I hit all of my closing ratio targets for all of my stores, which is how I get paid. Great month, so why am I nervous?

Maybe it has something to do with the fact that I work in an area where TrueCar has a contract with every high-volume dealer for every franchise, and that TrueCar has been supplying more and more quality leads to our dealer group over the last several months. For April, they were nearly TIED with our own website for deals.

SEO, SEM, lead process, remarketing, mailers, equity mining, yes. I get it. We do that, and it works. But we don't have TrueCar's advertising budget or their partnerships with CR, USAA, etc. They truly seem to have captured a large segment of buyers, especially new buyers, and with sales efficiency being key to the entire damn internet department, we can't afford to pick and choose who we do business with for purely philosophical reasons.

But still, tied with our own freaking website for deals? Really concerning.

The image that comes to mind is a story I heard about Easter Island. Apparently, though it's now barren, trees once grew there. Where did the trees go? Well, people being people, the natives cut them down and turned them into canoes and spears. There must have been a point where there were literally a few trees left on the island, and those in turn were cut down and harvested because the natives needed them for fishing. I wonder sometimes what passed through their minds as they cut down the very last tree. I wonder if it's anything close to what TrueCar dealer GSMs and internet sales director types are thinking these days.

Would welcome any thoughts.