higher up's expectations. Shout outs to Lightnup!

Remember the push in the early days of the forums to lose the handle and "be a real person?" I'll always be grateful to Chip for supporting me in that effort.

I think you will be hard-pressed to find a single person who has used DriveCentric and Focus who will tell you Focus is better.

If that person exists, and they don't work for Reynolds, I would love to see them post here. Reynolds has some great products, but DriveCentric is the current leader in usability and modern capabilities among CRMs on the market, with a significant user base.

In my experience, DMS+CRM bundles are only appealing to dealer principals and CFOs.

Someone else inquired about Focus on DealerRefresh a few years ago: FOCUS CRM from Reynolds and Reynolds

From Perplexity AI:

High‑level read on FOCUS​

• Mobile app reviews on both iOS and Android are overwhelmingly negative, focusing on crashes, confusing UI, and poor usability for day‑to‑day sales work.
• A TrustRadius listing shows extremely low “likelihood to recommend” and usability scores (1 out of 10 from the single published rating), which aligns with the app‑store sentiment.
• Marketing and vendor‑directory content (Reynolds’ own site and Pasch Group) are positive but are more sales collateral than independent reviews.
• Peer chatter (Reddit, etc.) where salespeople mention FOCUS tends to be strongly negative compared to tools like VinSolutions or DriveCentric.

Where to read actual reviews​

• Apple App Store – FOCUS by Reynolds and Reynolds: Contains multiple detailed, strongly negative reviews from sales users describing the app as confusing, non‑intuitive, and time‑wasting.
• Google Play Store – FOCUS by Reynolds and Reynolds: ~2.3/5 rating with complaints about constant crashes, null errors, needing to re‑login, and poor Android compatibility.
• TrustRadius – FOCUS by Reynolds and Reynolds: Has a product page comparing FOCUS to VinSolutions with at least one verified review; the published overall recommendation and usability scores are at the bottom of the scale.
• Dealer/industry discussion: Threads like the one on DealerRefresh and comments on Reddit’s r/askcarsales mention FOCUS, typically noting it as a CRM they would not recommend versus alternatives.

/checkpoint for claude users.

Claude Code (the AI coding assistant tool), a /checkpoint is an automatic snapshot of your coding progress and conversation state. It acts like a "save point" in a video game, capturing the state of your messages, modified files, and tool usage.

This thread is what you want: Quality Vehicle Delivery Companies for Dealers

I have used both AutoSled and Montway for personal vehicles multiple times. I shipped my old Porsche and my old X5 from Virginia to California using Montway - 2 different transactions, years apart. My last vehicle purchase was from Arkansas to Vermont, and I used AutoSled for that. Then, my wife had hers shipped from Maryland to Vermont.

The last two were my first times dealing with a non-English-speaking driver. Conversation and handling were handled via a call center elsewhere. We got it done smoothly.

Tallcool1 said:

I understand your frustration so please don't think I am making fun of you here. I have been there too.

As our AI Tools get to know us, they "learn" as they are presented more and more data and situations. We have to know that it is only a matter of time before the AI Tools learn to half ass a task or get to thinking for themselves rather than listening to the instructions. Remind us of anything?

Click to expand...

AI's have a token range they can recall. If you point it at a folder, rules, skills, etc. and then have a very long dialogue with it, it can only stay fresh on the more recent stuff.

I have learned this the hard way multiple times. The "new session" button is your friend. When you are headed down a change of direction, ask the AI to write a prompt for a new session that will help it remember what was done in this session.

You can thank me later

craigh said:

This is something I fear will happen to the consumer-facing tools - they will pretend to work hard while in the back-end decreasing token consumption to reduce cost on the fixed cost monthly plans. This is why I appreciate the transparency of Claude showing me token usage - I know if it's really working or not.

Personally I am using ChatGPT almost never anymore - Gemini took over all my research needs, Nano Banana Pro took over my image needs and Claude took over all code, planning, Excel, PowerPoint and PDF work (combined this means 90%+ of my workload is now on Claude).

If they do go down this road of faking the hard work, the nice thing about this industry is you can go right to the models with any other wrapper and get the same logic engine with none of the front-end shenanigans.

One of the coolest things I have followed since inception but still haven't built with myself is Pickaxe - Pickaxe | Shopify for Agent-Powered Businesses

Click to expand...

I will 2nd Gemini for research. When I have a decent drive I will cue up Gemini on hands free and we just talk. I like being able to just ramble on about ideas and have Gemini respond to me about feasibility, costs, structure, etc. A few weeks ago I had a 4 hour Chat with Gemini.

