Rev Up Sales in the Automotive Market
Gundersen concurred with this statement, but added, "Independents can continue to count on selling manual forms to smaller dealerships that are still sticking with continuous products since they don't want to spend money for new software."
Overcoming Directs
One of the primary reasons distributors are steering away from the auto market is the intrusion of directs. Gundersen reported that majors, such as ADP and Reynolds and Reynolds, are selling software to auto dealers that bundles together forms, toner and cut-sheets, and sell it to dealerships for what seems to be a super savings. "The problem is, car dealerships are so impressed by the price that they don't completely understand what they are paying for," said Gundersen. "The job of the independent distributor is to make dealerships see that they would wind up spending a lot of money on toner, and even repairs, since they would be reprinting their own colorful logos and company information over and over again."