TrueCar, just me?

[BillH]

So, I continue to see degradation of my TrueCar leads. Most sources are weak on a good day, but the USAA and a few others were perennial performers. My close rates are dropping and more just don’t respond. Many that can be contacted are irritated that their phone starts to blow up and they tune out because they didn’t expect it.

Likewise, the employee benefit sites must be getting promoted, as the numbers jumped and they “were just looking at the new offering from their job”.

TrueCar rep tell me they know they have an issue, but will the giant cruise ship, SS TrueCar turn a different direction anytime soon?

Anyone else seeing this trend?

Thanks,
Bill

 

[john.quinn]

Nope. Just you. Poor management skills.



(Hi Bill!!!)

 

[BillH]

Yeah, but besides that….

 

[BillH]

Nice, Quinn, you scared off all the good answers!!

Full disclosure, John would scare off the bad answers too. LOL

 

[Jeff Kershner]

Nice, Quinn, you scared off all the good answers!!

Leave to @john.quinn to mess things up.

@BillH I'll promote your question across some of our other channels and see if we can't get some more feedback. I dropped TC a few years back. We still receive a few USAA leads that we do okay with considering the low volume.

 

[Dan Sayer]

Well according to TrueCar's own press release (Oct 2019), and I quote:

"For the sixth year in a row, TrueCar and its affinity partners are the most visited and most useful independent websites among new-vehicle buyers. For the eighth year in a row, TrueCar and its affinity partners have driven the most dealer showroom visits among independent sites. Over the past eight years, TrueCar has been found to be most useful for its pricing content among independent sites."

Those claims are according to J.D. Power’s 2019 New Autoshopper Study. Is that spin city or is that a legit claim?

In Nebraska, we are on a monthly flat rate fee. Our Missouri stores were on the pay-per-sold model but we have since cancelled at those stores. We are not closing that high (between 5 and 10% monthly) but are selling enough that our cost per sale is lower than what the pay-per-model was. We can be better with handling leads...

 

[BillH]

Thanks, Jeff!

If it’s us, I get it. Even the TC rep admits they feel that they are not being clear enough with visitors that they will be contacted by dealers.

I’m not surprised that TC says that they are awesome. I think I look like Brad Pitt too….

Part of the reason I’m asking is that on a good month, we fail 90% of the time with leads. It’s a bummer. I’m working with John and Alex for some pretty cool (and vibration inducing) methods to make us more efficient. I might fall on my face with my plan, but if you call someone 6-7 times, send them half a dozen emails and a text, then they ignore you, it’s probably because they aren’t in a mood to engage. With staffing like it is, we need to focus on engaged folks. I won’t mention the plan (monkeys are involved) but it’s promising.

 

[john.quinn]

I think I look like Brad Pitt too….

You and Kershner have something in common!!!

 

[BillVaughnKMC]

We were apparently never fortunate enough to get to experience the good days of TrueCar. We tried them for about 4 months a little while back and it was so horrendous that we gave up a "free" lead source.

We aren't a lead hungry dealer, but were sold on TrueCar because we were told that customers had to go through a pretty thorough process before submitting a lead which supposedly meant they were farther down the funnel.

Virtually every customer we were able to talk to told us they didn't realize they were sending in a lead and that they were just beginning their process.

We didn't sell a single one of their leads. They still tried to claim two. One was from a different source and the other was a co-buyer that we had to dig up to get a separate deal done.

As a BP store our pricing was always on the low end of the scale, so we should have had plenty of good leads if they were to be had.

In their only defense, we are in a pretty rural market, so it's possible we just weren't a good fit.

 

[ChrisR]

I found that as TC used their "algorithm" to determine which dealer in the area "had the best chance to close the leads" my closing ratio went down the drain. I went from having an amazing (and expensive) closing ratio, to garbage, the more they worked to adjust lead delivery.