Steadyhand · Dealers
A Cars.com lead at 11pm, replied tonight and in for a test-drive tonight.
Steadyhand’s 24/7 SMS nurturer catches every dropped trade-in text before the shopper bounces to CarMax — replies in your dealership’s voice, drafts a real trade-in range against auction comps, and books the warm ones straight to your BDC calendar. The thread lands on the lot timeline so the salesperson walks up already knowing the vehicle, the range, and the appointment.
New here? Configure the script takes a signed-in account — you’ll go through sign-up in one click from /dealers/inbox.
The Sunday-night Cars.com gap
The 11pm Cars.com inquiry that the second dealer on the block closed by 11:14pm.
That’s the entire gap. The shopper sent the same trade-in question to three dealers on the block and opened CarMax in a fourth tab. The dealer whose bot replies in fourteen minutes owns the qualifying conversation; the dealer whose reply lands on the BDC’s Monday-morning pile is competing for whatever is left — because the shopper was cross-shopping Sunday night with three tabs open and a deposit ready, not because your team is slow on purpose.
A missed overnight reply on a Cars.com inquiry doesn’t cost you one lead. It costs you the test-drive slot that should have followed, the gross the BDC would have closed on the up, and the proof you were slower than the dealer whose reply actually landed. The fix isn’t discipline or another notification — the fix is a drafted reply with a real trade-in range that’s already in the shopper’s thread before they remember to reopen CarMax.
What Steadyhand runs for independent dealerships
One pipeline. Three pieces acting on every dropped trade-in text.
Each card maps to the part of the funnel your overnight reply gap was eating — the qualifying script, the test-drive handoff, and the missed-lead scoring on the Sunday-night Cars.com forms.
Script
Trade-in range-qualifier script editor
Edit the three-prompt trade-in script the bot sends on every new SMS — pre-seeded in Steadyhand voice. Tune the wording until it sounds like your dealership, not a vendor, before the first text goes out.
- Pre-seeded 3-prompt script — year/make/model/trim, mileage + condition, options + title
- Edit copy directly in the editor before launch
- Saved per user, so a reload re-hydrates your tuning
Booking
Test-drive scheduler link
The moment a shopper signals intent, Steadyhand hands them a direct link to your test-drive scheduler — Calendly, Lotpac, or an internal tool — and the round trip stays open. No Monday-morning review queue.
- Paste any https URL the lot already runs (Calendly / Lotpac / internal)
- Nurturer texts the link straight to the shopper once the range is qualified
- /dealers/inbox shows the same URL field your scheduler wire-up will read
Inbound
Missed-lead scoring
Steadyhand scores what your BDC’s overnight inbox left on read — Cars.com, AutoTrader, CarGurus, Facebook Marketplace, SMS forward, email parser — and answers the warm ones with a same-hour SMS in dealer voice.
- Five overnight sources picked up: Cars.com, AutoTrader, CarGurus, FB Marketplace, SMS forward, email parser
- Same-hour reply scored against your saved script + scheduler URL
- Every warm lead books the test-drive on the lot calendar the moment the qualification closes
Start here · /dealers/inbox
Configure the script. Go live tonight.
Three pieces act on every dropped trade-in text — the trade-in range-qualifier script, the test-drive scheduler URL, and the missed-lead scoring on Cars.com, AutoTrader, CarGurus, and Facebook Marketplace. Tune them in /dealers/inbox; wire the lead sources in /connect. The nurturer flips on the minute both are paired.
Questions every dealer prospect asks
The two or three things you want answered before you start.
One pipeline for independent dealerships. Trade-in range drafted the minute a shopper texts, test-drive booked on the lot calendar, every Cars.com, AutoTrader, CarGurus, and Facebook Marketplace thread on the BDC timeline. steadyhand-9@polsia.app