I believe that the dealerships that are struggling or know that they could do better with the internet are the ones with the lack of upper management’s knowledge on what to monitor, what to manage and how to make the department accountable. Put on top of that, the knowledge of what third party sites are good in your market, where to spend the internet budget, how to update the dealerships website, know the process of how the photos and inventory are being populated to all of these sites, and to make sure all of your internet leads are getting replied to in a timely manner and are being put through a good, effective internet process. These are the stores that struggle with the internet and get to the point of giving up on it or restructuring it every 6 months, the whole time knowing that the Internet is where they need to be these days to keep up with the consumer and the industry.

This is where dealerships with a knowledgeable Internet Director start getting the upper hand on results, like excellent response times, closing percentages, return on investment, low cost per sale and an overall more effective internet presence that helps effect the whole store. I see the Internet Director position at the store as similar to the GSM and the reason is that just like the GSM, the Internet Director is responsible to make sure that the virtual lot (website) looks good, they need to make sure they have the staff to handle the traffic and close the deals, they handle all the internet vendors, make sure that the ROI is in line, all the internet advertising is correct and the department is producing. But not only does sales benefit from having an Internet Director but also parts, service, body shop and F&I get to benefit from a well ran Internet operation. 

If you are a smaller store and have 1-2 Internet managers or salespeople handling the leads there is typically too much work for them to be effective selling cars!
1-2 Internet Managers responsible for 100-250+ leads
and is also responsible for:
-SELLING CARS
-Response time to leads
-Phone leads
-CRM updates
-Website updates
-Data/inventory feeds
-3rd Party vendors
-Internet reporting
-Photos
-Descriptions
-Locates
-Incentives
-Internet Specials
-Meet/greet appointments
….any many other responsibilities

But just like any industry, the larger stores, and large dealer groups have the resources and income to be able to hire a full time Internet Director while the single point or small multiple point dealer group still struggle to find a way to compete in their market. The big dealer groups have an Internet Director that manages 10+ stores (upwards of 30-40 stores in the larger dealer groups) that manage the departments and visit the stores on a monthly/quarterly bases.

So where do the small dealers go?

You can send your internet manager to conferences, hire an internet consultant for a day or two, but when the day is over, it is still up to the store and the management team to make sure they are getting the results they need. But most sales managers/GSM’s that I speak to (and I have spoken to about 1000+ of them nation wide over the last year) tell me that they wear too many hats already, so to make sure they monitor the Internet department is usually done only to their best ability. As long as their internet person sells their 10-15 units that’s good enough. This is not the sales managers/GSM fault, it is no different then having them be responsible for your parts or services departments, there is only so much they are going to know and only so much that they can monitor and as long as it is getting some results, that all they can do.

So I ask you again, where do the small dealers go?

Hiring a full time Internet Director would be the best place to start if you have the resources or income. But to have a full time Internet Director to manage a 1-3 person Internet Department might not seem to cost effective. Not only that but most the stores I talk to have a hard enough time finding good sales people or Internet Managers, much less finding a great Internet Director that really knows what they are doing. So now what? Hmmmm......

I believe that the dealerships that are struggling or know that they could do better with the internet are the ones with the lack of upper management’s knowledge on what to monitor, what to manage and how to make the department accountable. Put on top of that, the knowledge of what third party sites are good in your market, where to spend the internet budget, how to update the dealerships website, know the process of how the photos and inventory are being populated to all of these sites, and to make sure all of your internet leads are getting replied to in a timely manner and are being put through a good, effective internet process. These are the stores that struggle with the internet and get to the point of giving up on it or restructuring it every 6 months, the whole time knowing that the Internet is where they need to be these days to keep up with the consumer and the industry.

