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A meeting of the Young Dealers Group in North Carolina was discussing the problem of third-party vendors accessing information from dealership management systems without the dealer's knowledge.
Greg Westcott suggested a low-tech solution: Smoke 'em out. Unplug the modem and wait for the phone to ring.
"You'll be surprised at how many vendors that you didn't realize are getting your data," says the 39-year-old general manager of David Westcott Buick-GMC-Suzuki in Burlington, N.C. "There were one or two vendors that were on my system that I thought I had cut off. They were still actively pulling our data."
The idea was simple, and dealers have long gathered to share ideas. What was really new was the makeup of the group.
The young dealer group consists of mostly 30- and 40-something sons and daughters of North Carolina dealers who are heirs-apparent to their family businesses. It was formed in March 2008 by the North Carolina Automobile Dealers Association. Westcott is a former leader of the group and the son of David Westcott, incoming National Automobile Dealers Association chairman.
The group meets three or four times a year to get to know each other. They network, share best practices, help...