A monthly report should tell leadership what happened, what it cost and what changes because of it. Anything short of that is a stack of dashboards with a cover page.
Most dealership reports are assembled by channel, which means every vendor is scoring its own work. Google reports on Google. Meta reports on Meta. The website vendor reports traffic and the CRM reports leads. Every one of them can be accurate to the decimal and the story they add up to can still be wrong.
A GM needs one view built around the store instead of around the vendors. Seven sections. I would not sign off on a report missing any of them.
1. Spend against plan
Start with the money. Planned budget, actual spend and variance, broken out by rooftop and by funding source, with OEM-funded work on its own line away from dealer-led work. A percentage with no dollars behind it tells a GM nothing, and a variance with no explanation attached is a number somebody typed.
2. Corrected leads by true source
Google, Meta, organic, OEM portals and walk-in each get their own line, and somebody reviews the source and sub-source mappings before the meeting rather than during it. Google Analytics recommends consistent campaign parameters for source, medium and campaign so traffic can be classified. Those parameters are the front door. The CRM still has to hold onto what came through it.
In one five-rooftop group, unattributed leads ran from under 1% at one store to more than 13% at another. Rolled into a single group total, that produces a tidy-looking report nobody should act on.
3. Lead handling and appointment movement
Response time, contact rate, appointments set, appointments shown, and the leads that got nothing at all. Break it out by rooftop and by shift if the CRM will let you. A campaign can deliver a lead at a great cost and still lose the deal because the lead sat until morning.
Pied Piper's 2026 study found only 47% of powersports dealers answered the question a shopper submitted through the website by email or text. Report lead volume without reporting what happened next and you protect the channel while burying the operating problem.
4. Cost per lead and cost per sold unit
Cost per lead is useful for comparing acquisition and useless for settling a budget argument on its own. Where the CRM and DMS support it, leadership should also see sold-unit matchback by source. Put the method next to the number: the date window, the source rules, how many duplicates came out and how many records would not match at all.
If sold-unit attribution is not there yet, say so in plain English. Do not paper over the gap with platform-reported purchases or modelled conversions and let the room hear the word sales.
5. Inventory and department alignment
Put the spend next to the floor: what is aging, what the season wants, what the departments need moved. A media plan can hit its lead target while pushing a category the store is already short on. The report should make that mismatch impossible to miss before anybody signs off on another month.
6. Co-op, website and system health
Then the operational items, the ones that can quietly invalidate every number above them:
- co-op and MDF dollars, split into eligible, submitted, approved and paid
- feed failures and ad disapprovals
- results of this month's form, phone and chat tests
- broken conversion tags or call tracking
- vendor items still sitting on somebody else's desk
None of this belongs in a technical appendix at the back that nobody opens. If a broken form cost the store leads in week two, it goes right next to the lead count for the month.
7. Decisions, owners and deadlines
End with a short issue list: what changed, what is stuck, who owns the fix, and the date leadership sees proof it went live. A report that ends there has already written next month's agenda.
How we train the team you already have
The marketing manager does not need another agency PDF. We build the report on the store's own accounts, teach the team how to check the inputs before the meeting instead of during it, set the cadence and stay on as reviewer and escalation point. The knowledge stays in the building.
Where there is no capacity, we run the report and the systems underneath it. Where the internal team is strong, we audit, train and step back to quarterly oversight. Either way the format should leave leadership less dependent on any single vendor, ours included.
Leadership checklist
- Does actual spend reconcile to the plan and funding source?
- Were CRM sources reviewed before totals were reported?
- Can the team show response, appointment and follow-up performance?
- Are platform conversions separated from CRM leads and sold units?
- Does the media mix reflect current inventory and department priorities?
- Are co-op, feed, form and tracking issues visible?
- Does every open item have one owner and one deadline?
Sources and methodology
- Google Analytics: Collect campaign data with custom URLs.
- Pied Piper PSI: 2026 Internet Lead Effectiveness Study.
- Our five-rooftop source-accuracy and performance figures are reconciled from dealership CRM reporting and spend logs; see Results.
Build the report leadership should be getting.
The Dealer Growth Audit traces the current reporting chain, tests source accuracy and lead handling, and turns what it finds into an operating plan in priority order.
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