Dean Swindler

Background

About Dean Swindler

After nearly a year of semi-retirement in 1994, my wife and I were advised that we were going to be grandparents and she asked if she could retire and that I go back to work. She suggested that I sell cars with a last name like "Swindler" because it would be a great opening line. Hence, the start of my career in the car business. In order to be successful, I bought a laptop computer, a portable printer and a portable scanner and proceeded to write the basic code needed to track all of my customers. For the first month, I trained and trained on the car business and once I was released to the floor to sell vehicles, I was the salesman of the month my first two months, had a tough third month, but bounced back to attain the store record on my fourth month. About that time, there was a lot of buzz about the Internet. I asked the dealership if they were looking to have a website built for them. They stated that it was just a fad, so I asked if it would be okay to build a website and feature our used vehicles on it. They gave me the go ahead, so I learned how to program in basic html and created the first website called the swindlerslist.com. I started selling cars from the website and was promoted to Internet manager and asked to change the website name to roweauburn.com. In 2001, I received an award for having one of the top 10 automotive retail websites at the NADA convention. The CRM software program that I had been using since 1995 was put into place as the dealership CRM system that year. In 2004 I wrote a Business Development program that was Internet based, which tied directly into the CRM software program. Jump forward to now, I am the Digital Marketing Manager for the Rowe Auto Group, ie: Rowe Westbrook and Rowe Auburn. I oversee all eight of our dealership websites, social media, online reputation management, customer reviews, create videos for all aspects of the automotive retail and service business, and the list goes on and on.