This is where dealerships with a knowledgeable Internet Director start getting the upper hand on results, like excellent response times, closing percentages, return on investment, low cost per sale and an overall more effective internet presence that helps effect the whole store. I see the Internet Director position at the store as similar to the GSM and the reason is that just like the GSM, the Internet Director is responsible to make sure that the virtual lot (website) looks good, they need to make sure they have the staff to handle the traffic and close the deals, they handle all the internet vendors, make sure that the ROI is in line, all the internet advertising is correct and the department is producing. But not only does sales benefit from having an Internet Director but also parts, service, body shop and F&I get to benefit from a well ran Internet operation. 

If you are a smaller store and have 1-2 Internet managers or salespeople handling the leads there is typically too much work for them to be effective selling cars!
1-2 Internet Managers responsible for 100-250+ leads
and is also responsible for:
-SELLING CARS
-Response time to leads
-Phone leads
-CRM updates
-Website updates
-Data/inventory feeds
-3rd Party vendors
-Internet reporting
-Photos
-Descriptions
-Locates
-Incentives
-Internet Specials
-Meet/greet appointments
….any many other responsibilities

But just like any industry, the larger stores, and large dealer groups have the resources and income to be able to hire a full time Internet Director while the single point or small multiple point dealer group still struggle to find a way to compete in their market. The big dealer groups have an Internet Director that manages 10+ stores (upwards of 30-40 stores in the larger dealer groups) that manage the departments and visit the stores on a monthly/quarterly bases.

So where do the small dealers go?

You can send your internet manager to conferences, hire an internet consultant for a day or two, but when the day is over, it is still up to the store and the management team to make sure they are getting the results they need. But most sales managers/GSM’s that I speak to (and I have spoken to about 1000+ of them nation wide over the last year) tell me that they wear too many hats already, so to make sure they monitor the Internet department is usually done only to their best ability. As long as their internet person sells their 10-15 units that’s good enough. This is not the sales managers/GSM fault, it is no different then having them be responsible for your parts or services departments, there is only so much they are going to know and only so much that they can monitor and as long as it is getting some results, that all they can do.

So I ask you again, where do the small dealers go?

Hiring a full time Internet Director would be the best place to start if you have the resources or income. But to have a full time Internet Director to manage a 1-3 person Internet Department might not seem to cost effective. Not only that but most the stores I talk to have a hard enough time finding good sales people or Internet Managers, much less finding a great Internet Director that really knows what they are doing. So now what? Hmmmm......

Disclaimer: I am not an expert in ObamaCare and I don’t want to act like one so I am going to quote some recent articles for this article.

In order for a dealership to grow in sales volume, it takes hiring more staff a lot of times. If you are selling 100 cars a month and want to push it to 150, it might require to hire more porters, mechanics and/or sales managers/staff to handle the load. But that also might put you over the 50 employee limit that can push you into the Affordable Care Act or Obamacare which can eat into your profits. Some of these new employees could be part-time workers but according to a recent article on stltoday.com, by Jim Gallagher that won’t help either, “the Small Business Administration gives this example of how the math works. “Company X has 40 full-time workers working 40 hours per week, along with 20 part-time workers working 15 hours per week. The 20 part-time employees are counted as 10 full-time employees. Company X has 50 full-time employees.”

The same article from stltoday.com says: “Lots of companies close to the limit will hesitate to go over it. Doug Simms, vice president at the Meyer Group of benefits consultants, has a maid service as a client. The company was thinking of expanding into a new area, but that would put them over the 50-worker limit. “They decided they’re not going to,” Simms said. Of course, that strategy can be self-defeating in the long run. It limits the company’s growth — and ultimately the owner’s profit.”

But outsourcing some task to independent contractors to grow your store can be the answer. Another validation for this strategy was found in a March 2013 article from Nancy E. Joerg on w-p.com that stated:
“a U.S. Department of Labor spokeswoman recently said "The ACA is going to significantly affect the way employers hire and make hiring decisions, and it definitely increases the desire to hire more independent contractors …."
INDEPENDENT CONTRACTORS DO NOT COUNT AS EMPLOYEES: Under the ACA, independent contractors do not count as employees when determining whether the employer meets the minimum threshold as a large employer.

