Welcome to Sales Manager Success Tips.
This is PART III of 8 Ways to WIN MORE TRADE-INS. This will be numbers 6 through 8.
6 - Have the Appraiser Present the Trade-In Value to the Customer.
Instead of having a 3-month Sales Consultant nervously present the trade-in value, have the Appraiser present the trade-in value. Wouldn’t it make sense to cut out the middleman (the Sales Consultant) and simply have the Appraiser explain the valuation with confidence and expertise? Following an Appraiser explanation (and customer acceptance or negotiation of the number), the Sales Consultant then provides a detailed payment-based proposal on the newer vehicle considered. The trade-in value is no longer the elephant in the room and the big psychological roadblock to selling the newer vehicle.
7 - Create a TradeRev® Lounge.
If your dealership utilizes live auction platforms such as TradeRev® create a “TradeRev Lounge”. This could be an unused office space or a corner of a showroom sectioned off with a sofa, chairs and a large screen TV. When the customer’s trade-in is launched on the live auction platform, the customer is invited to sit down, relax with a coffee and watch the show. Over the 20-45 minute auction period, the customer sees live bids from all over Canada dropping on the screen. And, in some cases, they may also see the lack of live bids. Customers begin to quickly realize that it’s not the dealership that decides the value of their trade-in, but rather the market; bidders and buyers from coast to coast.
8 - Have ALL Used Vehicle Sales Managers Within a Dealer Group Bid on Trade-In Appraisals.
Why do we let buyers from all across Canada bid on customer trade-ins during the appraisal process but we don’t have the Used Vehicle Sales Managers within the same dealer group bid on trade-in appraisals? It is certainly a known anomaly that a used Toyota RAV4 (for example) will sell within hours on the front line of a dealer group’s Honda dealership, but will sit for weeks just a block away at the same dealer group’s Kia dealership. Why? No one knows. What we do know is that the RAV4 is worth MORE to the Honda Used Vehicle Sales Manager versus the Kia Used Vehicle Sales Manager within the same dealer group. Hence, why doesn’t the Honda Used Vehicle Sales Manager have an opportunity to bid? Why are we selling it to a Honda or Toyota dealer outside of our group instead? Why are we allowing competing dealerships (and groups) to bid ahead of your own group?
Why not have 20 Used Vehicle Sales Managers (within your own group) bidding on every vehicle instead of just one? At the very least, why not establish a 2-round bid system; all Used Vehicle Sales Managers within a dealer group bid on ALL appraisals via a closed internal auction, then the appraising dealership allows a second round of bidding to the open market. If an outside buyer bids higher, then the Used Vehicle Sales Managers within the group have a final opportunity to match or beat the outside bid. Companies such as TradeRev® can set dealerships up with their own internal appraisal auctions. If need be, it can also be done free with group chat.
Thank you for joining me in this 3-part video series, 8 Ways to WIN MORE TRADE-INS.
Consider joining us for our next 3-day Sales Manager Academy and 1-day SUPERdesking Workshop – both LIVE and ONLINE.
I’m Chris Schulthies
Chris Schulthies is the president of Toronto-based Wye Management. Wye Management provides sales and management training (showroom and digital) for dealerships, dealer groups, OEMs and industry suppliers in Canada and the U.S.
E-mail: cschulthies@wyemanagement.com
Cell: 416.908.6346
