Picture this… You are running an established dealership.
Your team is working.
Your operators care.
Your market has demand.
Yet the opportunities coming into the store are inconsistent…
It seems as if the store is dependent on third-party providers, the “Lot Gods”, and the sales team doesn’t have enough at-bats to increase volume.
That was the situation at Waxahachie Dodge back in 2023.. This is how 2025 ended – #1 in the Fort Worth district and the #1 Ram dealer in the metroplex.
This was not a brand-new store. This was not a blank slate. Waxahachie CDJR was already an operating dealership with history, expectations, and pressure to perform in a highly competitive market.
Back in 2023, lead count had gone down and website leads seemed to be non-existent. They added third parties to try and help, but that didn’t yield any increase in sales.
Eric Wilmeth, GSM of Waxahachie CDJR, was sick of being “talked at” by digital agencies about impressions and funnels and exhausted with getting bad information – specifically from companies.
It became a normal thing to “pray to the lot gods” where they would throw pennies on the ground and hope to see some people miraculously appear on the lot.
Eric Wilmeth, GSM of Waxahachie CDJR, stumbled across one of our blogs, just like you and decided to reach out to Fountain Forward.
He made it very clear. He was purely focused on NEW cars.
“We need to generate new car traffic. The store will get people into a car, just get the sales team more at-bats.”
Waxahachie CDJR was sick of their competitors selling in their PMA. Too often, dealerships were pumping units out into Waxahachie’s market
Eric believed they could do the opposite. Once we looked at the market and Waxahachie’s data, Fountain Forward did too.
Fountain Forward launched the Automotive Accelerator in March of 2024.
Waxahachie CDJR had a new Media Mix focused on driving quality lead volume through their website and reducing the dependence on third-party lead providers.
This strategy was and is geared entirely towards conversions.
3 months in and things were trending up, but Eric wasn’t satisfied. In fact, Eric was “screaming” for more opportunities.
They were WILLING AND WANTED TO spend more as long as the math kept working.
After taking a crawl, walk, run approach, we went all in on the platforms that were working and starting to generate more opportunities for the store.
The system became seasoned.. Leveraging all of the machine learning and AI capabilities with Meta and Google’s targeting, Waxahachie took control of their own growth. CORE Website leads flourished, and the store consistently reduced its dependency on 3rd party lead volume.
The store has committed to an aggressive pricing strategy, which has made it consistently stand out in an extremely competitive and saturated market.
How did Wax Dodge become the #1 Ram dealer in the Metroplex?
The Automotive Accelerator focused on quality website leads and a data-driven approach, combined with aggressive pricing, building up the right inventory mix, and improving efficiency at the store level
This is not a one-trick story. The dealership did not simply get hot in one department or ride a short-term incentive wave.
The store got better at turning its best opportunities into sold vehicles.
CORE Closing % improved from 9.84% in 2024 to 11.13% in 2025, a 13.5% increase.
That matters.
When CORE Website leads are rising fast and the closing rate is improving at the same time, it usually means the store is NOT just buying more leads.
It means the store is building a healthier demand engine.
That was the mission from the start.
Very few stores can improve the mix, improve the close rate, and grow both new and used sales at the same time.
Waxahachie Dodge did.
Of course, none of this happens from advertising alone.
The best dealership results always happen when the fundamentals line up.
- Inventory has to support the objective.
- Pricing has to stand out.
- The team has to be ready to handle the opportunities.
- The process has to move customers from lead to appointment to showroom to sold.
That is where the real money is won and lost.
The Automotive Accelerator worked at Waxahachie Dodge because it was paired with a store that was serious about performance. The dealership did not just want reports. They wanted leverage. They wanted better math. They wanted more opportunities they could actually do something with.
And once the store saw the strategy working, they kept leaning in.
That is how an established dealership creates meaningful year-over-year growth and takes market share in a highly competitive market. In 2025, they became #1 in the Fort Worth district and the #1 Ram dealer in the metroplex.
Waxahachie Dodge’s success over recent years is a case study in what happens when a dealership improves both the volume and the quality of its opportunities, then converts those opportunities at a higher rate in the showroom.
More traffic.
More CORE leads.
More appointments.
More sold appointments.
More cars sold.
That is the formula.
If you are a dealer principal or GM looking at your own store and wondering whether your bottleneck is traffic, lead quality, media mix, or conversion efficiency, that is exactly the kind of problem Fountain Forward helps solve.
