Circles Weekly · May 15 – 22, 2026

Doc Fee Implementation & Compliance: Adapting to FTC enforcement guidelines requires meticulous updates to price stacks and disclaimers. One operator spent a month auditing 14 rooftops to clean up confusing pricing language, while another transitioned to a zero-doc-fee model at the start of the month, using it as a local reputation play with zero negative impact on employee pay plans.

Web Provider Workarounds: Operators note pricing update lags on major providers; one dealer previously utilized three platforms (Pixel Motion, Dealer Inspire, and Dealer.com) over a 24-month period before building a custom WordPress site, successfully reducing their annual website cost to approximately $500.

Price Stack Settings: When managing doc fees in Dealer Inspire (DI), dealers recommend adding the fee as a blanket negative incentive or custom price stack rather than directly altering the vAuto feed. This prevents mathematical and syndication errors across third-party portals and Google VLA platforms.

Agentic Search & LLMs.txt: Despite prior skepticism regarding the value of LLMs.txt files, new signals suggest Google's Lighthouse is now auditing for them. Operators recommend adding structured "contactPoint" entries (e.g., sales, service) to schema markup to declare canonical numbers machine-readably and prevent LLMs from index-confusing dynamic tracking numbers.

Consumer AI Negotiation: The rise of consumer-facing tech is hitting the CRM. Dealers report their first encounters with AI negotiation bots (such as CarEdge, which costs consumers $990 to negotiate on their behalf) initiating back-and-forth price negotiations via email and chat.

CRM Workarounds & Lead Latency: Dealers report 1-to-3 hour lead delivery delays on GM web pipelines routing through DDC, with some stores seeing 30-minute delays. To protect internet response metrics, some operators use Fullpath to capture and route leads directly. On the accounting side, some operators report using scheduled GL exports as an alternative to the OpenTrack API certification process to feed transaction-level data into analytical tools.

Service Advisor Compensation: Members are evaluating whether straight percentage-of-sales plans align advisor compensation with department profitability. To align pay directly with department profitability, operators advise shifting to gross-profit-based structures. Recommended benchmarks include: a base of 5% of gross plus a 1% CSI kicker and a single monthly KPI focus bonus; a 40%/40%/20% split of salary, individual gross profit commission, and CSI/spiffs; or paying on total hours sold with a tiered Customer Pay (CP) labor gross rate and 1% on CP parts.

Mobile Service Cost-to-Value: Mobile service programs require heavy volume to pencil. Spiffy's mobile service (recently launched as Hyundai's certified partner) carries a $2,800/month fee and a $3,750 setup fee. Operators warn that low turn rates can leave expensive assets idle; a Toyota tire install pilot utilizing a $100,000 truck across 4 dealers failed to generate sustainable volume over a 3-month trial. Curbee was cited by members as an alternative.

Sourcing Flat-Rate Techs: Recruiting firms charging upfront fees of $3,000 to $4,000 are yielding poor results. Dealers report higher success rates and lower customer acquisition costs by shifting to Indeed Smart Sourcing subscriptions, boosted Facebook posts, and niche platforms like jobs.dealershipguy.com.

Softening Variable Demand: May lead counts have softened compared to a strong April, though they remain higher than March. Regional demand is highly varied: while some Stellantis (CDJR) dealers in San Antonio report soft leads but steady grosses and sales, rural CDJR stores in Ohio, South Dakota, and Southern California report significant traffic slowdowns. In contrast, one Kentucky store reported its best net-profit month in 1.5 years despite lower MoM volume.

F&I Performance & Captive Finance: The May CDG Temp Check (consisting of 73 dealers representing over 480 rooftops) indicates positive momentum in F&I performance across the community. However, some dealers report tighter underwriting from Stellantis Financial, with one dealer noting a 20% cutback or flat turn-down on submitted deals, alongside additional stipulations on 780-credit-score customers. Stellantis's promotional 2.9% for 72 months financing remains a key traffic driver.

Sales Manager Compensation: In Ford stores, operators report sales manager pay plans starting at 3.5% of variable gross with escalators pushing up to 4.0% based on CSI. Another dealer reported average variable compensation of 2.20%, including fleet gross.