Autotrader To Your Forecourt!

You’re reading this as you want to find new ways to buy great stock for your forecourt, AND enhance the power of your current sources of stock.

I started my automotive career as a ‘Trainee Vehicle Broker’ and have continued my journey in the buying segment of the industry!

I have been in your shoes of needing to find the right stock, finding sources and platforms where I can create a good volume of stock consistently.

Now more than ever, finding the balance of great stock and volume is extremely tough. I may be bias, but I think the hardest part of the job is the buying! A car is worth what it is worth on Autotrader, and they even grade your pricing with a marker showing you how good your pricing is. The challenge and the profit margins come from how well you can buy your stock!

This year I will be exploring different avenues of buying stock and what my personal experiences and thoughts are on them, but for today I will be starting with Autotrader!

In my opinion and experience, for the last 6 years in particular, buying privately owned vehicles is by far the best way to buy stock.

Before any money leaves your bank account you are able to find out the story behind the car, hear the customers journey with the car and their motives for selling, test drive, inspect the car cosmetically, run a diagnostics if you are able and then either buy the car, negotiate the price or walk away from a potential problem.

You can’t buy vehicles like this from any other source, whether it be trade to trade or auction.

In more recent times

Over the last twelve to eighteen months, speaking to customers on Autotrader daily I have noticed a shift in the volume of calls they are receiving on the cars that they are advertising.

Once I have built the relationship with the customer and gained their trust we move on to price. This is where I have seen the biggest change. I’m usually greeted with a response to my offer with “I’m sorry, I can’t accept that as X have offered me this”.

The X they were referring to was the usual suspects, We Buy Any Car, Money4Your Motors, and the last couple of years Motorway have entered into that conversation (even though they don’t buy cars haha).

Now fast forward to today and ‘X’ has multiplied ten fold and i’m hearing that Andrew Motors have offered me this and Sally Specialist Cars have offered me that. A positive for me is that they are smaller companies and don’t have the infrastructure to buy privately. I receive call backs regularly asking if my offer is still valid as Andrew didn’t turn up, and when Sally arrived they tried to knock me down on price.

Buying privately, in my opinion is the absolute best way to buy stock, but you need to think about it very carefully.

Let’s start by looking at the potential marketplace on Autotrader! While i’m sat here writing this I want to throw some numbers at you…

Today

• There are 450,543 vehicles advertised on Autotrader.

• 51,879 of those cars are advertised by private sellers.

• Excluding CAT cars leaves you with 44,504 vehicles available

That’s right, 44,504 vehicles listed for sale, by private individuals, available to buy!

Now we have our database of customers, what next?

Finding the right cars that meet your profile of stock

If you have an account with Autotrader you will have access to Dealer Portal. This is where you can use their filters to narrow down the 44,504 vehicles to give you a list of cars that you can target. You can use filters to narrow down the age of the vehicle, include a mileage cap of say ‘up to 80,000 miles’, maximum distance you’re prepared to travel, select fuel types or for example if you didn’t want to buy EV’s you could exclude them, and lastly price so if you only sold sub £10k stock you could filter this.

Don’t underestimate this challenge! Once you’ve filtered down your stock even more you then have to call them to buy their cars and this is not easy. We have a team of buyers in the office and it’s very rare that you call a customer and on the first call agree to buy their car. You have to build up a pipeline of customers that you are actively speaking to and it may take a few days to finally buy their car. Each day you will be adding new customers to your pipeline and following up customers you’ve already been speaking to. Depending on the size of your site and how many cars you stock this is a full time job role for at least one person, or a small team if you have a sizeable operation!

Negotiating price

This can be challenging and a lot of back and forth. Many sellers have unrealistic price expectations.

Again, the time spent on negotiations depends on the size of your operation and how you want to handle the pricing. Are you happy to let your buyer, or team of buyers handle the negotiations, or if you’re a Director of a small independent dealership do you want to have the final say on price? This can all contribute to the length of the negotiation and the back and forth. When your buyer puts the phone down to the customer there will be someone else calling them (Trust me!).

Appraising the vehicle

So luck is on your side, you’ve agreed a price verbally and you’ve arrived at the customers house to buy their car. The car hasn’t been sold to another dealer that’s offered £100 more and you’ve not made a wasted journey. This happens if you don’t commit the customer in the right way. Now it’s time to test drive the car and appraise the vehicle cosmetically.

The process I have with my tightly knit team is a 20 minute test drive, a full inspection of the vehicle inside and out, plug the car in for any fault codes, photos of any damage and a video walk round. My appraisers compile all of this into a WhatsApp message, I will review it and then call my appraiser to discuss the car in depth.

More often than not there has been something missed, whether the customer has kept it from me or just through lack of education of what to look for it’s been missed so there is a discussion and we agree the price. Everyone is different when it comes to preparation but I try to be lenient with soft preparation and only really focus on the severe damage or issues if they arise.

Documents

You’re in luck and it’s going well. The car meets your criteria and you agree to buy the vehicle. Now it’s time to handle the paperwork and the legalities of the sale. This is where we look at photographic ID, v5 documents, service history, finance settlement letters, obtain bank details, authority to sell if selling on behalf of someone else, the transfer of ownership in to trade.

Payment

Now it’s time to pay for the car. Does the buyer have access to the bank? Does everything need to be sent to the accounts department? Is the Director of the business wanting control of the payment. However you’re going to pay for the car, will you have someone available right at that moment to complete the payment instantly and send proofs to the customer that you have settled the finance? If not then it can delay proceedings, and trust me when I say this, most customers will not let you leave until they see either the funds cleared in their account or some sort of email proof that their finance has been settled. It may seem like a simple task but depending on the volume of cars you buy it can be a job in itself paying for cars.

SUMMARY

If you are thinking of buying directly from the public you must consider everything i’ve mentioned in this email. It sounds very easy, but to be successful buying stock like this you have to carefully consider every aspect of the process. If there is one break in the chain then it could jeopardise the whole process.

Consider the cost of having a buyer, or team of buyers. The cost of hiring appraisers. The cost to travel the country whether by car or by train and public transport. The cost of failed purchases if you were to go out to a vehicle that was just beyond repair or you arrive and it’s sold. The time involved and the process being in sync. Can your operation support this.

Another option would be to outsource the process, or even part of the process. For example, you may have someone that you trust to buy the stock but you need to outsource the collection/appraisal element. You may have a mechanic that can appraise the vehicles but don’t have anyone with the time that goes in to finding and buying the stock. You could outsource this element of the process.

How can we help?

• We have a team of buyers speaking with customers on Autotrader daily!

• We have a team of appraisers out on the road all over the country!

• We have experience of handling this process from start to finish!

If you want a chat to discuss this in further detail then reply to this email and I would be happy to give you a call. We could even be the people you outsource this process, or part of this process to.

I hope this has been worth the read. I just want to share my experiences with you and if it helps just one of you I will be over the moon. I know when you find a good source of stock you want to wrap your arms around it and not let anyone else see it but I just think if we work together we can all benefit in 2024 with some great stock on our forecourts!

Let me know any pain points you may have when it comes to buying stock. I’m sure I will be able to relate to most of them and could tailor a newsletter to answering it in more depth in a future edition of ‘Used Vehicle Stock’.

Until next time!