Most dealers cannot tell you what any single vendor actually costs them per car sold. They can tell you the monthly invoice, and they can recite the lead count the vendor reports. That gap is where wasted spend hides, and closing it starts with a real audit.
A marketing vendor audit is not complicated. It is tedious, and that is exactly why nobody does it. Here is how to run one that gives you numbers you can act on.
List every vendor and every dollar
Pull your last three months of statements and write down every marketing and tech vendor you pay. Not just the obvious ones. Include the website provider, the CRM, the SEO firm, the third-party lead sites, the chat tool, the reputation platform, and the digital retailing widget you forgot you signed up for.
Put the monthly cost next to each name. Add them up. The total is almost always higher than the number in your head, and that number is the first useful thing this audit produces. It is common for a store to find a widget or add-on it has paid for every month for a year and no one at the store can say who uses it or why. That line alone often covers the cost of the afternoon you spend on this.
Write down what each vendor is supposed to deliver
For every line item, write one sentence describing what you are paying for. Not the pitch. The deliverable. “Sends 40 leads a month.” “Runs paid search.” “Hosts the site and updates inventory.” If you cannot write that sentence, you have already found a problem.
- Named deliverable: what the contract or the rep actually promised.
- Vendor reporting: what the vendor claims it produced last month.
- Your data: what your own systems show it produced.
The third column is the one that matters, and it is the one vendors would rather you never fill in. You will often find the first two columns look great and the third is blank because nobody ever checked. That blank space is not a small thing. It means you have been paying against a promise and a self-graded report, with no independent proof that any cars came out the other end.
Tie every vendor to cars sold
Leads and clicks are not the goal. Cars are. Go into your CRM and your DMS and trace how many sold units you can honestly attribute to each vendor over the same three months. Be strict. If a customer touched five sources, do not let all five claim the sale.
Then do the simple math. Divide each vendor’s total spend by the cars you can credibly tie to it. That is your cost per sale for that vendor. Some numbers will be reasonable. Some will be indefensible. Both are useful. Imagine finding one lead site costing 2,000 dollars a month that you can tie to two sold units, next to an SEO line at the same price tied to fifteen. Same invoice, wildly different return. You cannot see that until you force every vendor onto the same cost per sale yardstick.
Sort the list into keep, cut, and question
With cost per sale in front of you, the decisions get easier. A vendor delivering cars at a sane cost stays. A vendor charging you every month for leads that never become sold units goes on the chopping block. A vendor you cannot measure at all goes into the question pile, because a vendor that hides its numbers is telling you something.
- Keep: clear delivery, reasonable cost per sale, transparent data.
- Cut: high cost per sale, vague delivery, or duplicate coverage.
- Question: no measurable output, or refuses to share raw data.
Duplicate coverage deserves special attention. Many stores pay two or three vendors to do overlapping work, each one taking credit for the same shoppers. The audit is where you catch that overlap and decide who actually earns the keep.
How to actually start
Do not try to boil the ocean. Block two hours, pull the statements, and build the vendor list first. Fill in the monthly cost and the promised deliverable in one sitting. The cost per sale work takes longer, so start with your three biggest vendors by spend. That is where the money is, and that is where the answers change your budget the most.
Frequently asked questions
How often should I run a vendor audit?
A full audit once or twice a year is enough for most stores, with a lighter monthly look at cost per sale for your biggest vendors. Contracts, spend, and results drift over time, so the point is to check often enough that no line item runs unexamined for a full year.
What if a customer touched several vendors before buying?
Be strict and consistent rather than perfect. Decide on a rule, such as crediting the source that generated the first real contact or the last one before the sale, and apply it the same way to every vendor. The goal is a fair, comparable number, not a courtroom-proof one.
Should I cut a vendor the moment the numbers look bad?
Not always. First give them the cost per sale figure and a chance to explain or improve. A good partner will engage with the number. A vendor that dismisses it or refuses to share the underlying data has answered the question for you, and that answer belongs in the cut pile.
These are the numbers you should own, not rent from a vendor. See how VCTRS helps dealers hold every vendor accountable on our vendor accountability page.