NickGCS

1. Actually it was plot - attention to detail 2. half cap clean was sarcasm- maybe over your head a litte 3. same applies to fortune references

Fuck me you pair, I’m giving the OP advice on going from a doorstepper to a pitch, something I’ve done recently over the past 10 years and have experience in. It’s my opinion that throwing this idea of lifting £1500 clean out every deal from a pitch is unreasonable on the type of cars he will need to buy with unit stocking. Your not going to get enough stocking off the back of no trading history to fit the type of business NICKMK has for example, therefore your not going to lift these outstanding profits on every deal. I’m delighted that you pair make a fortune from all your cars, people appear at your place to sell their cars for half cap clean. If your trying to tell OP that by moving and taking on unit stocking will achieve this then you are leading him up the garden path. imo of course. Jealous opinion too.

As I mentioned I am talking purely about margin - not commission or extras. If you can buy private at £1200 under cap clean then fair play, a braver man than me. The thought of running around the country and turning up and buying an £8k cash car off billy in his trackies gives me the fear. OP was asking for advice on a stocking loan and moving from a doorstepper to a pitch, in my opinion it’s an unfair reflection to mention £1500 as net when I would consider that gross if your running a pitch- you won’t have time to run around the country looking at private cars unless you employ someone to watch the pitch which will of course eat into your margin, your overheads will obviously be more, again eating into your margins, etc etc

£1500 net regularly across cars retailing under £10k I find hard to believe. There’s always the odd few but on a regular basis? You would need to be buying them incredibly cheap, or selling them way over retail! I’m purely talking margin here, no comm/add ons etc

i can only presume this talk of £1500 profits is gross?

I was trading from home for around 6 years, we moved to a pitch and got in toe with Nextgear for literally the same reason you are mentioning, as well as freeing up some capital for setting the pitch up. Now 3 years into the pitch and it’s the best thing we have done. We also rarely use nextgear any more, it is expensive on a per car basis but couldn’t have grown without them!

We bought a white Tiguan for cap average today..... starting to panic a bit

when customers FIRST question is - what’s the least you will take?

They are def over priced but a stick on for a 20 year old looking to get their first car on finance

2013/14 VW scirocco, 40-50k, 1.4 tsi or 2.0 diesel, GT, candy white, cap clean with usual prep, no major bodywork then it’s straight in and straight back out again, helped of course by a teaser photo on our beloved FB, sold before its arrived, usually with a tatty corsa or fiesta that we can trade on straight away for an extra couple hundred, and of course strapped up on finance

Completely agree, we point blank refuse to deal with cf247/zuto. If the customer is accepted through them, we can have them accepted through our own companies direct, and pick up a bit of commission. I’d lose a sale over giving them business. Just sign up direct to a couple of lenders and/or a broker offer the service “in house”. Makes the job look more professional and cuts out any other middlemen taking a piece of the ever reducing size of pie.

In our experience FB has provided us a great platform to promote our business, we are in a rural area too and it’s allowed us to build a following and awareness of our business, generate positive reviews, gain great reaches through boosted posts, and sell plenty of cars from. I can imagine the market place would probably be a waste of time, but that’s not the way to use it IMO. I wouldn’t be without it. Hate the new managers app though they need to revert it back to the old one!

Always managed without AT but it’s been a little slower this year as a whole so decided to bite the bullet! Tried all the rest and in all honesty probably spent just as much guessing elsewhere. We have 20ish in stock, have taken out 5+1 so doubled up we have 12 spaces, just rotate the stock and push the £99 a month motors on Facebook which works great for us. Only been on 2 weeks and not overwhelmed by responses but to be fair it’s november and it’s only been 2 weeks....

We have 4/5 lenders we can go directly to, and if we can’t get them picked up with one or 2 of them it goes off to the broker. I’d definitely recommend having a direct lender to maximise your commission, we’ve found Motonovo and Santander to offer the best return. We push it as much as we can, Facebook posts with examples, website calculators, online applications etc. Motonovo through Ivendi do a good self service application you can email to punters, which is good if you get a sniff of sub-prime or time waster. Never had any problems at all with them coming back. Unwound a couple deals because it was the right thing to do over the years but that was through the customer not the finance companies!

