SAN DIEGO -
Dealers turned out in abundance for the CPO Forum that was held Monday and Tuesday at the San Diego Grand Hyatt.
Three top dealers took to the stage on the first day to discuss inventory management and how their businesses have found such success in a recession.
The dealers included Howard Hakes, of Hitchcock Automotive Group; Kevin Nachbar, of McCarthy Auto Group; and Craig Belowski, of Acton Toyota of Littleton.
Hakes uses AAX of DealerTrack, while Nachbar uses FirstLook and Belowski uses vAuto. All sang the praises of what inventory management systems are doing for their business.
Nachbar said his company uploads at least 14 photos online.
“You need a good, solid pertinent ad and you will start ranking higher and higher in search. The better job you do with ads, the higher they will show up,” noted Nachbar.
Hakes’ team uploads 14 to 18 vehicles per unit.
As for Belowski, he said his team starts with a baseline of 20 photos and then grows from there.
The key to selling used vehicles, according to all the men, is to build a portfolio on each vehicle. This can highlight if the vehicle is a one-owner Carfax, that it has been well-maintained and more.
Nachbar sends all the information he used to decide to buy the vehicle to his Internet team and expects them to use that to help sell the unit.
Another factor in finding success is ensuring the entire dealership team is on board from the general manager on down. The men stressed that everyone in the store needs to be on the bandwagon for the inventory management system to work.
Next to take the stage was Brian Benstock, who accepted the first ever Auto Remarketing CPO Dealer of the Year award. Benstock represents Paragon Honda and Paragon Acura. His store is the No. 1 Honda CPO dealer in the U.S.
Dale Pollak, of vAuto, who introduced Benstock, said he has learned a lot from this tough, brilliant New York native.
Last month alone, Benstock’s stores moved 256 Honda CPO units and 100 Acura CPO models.
According to Benstock, there are no business secrets, transparency is key.
“I don’t think enough people spend enough time on the acquisition part,” Benstock said.
In order to move so many CPO units, he said his stores have a dedicated sales team that works in the service department. When they identify a model that fits their inventory needs, the team buys that vehicle from the customer and then sells that individual a new vehicle. The used vehicle then can be certified and sold to another customer.
But with volumes so low at auctions, the team relies on tapping its database of customers to find strong certifiable candidates.
“We are weaning ourselves off auctions. We don’t want to be the one paying the most. We have a sales manager and four salespeople who work in the service department and that’s all they do,” he said.
As for reconditioning, Benstock said he has a service department devoted to working on these units. His goal is to get a unit available for sale within three days. He identifies the sweet spot — or the time frame where the most money can be gotten for a CPO model — at 15 days. So his team works as quickly as possible to get units reconditioned and ready for sale.
“We create an autobiography for every car. We include ad price and a copy of the ad. If the vehicle has never been hit, we include that. If it has been hit, we tell the customer. The key is to be honest and upfront about the vehicles you’re selling,” he said.
By building up a strong database of clients, the team can pull upon that for marketing purposes and identify models in that database that are certifiable and meet the stores’ inventory needs.
And he stressed that using your own store’s database is free.