It’s no secret that us software vendors, and partners, and partner vendors want to stay in contact with you, the you being our customers and the team at your dealership. 

We want to be able to reach out to your used car manager, your Internet Manager, your GM, your whoever to communicate important information… but we don’t always know who is coming and going from every one of our dealer partners.

But it’s not just about us. There’s a security angle to this commentary also.

Do you know who has access to your leads and data? If Ricky, your Internet Manager leaves tomorrow and goes to a competitor, can he still access your leads? Can he lock out other people from having access?

Here’s an EASY solution!

Take an existing employee and designate him or her as the Vendor Manager to your dealership. This could be the Marketing person. Maybe it’s someone in HR. The important point is that it is a single person than can be trusted with the “keys to the kingdom”, with admin access to all of your dealer partners, AKA vendors. 

This person will be responsible for managing the “adds and drops” in the software platforms as employees come and go. It’s also a wise idea to appoint a backup person, like a GM or dealer principal just in case.

At the simplest level, the Vendor Manager sets a recurring calendar appt to check the TradePending portal (and the other vendor portals) to see who has access. They should remove former employees, edit titles, emails, phone numbers, and add new employees as they get on-boarded. The slightly more advanced approach is to have onboarding (and off-boarding) checklists for new and departing employees. 

In just a few minutes a month, you’ll keep your data safe and secure AND you’ll allow us to serve you better as we’ll know exactly who we should call with new ideas, helpful hints, and best practices.