Strategy with Jason podcast featuring NETSOL's Adam Bruttell (Digital auto retail)

In this episode of the Strategy with Jason Podcast, host Jason Harris sits down with Adam Bruttell, National Sales Director for Digital Retail at NETSOL, to examine what is actually happening inside modern dealerships and why the gap between how today's buyers shop and how dealerships respond to them is costing the industry in trust, sales, and long-term profitability. NETSOL's digital retail platform sits at the centre of this conversation: the technology that enables dealerships to meet buyers where they already are, rather than asking them to restart a journey they have already largely completed.

About this episode

Nearly 90% of a car buyer's decision-making process is complete before they step into a showroom. They have researched models, compared finance options, read reviews, and in many cases have a clear idea of what they want to pay. Yet too many dealerships treat the in-store visit as the starting point, asking customers to repeat information they have already provided online, re-running processes the buyer has already mentally completed, and introducing friction at exactly the moment when trust should be converting to a transaction.

Adam Bruttell brings the perspective of a sales leader working with dealerships across North America on exactly this challenge. His work sits at the intersection of dealer operations and automotive finance technology and this episode draws on that experience to examine both the immediate cost of the disconnect and the practical steps dealerships can take to close it.

What you'll learn

This episode is built for dealership principals, general managers, digital retail directors, and OEM retail strategy leads evaluating where the car-buying experience is breaking down and what needs to change. It covers:

• Why the 90% online decision-making statistic is not just a consumer behaviour trend, it is a structural challenge that traditional dealership processes were not designed to accommodate
• The specific points in the buying journey where trust erodes: when buyers arrive informed but are treated as uninformed, when online and in-store experiences are disconnected, and when deals take longer than buyers expect
• What the dealership of the future looks like operationally and why the dealers who adapt earliest will be disproportionately positioned to benefit
• How digital retail technology bridges the online-to-in-store gap rather than replacing the showroom and why the dealer relationship still matters even when most of the journey happens digitally
• The role of data and connected systems in enabling dealers to pick up a customer's journey where they left off rather than resetting it at the door.

Key Themes from the Discussion

Two ideas shaped the conversation from the opening exchanges:

The gap is costing dealers more than they realise. Lost trust is hard to quantify, but Adam Bruttell is direct about the measurable consequences: slower deals, compressed margins, and declining CSI scores. When a buyer who has spent hours online has to spend hours again in-store, the experience signals that the dealership has not been paying attention. That signal damages repeat purchase intent and referral behaviour, outcomes that compound over time far beyond the individual sale. NETSOL's coverage of the future of automotive retail at NADA 2026 covers the broader industry shifts that frame what Adam discusses in this episode.

Digital retail is not about replacing the showroom, it is about respecting the buyer's time. The MINI Anywhere digital retail platform illustrates what this looks like in practice for a major OEM: a buying experience that follows the customer from online research through to finance approval and delivery, without forcing them to repeat any part of the journey. The showroom remains central, but it enters the process where it adds value rather than where it resets progress.

Going Deeper - Related Reading

For dealers evaluating how to approach their digital strategy in practical terms, the whitepaper dealer digital opportunities provides a framework for where digital investment delivers the most measurable return across the buying journey. The partnership between NETSOL and Sonic Automotive, covered by CBT News shows NETSOL and Sonic Automotive digital retail for a Fortune 500 dealership group, and the kind of omnichannel platform architecture this episode directly addresses.