An Empathy-based Approach for Customers with Negative Equity

One of the most persistent topics of conversation with dealers of late has been the difficulty they experience working with customers who want to trade or sell a vehicle that’s saddled with an...

A View of the Rising Cost of Trade-in Appraisal “Bumps”

As I work with dealers, I’m seeing the return of a practice that largely went away in the past few years as dealers were hungry for new vehicle inventory and consumers were willing to pay MSRP or...

Putting Eyes on Your “Sight Unseen” Sourcing Opportunities

In my day as a dealer, we didn’t have customers calling or e-mailing the dealership to ask for a value on their vehicle to sell or trade it. Such inquiries happened, of course, but it was far more...

3 Best Practices for Today’s Multi-Channel Inventory Sourcing Environment

It’s no secret that many dealers have been working hard to diversify how they source used vehicle inventory, relying less on trade-ins and auction purchases in favor of acquiring vehicles directly...

A Means to Manage Your Gross Profit or Volume Preference in Used Vehicles

My recent post about dealer groups opting to go for used vehicle gross profit over volume prompted a question from several dealers—what if we do want to make the trade-off and make gross or volume...

How Dealers Acquire Inventory from Service Customers

In a recent post, I highlighted how vehicles dealers acquire directly from service customers hold almost as much investment value potential as those they acquire off-lease and from trade-in. The...

How to use Kelley Blue Book “Excellent” Trade-in Values to More Easily Acquire Customer Inventory (and Not at Excellent Prices)

5 Best Practices for Customer Vehicle Acquisition Success

There’s been a remarkable shift by dealers in the past 18 months to acquire more vehicles directly from customers rather than rely on auction and trade-in purchases. Among the dealers I’ve been...

5 Pointers To Preserve and Protect Profitability As You Acquire Used Vehicles

Most dealers would agree that you make your money in used vehicles when you acquire a car. If you pay too much for an auction or trade-in vehicle, you’ve shrunk the spread between your costs to...

ProfitTime in Practice: The Right Time To Engineer Investment Value

One of the key benefits Provision ProfitTime offers dealers is the ability to appraise an auction or trade-in vehicle, enter a potential purchase price and see, instantly, what kind of investment...

A Deeper Dive Into Dealer Trade Efficiency

As franchised dealers work harder to maximize new vehicle sales in the current market, some are taking a deeper look at dealer trades. The dealers are recognizing that, in today’s environment of...

What is a good look-to-book percentage in today’s market, and is there more that you need to know?

Andrew Wright of Lehigh Valley Acura Honda has a good handle on his trade appraisal process… Do you (vAuto) have average look to book ratios for dealerships with at leas 150-200 appraisals per...

Used vehicle wholesale forecasts from two prominent used car directors

All of the trade magazines have been reporting the continued escalation of wholesale used vehicle prices. In spite of these reports, I can’t help but question whether these trends will continue. I...

Two old-timers teach the industry a new trick

Every day I become more convinced that the ability to source used vehicles is and will continue to be the core competency of a successful used car operation. Simply waiting for trades or going to...

3 Ways To Make Trade-Ins Work Better for Your Dealership

As new vehicle sales gather steam, dealers have an opportunity to ease some of their used vehicle sourcing pain and help the new vehicle sales department hit volume targets to earn factory bonus...