Shared Used Car Inventory! Who should get the lead?

[Rick Buffkin]

Curious of your thoughts. Who should get the lead when it comes to shared used car inventory?? Hypothetically, If you have shared used car inventory on your websites (used cars that actually lives at a sister / brother store) across multiple stores within the same geo area, If a visitor submits an inquiry/lead on a shared used vehicle, should the inquiry/lead go to the dealership that owns the site the customer found the car on, or... should the inquiry/lead go to the dealership where the car lives (the sister/brother store)?

Very curious to hear your thoughts!

 

[Ryan Everson]

Here's what we do:

On a group site - the lead should go to the dealership where the car is located
On an individual dealer site - the lead should go to that individual dealership, regardless of where the car is located

 

[Dan Sayer]

Curious of your thoughts. Who should get the lead when it comes to shared used car inventory?? Hypothetically, If you have shared used car inventory on your websites (used cars that actually lives at a sister / brother store) across multiple stores within the same geo area, If a visitor submits an inquiry/lead on a shared used vehicle, should the inquiry/lead go to the dealership that owns the site the customer found the car on, or... should the inquiry/lead go to the dealership where the car lives (the sister/brother store)?

Very curious to hear your thoughts!

What a tangled web we weave! We have three tiers of sites:

Group
Market
Store

All sites show all Used inventory for all stores. I know, I know. The Group site, which we don't direct much traffic to these days, will allow a shopper from any market to choose to see any car at any store.

The Market sites, which have the highest traffic, allow a shopper to send the lead to any store within that market regardless of where the car is (even outside of market). For instance:



The Store sites allow a shopper to select any vehicle from any store but obviously that lead will only go to that store.

This strategy has proven very difficult for third parties, like Gubagoo and their VR team. Chad, who you know @Ryan Everson, had to help them and every other DR company figure it out.

It has proven to work pretty well. We are constantly running units from market to market and across towns BUT the customer is king!

 

[csabatka1]

I'll follow up with @Dan Sayer said because I helped design and develop that strategy when I was still at that dealer group and continue to do so.

The whole process should be about the customer, not the dealership. If you really want a customer to have a great experience, they should pick their store of choice. The dealership should have processes in place to make sure that car is transferred to the store the customer wants. The shared inventory allows all stores to have a much bigger selection. We run an 100% custom website so we could develop this in any way we wanted.

The biggest problem you'll run into is 3rd party plugins, specifically VR tools. Everyone we talked to developed those to work on a store level without shared inventory. So leads were routed to where the vehicle was located. Since everyone and their sisters were trying to install VR last year it was a nightmare trying to get someone to customize lead routing.

I did find a really easy work around with the Gubagoo VR scripts that we have in place on Dan's market and group sites.

I'll have to look at the numbers again, but there is a large percentage of leads who come in on vehicles not located at that particular store.

 

[ChrisR]

Here's what we do:

On a group site - the lead should go to the dealership where the car is located
On an individual dealer site - the lead should go to that individual dealership, regardless of where the car is located

That's how I did it in the past, as well.

 

[Rick Buffkin]

Thank you guys for your input on this. It's all invaluable information and very much appreciated. Our current setup is that we send the lead to the store where the car lives. We've been doing it this way for a long time. I can't remember the exact reason why it was done this way and the question was posed to me a couple days ago. We will probably be changing this process to more in-line with what you guys are doing.

 

[csabatka1]

Thank you guys for your input on this. It's all invaluable information and very much appreciated. Our current setup is that we send the lead to the store where the car lives. We've been doing it this way for a long time. I can't remember the exact reason why it was done this way and the question was posed to me a couple days ago. We will probably be changing this process to more in-line with what you guys are doing.

If you adopt it, it must be strictly enforced from the top. Early days a couple of the dealerships were resistant to shared inventory and vehicles were gamed from being traded among the group. The two most popular methods were recon ROs were left open to make it look like it was still in recon process and it was actually sitting on the lot and fake appointments were set or leads were created then deleted to make it look like someone was coming to the dealership to look at it.

 

[Marc Lavoie]

Here's what we do:

On a group site - the lead should go to the dealership where the car is located
On an individual dealer site - the lead should go to that individual dealership, regardless of where the car is located

That has to be the simplest and most manageable in terms of HR solution.

 

[loris]

Our leads, no matter the site, go to the store the vehicle is located.
This was put in place before I started at the dealership.

I always thought that if the customer is coming to your store's specific site then that is the store that should get the lead.

 

[Dan Sayer]

Our leads, no matter the site, go to the store the vehicle is located.
This was put in place before I started at the dealership.

I always thought that if the customer is coming to your store's specific site then that is the store that should get the lead.

Read my post from March 19th. Yes, if someone shops on "Bob's Used Car Emporium on 1st and A Street .com" the lead would go to that store. If someone shops on "All of Bob's Used Car Emporiums in Cincinnati .com" then the shopper should be able to select which store in Cincinnati they want to see the car. If someone shops on "The Entire Bob's Used Car Emporiums in the Galaxy .com" then the shopper should be able to select any store in Ohio or the world they want to see the car at. If a dealer shares inventory across stores, that would be our solution. Obviously, a dealer can silo each lot to its own inventory but we defer to the shopper preference and run vehicles back and forth. Customer wins and each of our stores win as they now can sell from 1000 units vs a fraction of that.