Steps to Get Your Cars the Digital Front Line

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2 1. Reduce Reconditioning Time P3 2. Buy the Right Inventory P4 3. Adopt a Market-Based Strategy P5 4. Create Attractive Listings P6 5. Manage Photos Effectively P7 6. Automate Classified Listings P8 6 to Steps to Get Your Cars the Digital Front Line The motto of today s auto dealership business could easily be time is money. We constantly talk about managing used vehicle inventory age, but an often-overlooked segment is lotready time. How long does it take you to list a unit for sale? Every day a fresh unit sits on your lot, it is costing your dealership front-end gross and reducing your average turn time. This e-book is intended to highlight how dealerships can improve profits by getting their cars to the digital front line quicker.

3 1 Reconditioning Reduce Time Reconditioning time is often overlooked and can be a profit-sucking vampire. Dealerships looking to improve profits will evaluate their average recon time and identify ways to reduce it. The average auction vehicle typically takes 6 days to get lot-ready, which costs an average of $50 per day or $300 per unit. This adds up fast. For example, if you purchase an average of 34 units per month, that is $10,200 per month or $122,400 per year in loss of gross. A significant way dealers can mitigate reconditioning costs is by sourcing clean inventory. Learn how you can source clean inventory without paying transaction fees at dealerslink.com. Clean inventory is inventory already sitting on a dealership lot being offered for retail sale. Accessing this new upstream source of retail-ready inventory will not only significantly improve the quality of your inventory offering, but these units require little to no recon time. Most aged retail inventory has been previously reconditioned and is typically ready for your digital front line in less than two days. For example, consider the same 34 units per month. Reducing the reconditioning time for those 34 units alone can unlock additional gross profits of $81,600 per year.

4 2 at Buy the Right Inventory the Right Price While this step might sound obvious, there are some key metrics to discover before you can know for sure if you re buying inventory at the right price. First, you should know exactly what profit you can make on each unit before you buy it. This will prevent you from paying too much when acquiring inventory and protect your already-tight margins. Leverage your dealership s analytical data to optimize your inventory mix for your retail market. Stock the right units, then price them correctly to be competitive in your market with your margin safely included. If you adopt this strategy, your dealership will sell more units faster and make more profit.

5 3 Pricing Adopt a Market-Based Strategy Today s used-car market is highly competitive, price-sensitive and more transparent than it has ever been. The internet and today s apps can turn the average car buyer into a savvy internet shopper. Buyers can now research exactly which vehicle they want, find how many are available in their market, and see what price they should pay. High-price retailers get less attention from shoppers, and customers are less loyal than, forcing dealerships toward the high-turn rate and less-gross-per-unit model. To stay competitive, dealerships should begin vividly marketing their retail units online with market-based pricing on vehicles. This will get you more views on your inventory, and the more views your cars get, the better the chance they will sell quickly for the maximum profit your market will allow. Know the price of every vehicle in your retail market with Competition View. Learn more at dealerslink.com.

6 4 Attractive Create Listings As mentioned previously, the more views a unit gets, the faster it will sell. The key is to increase views for every unit you re selling. Select an inventory-merchandising program with tools that allow you to instantly and automatically generate complete vehicle listings. Utilize these tools to speed up the time it takes to list units online. Remember to keep the listings clear and concise, and be completely transparent about any issues the unit might have. Detailed vehicle descriptions and high-quality vehicle photos are extremely important when listing your inventory online. You want to give potential customers a positive impression of the vehicles you are offering and of your dealership. Quality vehicle listings will encourage them to come shop at your store to see your high-quality inventory.

7 5 Photos Manage Vehicle Effectively You only have a few seconds to get a customer s attention online, and vehicle photos are often the first impression of your dealership. You ve spent thousands on auction fees, transportation and reconditioning your vehicles. After all this expense, don t fall into the easy trap of displaying below-average photos online to represent your vehicles. Post high-quality photos from your vehicles best angles. Even if you just have a couple of shots, online shoppers want to see the vehicles. A customer is not going to come into your showroom because of a coming soon photo. You could be losing potential customers every day each unit sits on your lot without any photos online. Learn how you can take and manage professional, quality photos in-house at dealerslink.com. To quickly and easily add vehicle photos to your online listings, utilize an inventory management tool that includes mobile photo capturing and cloud based uploading capability. Show the customer the quality of your product and that you want to earn their business. Then, watch as more of them come to visit your showroom.

8 6 Classified Automate Listings The last step after posting your retail-ready units to your website is to export them to your classified sites. Most car shoppers today utilize third-party sites to search for their next vehicle. In order for an automotive dealership to continue to get customers, they are now required to post attractive listings to these third-party sites consumers are using. Classified sites like AutoTrader.com, Cars.com and MotorCloud.com all consolidate available vehicles for sale into a single search engine. This allows a prospective buyer to see more units for sale from a broader radius. Consumers use these sites to research vehicles, compare sellers, compare prices, and find the best vehicle that fits their criteria. Learn how you can automate all your inventory exports at dealerslink.com. Gain more traffic to your vehicles by automating your listings on these third-party websites. This will ensure the prices posted are the most current across all your classified sites. The faster you can get your attractive listings posted, the faster you can start attracting buyers.

9 12 Empowering DealersLink is a state-of-the-art, industry-leading authority on automotive systems integration and networking technology. Founded in the late 90s by a team of auto dealers, DealersLink established the first dealer-to-dealer marketplace in the United States. In fact, we coined the term dealer-to-dealer. Every day we remain committed to unlocking unsurpassed value when delivering groundbreaking dealership and marketplace technologies that empower dealers to improve turn rate, gross and profitability. Learn more at dealerslink.com. Years Dealers Speed up your listing process and reach more customers faster with ExportPro from DealersLink. Learn more at dealerslink.com.

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