Great points made thus far...tools like vAuto are excellent and will get you in the game in regards to internet pricing and wholesale vehicle acquisition(we've used vAuto where I work for over a year). However, at the end of the day the same things that have moved cars for 60+ years apply today: clean/mechanically sound vehicles that elicit praise and not apologies, pertinent and informative marketing (multiple photos and great descriptions on websites like Autotrader and Cars.com) and an product-educated and engaged staff that can give a great walkaround. If your store is weak on the basics, utilization of tools like vAuto are the least of your worries.

Many of our 100 plus day units come with a $500 commission regardless of loss of profit, so we're excited about aged units. We don't ever have many though. The customers get a great priced car and the salesperson makes 5X that of a flat for new. I love used cars.

Great topic! Another avenue to unburden yourself from aged units is to use online marketplaces to sell them to another dealer, who may have more success. DealerGenius.com is a good one (its the one we use), but I am sure there are others. It never hurts to have constant feelers out there in case you can unload one of your aged vehicles. We also sometimes offer a bonus to the sales professional each month who sells the oldest unit.

A car dealership or vehicle local distribution is a business that sells new cars/ old cars at the retail level based on a dealership contract with an automaker. It may also provide maintenance services for cars. It will not cost much if you purchase an old car instead of new if you are getting good deal.

Used Car Dealers

I don't this as a problem of clean cars, or pricing, I see it as a issue revovling around the sales staff working the system. I believe that if you can get your sales staff to focus on what's important the unit will sell...Commission.
Get your sales staff to focus on creating their own commission based on unit age. In the example above the BMW would be paying an additional $93 in commission. Plain and simple if you offer a $1 per day for inventory you'll notice sales people showing the oldest units first. That 93 day old unit looks a lot better when there's a $$ sign base on the age. I really don't believe you have to lower the price to a break even point to get the customer interested. I believe that's the sales persons job.

It's time to get creative. Don't let your sales staff be the tail that wags the dog. Get them selling instead of working the desk for their commission. I've done this and it works.

If you haven't read Velocity by Dale Pollak yet, I highly suggest you buy it off Amazon. It will change the way you think about your used (and new) car inventory.

I second Jeff's comment about what if everybody used Vauto. It is only a piece of technology suggesting you to buy a certain unit, price it a certain way, appraise a vehicle at a certain value, etc. There are still way too many people in this industry that will ignore what a silly computer is telling someone with years and years of experience what to do. To those experienced "know it all " people, I say, thank you...keep thinking that way!

I just dropped AAX and signed on with Vauto on Friday. Installation should be complete by next week...looking forward to it!

Great topic Jeff- One thing salesmen also fall into the trap of is "It's an old age unit" thinking it should qualify for a greater discount. Problem is, it is NEW(er) to the prospective customer. Furthermore, assuming it is an Internet customer, they have specifically chosen THAT vehicle for some reason- found out why.

One thing does need to be said though, that 03 Jag X type has dropped in book value more than a little in the last 4 months since it was entered into inventory!

Speaking of vAuto, I wrote a piece on this subject that will HELP sell aged units.

------Do You Know Your DSD?------

DSD = Days Since Detailing

Clean cars sell for more and I have proof. First, let’s explore the study by Manheim and their findings, then, let’s make MORE money together.


Its a cycle:

Cleaner Inventory = More Turns
More Turns = Cleaner Inventory.

one pushes the other, over and over again.

Results?
Cleaner Inventory = More Gross.

Joe

I just heard one of the best pieces of advice from vAuto: use technology to plan your exit strategy before ever buying the car.

With technology capable of telling you how a car ranks in the marketplace, it is easy enough to calculate what your absolute worst retail price should be and what a "quick turn" price is as well. Use those figures to trade and buy the cars so you have a pricing strategy up front for each vehicle.

Great stuff today Brian! My eyes are starting to bleed from registering at all these new sites. Check my website link already posted a press release. Yeah I cheated a little - I should have linked back to the vintage site but I am greedy.

I can't wait. I can tell a real pro from a long distance. Your posts on sites have helped me already. Look forward to your info and hopefully meeting you at DD6!

###
The best non-dealer SEO’s that I know of, don’t even have websites; referrals and results drive their business.
###
^^^^^^^^
Automotive SEO's fall into that category too.

Real SEO's in any niche do not put on a public display of keywords on a marketing site.

That is a bad practice asking for disaster.

With the economy hurting in all niches and the average lead affiliate generating $12 CPA, somebody could come along and make your job a lot tougher....

The amount of censorship of these comments are getting ridiculous Jeff. I know you have to protect your advertisers, and I respect that, however anyone can anonymously post anything on these comments, fake reviews of products can be made, (not that they are, of course these are all real people with real reviews, right, right? anyone?) By the way, I am not actually George Bush but I play him on TV.