So what other choice is left for the small to medium dealer to do if they want to grow?

Well there are several task that need to be done on a daily bases to grow your stores sales that can be out sourced to outside contractors. Let’s take used car sales and Internet management for example because these 2 departments are totally up to the dealership on the potential growth but take a lot of man hours to maintain and grow.

In used cars, you need to worry about making sure the vehicles are photo’d, priced effectively to market and described accurately in a timely manner, and that these vehicles are getting onto sites like Autotrader, cars.com, craigslist and your own website without any issues. If there are issues, the managers at the stores have to take time away from sales to manage and maintain these activities making them less productive to increase the sales volume. Managers need to do a “virtual lot walk” like they do their physical lot walk to make sure their vehicles on line stand as tall if not taller than they do on the lot. Good photo’d, good priced and good described vehicles on line will increase sales, but who is managing that process? If it is your manager, it is taking away from him selling cars on the lot. Hiring an outside contractor to handle these responsibilities will free up more time for your managers to sell more cars and work/train with your sales staff.

The internet department will also have task that are time consuming that are taking away valuable time away from the internet manager from working leads and selling more cars. They spend a lot of time updating the website, dealing with 3^rd party vendors, inventory feed problems, process problems, CRM updates, social media updates, reporting plus many other task. These task are not producing sales, but take valuable time away from that manager to be more productive working internet leads, which leads to selling more cars.

Again, these types of activities can be outsourced to an independent contractor to reduce the labor force load while helping the managers at the store be more productive and free up their time to help the dealership increase sales volume without adding another “employee”. There are many other types of jobs at the dealership that can be outsourced but these two are the most dominant ones to help increase sales that can be done from any location and not necessarily at the store. And here is why that could be possible, on a recent blog by Shane Snow titled “Half of Us May Soon Be Freelancers” he states several reasons why “it's entirely plausible that more than half of the American workforce will one day log in or show up every day as independent contractors.” The most dominate statement was: “The web lets you find the best person to do anything anywhere. Would you rather work with someone awesome or someone mediocre? Companies used to not have a choice, if the awesome person lived 3,000 miles away. Now they do.”

So I am asking you to think of how you can grow and then if you have limitations on your employee count to get there, think of other ways around the problem. That is what we car guys are good at doing, working around issues and tweaking what we have to get better results.  

Disclaimer: I am not an expert in ObamaCare and I don’t want to act like one so I am going to quote some recent articles for this article.

In order for a dealership to grow in sales volume, it takes hiring more staff a lot of times. If you are selling 100 cars a month and want to push it to 150, it might require to hire more porters, mechanics and/or sales managers/staff to handle the load. But that also might put you over the 50 employee limit that can push you into the Affordable Care Act or Obamacare which can eat into your profits. Some of these new employees could be part-time workers but according to a recent article on stltoday.com, by Jim Gallagher that won’t help either, “the Small Business Administration gives this example of how the math works. “Company X has 40 full-time workers working 40 hours per week, along with 20 part-time workers working 15 hours per week. The 20 part-time employees are counted as 10 full-time employees. Company X has 50 full-time employees.”

The same article from stltoday.com says: “Lots of companies close to the limit will hesitate to go over it. Doug Simms, vice president at the Meyer Group of benefits consultants, has a maid service as a client. The company was thinking of expanding into a new area, but that would put them over the 50-worker limit. “They decided they’re not going to,” Simms said. Of course, that strategy can be self-defeating in the long run. It limits the company’s growth — and ultimately the owner’s profit.”

