TORONTO -

This week, TRADER Corp. revealed the winner of its 2015 Driven to Perform Contest, which debuted for the first time early last year and aimed to recognize the top performing dealer in Canada.

The company selected the honoree based on key performance metrics using the vAuto inventory management solution, including turn rate, average days in inventory, cost to market and price to market.

Receiving the award was Craig Dunn Motor City from Portage LaPrairie, Manitoba.

“We are excited to announce Craig Dunn Motor City as the winner of the 2015 Driven to Perform Contest,” said Robert Rath, vice president of business development at TRADER.

“When we compared their performance prior to using vAuto to where they are today, it’s really quite impressive to see the growth transition and efficiencies the product has created,” Rath continued.

The store, part of the Murray Group of dealerships, has been a vAuto subscriber for more than years and is located 100 kilometers outside of Winnipeg.

“I was surprised by the results (of vAuto). It’s absolutely the only reason I can remain competitive outside of major metro (Winnipeg), especially in today’s economy where there may be less consumer demand,” said Tyler Dunn, sales manager of Craig Dunn Motor City.

TRADER explained the dealership recognized their biggest challenge prior to using vAuto was the high cost of advertising inventory to attract customers outside of its local market. The company indicated store managers knew they needed to find more efficient ways to attract these customers in order to decrease their average days in inventory and increase their turn rates.

TRADER reiterated vAuto is the only inventory management solution on the market that integrates live local market data powered by autoTRADER.ca. With more than 8,500 dealerships subscribing to vAuto in North America, the solution can offer unique tools to help dealers make better and faster sourcing, appraising and pricing decisions.

“We needed a way to attract customers without spending thousands of dollars marketing every single unit,” Dunn said. “vAuto helped us realize that the only way to do this was to not only source the right vehicles that are in demand in our market, but to find the perfect price to market those vehicles right off the bat, even if it meant pricing our inventory lower than market average.”

Dunn admitted that while it did take some time to get a buy in from his team, vAuto has made a huge impact on his dealership performance, bringing in more and more customers from surrounding areas.

“Since using vAuto, we’ve improved our volume and gross per unit every year, the sales guys are happy, the customers are happy, and we continue to sell more cars,” Dunn said.

TRADER recently kicked off the second annual Driven to Perform Contest and invited all qualified dealerships to participate. The winning dealership will receive its current vAuto subscription free for 2017.

For more information and to sign up, go to this website.