Between juggling leads and following up, it’s easy for even the best dealership teams to let opportunities slip through the cracks. On today’s episode of Driving Solutions, we sit down with Dave Steinberg, President and CEO of Foureyes, to discuss how dealerships can adapt to market volatility by leveraging better data, smarter AI strategies, and more surgical sales performance analysis. With thousands of salespeople tracked daily, Steinberg shares key insights on how today’s leaders can improve accountability, close rates, and customer engagement by using the right tools and setting clear expectations.
While the automotive industry may feel it’s undergoing a fast-changing market environment, Steinberg stresses that dealerships need to shift from standard management to crisis management. “Context, decision-making speed, and leadership style all change during a crisis,” he explains, noting that dealership leaders must act quickly and set clear, data-informed expectations for their teams.
According to Steinberg, Foureyes currently tracks the daily performance of over 40,000 salespeople, using metrics like close rates segmented by lead source—whether from AutoTrader, Cars.com, or a dealer’s website—and lead age (0–3 days, 4–7 days, 8–14 days). However, he points out that today’s car buyers often need to purchase rather than just simply shop. Since many CRMs fail to store critical urgency data, dealers can miss easy wins by not prioritizing leads from ready buyers.
In addition, Steinberg offers a clear example: A salesperson who sold 18 cars in a month had an 11% close rate, while others in the group could have closed at 15% with the same leads. “That’s a loss of 4%,” Steinberg says, emphasizing that performance reviews must move beyond volume to conversion efficiency. “Great job on the 18—but let’s talk about how you could have done 24.”
The intent of providing the example for dealers is to clearly clarify the role of BDCs in filtering and prepping leads. However, Steinberg highlights a common issue: BDCs often hold back on leads that only close at 1–2%, rather than optimizing them with the right processes or redistributing them to proven sales talent.
On the other hand, AI, he says, can help—but only if powered by clean, actionable data. “Good AI is surgical, not shotgun,” Steinberg warns, pointing out that AI campaigns should support individual salesperson behaviors, not override them. In one case, a high-performing representative had a 3% close rate from 8–to 14-day-old leads, outperforming both the group and industry averages (14% and 11%, respectively). For this rep, the AI campaign had to be turned off entirely to avoid interference.
Another critical stat: industrywide, if a lead reaches day four, the average close rate plummets to 1.7%—a sign that dealerships are missing key follow-up information or failing to adapt to changing customer intent. This is where targeted AI can fill in the gaps, refining campaigns to maintain engagement and raise close rates.
Ultimately, Steinberg urges dealers not to get swept up in AI hype. “AI isn’t going to replace your six-person sales team,” he says. “It’s going to augment them—if you have the right data.”
“AI is not going to replace the six people. It's going to augment them. And the way it augments them is with the right data.”– Dave Steinberg