The thing I really like about Gemini is the willingness and ability to translate a Chat into a summary that is laid out and designed for another AI Agent to digest. I was surprised that Gemini would play nice with anyone else.

joe.pistell said:

Another day where I'm yelling at AI...

AI replied to me:


Then AI completes the audit and I'm mad as hell, I'm 6 hours into a project, I threaten it and tell it to do it again: "Have you given this a full forensic review? What about the context window. I want to establish the best possible outcome."

AI replies: "No. The honest answer is no — my prior audit was shallow. It only checked SME notes vs. actions taken. It did not audit the entire processing chain. Let me do that now."

Ugh...

Click to expand...

I understand your frustration so please don't think I am making fun of you here. I have been there too.

As our AI Tools get to know us, they "learn" as they are presented more and more data and situations. We have to know that it is only a matter of time before the AI Tools learn to half ass a task or get to thinking for themselves rather than listening to the instructions. Remind us of anything?

Big update today in the backend. DealerRefresh now has a complete end-to-end lead-to-sponsor-to-banner-ad-to-accounting management system.

Think of it as a CDP and CRM custom-built for our needs that flows directly into a DMS with two-way sync. Not anything anyone other than Jeff, myself, and staff see, but I wanted to nerd about it here.

The banner ads you're seeing are 100% hosted and served by this system.

AND the ads are contextual. When we create a sponsor, an API examines the ad and the sponsor to generate keywords for the ad. If a keyword matches the AI summary about a thread, that ad scores higher for placement. When an ad doesn't match a keyword, ads are displayed randomly. There are also some performance algorithms built into the ad server. This all helps our sponsors reach the right eyeballs. 97% of DealerRefresh traffic is not from members; it is from lurkers.

this thread is only 12 years old.

joelisfeld said:

AI has fantastic use cases but anyone telling you that you can just launch an agent or a bot to run your sales team or your business, call your customers, or get rid of half your team (especially in our industry) is lying to you. Human assisted increase on throughput of mundane tasks (call analysis), writing (still needs strong human edits, especially on the sales follow up side), and data analysis (finding patterns or needles in the haystack). Most customers say they hate dealing with AI and anything obviously AI is off putting. Use AI to strengthen your foundation and the basics, save time. Maybe it will get there one day but right now it's simply not a 'hand it over to ai' situation for car dealers.

Click to expand...

Agreed.

I have been DEEEEEEEEEP into building with AI. DealerRefresh is a testament to that, but it goes beyond. AI is getting easier to use... AKA, better at figuring out what dumb humans are saying.

You still need to appreciate the AI system's logic and understand the data it works with. It takes a couple of massive projects to help put it all in perspective. And when I mean massive, I'm not talking about building a cool report. I'm referring to an entire piece of software. Start using something like Claude Code. It isn't really coding

If you want to get into it deeply, there are two projects that can help you learn without too much risk.

1. Build yourself an operating system on your own computer. Look up videos on AgenticOS to see what I'm talking about. If you want some ideas, I'm happy to help. It can be insanely helpful to your daily life. You're essentially making a program that does whatever you want it to.
2. Or build an offline AI inside an old computer you don't use anymore. You could make it a personal system that runs some things around your house. Also, very helpful.

Either of those projects will force you to get more intimate with AI and start to understand the differences between memory, agents, tokens, and how to prompt it. Once that makes sense to you, there is no limit to what you can make.

If you do both really really well wouldn't you see some organic value and generally lower your google ads costs due to a higher quality score?

@darrenstromain what have you noticed? Any specifics to give some insight?

Thx fellas, my biggest reco was to find a Ford store using it already and have that discussion so you're talking to someone who has some reps with it in live fire action. It seems to have some horsepower and the price is right...

darrenstromain said:

One thing I keep noticing reviewing dealership SEO visibility:

A lot of dealerships rank reasonably well for branded searches…

…but stronger organic growth often comes from targeting deeper search intent, including:

• model + city searches
• lease-related searches
• financing searches
• used inventory searches
• comparison searches

Examples:

“2026 Kia Sportage Toronto”
“Kia lease deals Ontario”
“Kia financing bad credit”
“used Kia Telluride near me”
“2026 Kia Sportage vs Hyundai Tucson”

That second layer of visibility is often where incremental organic traffic and lead growth starts to happen.

Especially in highly competitive local markets.

Click to expand...

The quickest way to lose organic SEO clicks is through Ads. The world's best SEO won't overcome Google Ads spend, especially on mobile.

Most dealers run make/model Google Ads campaigns which eat up organic clicks.

