They say
“Our CRM already attributes leads to sources.”
We say
To the source recorded on the lead. This adds the campaign and keyword behind it and ranks on delivered gross rather than lead count.
For DealerSocket
Which campaigns produced units that actually delivered?
Match sold and delivered units, and the gross behind them, to the campaigns and calls that produced the buyer.
- No API key
- Nothing to install in DealerSocketNothing to install
- No card requiredNo card
CloseRev reads a DealerSocket export of delivered deals — buyer contact detail, front and back gross and the delivery date — and matches it against the calls, forms and walk-in records that preceded them. Gross, not units, is what separates a channel that sells cars from one that sells cheap cars. Deals with no traceable origin are reported as Direct / Unknown.
Page updated September 24, 2026.
The gap
A lead costs the same whether it buys a used compact or a loaded truck. Your reporting treats those two as one conversion each.
DealerSocket sees
What was sold, to whom, and for how much.
no shared row
Your ad account sees
The click, the keyword, the call, and what each one cost.
The file
What the export needs in it.
Three things carry the match: who, how much, and when. Anything else is optional and only changes how the report can be sliced.
- Needed
Buyer phone or email
The customer record on the deal. Phone is the stronger key in retail automotive.
- Needed
Front and back gross
Gross rather than sale price. Price ranks the vehicle; gross ranks the deal, and F&I is a large part of it.
- Needed
Delivery or funding date
Delivered, not sold. A deal that unwinds is not revenue.
- Optional
New or used, and store
New and used draw on completely different demand, and stores in a group rarely share a market.
Step by step
Getting the file out of DealerSocket.
Written for somebody with DealerSocket open in the next tab. Report names vary by edition, so each step says what to look for.
-
Export delivered deals with gross
One row per deal carrying the buyer's contact detail, the gross and a date.
-
Use delivered rather than sold
Unwound deals are not revenue, and unwind rates are not uniform across sources.
-
Include back-end gross in the amount
F&I gross is a meaningful share of the deal and does not distribute evenly across channels, so the amount should carry front and back together.
-
Export CSV and upload
Confirm the suggested mapping or set it by hand.
-
Combine every demand source
Paid search, paid social, third-party listing sites and call tracking, in one lead file with the source named on each row. Each ranks on gross.
What comes back
The page DealerSocket cannot show you.
Revenue by channel, the count of sales behind each figure, and an honest bucket for the ones nobody could trace. Sample figures, from the worked example on the Auto Dealers page — not from a DealerSocket account.
Traced to a channel$429,00066% of $650,000
Sales matched142 of 210high confidence only
Average sale$3,090per paid sale
| Channel | Share | Sales | Revenue |
|---|---|---|---|
| Google Ads | 62 | $188,500 | |
| Listing sites | 51 | $156,000 | |
| Meta Ads | 29 | $84,500 | |
| Direct / Unknown | 68 | $221,000 |
Unmatched sales stay in Direct / Unknown. They are never spread across the paid channels to make the total look better.
The argument
What changes when the deal and the ad share a row.
Cost per lead is the wrong denominator and everyone in the store knows it
Automotive retail is measured in leads because leads are countable the same day. A third-party listing site, a paid search campaign and a social campaign all report lead volume, and the cost per lead comparison follows automatically.
The problem is the numerator. A lead that buys a used compact at modest gross and a lead that buys a new truck with a full F&I package are one lead each and multiples apart in what the store earns. Cost per lead cannot see that and never will.
Ranking sources on delivered gross can change the ordering, and it is the ordering the general manager actually needs, because the budget is defended on gross rather than on traffic.
Third-party listing sites report what suits them
Listing marketplaces are a large line item in most dealer budgets and they report their own performance: views, leads, sometimes influenced sales on their own definition. There is no neutral ground on which to compare them with the store's own paid search.
Adding the marketplace's leads to the lead file, under its name, creates that ground. Both are ranked on delivered gross from the same deal export, which is the only comparison that settles the argument.
Service and fixed ops belong in the customer's value
A buyer who returns for service is worth materially more than the deal alone, and fixed ops is where much of a store's profit actually lives. The advertisement that produced them is scored against the front-end gross only.
Because the match is on the customer, later service revenue exported as further rows credits the channel that produced them originally. Sources that bring customers who come back stop looking equivalent to sources that bring one-time price shoppers.
Store by store, not group average
A group running several rooftops across brands and markets has no useful average. Demand, competition and inventory differ, and so does what works.
A store column mapped as Location shows each rooftop's delivered gross and the share traced to a channel, and the matched-records export carries store and source on every deal for a per-rooftop ranking.
