RH Trading

Cards all day long for smaller amounts and deposits then bank transfer for the rest, use a Barclays terminal and its quick and never had a problem, don't handle a lot of cash these days which is how I like it. I've nothing against cash but I do think it makes you more credible and trustworthy if you offer card facilities in buyers eyes

Yes, works for us, we stock anything between £4k up to £20k. tried everyone else and whilst they're all so much cheaper, you get what you pay for, no one else comes close for us

There are plenty of website and dms providers out there and it all depends on what you want from it. You can pay silly money for an all singing and dancing website that you don't really need. Cardealer5, Spidersnet, GForces, AA websites, Autoexposure, Autoweb. I looked at quite a few before I settled on Clickdealer a few years back when I swapped over from an old autoexposure site, for me it does what I need, decent quality site, mobile, finance and deposit system, backend dms is pretty good, stock feeds etc. Team used to be fantastic but think they've grown very quickly and whilst OK, service has dropped a little, takes a bit longer to get things done than used to would be my only slight negative best to have a shop around and compare what you get for the money and what you want from it, difference in costs can be quite huge, and some will charge you for every little change once you've signed it off so make sure you see a menu of running costs

I think as long as you measure what you're getting out for what you're putting in that's the main thing. different websites work for different dealers, different price points, different profiles, we've all got different business models and what works for one doesn't for some. I religiously pour over my advertising bill and match it with my CRM to measure not just leads but the gross and net profit per sale from that advertising. If the figure is a minus I drop that website after 3 months after which I've given it a good crack of the whip. I then move that spend into what is working. Currently at this moment in time its the autotrader. For February it generated 80% of my sales, sold cars to Totnes, Bournemouth, Sunderland, Dundee, all over the place where people wouldn't have found me as I don't use anyone else. for what I'm spending and the profit of those sales its well worth doing for me but each to their own. when that starts to drop I'll look elsewhere but until then I'm happy, have tried Carguru's (lots of leads no sales) tried ebay (lots of leads, lots of timewasters, lots of ridiculous offers, 1 sale after 3 months) have tried motors (zero both) and have tried Facebook (lots of leads, lots of timewasters, no sales) I stock 35-40 cars priced around £4k-£20k max nothing heavy, all makes. measure the profit you get from the sales you get from your advertising - I'd happily pay more for 1 quality lead than 100 shite ones

Just rang my rep and he doesn't know anything about 0.79p when I mentioned it, says its part of the increase this year. completely free unlimited checks, I don't get spec check but I paid extra for that anyway when I used it. my increase is £238 a month for my 35 cars but I'll be saving £220 from dropping HPi plus I'll be able to do more of them, getting text chats as well, no brainer for me but check with your rep, might be cost neutral or even cheaper if you can bin off hpi, anyone know if if hpi tie you into a contract? cant find any paperwork

this is from my Autotrader advert - exact same thing I think Mark

spoke to Marvin my rep last night and everyone regardless of contract will be able to have the full vehicle check, unlimted checks, its part of this years rate increase and not charged per check apparently. The ebay free one is the same 5 basic background checks that we currently get free also on the autotrader not the full HPi report. (Stolen/Scrapped/Cat C,D,S,N/Imported/exported) .

Looked into the vehicle check thing on the Autotrader, currently use HPi and pay £2.75 per check, last months bill was £220. wouldn't entertain eBay as tried it before and didn't work for me, with zip sales so technically I'd just be paying eBay to get free checks. beauty of the autotrader checks is they'll appear on all of my adverts, something I cant get using anybody else , that for me is worth it. also my rep told me I have UNLIMITED checks! so I'd probably do more checks every week, the fact that it'll save me £200 a month is bonus. anybody else told its unlimited vehicle checks with the autotrader? surely that cant be right? is Cargurus worth trying? they keep ringing me with different offers every month and slowly getting tempted.

