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the customer is saying he doesn't trust you,for me that's it ,i wouldn't want the sale

Yep I think you've escaped one there.....I'd happily let a customer see my technicians plug one in and explain if/what any codes mean. I fell out with a customer at the weekend who came to look at a BMW 3 series and while the car was running removed the oil cap, which then led to oil spitting out and the car running rough (like most BMW's do if you remove the cap while running) and him commenting how it must be over filled with oil and he wouldn't buy a dodgy car!! In the politest way I told him to do one and never come look at one of my cars again.

I know I posted this is Twitter Car Dealers but I want a broader audience. So in short; this is how I use autotrader: 1) Buying stock from auction with the stock profiler in autotrade mail. 2) Pricing stock using retail checker. 3) Valuing part exchanges with retail checker. 4) Creating adverts. 5) Printing sales flyers. 6) Generating leads. This costs around £1200 every 4 weeks. I really find the pricing useful and allows me to buy stock in the first plce to still be able to use their retail prices which I find really does work well and helps with stock turnover. What I want to do is knock AT on the head completely and source each of the above elsewhere. It will be a little more work but should be worth the £14,400 annual saving. So I would like help on the following replacements: 1) Does anyone use the stock profiler in autotrade mail as a stand alone product or are there other alternatives out there? 2) I have considered Glass radar as this will do the same sort of thing but at the moment AT's retail checker is quite good. Does anyone else have experience of Glass's radar or it's accuracy? 3) What is the best way to value a part exchange. I always sell my part exchanges and never auction so I am guessing with the help of Glass' radar (if it is any good) then that is my best bet. 4 & 5) I would use Motor's portal if I ditched AT, do you know if you can do flyers from there? 6) Motors generates the most leads by far already for me, far more than AT so this has never been an issue. I am am expecting sales to drop slightly if I did decide to do this but I wont ever have the financial burden of the AT bill and I wont find myself having to budget through tough times. I would have the extra advertising budget for facbook and local papers that surprisingly also work well for me. This has been playing on my mind for a while now and it is a huge step for me as I am only a 23 year old one man band, so I would really appreciate any thoughts at all. Even if it is on just one of the above subjects. Any feedback would be incredibly useful.

Rory, based in Cheshire. www.rscarsales.com

www.tridentvehiclesales.co.uk Happy to share, any thoughts on our site would be gratefully received, good or bad, we all need support...