Finding Quality Used Vehicles in Your Service Drive

Find the used cars you need on your service drive, and sell some new cars, too!

Challenge

Find more good used vehicles to sell when the available supply is tight.

Overview

One underused source of vehicles for used-car inventory is the service drive. The customer is going to be at the dealership, and the vehicle is probably well-maintained.

One approach is to hang a sign in the Service write-up area listing specific vehicles that the dealership is looking for. Customers can ask about that sign, and Service Advisors can be trained to ask customers who are bringing in those vehicles if they would be interested in talking with a Salesperson about a trade-in.

Another approach is to assign a Salesperson to the Service write-up area every day during peak times. That Salesperson would approach owners of vehicles that are good candidates for trading in and attempt to interest the customer in an upgrade.

A third approach is to appraise all vehicles scheduled for Service that would be logical trade-in candidates. Every day, before close of business, the Used Car Manager gets the list of service appointments scheduled for the next day, with their VINs. For each of those vehicles, the Used Car Manager creates an appraisal that reflects current market conditions. He then documents that appraisal so that it can be shared with the customer in a way makes the customer feel good and consider trading in that vehicle.

The next day, the Used Car Manager or a Salesperson visits the service lane as customers are being written up. For each customer with an appointment, he hands them the appraisal, explains it to them, and invites them to consider replacing their vehicle. For customers who did not have an appointment, he offers to prepare an appraisal. Obviously, there has to be some wiggle room in this process to allow for vehicle issues that might require unusually high reconditioning expense.

Another approach is to staple an appraisal form or voucher to each R.O. at check-out, and have the cashier or Service Advisor explain to the customer what it is. The Used Car Manager or a Salesperson can then make a follow-up call to the customer to discuss a potential trade.

Some dealerships are using new tools that are designed to make these approaches easier. The attachment shows a sample “check” made out to the customer for their used car that reflects the appraised value and a sample Appraisal Summary. Those particular documents were created in vAuto, which has an appraisal module that enables the dealer to calculate an appraisal value based on current retail market data, reconditioning expense, and target gross profit.

Benefits

Dealers who use this process can expect to find several good used vehicles and to generate several extra vehicle sales each month on the service drive. That offers gross opportunities on both the newly-inventoried used vehicle and the vehicle that is sold to replace it. The attached video shows one Salesperson talking about a sale with trade-in he just made to a Service customer.

Since this program transfers some potential Service gross to the Sales department, there may need to be some arrangements between those departments so that it feels win-win to all involved.

Action Plan

1. Have the Used Car Manager, New Car Manager, and the Service Manager meet to figure out how this process should work, to minimize disruption but maximize success.
2. Develop the materials that the dealership will use. These could include signs listing “hot” vehicles, appraisal vouchers and summaries, and schedules for assigning Salespeople to the Service write-up area.
3. Start the process and evaluate the results.

If you have any questions, or would like to just talk about your situation, call 330.665.9469or email Steve Nickelsen