DealerSignals as Your Digital 20 Group: Benchmark Your Tech Stack Against 1,747 Peers

The 20 Group is one of the most proven concepts in automotive retail. Bring together non-competing dealers, share real operational data, compare performance against peers, and hold each other accountable. Since NCM Associates originated the model in 1947, dealers who participate consistently outperform those who don’t.

The model works because it gives dealers something they can’t get from vendors: an honest, unfiltered view of what other operators are actually doing. Not what they claim to be doing. Not what a vendor says is best practice. What’s actually running in the market.

DealerSignals is that concept applied to technology.

What a digital 20 group actually looks like

In a traditional 20 Group, you review a composite — a standardized financial report showing your numbers alongside the group average and best-in-class. You see exactly where you’re ahead, where you’re behind, and what the best-performing peers in your segment are doing differently.

DealerSignals produces the same composite for your technology stack. We’ve scanned 1,747 dealer websites across 25 states, detected the software running on each one, scored every dealer on a 0-20 scale across 14 technology categories, and made that data freely available for any dealer to benchmark against.

The questions your digital 20 group answers

In a traditional 20 Group meeting, you’d walk out knowing answers to questions like: What’s my gross per unit versus the group average? What are the top performers doing in F&I that I’m not? What’s the average days-to-sale for a store my size in my region?

Your digital 20 group answers the technology equivalent:

What percentage of dealers my size have a detectable CRM presence? (18% nationally — meaning most of your competition is running lead management informally.) What percentage of dealers in my state have online deal tools? (8% nationally — the biggest gap between advertising spend and conversion infrastructure in the market.) What do the top-performing franchise dealers run that the average independent dealer doesn’t? (Fixed ops software at 9% adoption, F&I platforms at 15%, online deal tools at 8% — all areas where franchise dealers significantly outperform.)

Segment filtering: your actual peer group

A good 20 Group puts you with non-competing peers of similar size and structure. DealerSignals does the same. The Signal Reports page breaks data by segment — franchise, independent, BHPH — so you’re comparing your technology stack against dealers who actually face similar operational conditions, not averaging in franchise dealer groups running 20 rooftops.

The franchise-independent technology gap in our data is 1.8 points on a 20-point scale (7.3 vs 5.5 average). But within the independent segment, the range is far wider — some independent dealers score 14+, others score 0. Where you fall in that range relative to your peers in your state is the number that actually matters.

Free, always on, no sales pitch

Traditional 20 Groups require travel, membership fees, and meeting schedules. Your DealerSignals digital 20 group is free, runs 24/7, and requires no registration. The data updates with each scan cycle. The benchmark tool runs in seconds.

Check your technology stack against 1,747 peers at dealersignals.com/benchmark. See your state’s data at dealersignals.com/signal-reports.