In 2022, Macdonald Motors CDJR was fighting an uphill battle—ranked last in their competitive pool, holding just 6.42% market share.
Bill Macdonald, owner of Macdonald Motors CDJR set his sights on re-setting the standard at the dealership.
Bill started to focus on talent acquisition, pricing, inventory sourcing and management, and an analytics and marketing partnership designed to take the dealership to the next level.
Fast forward to 2025 – Macdonald Motors CDJR has flipped the script completely: Now the #1 CDJR dealer in Maine, AND the #1 Ram HD dealer in the entire Northeast Business Center!
Learn how Bill Macdonald took his store from selling 95 new units in 2022 to selling 700 new units in 2024 in the story below.
Inside the Strategy That Made Macdonald Motors #1
Bill Macdonald, owner of Macdonald Motors CDJR, was keeping a close eye on the surrounding dealerships.
Every month, he reviews the factory sales reports to see how his store stacks up against the competition.
Bill KNEW there was demand in his area. He didn’t feel like he was getting his “fair” share.
Macdonald Motors started working with Fountain Forward in December 2020 after he had seen a long-time friend and dealer be featured in another one of Fountain Forward’s blogs.
He was determined to become his own case study!
Back in 2020, Bill hired Fountain Forward to analyze their dealership’s data and make better sales, marketing, and merchandising decisions with Analytics Edge, a bolt-on “Moneyball” back office using data to make dealerships more money.
We realized that Macdonald Motors’ digital strategy was virtually non-existent, and the dealership was a great candidate for our proprietary Media Mix Modeling technology, which we now call the Automotive Accelerator.
Instead of putting Maconald’s advertising dollars in saturated and competitive traditional channels, we went “all in” on digital – specifically Facebook – and bet on digital being the best catalyst for growth.
The real inflection point came in early 2022. That’s when Bill brought in Aaron Chase in December of 2022. Straight from the competition!
Aaron is now GM at the store and has been massive for driving the day-to-day operations of the dealership. He’s helped reinvent the culture at the dealership, while Bill has been able to focus on driving other expansions and projects at the dealership.
Aaron has also played a major role in finding creative ways to source inventory. He’s nimble and knew how to act quickly.
The store started to take advantage of getting information early. If Chrysler announces they have 15-20% off of 2023 Ram 1500s, within five minutes of receiving the email, he’s calling other stores to see if they’d give up any of their ‘23 inventory.
They also benefitted from regional programs. If there was a northeast regional special, they would call outside of the region to bring in more vehicles that qualified.
In 2023, they ran out of half-ton trucks! So what did they do? Called a dealership outside of the region. They bought 12, then sold 12. Rockstar stuff!
The results? While others sat on aging units, Macdonald kept turning vehicles and earning more allocation.
Month after Month, Macdonald Motors has chipped away and eaten up market share from ALL stores in the area and becoming the #1 CDJR Dealership in Maine.
As Inventory processes improved, Macdonald Motors leveraged the Automotive Accelerator and cranked spending up across their omnichannel approach. Blasting aggressive offers and attractive audiences, the lead volume started to grow.
Aaron and Bill have focused on what they are doing to get customers INTO the showroom.
They look at every angle of every lead to find some opportunities to get a swing at the deal. After all, every problem has a creative solution, right?
Another massive change and focus on lead handling. Macdonald Motors decided to bring a BDC manager in-house, and they found a hitter with Aimee.
What happened to Macdonald Motors CDJR wasn’t luck. It wasn’t just a few good months.
It was a shift in strategy, mindset, and execution, driven by a dealership willing to go all in on process, pricing, and inventory.
This store has figured out how to do this again and again, backed by Fountain Forward’s Automotive Accelerator.
This example with Macdonald Motors does a great job of highlighting when done correctly, strong fundamentals can and will propel a dealership. Much easier said than done.
Well done, Macdonald Motors!
