Barbara Cox Awards 2024 nominees:
Sally Foote
Chief Commercial Officer at CarWow
Brief biography of you and your career
Sally Foote is Carwow’s Chief Commercial Officer, leading their Sell My Car business. With more than 20 years’ experience in eCommerce and marketplace businesses, her role encompasses commercial and sales, product, operations and day-to-day trading for the growth engine at the heart of Carwow’s business model. In the past year, Sally has helped grow the business 83% while also improving profitability by more than 100%.
In her previous role as Vice-President of eCommerce at GoCompare, she led the product, innovation and marketing divisions in the midst of the brand’s relaunch. She drove significant changes in marketing performance and ROI, including the rollout of new bidding technologies, launching social as a channel and setting up a performance marketing centre of excellence for Future Publishing following the acquisition of GoCompare. She has focused on customer retention, expanding the £250 excess cover, building out lifecycle management and relaunching the home insurance journeys.
Previously Chief Innovation Officer at Photobox – where she headed up the creation of new revenue lines and physical product development, she has also held positions at newspapers including The Guardian, The Times and The Sunday Times. In the latter two publications, she had an instrumental role in the launch of their paywall.
What is your proudest achievement as a leader or role model?
“I’m a relative newcomer to automotive as my background is more in e-commerce and publishing. I joined Carwow nearly two years ago and it has been a fascinating journey.
“Building my industry knowledge and credibility quickly was absolutely essential to delivering the ambitious growth plans that we have for Sell My Car. I am responsible for building our reputation and developing our proposition/product offering among dealers in the UK, whether that’s large national franchise groups or small independent dealerships. The past two years have been an incredible journey and the future is bright.
“I’m incredibly proud of what my team has delivered in that time and the growth achieved has been phenomenal. Last year, we grew our revenues massively while improving our profitability by a staggering 150% year-on-year. That was on top of triple-digit growth the year before. Very few businesses could have achieved that level of growth in the current climate – especially given the stabilisation of used car pricing and the impact this had on seller and buyer confidence in the second half of 2023.
“I’m lucky to work for a business where I get to be the type of leader that I’m best at: leading with humility, transparency and curiosity. Thankfully, this approach has worked very well so far.
“Our biggest strategic change to deliver this growth was the transition to an auction model to drive better outcomes for dealers and customers. This was one of the first major projects that I led at Carwow and my experience in leading huge game-changing projects in other industries has allowed me to shape it for success.
“I’ve been surprised by the comparatively small number of women there are in automotive. As a business, we’ve been working out where we can get involved and how we can help, including becoming patrons of the Automotive 30% Club.
“I’ve also made our Sell My Car platform a welcome ‘home’ for female-owned car dealerships – there are now two in the UK – one of which is Wink Cars. We have been working closely with its female owners to help them build a thriving business. I recently invited the owners to our offices in London for International Women’s Day, to talk about their experiences. It was one of the most enjoyable days I’ve had at Carwow.
“I’ve been shocked and extremely disappointed by some of the behaviour I’ve seen toward females on my team at industry award events. Rather than ignore it, I chose to act and talked to several industry companies and partners about introducing simple changes at events, like the wearing of name badges. I have also created a pledge for our own events and a code of conduct for attendees.
“My proudest moments as a role model within the automotive industry have been my ability, as a newcomer and as a woman, to build a strong understanding of the industry and hold my own at industry events. I presented at AutoBuzz in Lisbon in 2023 and at the AFI in 2024 to a room full of Dealer Group and OEM CEOs. I get particular satisfaction from meeting dealers and talking through ideas we’ve had that would be transformative for them.
What is the most significant innovation you have been involved with?
“Buying cars online is inherently risky for dealers. They’re more used to physically inspecting the cars themselves and sellers often struggle to provide accurate details about the vehicles and their condition. This can make buying online riskier and time-consuming. To help overcome this problem, Carwow launched our new BuySafe product in March 2024. It provides dealers with a warranty against major mechanical damage. This has been a game changer for our dealer partners and is an industry first for businesses like ours.
“We also launched our ‘Value as a Service’ proposition this year to build out affiliate relationships. Many customers value their cars at different points in their ownership i.e. when they’re renewing their insurance or getting a repair. We have built a tool for 3rd party sites that allows them to provide valuations to customers without having to ‘click out’ to Carwow as they would in a typical affiliate model.
“Of course, these are just some of the latest developments for Sell My Car at Carwow – we have a many more innovations on the horizon this year for sellers and buyers. It’s going to be an exciting time.
“I am passionate about bringing new ideas to the industry and launching game-changing innovations. I also love working for a company that is bold enough to take those bets and who have transformation and change at the heart of their mission.”
What do you do to give back to charity and/or the wider community?
“I am passionate about sustainability and diversity, and both these topics are very high on my agenda to drive positive change in automotive. I am responsible for leading Carwow’s ESG agenda and developing our new EV strategy. One of my latest initiatives was launching an ESG Webinar that pulled together interesting and inspiring case studies from across the industry to drive change.
“Throughout my career, I have actively encouraged businesses to invest in more women and their careers. At Carwow I created a mentoring group for senior women in the UK office. This includes running monthly sessions for this group and drawing upon my network of fabulous women to come and talk to our team about their inspiring careers and provide coaching support.
“Before joining Carwow, I set up and ran a network for women working in tech called 10 Digital Ladies. We built a community and watched it grow to over 2,000 women members. It included award nights to celebrate and recognise achievements. Outside Carwow, I am a voluntary Board Advisor to Bower Collective, a sustainability business based in my local area.
“I am also a mentor to women, particularly in the product and tech community. And I volunteer for Bath University Entrepreneurship Programme, where I review and support students who are developing business plans.”
What advice would you give to a woman considering a career in automotive?
A lot of women don’t consider careers in automotive because they don’t like cars. And that’s the first thing to correct. This industry is not about cars – it’s about people. Buying and selling a car is still a huge thing. A car is often the second most expensive purchase most people make in their lives and yet as a process it is still fraught with difficulty, confusion and stress. So if you like solving problems and making things better for customers, then this is the industry for you. Secondly, women make up 48% of all motorists and are equally interested in the buying and selling process, but are often invisible in the process. Car websites and marketing are historically not targeted at them or designed for how they think and shop. The retail experience over indexes on masculine aesthetic. But this is starting to change, and it will change faster when more women are working in those businesses and influencing and driving every aspect of what they do. So if you’re interested in making the world a better place for women, then this is the industry for you. But perhaps more importantly, if you are a woman who is interested in business and market mechanics, then there also could not be a more exciting time to be working in automotive. With consumer buying shifting online, manufacturers scaling their direct selling, electric vehicles entering the mass market and the arrival of a barrage of new brands particularly from China, this is a marketplace that is in the midst of an extarodinary wave of once in a generation change. So if you love working in businesses who are changing and adapting with people who are excited about what the future holds, then this is the industry for you.
