Connected Retailing: The Future of Automotive Sales

The automotive customer journey has gone through significant changes in recent years. Customers expect the convenience of online shopping, the personalized showroom experience, and the transparency of modern e-commerce—all rolled into one. For dealerships, achieving this can be quite challenging, especially with systems and processes that don’t always work together.

These disconnects don’t just frustrate buyers—they slow down conversions and create inefficiencies for your team. To fix this, dealerships need a new approach.

Why Dealerships Need Connected Retailing Now

Think about this: After days of researching vehicles across multiple sites, a customer finally chooses your dealership’s website to take the next step. They find their dream car, provide their trade-in details, and even start a credit application. Excited and ready to buy, they head to your dealership expecting to have a head start—only to be told their saved vehicle, trade-in details, and financing application aren’t in your system. So they have to start over from scratch. Frustrated, they start questioning whether the dealership actually values their time—or if the online experience was just a gimmick to get them in the door.

Sound familiar? You’re not alone. Many dealerships struggle with this exact challenge—disconnected systems that slow down deals, frustrate customers, and waste valuable time for your team.

Today’s car buyers expect more. They want:

• Convenience: The ability to start online and pick up right where they left off in-store.
• Transparency: Consistent, accurate information at every step.
• Time Savings: A process that moves quickly, without unnecessary delays or repetition.

This is where connected retailing comes in. The transformative approach focuses on bridging the gaps between online and in-store experiences, giving customers the seamless process they expect while improving your dealership’s efficiency and profitability. Are you ready to deliver the experience today’s car buyers crave? Let’s start by understanding what connected retailing really means.

What Is Connected Retailing? Bridging the Disconnects in Automotive Sales

So, what is connected retailing? At its core, connected retailing is both a philosophy and a strategy that transforms the car-buying journey into one seamless, connected process. It ensures that every stage—shopping, buying, and contracting—flows smoothly, without interruptions or redundancies.

Unlike other approaches like omnichannel or digital retailing, connected retailing goes a step further by integrating not just the customer experience but also the systems and workflows behind the scenes. Here’s how it stands out:

• Omnichannel retailing focuses on delivering consistent customer experiences across different touchpoints (e.g., websites, mobile apps, showroom).
• Digital retailing emphasizes enabling specific online tasks, such as applying for financing, trade-in valuations or payment estimates.
• Connected retailing combines the strengths of both approaches while also uniting the behind-the-scenes workflows—ensuring that technology, systems, and people work together.

Key Elements of Connected Retailing

Connected retailing addresses three critical disconnects that plague many dealerships:

1. Online and In-Store Experiences: Customers want a seamless transition between the two, so they don’t have to re-enter information or restart their journey.
2. Shopping and Buying Activities: Dealership websites are often designed to collect customer information, not built for transactional experiences- creating roadblocks and trust barriers
3. Sales and Finance Teams: These departments often operate in silos, leading to inefficiencies, conflicts, and customer frustrations.

By uniting technology, workflows, and people, connected retailing allows dealerships to deliver the seamless, transparent, and efficient journey that today’s customers expect while also improving efficiency and profitability.

Solving the Disconnect: Unifying Online and In-Store Experiences

Imagine this scenario: A customer starts their car-buying journey online, using digital tools to compare payment options and explore financing. They receive a monthly payment estimate that fits their budget and even get pre-approved for financing. Confident in their progress, they visit your dealership, expecting to pick up where they left off.

But once they sit down with your team, they’re met with confusion. The monthly payment they expected online doesn’t match what’s being presented—due to shifting lender terms, missing incentives, or added fees. The financing terms they thought were locked in aren’t available, or final lender approvals require different conditions. What felt like a done deal now feels uncertain and frustrating. To them, it feels like all the progress they made online was a waste of time—and now, they’re questioning whether the dealership is being upfront with them.

This breakdown between online expectations and in-store reality is one of the biggest challenges in our industry. When customers encounter mismatched pricing, financing surprises, or unnecessary hurdles, trust erodes, and they start questioning whether they’re getting a fair deal.