We often get stuff like that done grey, seems to help shifting them, bit different to the majority out there!

I quite like them, stack up okay on a pcp deal, never have much bother with them really. Had a couple 08-10 plates in px and they are usually goosed by then so would only touch newer ones for retail. 14/15/16 plates do okay for us!

Not a chance for this guy, he will be trouble! I hope some one else buys it and he rings back....

Had a cracker today Middle aged couple looking at our mini, wife was very pleasant, husband was a know it all. They had a nice low mileage MX-5 to part ex I (generously I thought) bid them £6k...... husband “hmmm we’ve been offered more than that from one of these car buying sites” No problem sir please take it there, get good money and you’re welcome to come back and buy mines! The humming and hawing continues for quite some time, meanwhile husband starts ringing around these WBAC-type places while the 3 of us are mid conversation, wife is mortified. “We will have a think about it” ”no problem at all thanks for coming out- if you don’t mind me asking, how much more have you been offered you for the Mazda?” ”£6,014” Incredible.

We use CAP too alongside this new “Cazana”, I was sceptical at first but they compliment each other very well. Cazana actually lists same spec vehicles for sale and the prices they are up for, allowing you to retail back/and compare against Cap figures to see what everyone else might be bidding!

We’ve recently started doing walk round videos on all our stock, We do prep properly but I’m not going around pointing out any minor imperfections. We treat it like you would as if the customer was there. I find it slightly cringe but if it sells cars I’m all in! Read this post a couple days ago and was staring to doubt if they are worth the time/effort - customer today comes in for our 65 plate outlander and as I start giving him the pitch.... “it’s okay mate I watched the video” quick test drive, finance sorted, collection tomorrow! Video camera back out Monday

Movex with higher rated companies or we have used cargoes as well with no complaints

Location and stock profile seem to be a big factor for dealers from similar topics I’ve read We have a stock of around 20 on a roadside pitch Personally I’ve found Autotrader to be an extremely expensive waste of time, gumtree was even worse - but at least it was only 1/5 of the price! We have had a lot of success from Facebook, we sponsor ads and update our page regularly, do competitions etc, you have to mix it with non-sales related posts too Which seems to keep customers following you. But for what we spend on there it easily outweighs any other platform! It’s obviously not an out and out selling platform though and that’s it’s only downfall (comments/lowball offers/idiots) I’d just love a motors/car gurus/F&F to deliver results for the price but none seem to work for us!

Our stock is up to 7 years, 70k max, mixture of everything, German, jap, down to Peugeot, Vauxhall ford etc mostly run of the mill but try and have a couple of more prestige cars too. A good idea for the radio upgrade too though especially with the first time cars! The margins are tighter and tighter and there’s good commissions to be made, really starting to feel the need to maximise the profit opportunity in every deal!

We do fixed pricing, 2x polite signs inside and outside the office stating this. Customers opening line - “we’re a cash buyer, no px, what can you knock off for us?” customers that make comments about our courtesy car “oh it’s a bit smaller than I’m used to”. Walk then. Same customers that don’t replace the fuel, or we had one recently that used it to cart his dog around (while we were doing a DPF regen and clean as goodwill) “oh great thanks for bringing it back with no fuel and I had nothing else to do tonight anyways, I’ll get George out and hoover up all your stinking dogs hair” Customers that want their shed px valued despite already admitting we don’t have what they are after. Same customer back 8 months later expecting the same DA or Sytner appraisals carried out by the apprentice coffee maker phoning 1 hour before arrival, to then arrive and be met with “it’s just at the compound”

Yeah he wouldn’t take them anyways but just got me thinking about adding extra profit to deals/value for our customers! Agreed the t&cs would be interesting tried uploading photos of the cover but won’t work- scratch/dent £270 1 yr, £367 2yrs, £477 3yrs quick scan through and scratches up to 3cm!!! Dents 30cm - only smart repairable /PDR stuff