LEGACY OF AUTOMOTIVE LEADERSHIP
Built by People Who Know the Business - and Have Helped Change It Before
DealerMarkets brings together decades of experience in automotive F&I, dealership profitability, digital transformation, UX, technology, operations, training, marketing, and commercialization.
This is not an outside technology company trying to reinvent an industry it does not understand.
Our leadership has spent careers working with OEMs, major dealer groups, independent dealers, providers, administrators, and some of the world's leading automotive brands.
We know the culture of the dealership. We know the importance of relationships. And we know where technology can remove the limitations around them.
DealerMarkets is the next step: a digital marketplace built for the way dealers and providers will do business next.
A History of Practical Innovation
DealerMarkets continues a history that reaches back more than four decades in automotive and more than twenty years in digital F&I innovation.
Jim Maxim Jr. co-founded MaximTrak in 2003 after working inside his family's automotive business and learning dealership and F&I operations from the ground up. MaximTrak grew into a national F&I technology platform serving independent dealerships, major dealer groups, OEMs, providers, and administrators. (P&A Magazine)
In 2016, RouteOne acquired MaximTrak as the companies combined their technologies around a shared vision for a more seamless vehicle and F&I sales process. At the time, the combined ecosystem served more than 18,000 dealers, 1,400 finance sources, 130 dealer service providers, 80 aftermarket insurance providers, and more than 10 OEMs. Jim continued as President of MaximTrak and Chief Digital Officer of RouteOne Holdings through the transition. (PRWeb)
Jim then returned to the family business and expanded DealerMax, bringing together F&I income development, training, digital retail consulting, and dealer profitability strategy. DealerMax served OEMs, dealer groups, and independent dealerships before its assets were acquired by Brown & Brown Dealer Services in 2024. (DealerMax)
DealerMarkets carries that experience into a new challenge:
The industry digitized F&I inside the dealership.
Now it is time to digitize how dealers and providers find each other and conduct business.
ABOUT DEALERMARKETS
Our Philosophy
Real Dealer Culture. Better Technology.
DealerMarkets is built around a simple principle:
Technology should support the way great people do business - not force the industry to abandon what made it successful.
Relationships matter.
Trust matters.
Profitability matters.
But geography, paperwork, manual prospecting, travel, limited information, and slow processes should not define the ceiling of what a dealer or provider can accomplish.
DealerMarkets brings those two worlds together:
Deep automotive experience
+ practical technology innovation
Our Technology
DealerMarkets combines modern technology with decades of F&I experience to create a more intelligent marketplace.
That includes:
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Intent Intelligence
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AI-Powered Prospecting
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SEO
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GEO
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Digital Outreach
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Marketplace Shopping
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Custom Offers
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Product Comparison
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E-Contracting
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Digital Onboarding
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Training
The technology may be sophisticated.
The purpose is not.
Help the right dealers and providers find each other sooner and make profitable business easier to conduct.
Our Values
Relationships
Protect the relationships and business that already work.
Profitability
Technology should create more opportunity and more value—not a race to the lowest price.
Trust
Sensitive provider information, customer data, and established business deserve protection.
Clarity
Dealers should have the information necessary to make confident, profitable decisions.
Speed
Great opportunities should not be slowed down by outdated processes.
Innovation
Technology is valuable when it solves real business problems and expands what people can accomplish.
OUR PROMISE
We Protect Your Existing Relationships
DealerMarkets is designed to protect existing relationships while opening a new channel for growth.
We Protect Your Proprietary Information
DealerMarkets is designed to give Dealers the clarity they need to make profitable decisions while protecting sensitive provider information.
We Power Your Prospecting
Reach high-intent Dealers when they are ready to buy - not months before or after.
We Vet Particiation
DealerMarkets is not intended to be an open directory. Dealers and Providers operate in a controlled marketplace designed around legitimate industry participation.
We Accelerate Revenue
DealerMarkets is designed to turn years of prospecting into days from opportunity to business.
We Create Opportunity for Both Sides
DealerMarkets is not a race to commoditize F&I or to the lowest price. It is a race to harness technology that creates more value with better access, information, timing, execution and decisions.
LEADERSHIP
Jim Maxim Jr.
• Automotive F&I Leadership
• Technology Innovation
• Dealer Profitability
Relevant to DealerMarkets
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OEM to Independent Dealer Experience
Jim's career has crossed OEM programs, large dealer groups, independent dealerships, providers, administrators, and distribution.