Rick Astly now is endorsing Pasch's offerings which perhaps has led to the resurgence of his career. Kudos on that. That's amazing results and deserving of some sort of SEO Award.

There is no validation on the comments, and anyone with an aircard can change IP's at the click of a button and repost. I'm all for promotion and advertising but how much of this is real and how much made up? All of the negative reviews are coming and going as fast as they are listed. And it's too bad about Skidrow- I heard they were making a comeback =)

As with any company, nobody's perfect, and some are excellent but let's not see this site have this high level of blatant censorship nor should it be falsely manipulated for personal gain through fake reviews, although I'm sure Rick Astly is happy with his great personal service...

I am all registered and excited to learn something new...

Excellent! This forum has a very wide range of expression and now music! I always was amazed how that voice came out of that body. It just didn't match.

I have a (tongue-in-cheek) love/hate relationship and respect for Pasch Consulting.

I love them because there are very few trustworthy and respectable SEOs that can deliver REAL results. At the top of this list has to be Pasch.

I 'hate' them because they REALLY make ranking top 10, for the same thing you're trying to rank for, extremely hard. It's gotten to the point where I don't even have to dig into someone's SEO campaign when we're getting boxed out, to know who's running it.

Of course I don't really hate them - I do look forward to this seminar - and perhaps I can figure out the Pasch Magic Sauce.

------

There's an old saying - of which I forget the exact wording - but it's along the lines of the cobbler's children walk without shoes.

The best non-dealer SEO's that I know of, don't even have websites; referrals and results drive their business. I can't help but notice that of the Pasch clients who chimed in above, they're all ranking rather well:

Massachusetts Infiniti Dealers

Massachusetts Nissan Dealers

Arizona Infiniti Dealers

If it were me, that's all my business card would have - links like that and on the back of the business card a credit card authorization form.

Chip-

PS: I've never in my coding life written a page that validates - but I blame Microsoft for that .

We are in a ferociously competitive market; we like to win (and almost all of the time, we do); we seek out only the best to help us. We brought on Pasch Consulting about 15 months ago. The benefits to our internet presence have been astronomical. Brian is smart as hell, works his tail off and demostrates his commitment to our success virtually every day.

We resist pointing out the faults of our competitors. If we were to do that, it would cheapen us in the perception of those listening, do little if any damage to the competitor and not help our business.

But it takes all kinds, I guess. Keep up the great work Brian.

Our Car Dealer has used Pasch Consulting for just about a year now and we are very happy with his work. I look forward to this class and any others he has in the future!

I am a client of Brian's. I also work for the 2nd most profitable Nissan Dealer in the NE region. Since bringing Brian onboard as part of our online marketing strategy our overall traffic has doubled. We had over 20k visitors to our websites last month. This past Presidents Day weekend we had just shy of 7k visits on that weekend alone and 38 of the 69 cars we sold that weekend came as a direct result of our online efforts. Since I am someone who is quite knowledgeable about seo strategies, I am confident in stating that Brian is among a small list of true experts in this field.

Several of my clients are now working with Brian Pasch, and everybody I talk to raves about him. Brian Pasch is the tops and will add value to any organization. This is one Webinar that I would not miss. I know I am looking forward to it.

I have heard great things about Brian from several people in the industry whose opinion's I respect. I'm signed up and am looking forward to the learning opportunity. Thanks for putting it together.

I'm signed up as well. I'm always open to learning a few new ideas and tips.

I'm signed up and looking forward to it Brian. Thanks for taking the time to do this!

Corey

I contribute on my Driving Sales blog which provides articles and tips to help the automotive community.

I also have been updating dealer-seo.com with additional examples of our work and success.

Of course there is only so much you can discuss without giving away the fire and your competitive edge.

That said, this seminar is not a sales pitch but a discussion of practical tasks that an ISM or GM can make happen to improve their Internet visibility by themselves.

It may seem simple to you but my estimate is that over 75% of the car dealer websites would benefit from the information in this free webinar.

Our industry needs to be able to compete against the larger 3rd party lead collectors and I'm doing my part to help.

that's a great reason why i don't sell consulting work or provide classes to teach others. i commented earlier that i am not real big on validation because not all popular browsers are. you were displaying the link, so perhaps you cared..

i found your pitch on this website so i clicked through and found a few more of your pitches, but not much else about the training material. i used my brain for a minute, and came up with, "maybe some of his strategies are applied to this website." i am sorry if my disappointment in the site linked above amazes you.

i guess i was looking for the fire. in a video you said you could rank amongst edmunds and automotive.com, but i was not particularly blown away by your example of bmw128i.com ranking for bmw 128i. that seems pretty straight forward to me.