But outsourcing some task to independent contractors to grow your store can be the answer. Another validation for this strategy was found in a March 2013 article from Nancy E. Joerg on w-p.com that stated:
“a U.S. Department of Labor spokeswoman recently said "The ACA is going to significantly affect the way employers hire and make hiring decisions, and it definitely increases the desire to hire more independent contractors …."
INDEPENDENT CONTRACTORS DO NOT COUNT AS EMPLOYEES: Under the ACA, independent contractors do not count as employees when determining whether the employer meets the minimum threshold as a large employer.

So what other choice is left for the small to medium dealer to do if they want to grow?

Well there are several task that need to be done on a daily bases to grow your stores sales that can be out sourced to outside contractors. Let’s take used car sales and Internet management for example because these 2 departments are totally up to the dealership on the potential growth but take a lot of man hours to maintain and grow.

In used cars, you need to worry about making sure the vehicles are photo’d, priced effectively to market and described accurately in a timely manner, and that these vehicles are getting onto sites like Autotrader, cars.com, craigslist and your own website without any issues. If there are issues, the managers at the stores have to take time away from sales to manage and maintain these activities making them less productive to increase the sales volume. Managers need to do a “virtual lot walk” like they do their physical lot walk to make sure their vehicles on line stand as tall if not taller than they do on the lot. Good photo’d, good priced and good described vehicles on line will increase sales, but who is managing that process? If it is your manager, it is taking away from him selling cars on the lot. Hiring an outside contractor to handle these responsibilities will free up more time for your managers to sell more cars and work/train with your sales staff.

The internet department will also have task that are time consuming that are taking away valuable time away from the internet manager from working leads and selling more cars. They spend a lot of time updating the website, dealing with 3^rd party vendors, inventory feed problems, process problems, CRM updates, social media updates, reporting plus many other task. These task are not producing sales, but take valuable time away from that manager to be more productive working internet leads, which leads to selling more cars.

Again, these types of activities can be outsourced to an independent contractor to reduce the labor force load while helping the managers at the store be more productive and free up their time to help the dealership increase sales volume without adding another “employee”. There are many other types of jobs at the dealership that can be outsourced but these two are the most dominant ones to help increase sales that can be done from any location and not necessarily at the store. And here is why that could be possible, on a recent blog by Shane Snow titled “Half of Us May Soon Be Freelancers” he states several reasons why “it's entirely plausible that more than half of the American workforce will one day log in or show up every day as independent contractors.” The most dominate statement was: “The web lets you find the best person to do anything anywhere. Would you rather work with someone awesome or someone mediocre? Companies used to not have a choice, if the awesome person lived 3,000 miles away. Now they do.”

So I am asking you to think of how you can grow and then if you have limitations on your employee count to get there, think of other ways around the problem. That is what we car guys are good at doing, working around issues and tweaking what we have to get better results.  

While working with one of my clients covering a strategy on changing the price of a vehicle he had priced at $15,298, my first reaction was to tell him to reduce it down to $14,995 so he wouldn’t miss any searches done up to $15,000 because of his $298. Then it dawned on me, don’t even change it to $14,995 that might not work either. After the conversation, I come across a strategy that has changed the way I tell my dealers how to price a lot of their cars. It made me research all pricing strategies and how this type of pricing started in the car business.

Pricing a vehicle at $19995, $14998, or $9997 is a strategy that marketing experts call Physiological Pricing strategy.

How it Works
“A psychological pricing strategy works by selecting prices to which consumers will have an emotional reaction. For example, a car might be priced at $14,995 rather than at $15,000. A completely rational consumer would recognize that a price difference of $5 is negligible on a big ticket item such as a car. In reality, however, consumers do not tend to behave in such a rational manner, but will tend to act emotionally and round down prices.

Although the price of the car is closer to $15,000, many consumers will tend to think of it in the $14,000 range.” What Is a Psychological Pricing Strategy?By Wendel Clark, eHow Contributor updated June 30, 2011

We do this so when a consumer sees our ad, $14,995 looks smaller than $15,000 and they may mentally round it down to $14000 range, but that is if and only IF they actually see your ad. This strategy goes way back over hundred years and it is an effective strategy for traditional advertising. I would say though, for a lot of used cars on your lot, this is NOT the strategy I would carry over to today’s market.