BDC response time is measurable against gross, not against leads
Every store knows response time matters and most measure it against lead-to-appointment. That is the right instinct and the wrong denominator, because an appointment is not a delivered unit and the relationship between speed and gross is not the same across sources.
The report does not measure that: the lead file says when a lead arrived, not when the BDC reached it. Pairing the CRM's response times with gross per source is the analysis worth doing, and the gross side is what this supplies.
That is a finding that changes staffing in the BDC rather than spend in the ad account, and it is not available from any single system the store already runs.
Fair questions
“DealerSocket already does that.” Not quite.
They say
“Most buyers walk in.”
We say
Many of them searched first. The report is honest about what it cannot match, so the walk-in share stays a real answer rather than a rounding error.
They say
“Gross is sensitive.”
We say
It stays in your workspace, encrypted and isolated, and is deletable in one click. You also choose whether to export gross or sale price.
Delivered deals: a buyer phone or email, front and back gross, and a delivery date.
Gross. Price ranks the vehicle; gross ranks the deal, and F&I does not distribute evenly by channel.
Delivered. Unwind rates differ by source and sold-count hides that.
Yes, with a new/used column — they draw on different demand entirely.
Yes, exported as further rows against the same customer, credited to the original channel.
Yes — map a store column as Location.
Yes — their leads go into the lead file under each site's name and rank on gross beside paid search.
Not required, but automotive converts heavily on the phone, so it is a strong second file.
Twelve months, so seasonality and model-year effects are inside the file.
A deal export with a contact detail, gross figures and a delivery date. No credit applications, no finance terms, no driver's license data — none of it is part of the join and none of it should be in the file. Uploads are encrypted in transit and at rest and isolated to your store's workspace.
Not in the report: the lead file carries when a lead arrived, not when it was answered. Gross per source is the half this supplies.
Yes, as further rows against the same customer, credited to the channel that produced them.
Not as two figures: the sales file reads one amount per deal, so export front and back combined. F&I does not distribute evenly by channel, which is why the combined figure matters.
Yes, added into the deal's amount, or as further rows against the same buyer — each extra row also counts as a sale.
They still match. The join is the buyer, so a three-month gap between inquiry and delivery costs nothing.
Yes. A customer who buys used and returns for new is one acquisition with two deals, both credited to the original channel.
The row carries one phone and one email. Put the buyer's on it, or the co-signer's email beside the buyer's phone if that is what the inquiry used; either can match, and nothing is linked on a guess.
By trade
Trades that run DealerSocket.
What the report looks like once the export is in, written for each one.
- Auto DealersWhich ads delivered units?
- RV & Marine DealersWhich channels produced sold units and gross?
- Powersports DealersWhich channels produced sold units and gross?
- Commercial Fleet SalesWhich channels produced fleet orders?
- Dealer & Distributor NetworksYou fund the advertising. They close the sale.
Other systems
Also worth reading.
Running more than one system, or comparing? The method is the same and the columns are not.
Lead and call file CallRail Businesses whose sales close on the phone Lead and call file What to export Either file Salesforce Revenue teams with Salesforce as the system of record Either file What to export Closed-sales file ServiceTitan HVAC, plumbing, electrical and roofing contractors Closed-sales file What to export
All 122 systems 
DealerSocket and the other product names and logos on this page belong to their owners and are shown to identify the software a file comes from. CloseRev is not affiliated with or endorsed by them, and connects to none of them: it reads a file you export.
From the blog
Further reading.
The job was booked by phone, done in a van, and invoiced two weeks later
Multi-crew home and field services businesses run on phone calls and job management software, not on web forms. Which means the standard marketing dashboard is measuring the smallest part of the business and missing where the money actually is.
Read the articleCost per lead is the most expensive number in marketing
It is easy to compute, easy to improve, and it will happily bankrupt you. A defense of the least popular position in performance marketing: that the metric most teams are held to is actively harmful, and that the alternative is available to anyone willing to do one join.
Read the articleCustomer acquisition cost by channel: how to calculate it from closed sales
The cheapest leads you buy can turn into your most expensive customers. Customer acquisition cost by channel divides what a channel cost by the new customers it actually produced, and for a business that closes by phone or in person those customers live in the sales records, not the ad dashboard. Here is the formula, which customers to count, fully loaded against paid-media CAC, blended against per-channel, untraced customers, payback and time lag, with a worked example where cost per lead and CAC rank four channels in different orders.
Read the article
Start today
Two exports, and you will know.
Nothing to install in DealerSocket, no API key, and no need to have been tracking anything until now. Last year works as well as this month.