3 Practical Tips To Save Time and Money

The days of doing things manually are fading fast. Running your business without using the newest technology can be challenging to say the least. Technology is ubiquitous and, more importantly, can save you time and ultimately money. To this end CarOffer recently hosted a webinar with Nick Gerlach, VP of Dealer Relations and Jeff Bittancourt, Senior Director of Remarketing. Both Nick and Jeff have an extensive background in the automotive industry specifically from the operator’s perspective and shared some great tips for dealers to save time and money.

We’ve recapped 3 key tips from the webinar, however, reach out if you want to watch the entire webinar.

You’ve likely already heard of CarOffer, but just to recap, CarOffer is an automated digital tool to help dealers sell and buy pre-owned inventory. We also source consumer vehicles for our dealers via our partnership with CarGurus and have several other tools that help you buy, sell, and trade on our platform with confidence. We have more than 10,000+ dealers across the United States that use our platform! You may be one of them and want to know more about our new offerings or perhaps you are interested in learning more.

Tip 1 - Automate Your Core Inventory Sourcing

Wouldn’t it be easier to source your inventory without effort versus going to an auction and bidding one by one? Similar to having a full-time buyer, dealers give us their buy list, and we automate it. We ask dealers some simple questions like what cars do you want to buy, how much are you willing to spend and how many do you want? So, say you are looking for 10 Toyota Corollas, instead of the “old” way of going to an auction, searching a fixed site, or competing with everyone else one car at a time hoping to be the last guy standing, we collect orders and fulfill them automatically based on how you set up your Buying Matrix™. You simply input what cars you want to buy, how much you are willing to spend, how many cars you want and the BuyingMatrix™ goes to work. This automated inventory sourcing really helps you plan and prepare for what cars perform the best, ultimately making you more profitable.

A new exclusive tool that CarOffer provides our clients is CarGurus’s Instant Market Value (IMV), which is a proprietary algorithm that provides dealers and consumer with a retail value that is VIN specific and unique to your market / zip code. IMV data is updated daily using an algorithm with more than five million data points. This real-time data allows you to automatically buy or even sell smarter based on your market!

Tip 2 - Extend Your Reach to Win

CarOffer has a network of more than 10,000 dealers across the country. What does this matter to you? It allows you to cast a wider net to find inventory in other markets and helps to instill buying discipline. With used car prices up 45%, buying discipline is key. Our nationwide network of dealers are buying exactly what they know performs in their store and their market. The car that is in high demand at your store likely fetches top dollar at your local auction, but two states over, that car may be better supplied, allowing you to grab it at normal market pricing.

Or, use our automated offer as a weapon to win that trade-in and more importantly win that customer. If you can’t justify what you spent to get that vehicle using the highest offer in our system, simply sell it through CarOffer. Most importantly, you’ve kept a customer, sold a new car, picked up back-end profits, and fed your service department.

Tip 3 - Save Time with Hassle-Free Selling & Transparency

You cannot say enough about how crucial saving time and transparency is to your business. If you are a dealer today, say you need to wholesale a car. Traditionally, you would reach out to the dealer services manager at the nearest physical or online auction, have them come pick it up in a day or two, and it would sit on your lot for up to a week until it finally runs down a lane. There are a myriad of steps in order to market the vehicle for sale and several days to prep and actually sell - if it sells. As you know, it’s a hassle to wholesale a car and to go through all of that for it to not sell.

What if selling was like an Amazon shopping experience? You pick the cars you want to sell, put them in a shopping cart, and accept those offers with the click of a button. In addition, you know exactly what the fees will be so there are no surprises. Overall, CarOffer saves you time and the hassle of wholesaling cars the old-fashioned way, avoids the no sale and you know what the car is worth upfront. This helps to lower your depreciation risk and lets you focus on your most important and fun job – retailing cars!

Our latest innovation is Seller Assurance™, a new product that was created based on feedback from dealers. What we heard is that dealers want to know that when they sell a car, it is not going to come back to their lot. Our dealers like this feature to liquidate inventory and guarantee that vehicles will not be returned for cosmetic damage, mechanical problems, or electrical issues. This gives you one more tool in your toolbelt to save you time.

With this, we have provided many updates on how our platform can help dealers save time and money. If you are interested in learning more about our services, please click here for a customized demo