TradePending

If you want to know which way the world is headed in automotive, one great source is to pay attention to the publicly traded dealer groups. You know what they’re saying? They’re all emphasizing service and their fixed operations. Reading through the quarterly reports from Penske, Asbury, Group 1, Sonic Automotive, and Lithia reveal that they’re all giving their service departments some love as inventory supply continues to increase and consumers hold on to cars longer. This focus takes a few different forms. Penske upgraded their loaner fleet to bring the reservation wait time down from 14 days to 7, bringing service business in faster. They saw an increase of $34M in service and parts gross profit year over year. Group 1 and Sonic are adding more techs to get more utilization from their existing service bays. Asbury is getting more aggressive vehicle acquisition because they want that internal service business. So what does this mean for all of the privately held dealerships? At the simplest level you can follow their lead, and look for ways to increase your service business. One of the easiest ways to do that is to actually market your service offers. Yes, advertise your service department! Let people know what you offer, how much it costs, and the perks of doing business with you(think time savings, OEM certified techs, video inspections). If you need help turning your website into a service marketing machine that displays those offers clearly and designed nicely, and keeps the offer prices up-to-date across your marketing channels automatically, we can help. #TPTV

Jim Taylor, Internet Sales Director at Capital Toyota, has spent almost his entire career in automotive and held just about every position in the dealership. He’s seen it all, but sometimes fresh eyes opens up new possibilities, and $$$.

It's time for another edition of The Bird's Word, the least boring automotive software company newsletter around.

It's that time again! Celebrating all of our July TradePending anniversaries. Jaime Blalock

TradePending is proud to be a Corporate Sponsor of The Hourglass Foundation, a 501(c)3 Nonprofit Organization and AFLA’s 2024 Charity of the Year! Together, we are helping underserved students through scholarship opportunities that support educational pursuits in automotive tech.

What do you think is the most important part of making a car sale? (If you had to pick ONE)

Hear TradePending's fixed ops master, 🌜Owen Moon🌛, in a new UnJaded by Autotrader episode. He shares both "the how" and "the why" for today’s dealers for expanding their fixed ops marketing strategy as they close out the second half of this year to best showcase their services and drive more revenue. Watch it here: https://lnkd.in/enXCKEDp?

The amount of lease returns coming in over the next few years will be down substantially, which means that the amount of highly profitable Certified Pre-Owned vehicles available will also be down, which means if you haven’t started exercising that inventory sourcing muscle, there’s no better time to start than now. Just like that summertime cold that seems to last 3 weeks and you just can’t shake, the impact of fewer lease returns is going to keep perpetuating that pandemic hangover a few more years. Here’s what happened. Inventory shortages, coupled with rising rates, fewer incentives, and customers with more cash in their pockets made leasing a lot less attractive. Fast forward a few years later to right now and what used to be millions of leased vehicles returned every quarter plummets down to the 500,000s. Automotive News is the source here, and a wealth of information for this data. Three year old off-lease vehicles are wicked profitable for dealerships. They’ve got great margins, sell fast, and result in service revenue from inspection and recondition. They make up the foundation of the used car market, and a massive chunk of them no longer exist. Like Keyser Soze from the movie Usual Suspsects…poof…they’re gone. My hypothesis is that the consumers that loved getting that new car every three years still love getting that new car every 3 years. That consumer behavior, that mentality, hasn’t really changed. With this impending CPO drought comes a phenomenal opportunity for those who can see it and seek it out: Get really, really good at sourcing those 2,3,4 year old vehicles back from your previous customers. Market to your customers, repeatedly, to let them know that you’re still eager to acquire their car, and know that you can make trading in their vehicle for a new simple, easy, efficient, and pleasant, so that they can get back into that new ride, just like they’re used to.

Huge congrats to Ariana Pisano, ICOM AI, who won TradePending's YETI raffle at the Orlando Parts and Service Conference! 🎊

Imagine the A.C. in your car broke right now. How much are you willing to pay to fix it? We asked our friends, now it's your turn.