January we delivered 3 to Scotland,1 to Brighton and 2 to Devon/Cornwall on transports. We offer nationwide delivery for a small charge but deposits and finance apps where completely online without seeing them. One of them I didn't even speak to. Great on one hand as these hardly ever want to chip on price, on the other hand as I also run a service centre its a one hit wonder, doubt I'll ever get any other business from them and don't get a part ex so this is a double edged sword. Think its me being old school here but personally would prefer to see the customer, notice its younger people who are more confident in buying purely online. don't think its anything new, we've sold online without seeing the customer for at least 5 years, just doing more and more

I agree with Nick, I keep saying you've got to measure it. If it works and you make profit from your advertising then its an investment not a cost. whatever you choose you've got to make sure it works, for me nothing comes close to generating the total return and profit that I get from the Autotrader sales, and over the years I've tried most of them, I have call monitoring, Google analytics and different tracking numbers on everything, I don't just rely on asking people "How did you find us?" most recently last year, I tried cargurus and finandfundmycar.com - sales from those 2 websites in 3 months = 1, total cost £2,150. In same period my AT package cost me £10,500. but I sold 78 cars directly from them in those 3 months, so who is the most expensive? Doesn't work for everyone, but if you have the right cars, priced right and advertised well with great images then cant see why it wouldn't work

Fair play looks great AD, Good luck with it and keep us updated, will be interested to read the outcome on this one

On sold stock its easy, play around with the price until you get a "Great price" marker - I've found I get more interest on these cars than any other price marker. As Nicks sold the car already it doesn't matter, reflects on all his other cars. its a neat idea

Workshop very busy, no slots left till third week in Jan now so fantastic as that keeps me going if ever sales are quiet. 4 away so far from 30 advertised with another 2 pending finance, plenty of phone calls and emails. Last December did 31 from 34 stock so fingers crossed might be looking at similar numbers

They've done double up offers for about 13 weeks every year for as long as I can remember, no good to me though as I have all my stock advertised all year long, as I see it if its not online its not for sale but I cant benefit from the offer as I don't have and physically cant stock any more cars. I get it its a great incentive to put more cars on and why wouldn't you as a dealer as it makes your overall package cheaper if you can squeeze an extra 10-12 sales out of it over the period for free its fantastic, January is always a bumper sales time for us so they do it at the right time, just incentivises people who cant benefit from it to keep sold cars on as Nick says above. I did get a sale though yesterday, some enquired about a Qashqui Id sold but kept on the autotrader and managed to switch them into a Juke. swings and roundabouts I suppose

Great idea, as the above says levels the playing field, anything that can crack down on misleading adverts and tries to get rid of the less than reputable dealers is welcome

Congrats Rory, very well done Sir. Everyone would love an award and the kudos it gives you with customers, so hats off to everyone. Am looking at entering for one of these next year if possible, always been a bit reticent about blowing our own trumpet but Rory's correct, you've got to be in it to win it, and my service team really deserve a shout out There's another one coming up, the auto industry excellence awards - does anyone know anything about it? are they worth entering? I think a lady from there rang a few weeks ago to ask us to enter but it sounded expensive? and any idea how to enter the autotrader awards? is this worth winning do you think? Advice very welcome gentleman

I used to pay £800 for a half page (24 cars with 1 photo each) in Midlands AT 20 years ago, about a third of the cars would be sold by the time the mag came out on the Friday but still sold around 8-10 a week from it. Used the Top Marks mag as well to sell the odd classic in the day, worked really well. Now its costing around me around £4k a month but we go nationally and sell around 35 a month from it so not much has changed I guess. I advertise every single one of my cars every week, if its not on the autotrader in my mind its not for sale, I keep a close eye on every penny I spend on my advertising and it works for me, however when double your stock comes along I don't benefit from it, so don't think that's entirely fair. Jan is always one of my best months on the autotrader, followed by March so I'll be trying to buy as much as possible when it goes quiet in Dec but no idea where I'm going to put them

Agree with everything on here, sold an A3 convertible last week for decent margin that I've had in for about 3 weeks, daily cost for me was £9, don't sit on stock, try and work out what you're daily cost to stock is, rent, rates, wages, depreciation, advertising, overheads etc spread out across all your stock and you'll soon understand the need to turn as quick as possible

