Rory RSC

Max out at 50 cars stocked fully here have been retailing 40+ a month consistently but this month we are a little quieter. One of the problems I am finding it hard to buy nice stock at the moment just not seeing the bits I like to keep in at the auctions.

Stark contrast they are currently one of my top selling cars here that I always keep in and have in stock. Find estates generally sell quicker than hatchbacks. Would never buy saloon. I only buy titanium X models and titanium X sports 2.2 titanium X sports take good margin out of them.

Snap - loads lined up tomorrow.

Good idea IMO

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/110730973963?ul_noapp=true

£100 refundable holding deposits taken over the phone to secure viewing. Short term and will generally only take 24/48hr in advance. It has worked positively far more than negatively. Have only had to refund on a couple of occasions and its been no issue. If the car is what you say it is, it gives a bit of confidence for a buyer travelling a long distance and one of the biggest concerns over placing a deposit over the phone is they travel 200 miles to see the car with you and it's an absolute nail and the dealer is going to stand there saying no deposit back. Works for us and increased sales.

take his deposit and don't tel the other customers until this guy has viewed. sell loads of cars our end with holding deposits on them and they really work well for us.

You need one of the removal tools that has some really soft sockets you bash over them and then remove. about £100 we got it off snap on man but not a snap on part. Spare tips ebay. We we have started to take a picture of them at same time as photographing the car. Absolute pain and one of the worst things ever created.

Beast of an M4.

removed incorrect suggestion posted.

You really don't want to see my last A/T bill

I didn't realise it was loosely cars untaxed for 3months Umesh, seemed like pot luck for me as to what cars I was able to do.

£390 a month? Thats a lot .

My understanding is when you are on the free search customers see your cars but not location so you get a lot of enquiries. Once you pay you get less enquiries but you get more substantial ones which should convert better. Having just had a car guru trial unsure what to make of it at present. On the fence.

Good weekend here chunky stuff has been shifting.

I steer clear of minis every single one I have had has been nothing but trouble.

I buy 90% of my stock from manheim and have rarely encountered any issue with their site. Works fine for me. A bit of downtime in an evening for maintenance is fairly normal from time to time.

I pay more for them and they certainly sell for more in a lot of models. White BMWs and Audis are a good bet as are most cars I find.

Slowed down this back end of the month we were on fire at the start. Overall positive and healthy but still very unpredictable. Not seeing the same amount of stock available to buy in as this time last year either.

Thing with autotrader is that if you ever decide to leave they have all your reviews. It also generates even more data for them that can be sold to Zuto etc etc Whilst i I understand Google will also have all the data , rightly or wrongly, I don't feel quite as opposed to it. emails being sent out to all customers from this point on, let's hope some good comes of this.

Cheers for the input. Believe it or not Autotrader were advising me its best practice to get the customer to leave a review whilst sat in office at point of sale . Make of that what you will. I would feel exceptionally awkward doing that and I can see I am not alone. I think I will go with a follow up email 3-5 days after purchase to ensure the customer is happy with the new car and hopefully they can leave some feedback at that point. Great info on google reviews Sam, they are what I am going to be pushing more towards.

Hope you are all having a good weekend. How do you approach obtaining customer reviews and feedback? Do you openly request or ask for them? Do you sit back and wait for people to just do them ? I think I need to adopt a fresh approach here as the amount of customers that use them to influence the buying decision and say it was our reviews that swung it for them stresses the importance. Having an ipad in the office and asking them to leave a review whilst we do paperwork and how they have found the buying experience and one review a month wins £100 vouchers something like that is this to pushy / offensive ?

Disagree with Max there. When I first started out trading I had alternative sources of income and could fit my other work around selling cars. I did not need to take a penny from my car sales business allowing me to re invest and kick start the initial growth from the 1 -2-3 cars. After a while when the business was taking shape and I could see the future vision I decided to focus all of my time on the car sales and sold one business and closed another to take over the site with expanding car sales company. Quite handy to have alternative source of income to get off the ground so be good to keep fencing going.

You can't win can you. That is the technically correct way to use them as I understand it. The alternative is to shove them in the Windows which most police seem to moan about. I think the police have no idea which does not surprise me.