We all know that appraising more cars generates more profits into our dealership. Appraising vehicles gives us an opportunity to provide a desired service to consumers today. With more than 70% of consumers buying a new car with a trade-in attached, it’s now more important than ever to face the trade in head on.

These are three strategies I’ve seen some of the most successful dealerships in our industry implement to source more trades:

1) Inbound Strategy 

When it comes to trade in’s, consumers want to know the value of their car, without having to talk to someone at your dealership. I’m guessing your website has a generic text box form for “Value My Trade” or “Sell Us Your Car”, but it’s unlikely that you’re capturing many leads. Why? Because we’re programmed as consumers to get instant gratification anywhere we turn, why should it be any different with a trade in value?

Solutions: Accu-Trade is a website widget that gives consumers a range of value for their trade, customizable by the dealership using Galves market data. It’s a great way to give your website visitors what they want, while capturing what you want – the lead. Other inbound tools that dealers are using include: SNAP by TradePending, Tradesii powered by Canadian Black Book and eAutoAppraise based on NADA guides.

2) Outbound strategy

As we know, some consumers today like to try to sell their vehicle on their own before going to a dealership. By creating an outbound strategy or a sourcing team, you can target and find these customers more readily than ever before. Consumers today are more educated than ever. If you can target a specific niche of consumers, or vehicles, and create a well known buying center within your marketplace you’re going to see more vehicles coming in for appraisals. We know that online listing sites like Kijiji are full of three types of vehicles that generally still have equity in them: the thinly traded vehicles that nobody wants to buy, tired of the tire kickers, and desperate consumers. Find these units and you’ll be surprised with your profits.

3) Equity Mining

This is a really great strategy and a hot topic with more companies entering and specializing in the space. Tapping into your current data base and mining for opportunities is one of the most powerful ways to source trade in’s. This strategy is rarely optimized at dealerships but I hear success stories time and time again when people start tapping into this source. I encourage you to call some vendors that specialize in this and ask some questions. The value of a current customer is commonly much cheaper than trying to get a new one in the database. There are lots of players in this space including but not limited to: AutoAlert, CDK, DealerMine, Pearl Solutions, Dealer Socket, AutoHook.

How are you currently sourcing more trade-ins? I’d love to hear some other strategies your dealership is using to find more units to appraise!

Trade-in values are important key to the online shopping experience, but how can you make the UI better? You have a generic trade-in, value my trade, or “sell us your car” form on your website…. but you’re not getting any leads. Why not? Because, customers today don’t want to fill out text box forms only for a sales rep at the dealership to contact them to learn more about the trade. 

It’s just not the way we operate anymore.

• Trade-in values remain one of the top 4 pain points for consumers today;
• More than 70% of new and used car purchases have a trade-in attached;
• An Auto Trader study showed that 63% of your online shoppers wanted to find trade-in values on a dealership website.

It's time to give your website visitors a trade-in value they could expect to get for their trade… then, help them understand the value by appraising the unit interactively with the same information. There are lots of value my trade tools out there that offer varying UI's and use different data sets.