Boat dealer CRM, built into your DMS. Generic CRMs treat your inventory as a flat product list — HelmDMS treats every lead as connected to a specific hull, from first inquiry through delivery and registration.
$200 refundable deposit. Locks in $499/mo for life.
Generic CRMs — HubSpot, Salesforce, Pipedrive, monday — are sold as "flexible." On a marine lot, "flexible" means six months building custom fields with no hull IDs, no trade-in valuation pulls, and no OEM lead routing. The MRAA documents a 4+ month marine buy cycle with up to 24 touchpoints and a one-hour speed-to-lead benchmark. HelmDMS rolls CRM, inbox, SMS, voice, website lead capture, and the DMS into one product for $499 flat.
HubSpot, Salesforce, Pipedrive, and monday treat your inventory as a flat product list. A marine deal is a specific hull — a 2023 Robalo R230 with HIN RBLR2301H324, a trade-in 2017 Sea Ray, and a financing app at Priority One. HelmDMS treats every lead as connected to that exact unit from first inquiry through delivery and registration. Even MarineMax's HubSpot case study describes wiring up custom objects to make a generic CRM behave like a marine one — work HelmDMS does out of the box.
Web forms on your dealer site, Boat Trader / YachtWorld inquiries, OEM and Rollick Aimbase lead drops, boat show badge scans, phone calls (with caller-ID popup), walk-ins, and Facebook page DMs all land in one inbox. The MRAA's one-hour speed-to-lead benchmark stops being aspirational — it's automatic, and the response goes out by the channel the buyer used.
Inquiry → qualified → sea-trial scheduled → quote → trade-in appraised → finance submitted → contract signed → rigging/PDI → delivery → registration. Each stage has marine-aware automation: weather-aware sea-trial reminders, trade-in valuation prompts against NADA, ABOS, BUC, and SoldBoats, lender packet checklists, and post-delivery 30/60/90-day owner check-ins. State titling, USCG documentation, and warranty card follow-up don't fall through the cracks after delivery.
Boat buyers research 3–5 weeks before they call and an average of 4+ months before they close. HelmDMS automates the long game: winterization reminders, spring "are you ready to upgrade?" sequences, OEM-model price-drop alerts, slip and storage renewal nudges — all keyed to the boat that customer owns or browsed. F&I handoff is built in: soft-pull credit, lender packet, and a single audit trail from first form fill to funded contract.
Because HelmDMS is the DMS, sales, service, and parts share one customer record. The salesperson knows the trade-in is in your service bay. The service writer knows the customer is mid-negotiation on a new pontoon. The parts counter knows it's a repeat customer. No Zapier glue. No Kenect add-on. No HubSpot Pro seats. $499/mo flat, founding-dealer pricing.
These aren't fields you add in setup. They're the workflow.
Buyers ask about that 2023 used Robalo, not "a boat." HelmDMS attaches every inquiry to a HIN-level inventory record, so you know which unit each lead is interested in — and which units have heat.
OEM-referred leads arrive via Rollick Aimbase (40+ marine OEMs) with radius, drive-distance, and inventory-based routing rules, plus disposition reporting back to the OEM. HelmDMS handles the routing rules and the disposition feedback automatically.
Marine trades are appraised against multiple guidebooks plus seasonality and condition. HelmDMS prompts the right pulls at the right pipeline stage and keeps the appraisal attached to the deal.
Inquiry → sea-trial → quote → finance → docs → rigging → delivery → registration. Sea-trial scheduling, weather rescheduling, and water-test prep are first-class — not crammed into a generic "meeting" object.
F&I handoff with MRAA-aligned documentation and lender packet checklists — soft-pull credit, references, insurance, deposit, and trade.
State titling, USCG documentation, manufacturer warranty cards — all tracked against the hull, with overdue alerts so nothing sits on a desk for three weeks.
Cadence campaigns keyed to the boat that customer owns. Winterization in October, spring commissioning in March, "your engine is due for 100-hour service" when telemetry or service history says so. Because the CRM and the DMS are the same product, the cross-sell uses real service history — not a guess.
Honest summary of where the alternatives land for a marine dealer.
CRM via partner/add-on (Dealership Performance 360). SMS bolted on via Kenect at roughly $300/mo.
Full comparison →CRM module exists, but slow support, legacy UX, and per-module pricing push real totals to $500–1,500+/mo.
Full comparison →CRM with embedded SMS, but dated UX and reports that end up in Excel. Comparison page coming online soon.
Full comparison →Generic CRMs require months of custom-object work, manual OEM routing, third-party trade-in tools, and separate sea-trial scheduling. The marine-vertical CRM market (NautiLead, BoatLife.ai, teamMarine, Dealership Performance 360) exists because the generic ones don't fit.
25-minute demo against your own inventory and lead sources. Or reserve a founding-dealer slot — $200 refundable deposit locks in $499/mo for life.