Acquisition
Used-vehicle sourcing
Service-drive sourcing before auction dependency. The economics of the acquisition funnel decide the store, not the sales floor.
EVP, Cars Commerce · Naples, FL
Dealer growth, earned through trust.
Automotive retail operator and executive, now leading dealer growth at Cars Commerce. I write, teach, and build for operators who treat trust as an operating system.
More about Brian →
Brian Kramer
Naples, Florida
Clarity
Say the true thing plainly, in the fewest words that carry it.
Trust
Earned in small moments, spent by a single broken promise.
Truth
What the numbers say when the story wants to say something else.
Focus
Where I spend the reps.
Reputation economics
Reviews are paid media
Bad reviews aren't just a marketing problem; they can become a paid-media drag. Trust compounds; the lack of it compounds faster.
Digital transformation
Paperless, and beyond
Helped lead an early end-to-end paperless automotive transaction. Now working on what comes after: AI-native retail, structured data, and clearer operating systems.
Trust is produced when message, process, evidence and outcome agree.
A book · In progress
The Best End User
A field manual for dealers who want to earn the last customer, not just the next one. Built from GM reps, appraisal spreadsheets, and the trust math that actually moves a store.
One email when it ships. No newsletter, no spam.
Brian Kramer
The Best End User
How great dealerships earn the last customer.
In progress
Writing
Essays from the floor.
AI search
Why AI can't cite your VDP — and what it's costing you
Structured data, canonical stability, and the invisible tax dealers pay when ChatGPT and Perplexity skip their inventory.
7 min read→
Acquisition
Service drive is a search problem, not a sales problem
Why strong acquisition programs look like SREs at work, not appraisers with clipboards.
6 min read→
Playbook
Operating tools you can run this week.
The operating doctrine turned into practical tools with clear owners, cadence, proof, and success measures. More publish as source material clears review.
Open the playbook →Featured in
Automotive News
2012 Retail 40 Under 40 — primary award page
F&I Magazine
F&I Showroom, Dec 2020 — The Future Is Digital at Germain Toyota of Naples
Digital Dealer Magazine
Nov 2020 interview — Germain Toyota of Naples
Jalopnik
Oct 2021 quote — Good Luck With Your Carvana Purchase