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F&I Technology Innovation
Helped pioneer technologies that became part of the industry's transition from analog to digital F&I.
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Dealer Culture + Technology
His work consistently connects practical dealership realities with technology innovation rather than treating them as separate worlds.
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Profitability
From MaximTrak to DealerMax, the goal has remained consistent: use better systems, process, and training to help dealers and partners perform better.
Jim Maxim Jr. has spent his career combining an understanding of real dealership culture with technology designed to make the industry more productive and profitable.
He learned the business from the dealership level up before co-founding MaximTrak in 2003. Under his leadership, MaximTrak developed technology serving dealers, providers, administrators, and OEMs and helped advance electronic F&I menus, digital product presentation, rating, integration, and e-contracting. (P&A Magazine)
After MaximTrak's acquisition by RouteOne, Jim served as President of MaximTrak and Chief Digital Officer of RouteOne Holdings, helping pursue an integrated F&I experience designed to work across OEMs, dealers, providers, finance sources, and consumers. (PRWeb)
He later returned to the family automotive business and expanded DealerMax nationally, focusing again on dealer profitability, F&I performance, training, digital retail, and advisory services. DealerMax ultimately became part of Brown & Brown Dealer Services in 2024. (DealerMax)
DealerMarkets extends that philosophy from the F&I office to the marketplace itself.
Mike Faust brings over three decades of experience in automotive finance, digital transformation, and operational execution.
He built the core of that experience at Harley-Davidson Financial Services, where he was part of the leadership team behind Deallink, a proprietary digital loan-origination system connecting dealers with HDFS through a faster, fully electronic process. Before any of it got built, Mike traveled with the sales teams, sitting across the table from F&I managers at dealerships to listen to what actually slowed them down. That time in the field, listening before building, is a big reason Deallink saw the adoption it did. Anyone can build a system. Getting a dealer network to use it is another matter.
From there, Mike's career expanded into broader technology and operations leadership across manufacturing, financial services, and IT programs. The pattern held everywhere he went: understand the workflow and the pain before anyone touches an engineering spec. Talk to the people doing the job first. Build second.
Relevant to DealerMarkets
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F&I and Dealer Finance
Direct experience at Harley-Davidson Financial Services building the digital systems that connect dealers to finance and insurance products.
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Dealer-Facing Digital Systems
Experience building technology that has to work in the reality of a dealer's day, not just in a product spec.
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Digital Transformation
Over three decades of bridging existing business processes and new technology.
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Operational Execution
Turns the DealerMarkets vision into processes that dealers, providers, and partners can actually use.
At DealerMarkets, Mike helps ensure that innovation becomes an operating business - not simply an idea.
Mike Faust
• Digital Transformation
• Automotive Finance
• Operations
Steve Forde has spent more than 30 years producing award-winning creative innovation in and out of automotive - helping world-class brands turn ideas into experiences that people can understand, use, and buy.
DealerMarkets also represents the continuation of a creative collaboration with Jim Maxim Jr. that began in the early 2000s.
That work has included, MaximTrak brand and system development, interactive F&I sales tools, video systems for training, product education, and sales, concept, design, and ideation for FLITE and MaximTrakGo, product strategy, and go-to-market strategy.
Steve and Jim have been a winning relationship. Jim's vision has consistently identified opportunities to improve how automotive and F&I business works. Steve has helped given Jim's vision form through products, experiences, stories, and systems people can understand and adopt. DealerMarkets continues that collaboration on its most ambitious scale yet.
Relevant to DealerMarkets
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30+ Years of UX + Design
Designing digital products, systems, interfaces, brands, and experiences across automotive, technology, and entertainment.
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Commercialization
Helping world-class brands transform ideas and intellectual property into products, experiences, and viable businesses.
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Automotive + F&I
More than three decades in automotive, with two collaborating with Jim Maxim on F&I innovation, complemented by broader work with dealerships, technology companies, and major automotive brands.
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Strategy + Ideation
Turning early-stage ideas into clear propositions, features, customer journeys, brand platforms, and go-to-market strategies.
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Long-Term Creative Partnership
DealerMarkets is not the beginning of the Maxim/Forde collaboration. It is the latest chapter in a relationship that has repeatedly combined industry vision with strategy, UX, design, and creative execution.
Steve Forde
• Creative Strategy
• Design
• Commercialization