When you think about it, we have changed almost every aspect of used car management because of the Internet, every aspect except Psychological Pricing.  Not changing from this pricing strategy is costing your vehicles search results (SRP’s) on sites like Autotrader/Edmunds.com, Craigslist, KBB.com, some dealerships websites and a lot of certified websites. It is also causing your vehicle to not get the vehicle detail page views (VDP’s) that it deserves because we are positioning them into pricing buckets that make them less appealing.

Let’s say you take a sedan from a price of $15,495 to a price of $14,995 to help move the car off of your lot and to get it more exposure online. But all you might have done is just moved that car from one price bucket into another price bucket and not increased its search results at all.
Here is why: if you have 500 customers shopping for a sedan in a price band of $12,000 to $15,000 and then you have 500 customers shopping for a sedan between $15,000 to $18,000 all you did is move the sedan from one price bucket to the other and you broke even in search results and didn’t get any more exposure on the car.

You need to get away from Psychological Pricing and price your sedan at $15,000!!! By pricing it at $15,000 you will double the opportunity for your vehicle to showing up in searches.  By staying with traditional pricing of $14,995, you will miss the opportunity of any search done $15,000 and up because of $5. Let’s face it; Craigslist is not the easiest of sites to shop for a vehicle. If you have ever shopped on Craigslist before, searching by price is the most effective to find what you are looking for, unless you know the exact model of car you are looking for, and if you price yours at $14995 instead of $15000, you are missing a lot of activity on that site.

This strategy is what I call Flat Based Pricing, and that would be to round up or down to the next common price band. The most common ones are $5,000, $10,000, $15,000, $20,000, $25,000 and on and on in $5000 increments. But there are also a lot of searches with $8,000, $12,000, $18,000 and pretty much any thousand dollar range under $10,000. I am not saying to take a $11,235 priced car and move it all the way down to $10,000 or to rise its price up to $12,000 just to get it in a common price point, but if it is due for a price change, I would move it to $11,000. All of this also depends on things like market days supply, age, % of market or ranking and other factors, so keep that in mind when you are pricing a vehicle.

Psychological Pricing could also be costing you vehicle detail page views (VDP’s) and here is why, let’s go back to the customer shopping for a sedan between $12,000 to $15,000. Most customers shopping between $12k-$15K have a budget closer to $12K but will look up to $15K, so pricing your vehicle at the traditional $14,995 will position this vehicle at the top of their budget and less appealing then the cars closer to $12,000. Now, pricing it at a flat $15,000 will also get that car into a price search of $15,000-$18,000 and if their budget is closer to $15K than to $18K, your car is the lowest priced car in this pricing bucket making it more appealing and get it more VDP’s. With this strategy, your search results and vehicle detail page views will increase significantly.

There are many other advantages to pricing your vehicles at a Flat Based price and I will cover them in later articles but we know at vAuto, the more VDP’s your inventory gets, the more cars you will sell.
 

Here are a couple of quotes that I have received from some of my dealerships over the last month since trying Flat Based Pricing:
“Jasen, I just thought you would want to know what your suggestion did for our internet department. I can’t thank you enough!”