How Connected Retailing Fixes This

Connected retailing ensures that the preferences, quotes, and decisions made online (e.g., vehicle selection, payment preferences, trade-in details, etc) are seamlessly synced with your dealership’s in-store platforms and systems. Here’s how it works:

• Data Synchronization: Middleware and API’s within connected retailing acts as the bridge between your website, CRM, DMS, Inventory, F&I platforms and other tools, ensuring real-time data sharing and synchronization.
• Lender Integration: API-based middleware solutions ensures that quoted payment options are accurate, realistic and match what is available in-store, eliminating bad surprises.
• Faster Transactions: Your team has access to all the information they need before the customer arrives, eliminating process redundancies and information disconnects.

What This Means for Your Dealership

With connected retailing:

• Your customer benefits from a consistent, faster moving, frictionless buying experience.
• Your team spends less time re-entering data, speeding up the sales process.
• You build trust and loyalty by delivering a modern retailing experience while improving dealership operations.

Solving the Disconnect: Closing the Gap Between Shopping and Buying

Think about the customer’s online journey. It starts with research. They browse inventory, compare models, and estimate payments. But the moment they try to move down funnel, they hit roadblocks transitioning from browsing to buying.

• Advertised pricing shows MSRP or general estimates, but dealer-specific best-selling prices aren’t available—leaving customers without a real starting point for negotiations.
• Payment calculator tools don’t generate real, lender-approved payment options.
• Trade-in offers are either unavailable or disconnected from the deal structure—leaving customers unsure of their total cost.
• Financing pre-approvals aren’t tied to real lenders or specific deals.

At this point, the customer is stuck. They are often dead-ended into a lead form fill or dealership visit. This isn’t digital retailing. This isn’t digitizing the deal. It’s a dead end. Do they start over elsewhere? The fragmented journey creates distrust and confusion. Car buyers move through two distinct phases: shopping and buying. Here’s how they break down:

• Shopping Tasks: Vehicle research and selection, price/incentives info, trade appraisal, explore finance information/payment options.
• Buying Tasks: Confirming vehicle availability, selling price negotiation, credit decision, qualified payment quoting, deal structuring, firm trade offers often require a lead form fill or dealership visit.

Here’s the challenge: Your website isn’t an e-commerce platform—but customers expect it to function like one. Most dealership websites don’t include capabilities related to the more complex ‘buying’ steps, creating roadblocks and dead-ends, leaving customers frustrated and dealerships missing out on browser-to-buyer conversion opportunities. And even dealerships that do offer buying tools often rely on standalone solutions that don’t integrate with their core in-store platforms—creating even more friction in the process.

How Connected Retailing Fixes This

Connected retailing bridges the gap between shopping and buying activities by:

• Enabling Remote Buying: Middleware powers key buying steps—price negotiation, payment quoting, and trade-in valuations—without requiring a dealership visit or lead form submission.
• Providing Real-Time Transparency: Digital finance middleware solutions enable personalized, transactable pricing information, trade-in values, and financing details, eliminating trust barriers and bad surprises.
• Synchronizing Customer Data: Trade-in details, credit pre-qualifications, and saved vehicles—is instantly available and accessible across departments and platforms.

What This Means for Your Dealership

With a unified shopping and buying experience:

• Customers confidently move forward with clear, realistic information.
• You create a cohesive customer-centric experience that improves conversion rates.
• You stay competitive in a market that increasingly values modern retail experiences.

Solving the Disconnect: Aligning Sales and Finance Teams for Better Outcomes

If there’s one disconnect that causes the most frustration for both customers and dealership teams, it’s the divide between sales and finance. Deals easily go sideways because these departments are intentionally siloed and can have competing focuses, objectives and priorities. As a result, the negotiation and time spent in F&I are tremendous sources of buyer dissatisfaction and profit leaks for you.

Here’s why sales and finance often clash:

• Different Definitions of Success: Sales prioritize quick volume-driven deals and discounts, while finance focuses on maximizing backend profit, creating tension over pricing, profitability, and customer interaction time.
• Contradictory Customer Messaging: Sales promise affordability and simplicity, while finance introduces added costs and complexities, creating mixed messages that can confuse customers.
• Compensation Structures: Sales prioritize volume and front-end profit, while F&I focuses on backend gross, creating conflict as each team has a financial incentive to prioritize their specific area of the deal.

How Connected Retailing Fixes This

Connected retailing fosters communication and teamwork between sales and finance by:

• Establishing Real Time Data Sharing: Middleware within connected retailing ensures both teams work with consistent information on inventory pricing, financing terms, and deal parameters.
• Enabling Real-Time Collaboration: Middleware automates and synchronizes deal structuring, ensuring that sales promises can be lender matched and money is left in the deal for finance.
• Automating Compliance and Approvals: Middleware enforces consistent pricing and ensures all deals meet regulatory and financial guidelines upfront, reducing re-works and regulatory penalties.

