Strolid is bridging the gap between online automotive shoppers and brick and mortar auto dealerships. To do this, we open up any and all communication channels to increase engagement between the two sides. We do what dealerships don’t have the time to do: actually have conversations with consumers.
The result? We hand off highly engaged and educated customers right to the doorstep of the dealership you represent.
We operate a full service Business Development Center that answers sales calls, generates and follows up on leads, and scheduling appointments — all in an effort to increase business for automotive dealerships.
90% of car shoppers go online to find out exactly what you have for inventory and your current specials before they ever step foot into your dealership.
Meaning: Your chances and opportunities to sell a consumer on a car are becoming increasingly limited. This means dealerships need to adapt and start generating more leads. However…
It comes down to training and education for employees. Dealerships face a great challenge in hiring, staffing, and training people to adhere to best practices and process that align to today’s independent shopper. Instead, too many dealerships rely on salespeople who are trained to sell cars, but not trained to handle sales calls and leads.
At Strolid, we saw this gap as an opportunity. Using our industry knowledge and experience, we would help dealerships close this growing gap while simultaneously helping customers make a more informed decision.
Strolid helps make your dealership thrive in the digital age by creating a strong market presence and helping you understand and handle the traffic you get, leading to solid and dependable sales.
We are a marketing and sales management company that gets prepped and educated leads into your showroom, ready to make a purchase. We engage the online customer to improve their experience on behalf of a dealer. We respond to leads and schedule appointments so you don’t have to.
Strolid employees are trained in everything from the actual product (automobiles) and sales, to customer service and technical CRM training.
But not just our CRM, but your CRM. We utilize the dealer’s CRM so everything we do is completely transparent. We use an integrated software for quoting customers using REAL inventory and will soon add a chat and text service. As we guide shoppers through the research process to your doorstep, you can check in the entire way. This ensures their visit to your showroom is smooth, efficient, and successful.
When you partner with Strolid, everyone wins.
Three primary groups will benefit from Strolid’s services:
Our partner dealerships see process implimentation, increased lead conversion to a sale, increased engagement with customers, in a turnkey solution. We sell Dealers a process not a call center.
We offer manufactures a better way to communicate and reach out to dealerships. We help the manufactuers by helping the dealers inprove their process with online consumers. With out quote tool we will ensure dealers respond to leads quickly and with our managed chat service, we offer an established process to license.
Ad agencies who work with us can integrate the ads they run into the dealership’s CRM. This will greatly improve messaging and communications sent on behalf of the dealer and will help bridge the gap between what the customer saw and what the salesperson knows about their customer.
We can’t tell you all our secrets or else we would be out of business, but our process is pretty straight forward:
We receive leads through the Delaers CRM and Our CRM from websites like Edmunds.com, Cars.com, specific manufacturer websites, etc. that the dealer is already getting. Consumer data including names, emails, and any other information, and we engage those people.
We field all incoming sales calls that the dealership receives.
We provide all our leads with information and research data that will make their showroom visits efficient. In short, we help them on the car they want, and perhaps the car they should get instead.
We educate dealership salespeople as well. This way, no one has to repeat themselves when the customer gets into the store. Salespeople have access to every prior conversation we’ve had with the customer through their own CRM system.
Instead of manually finding leads, reading their information, and individually contacting them, we have developed technology that autopopulates the lead’s photo, pricing requirements, and contact info.
This increases our efficiency by 20%, thereby increasing your lead to sale potential by 20%.
Established in February 2014, Strolid, Inc. reached $2 million in revenue in our first year in business.
We have 10 more dealers in the pipeline as new business potential. Most of this business is coming from existing customers adding additional dealerships to their portfolio, and thus our portfolio. We have also received a handful of referrals from our current customers. All this success, and we haven’t spent a penny on advertising and marketing.
Among our dealership portfolio is: The McLarty Landers Automotive Group, the WG Auto Group, the Bernardi Auto Group, The Premier Auto Group, the Village Auto Group, The Experience Auto Group, the Peters Auto Group, and many other standalone dealerships around the country. We are current servicing dealers in California, Texas, New Orleans, Mississippi, Georgia, Kentucky, New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, Rhode Island, Massachusetts and New Hampshire.
In terms of manufactures, we are currently in discussions with Maserati and have had talks with South East Toyota. We have a very good reputation with Toyota and Nissan and have many good connections with various ad agencies, website companies, and other automotive vendors within the industry.
We are also working with two different companies for our internal technical solutions. To help is achieve scale, we need to offer more and better solutions to our current and future customer base. We have already invested in our technology by integrating our CRM to the dealer’s CRM. This has created a significantly better customer experience with our ability to quote and market to the dealer’s prospective clients, but we are far from satisfied.
Technology is the main focus of our next steps, and the reason for this fundraise. We need to develop and implement chat and text products that will open more communication channels, with more customers, giving Strolid more opportunities. More opportunities for us means more customers in dealership showrooms. We also have marketing capabilities within our platform using exisiting customer data to market to increase showroom visits.
Vincent has 24 years of automotive retail experience and has been involved in every aspect of a dealership — from sales to advertising, to service and parts. Most of his time, however, has been focused on improving sales processes and business development, skills that are crucial in his current position at Strolid.
Before Strolid, Vincent worked for Group 1 Automotive, overseeing 47 dealerships in the East region and running a large Business Development Center that employed 90+ people. He carried over all the contacts and relationships he built at Group 1 to Strolid, while fine tuning the process.
Vincent’s primary focus is visualizing the future of Strolid, taking into consideration profitability, technology, and building the foundation and structure of the current and future operation of Strolid.
Shawna runs the day to day operations of the Business Development Center. Strolid being a startup, Shawna has been instrumental in handling many different roles from overseeing administrative, Human Resources and training, as well as the day to day operation of the business. She has worked with Vincent for 14 years.
We have a total of 40 employees, 28 of which came with us from Group 1. This carry over group makes up our entire management and sales team. Our Director of Training has been with us for 7 years, and all our managers all have between 4 to 10 years of experience.