I was reading the forum with my 5 year old son who afterwards said to me "Daddy can't mummy eat a Man-size pasty?" I said of course not Pasties are strictly for real men only ! And also, due to your mum putting on a bit of timber lately she needs to stay well clear of pork related pastries and stick to salad, otherwise I'm off. We laughed

I think there's a deeper play here, Cox own autotrader.com, they've deep enough pockets to buy autotrader.co.uk, they bought motors and tried to make it work but failed miserably. Cox and autotrader are working together on dealer auction and autotradermail. I reckon they'll be lining up a bid for it very soon. eBay and Gumtree never worked for me except for selling a few very cheap trade ins a few years ago, couldn't make it work selling the volume I needed for my main stock. Motors is very cheap and the reps rings every other month with a free offer so might try it again if they up their game or offer something new.

This question is like asking do people like Films? good films - yes, bad films - no, Do videos help sell cars? for my money Good quality videos, nice commentary selling yourself as Rory says and why they should buy from you, and not just a walk round help to sell cars or at the least make the sale easier and quicker. People can walk round any of these cars in their local Tesco car park,- turn on the sat nav, have the lights on, turn the engine on and let them see the dashboard, open the boot, point out key selling features and keep it short and I've found they help me convert and get people from further afield willing to travel. I'm not sure I've sold more cars, but I do know that people are quicker to buy and less likely to want to chip me when they've watched one of my videos. My local VW dealer puts a film up of every one of their cars and its the same bob basic walk round with backing music, on every single car and its not the best HD quality and for me that would put me off. you don't need to spend loads of time and money and always have loads of good quality images for the people that prefer to view adverts that way - that just me though, each to their own

So you've worked out exactly which one is providing the best ROI? cheapest as we know isn't best. I'm religious about knowing exactly where the sale came from and I don't mean just asking people, work out the net profit made from each sale. I'm with EPV, if its working for you then what are you hoping to achieve by changing it? shift money from the poorest performer to your best to get better return but understand exactly what website produces what profit is my tuppence worth.

Love videos, usually do a commentary over most of them and keep them to around 90 seconds, I too hate the sound of my own voice and try to get my daughter to do some of them when she's got time, they do get commented on and strongly believe it builds up trust rather than just music but I guess its personal preference. my website guy says the stats are different due to it only counting the autotrader or anywhere else you have it embedded as the referrer so I do get 30-40 views on a car in my autotrader portal but that might only count as 1 on the youtube

Stock 40 cars, from January this year been selling consistently around 32 per month on average sales from AT around 25 per month

That sounds expensive! that will also include putting your stock on the AutoTrader which you'll need to do anyway. I have a Click Dealer site and moved away from the autotrader razor one about 4 years ago. Click Dealer is great, loads of functionality but I still need all my cars on the autotrader. You can pay a fortune for the best website in the world but if no one visits it, its not worth a penny, you might as well stick a postcard in the local newsagents shop window. you're paying for the audience that'll see your cars, Looking right now at August website traffic from my google analysis tool and website tracker I see 91% of the people that came to my website where as an autotrader referral apparently, 7% from google and the rest came direct. looking at the cars sold 85% came as a result of finding my car on the autotrader - that to me isn't an expense, its an investment, as EPV says above, spend money on marketing but measure it and make sure it works. I used to spend around £6000 a month back in the 90's for the midlands autotrader, and about 3 other local newspapers, and only if I asked did I know where a sale came from. now I spend about half of that because being online means I can see exactly what's working and get rid of what isn't, its only expensive if it doesn't work. many people on here get by fine without them but for me I need to be on the biggest and best generator of sales. whatever you choose to decide P118 make sure you measure your return, sales and net profit and make every penny work hard for you. Jobs hard enough without throwing money away Theres another thread on here on findandfundmycar, they charged me £2000 earlier this year to get on their website which returned me zero, in same time I was on the autotrader which cost me £8000 but resulted in nearly 90 sales - which was the most expensive?