Fuse Autotech Cracked the Dual GTM Challenge in Automotive SaaS

Selling into the automotive world isn’t your typical SaaS GTM challenge. You’re dealing with 18,000 dealerships in the U.S. alone — from single-location family-owned rooftops to massive public dealer groups. Each one has different workflows, budgets, tech stacks, and trust thresholds.

That’s the complexity Yaron Rosen, founder and CEO of Fuse Autotech, is navigating. Fuse isn’t just modernizing dealership operations — it’s overhauling how cars are sold, financed, and delivered.

And as Yaron shared with me on SaaS Founder Stories, the biggest challenge hasn’t been the product. It’s been the go-to-market.

Key Takeaways

• Fuse Autotech sells into two radically different segments: enterprise dealer groups and single-rooftop stores

• Their original pitch worked for the big players — but fell flat with smaller dealers

• The team had to completely change how they told their story to match buyer mindset

• They shifted from selling “a whale” to offering bite-sized, digestible value

• A deep understanding of buyer budget authority unlocked shorter deal cycles

Understanding the Dual Persona Challenge

Fuse helps dealers streamline variable ops — the messy, multi-system workflows that happen when someone buys a car. Most of us just notice that the process takes 4–5 hours. Fuse’s goal is to shrink that to under an hour and make it more profitable for the dealer in the process.

But dealerships aren’t one-size-fits-all. As Yaron put it:

“There are 18,000 franchise dealers. Around 12,000 are small — 1 to 5 rooftops. The rest are large groups, often public companies. It’s enterprise sales and B2C sales… at the same time.”

That duality made go-to-market especially hard.

On the enterprise side, they were doing fine — a structured, account-based motion, longer sales cycles, multiple stakeholders, and larger budgets.

But smaller rooftops? That was chaos. The team was using the same sophisticated pitch… and getting stuck.

The Whale Problem

“We were trying to sell a whale to someone who couldn’t digest it.”

That’s how Yaron described the early SMB pitch. Fuse was leading with the full platform — complex ops improvements, cross-department benefits, all the bells and whistles.

It was the right story for an enterprise buyer.

But for a single-rooftop owner — who’s also the budget holder, sales manager, and operator — it was overwhelming.

So the team made a radical shift.

Selling Dolphins and Sardines

They started breaking the pitch — and the product — into smaller, more digestible pieces.

“We stopped pitching the whale. Instead, we asked: ‘Where’s your biggest pain?’ Then we solved that first.”

It wasn’t just storytelling. They changed the product packaging, pricing structure, and sales conversation. Instead of $1,000+ monthly commitments, they offered entry points under the budget authority of a single manager — sometimes under $999.

That change reduced friction, shortened the sales cycle, and let Fuse land and expand once trust was built.

“This guy isn’t a procurement officer. He’s spending his own money. That changes everything.”

How They Unlocked Budget Insight

Interestingly, the team didn’t need new research to discover this. They already had the knowledge — they just hadn’t been looking at it with the right lens.

“We weren’t asking the right questions. The answers were in front of us — we just had to look under the right rock.”

Once they reframed the challenge, everything started to click. The sales cycle shortened. The team learned what messaging landed. And they could route small and large deals into different flows — without confusing either persona.

The Bigger Lesson for Founders

“We looked at our customer in the wrong resolution. It wasn’t that they were ‘just smaller.’ They were totally different buyers.”

This mindset shift applies to every founder building a dual-sided GTM motion. It’s not enough to segment by company size. You have to rethink your story, your offer, your pricing — and most importantly, your assumptions.

What’s Next for Fuse Autotech

Fuse is continuing to land large groups — but the big opportunity now is in the long tail of smaller dealers. With better messaging, more modular pricing, and clearer sales flows, they’re unlocking a huge part of the market that most enterprise-first platforms overlook.

Yaron’s ask for the network? Share these kinds of stories more openly.

“The faster I learn the cycle, the more go-to-market experiments I can run — and that’s what gives us runway.”

Book a Free AI Assessment if you’re navigating a GTM challenge with complex or segmented buyers. We’ll help you break down your motion, identify where AI can streamline workflows or accelerate sales velocity, and deliver a strategic roadmap built to move faster with the team you already have.