What This Means for Your Dealership

When sales and finance teams are aligned:

• Customers experience a smoother, faster moving, more transparent process.
• Process conflicts and inefficiencies are reduced, saving time and money.
• Profit opportunities increase and F&I turns are maximized

The Future of Automotive Sales: Why Connected Retailing Is Essential

Car buyers today live in a digital-first world. They expect the convenience, speed, and transparency they’re used to with online retailers like Amazon, Apple or other e-commerce platforms. For dealerships, meeting these expectations isn’t just a nice-to-have—it’s essential to staying competitive.

Insights from the Car Buyer Journey Study

Recent research sheds light on how car buyers approach the shopping and buying process, offering valuable insights into their evolving preferences:

• 43% of buyers said their purchase included both online and in-store activities.
• 71% want their next car-buying experience to blend online and in-person elements.
• 21% would prefer to complete the entire process online.

These numbers tell a clear story: Customers don’t want to be forced into one way of shopping—they want flexibility. They expect an experience that bridges online convenience with the personalized touch of in-store interactions.

Here’s what’s driving their expectations:

• Convenience: The ability to pick up where they left off, whether they’re online or in-store.
• Transparency: Clear, consistent pricing and financing information throughout the journey.
• Time Savings: A faster process that eliminates unnecessary steps or redundancies.

Why Connected Retailing Is the Answer

Connected retail automotive solutions provide the framework to deliver on these expectations. It aligns your dealership’s systems and workflows to create a seamless, automotive omnichannel experience. Here’s why this matters:

• Customers Prefer It: The majority of buyers want a hybrid approach. Connected retailing makes this possible by unifying every step of the journey.
• It Future-Proofs Your Dealership: As technology continues to shape consumer behavior, adopting connected retailing ensures you stay ahead of the curve.
• It Builds Trust and Loyalty: By meeting customers where they are, you create a process they feel good about—one they’ll return to and recommend.

Your Roadmap to Connected Retailing

Adopting connected automotive solutions isn’t just about staying current—it’s about taking the lead in a hyper competitive and rapidly evolving industry. Customers are demanding better experiences, and dealerships that deliver on these expectations will be the ones that thrive.

How to Get Started

Shifting to a connected retailing model may seem complex, but the reality is that small, strategic steps can create immediate improvements. Here’s how to get started.

1. Identify information gaps in your current processes and where data disconnects occur. Here are key areas to evaluate:

• • When a customer completes a trade-in valuation, credit application, or vehicle selection online, does that information immediately transfer to your in-store systems—or does your team have to manually re-enter it?
  • Is customer information captured in any one platform appropriately accessible across others, like your CRM, DMS, or F&I Platforms?
  • Do your in-store systems automatically reflect updates made by the customer online?
  • Can your sales team see financing information or trade-in details entered online?

2. Audit whether your CRM, DMS, F&I, and digital retailing platforms share data in real time—or if manual workarounds are needed. Look for:

• • Duplicate data entry, mismatched information, or system silos that slow down operations
  • Tools that require manual workarounds to function properly
  • Feedback from your sales, finance, and service teams about inefficiencies

3. Find middleware solutions that seamlessly connect your CRM, DMS, F&I platforms, and desking tools—ensuring that customer data flows automatically across systems.

• • Open APIs that enable seamless integration and real-time, two-way data sharing
  • Real-time data synchronization
  • Compatibility with all your existing platforms and systems.

4. Protect your dealership and customers by focusing on data security. Steps include:

• • Ensuring compliance with privacy laws like CCPA or GDPR.
  • Using tools with encrypted data storage and transfer.
  • Training your team on data protection best practices.

5. Customize your connected retailing solutions to fit your specific dealership needs:

• • Determine the solutions that work best for your strategy, your brand and your customers.
  • Streamline finance workflows to match your existing parameters and policies.
  • Involve your sales, finance, and IT departments to ensure your tools and processes meet their needs.

Why Now Is the Time

Connected retailing isn’t just the future—it’s what your customers already expect. By adopting it now, you’re not just keeping up—you’re staying ahead. The dealerships that make connected retailing a priority today will be the ones leading tomorrow. The future of automotive sales is already here.

Take the first step now—your success depends on it.