What CRM should a small car dealership in Ireland use?
A small dealership in Ireland needs a system built around cars and enquiries, not around a generic sales pipeline. The practical test is simple: can it hold your stock with photos and NCT dates, receive the enquiries that arrive from DoneDeal, Carzone, your website and social media, follow them up on WhatsApp and email without someone typing every message, and record the sale correctly under the VAT margin scheme? If a tool cannot do those four things, your team ends up running it from a spreadsheet and a phone anyway.
What a dealer CRM has to do that a general CRM does not
General CRMs are designed for companies selling one product to many accounts over months. A car dealer sells hundreds of different products, each one unique, each one gone once it sells, to customers who decide in days. That changes the requirements.
- The vehicle is the centre of the record. Every enquiry, message and appointment should be attached to a specific car, not just to a contact.
- Stock has its own life: purchase price, preparation work, NCT or MOT date, photos, advert status, sale and margin. A contacts-only tool has nowhere to put that.
- Enquiries arrive from portals and messaging apps, not from web forms alone. In Ireland that means DoneDeal and Carzone emails, WhatsApp, Facebook and Instagram messages, plus the phone.
- Follow-up has to happen in the evening and at the weekend, because that is when buyers browse. A system that only reminds a salesperson to call is not doing the follow-up.
- Invoicing has to understand the VAT margin scheme for used cars, deposits, trade-ins and warranties. Otherwise the CRM stops at the handshake and the accounts start again from scratch.
Three ways dealers in Ireland run enquiries today
Most independent dealers we speak to sit in one of three places. Phone and notebook: fast to start, nothing is recorded, follow-up depends on memory. A general CRM: contacts are stored, but cars, portals and WhatsApp live outside it, so it is updated after the fact or not at all. A dealer platform: stock, enquiries, follow-up and sales in one place, with the cost of an implementation and a monthly fee.
None of these is wrong for every dealer. The question is where the enquiries are being lost. If customers who enquired last week are not being contacted this week, the problem is follow-up capacity, and a reminder system will not fix it.
What 10X Dealership covers
10X Dealership is a dealer platform plus an implementation team, built for independent dealers, dealer groups and franchise dealerships in Ireland and the UK. It holds the stock, publishes it to a dealer website, runs vehicle advertising across Meta, Google and TikTok, receives enquiries, follows them up automatically on WhatsApp and email, and records the sale with invoicing and VAT handling per region.
The published price is €697 per month for the system, setup and ongoing support. Advertising budget is separate and stays under the dealership's control. There is no long-term contract, and the core system can be live in as little as seven days once stock and advertising access are provided.
Questions to ask any vendor before you sign
- Where do DoneDeal and Carzone enquiries land, and who replies to them at 9 pm?
- Can I see the car, the customer, every message and the appointment on one screen?
- Does the invoice handle the margin scheme, deposits and trade-ins, or do I re-type the sale into accounts?
- What happens to my data and my customers' conversations if I leave?
- Is there a person who implements it with my team, or a login and a help centre?
Related questions
Is a spreadsheet enough for a dealer with under 20 cars?
It can record the stock, but it cannot answer an enquiry at 9 pm or remind anyone to follow up on Thursday. The gap is not storage, it is follow-up. Dealers with small stock usually lose more to slow replies than to missing records.
Do I need to replace my website to use a dealer CRM?
Not necessarily. 10X Dealership can provide a storefront that lists live stock, but the first step is a review of the current setup. If changes are useful, we explain them during the demo rather than assuming.
Does the system work for dealers in the UK as well as Ireland?
Yes. Regional details differ — MOT and V5C in the UK, NCT and VRC in Ireland, VAT handled per region — and the system uses the right set for each dealership.
