Daryl Lynch, Owner and Operations Director at Marketplace Chevrolet is go-getter.
Back in early 2024, grosses were compressing for dealerships as the industry was normalizing coming out of COVID and supply chain disruptions.
Daryl and his team set their sights on increasing sales volumes to offset falling grosses.
Far from being satisfied, the store has it’s sights set on more growth, higher volumes, and higher profits.
“We want to get more customers in our database, build our service business, build our sales business, and build our satellite use car business.” – Daryl
12 months later, Daryl and the team have been able to increase sales by 27.25% YOY at Marketplace Chevrolet and 78% YOY at their satellite lots.
Far from being satisfied, the store has it’s sights set on more growth, higher volumes, and higher profits.
What Happened:
As inventory returned to dealership lots in 2023 and 2024, Marketplace Chevrolet knew they’d have to balance sales volume and profit.
Selling 833 vehicles in 2023, Daryl knew his store could sell MORE, but he wasn’t sure how.
Daryl started to see success stories of dealerships after partnering with Fountain Forward’s Automotive Accelerator, so he decided to reach out.
Fountain Forward analyzed the store’s competitive landscape and performance and realized that Marketplace Chevrolet’s digital strategy could be improved significantly, and the store was a great candidate for our proprietary Marketing Mix Modeling technology.
Marketplace Chevrolet added the Automotive Accelerator at the start of 2024. Fountain Forward implemented a new media mix model for the dealership giving the store an omni-channel presence and generating significantly more traffic to the store’s website. and lead volume.
While generating more traffic is important, Marketplace Chevrolet has executed an aggressive pricing and merchandising strategy. Marketplace Chevrolet aggregates inventory on their website with their satellite used car lot as well.
The store was showing HUGE discounts on new inventory and adjusting prices on used vehicles frequently was a massive focus.
The combination of these resulted in a higher lead volume for the store.
Almost immediately, Marketplace Chevrolet started to capitalize on the increase of lead opportunities and saw an increase in sales.
Throughout 2024, the dealership rebuilt it’s BDC department 3 to 4 times.
The dealership decided to implement AI to improve its lead nurturing process. Only a few months in, their decision is paying dividends.
Daryl and the team knew they could do a better job which is why they are hyper focused on implementing and improving their processes with AI.
Since implementing AI, Marketplace Chevrolet has seen an increase in market share.
March of 2025 set records. The best month Marketplace Chevrolet has ever had.. And they are hungry for much more.
Results
One Year Later
- Marketplace Chevrolet – sales grew by 27.25% YOY
- Satellite Lots – Sales grew by 78% YOY
- Website Traffic grew by 105.18% YOY
- Website Leads grew by 30.97% YOY
- Total Leads grew by 14.20% YOY
As their success continued, they were able to add on another satellite lot. one in Shreveport, one in Bossier. One of those is growing into what will be SBC Autos.
Shoutout to Daryl Lynch for his humility and his leadership at the store. He continues to make decisions based on what and where the data suggests. His first question is always, “What does the data tell us?”.
Leading from the top, Marketplace Chevrolet remains active in its community sponsoring 50 organizations a year, and has been featured in Best of Shreveport for 5 consecutive years.
Looking forward to the success Marketplace Chevrolet has in the coming years!