“2008 Toyota Tundra listed at $18477 after 7 days this month it had 1025 impressions and 14 clicks at a rate of 1.4%
After changing the price to an even $18000 in only 11 days it had 3430 impressions and 79 clicks at a rate of 2.3%
THIS CAR WENT FROM  146 SRP PER DAY TO  219 SRP’S A DAY
THIS CAR WENT FROM 2 VDP’S PER DAY TO 6 VDP’S A DAY”

 “2007 BMW X5 listed at $30524 after 7 days this month it had 833 impressions and 7 clicks at a rate of 0.8%
After changing the price to an even $30000 in only 11 days it had 4218 impressions and 49 clicks at a rate of 1.2%
THIS CAR WENT FROM  119 SRP PER DAY TO  308 SRP’S A DAY
THIS CAR WENT FROM 1 VDP PER DAY TO 4 VDP’S A DAY”

Here is another one:

“Here are two examples that I thought you would enjoy for the flat based pricing
2003 dodge Durango 357 days old
Changed price to 6000 dollars on 7-24-11
Sold 7-28-11  for 6000 dollars    4 days                    
 

2000 Ford Ranger 59 Days in inventory
Original price 7499 06-1-2011 no action
Raised price to 8000 07-22-2011
Sold 07-27-2011 for 8000”

And another quote

“Since adoption of flat based prices in early July our SRP & VDP numbers have just skyrocketed within Cars.com and AT.com.  Here are my numbers from July…. 

AutoTrader 

Four months SRP…. 
April   May     June     July
74K     70K     55K     110K

Four months VDP….. 
April   May     June     July
1,800   1,650   1,260   2,200

 Cars.com 

Four months SRP…. 
April   May     June     July
45K     39K     36K     75K

 Four months VDP….. 
April   May     June     July
1,780   1,200   1,410   1,920 

Now don’t go telling everyone!”
 

Nick Miller 

While working with one of my clients covering a strategy on changing the price of a vehicle he had priced at $15,298, my first reaction was to tell him to reduce it down to $14,995 so he wouldn’t miss any searches done up to $15,000 because of his $298. Then it dawned on me, don’t even change it to $14,995 that might not work either. After the conversation, I come across a strategy that has changed the way I tell my dealers how to price a lot of their cars. It made me research all pricing strategies and how this type of pricing started in the car business.

Pricing a vehicle at $19995, $14998, or $9997 is a strategy that marketing experts call Physiological Pricing strategy.

How it Works
“A psychological pricing strategy works by selecting prices to which consumers will have an emotional reaction. For example, a car might be priced at $14,995 rather than at $15,000. A completely rational consumer would recognize that a price difference of $5 is negligible on a big ticket item such as a car. In reality, however, consumers do not tend to behave in such a rational manner, but will tend to act emotionally and round down prices.

Although the price of the car is closer to $15,000, many consumers will tend to think of it in the $14,000 range.” What Is a Psychological Pricing Strategy?By Wendel Clark, eHow Contributor updated June 30, 2011

We do this so when a consumer sees our ad, $14,995 looks smaller than $15,000 and they may mentally round it down to $14000 range, but that is if and only IF they actually see your ad. This strategy goes way back over hundred years and it is an effective strategy for traditional advertising. I would say though, for a lot of used cars on your lot, this is NOT the strategy I would carry over to today’s market.

When you think about it, we have changed almost every aspect of used car management because of the Internet, every aspect except Psychological Pricing.  Not changing from this pricing strategy is costing your vehicles search results (SRP’s) on sites like Autotrader/Edmunds.com, Craigslist, KBB.com, some dealerships websites and a lot of certified websites. It is also causing your vehicle to not get the vehicle detail page views (VDP’s) that it deserves because we are positioning them into pricing buckets that make them less appealing.

Let’s say you take a sedan from a price of $15,495 to a price of $14,995 to help move the car off of your lot and to get it more exposure online. But all you might have done is just moved that car from one price bucket into another price bucket and not increased its search results at all.
Here is why: if you have 500 customers shopping for a sedan in a price band of $12,000 to $15,000 and then you have 500 customers shopping for a sedan between $15,000 to $18,000 all you did is move the sedan from one price bucket to the other and you broke even in search results and didn’t get any more exposure on the car.