For example "ford lease deals" organically I have sites/pages in organic position 1, 2, 5, 8, and 9 for my location. Same 2 Ford dealers have Ads targeting that keyword and taking nearly 90% of clicks.

One of my all-time fav AI prompts. If you use it, lemme know, or hit the like button

CONCEPT:
• Have a half-baked idea that needs work?
• Have a task/project that is complex and its difficult & time consuming to define it?

Create your 1st pass at it, then PASTE the prompt I nicknamed "LETS TALK" below it.

<iteration_protocol>
<!--
Iteration Protocol v2.3
Purpose: Improve user outputs via Q&A
Dependencies: None.

=== USER GUIDE ===

You don't need to memorize anything.
AI shows your options at every decision point.
Just read and react with short responses.
Anything that isn't a listed option = feedback.

================================
-->

## ACTIVATION

This protocol activates when present in context.
- To bypass for a single response: say "direct answer" or "skip"
- To disable for remainder of conversation: say "iteration off"

## MODE

Guided iteration with SME approval gates. Claude does not assume, expand, or execute until SME explicitly approves.

## PROCESS

1. **RECEIVE** — Accept SME input without elaboration or interpretation.

2. **OBSERVE** — Surface 1-3 observations relevant to the active task.
- Observations must identify gaps, contradictions, or decisions needed—not restate what SME said.
- If no meaningful observations exist, state: "Input clear. No gaps detected."
- Append: **SPEC COMPLETENESS [X/10]** + **BLOCKER [single biggest gap]**
- Then show inline options (see OUTPUT FORMATS below)

3. **HOLD** — Do not assume, expand, or proceed until SME responds.

4. **LOOP** — Repeat 1-3 until SME signals proceed.

## OUTPUT FORMATS (Claude shows these — user reacts)

**After OBSERVE:**
```
SPEC COMPLETENESS: [X/10]
BLOCKER: [gap or "None"]

y = show skeleton | jdi = build now | ? = status | or ask/clarify
```

**After SKELETON shown:**
```
[SKELETON content]

y = build it | x = start over | or tell me what to change
```

**After BUILD delivered:**
```
[Build content]

y = done | new = different task | or tell me what to fix
```

**On ? (status request):**
```
LOCKED: [confirmed decisions]
OPEN: [unresolved questions]

y = continue | x = start over
```

## RESPONSE LOGIC

- `y` = approve / proceed / confirm
- `x` = reset / start over
- `?` = show status (LOCKED + OPEN)
- `jdi` = just do it (skip skeleton, build directly)
- `new` = I'm switching to a different task
- **Anything else** = feedback, questions, or changes ? continues the loop

## TASK SCOPING

The active task is the most recent user request that hasn't been marked complete.
- If ambiguous, ask: "Still on [X], or new task?"
- Feedback on a delivered build continues the same task.
- "new" or a clearly different topic resets fully.

## SPEC COMPLETENESS RUBRIC

| Score | Meaning |
|-------|---------|
| 1-3 | Core intent unclear; cannot proceed |
| 4-6 | Intent clear; missing inputs or edge cases |
| 7-9 | Buildable; minor gaps remain |
| 10 | Fully specified; ready to build |

## BLOCKER CRITERIA

The single gap that, if unresolved, makes the build fail.

**Priority order:**
1. Unclear intent
2. Missing inputs
3. Ambiguous logic
4. Undefined edge cases
5. Nice-to-haves

Surface only the highest-priority unresolved blocker.

## SKELETON FORMAT

- Section headers or component names
- Key inputs/outputs per section
- No prose, no implementation detail
- 5-10 lines max

## RULES

- No speculative builds
- No "here's what I think you mean" rewrites
- Observations must be specific, not summarizing
- Flag ambiguities as questions, not assumptions
- Always show inline options after every output
- Treat any non-command response as feedback

## EXPRESS MODE

"jdi" or "just do it" = skip skeleton, execute directly.

## ON RESET (x / start over)

Clear LOCKED decisions. Treat next input as new task. Prior conversation remains visible but not binding.
</iteration_protocol>

New registration page is up. Callout to Todd Caputo for the quote that can't be seen in this screenshot.

I've been heavily concentrated on making the Guest experience better with the hopes it will lead to more people becoming members. Membership grows the community and is good for all of us!

Alex Snyder said:

we have a new feature in the Admin panel

Click to expand...

dammmm... u are rocking!

Alex Snyder said:

I'm getting so much done on Sonnet and never hitting a limit wall.

Click to expand...

LOL. Your bud Uncle Joe gets a little giddy when I get the claude warning "your approaching your limit, add $$ now bitch"