You need to get away from Psychological Pricing and price your sedan at $15,000!!! By pricing it at $15,000 you will double the opportunity for your vehicle to showing up in searches.  By staying with traditional pricing of $14,995, you will miss the opportunity of any search done $15,000 and up because of $5. Let’s face it; Craigslist is not the easiest of sites to shop for a vehicle. If you have ever shopped on Craigslist before, searching by price is the most effective to find what you are looking for, unless you know the exact model of car you are looking for, and if you price yours at $14995 instead of $15000, you are missing a lot of activity on that site.

This strategy is what I call Flat Based Pricing, and that would be to round up or down to the next common price band. The most common ones are $5,000, $10,000, $15,000, $20,000, $25,000 and on and on in $5000 increments. But there are also a lot of searches with $8,000, $12,000, $18,000 and pretty much any thousand dollar range under $10,000. I am not saying to take a $11,235 priced car and move it all the way down to $10,000 or to rise its price up to $12,000 just to get it in a common price point, but if it is due for a price change, I would move it to $11,000. All of this also depends on things like market days supply, age, % of market or ranking and other factors, so keep that in mind when you are pricing a vehicle.

Psychological Pricing could also be costing you vehicle detail page views (VDP’s) and here is why, let’s go back to the customer shopping for a sedan between $12,000 to $15,000. Most customers shopping between $12k-$15K have a budget closer to $12K but will look up to $15K, so pricing your vehicle at the traditional $14,995 will position this vehicle at the top of their budget and less appealing then the cars closer to $12,000. Now, pricing it at a flat $15,000 will also get that car into a price search of $15,000-$18,000 and if their budget is closer to $15K than to $18K, your car is the lowest priced car in this pricing bucket making it more appealing and get it more VDP’s. With this strategy, your search results and vehicle detail page views will increase significantly.

There are many other advantages to pricing your vehicles at a Flat Based price and I will cover them in later articles but we know at vAuto, the more VDP’s your inventory gets, the more cars you will sell.
 

Here are a couple of quotes that I have received from some of my dealerships over the last month since trying Flat Based Pricing:
“Jasen, I just thought you would want to know what your suggestion did for our internet department. I can’t thank you enough!”

“2008 Toyota Tundra listed at $18477 after 7 days this month it had 1025 impressions and 14 clicks at a rate of 1.4%
After changing the price to an even $18000 in only 11 days it had 3430 impressions and 79 clicks at a rate of 2.3%
THIS CAR WENT FROM  146 SRP PER DAY TO  219 SRP’S A DAY
THIS CAR WENT FROM 2 VDP’S PER DAY TO 6 VDP’S A DAY”

 “2007 BMW X5 listed at $30524 after 7 days this month it had 833 impressions and 7 clicks at a rate of 0.8%
After changing the price to an even $30000 in only 11 days it had 4218 impressions and 49 clicks at a rate of 1.2%
THIS CAR WENT FROM  119 SRP PER DAY TO  308 SRP’S A DAY
THIS CAR WENT FROM 1 VDP PER DAY TO 4 VDP’S A DAY”

Here is another one:

“Here are two examples that I thought you would enjoy for the flat based pricing
2003 dodge Durango 357 days old
Changed price to 6000 dollars on 7-24-11
Sold 7-28-11  for 6000 dollars    4 days                    
 

2000 Ford Ranger 59 Days in inventory
Original price 7499 06-1-2011 no action
Raised price to 8000 07-22-2011
Sold 07-27-2011 for 8000”

And another quote

“Since adoption of flat based prices in early July our SRP & VDP numbers have just skyrocketed within Cars.com and AT.com.  Here are my numbers from July…. 

AutoTrader 

Four months SRP…. 
April   May     June     July
74K     70K     55K     110K

Four months VDP….. 
April   May     June     July
1,800   1,650   1,260   2,200

 Cars.com 

Four months SRP…. 
April   May     June     July
45K     39K     36K     75K

 Four months VDP….. 
April   May     June     July
1,780   1,200   1,410   1,920 

Now don’t go telling everyone!”
 

Nick Miller