3 Vehicle Wholesaling Best Practices for Quicker Sourcing
Our guide will take you through our top three vehicle wholesaling best practices for quicker sourcing: using automotive sales data insights for effective inventory management, taking advantage of the right products and features, and putting your best foot forward. By concentrating on these three things, you can enhance your work flow speed and drive your competitive edge forward.
Using Automotive Sales Data Insights for Effective Inventory Management
In this day and age, data insights are currency — and leveraging the right data insights are critical to maintaining a healthy level of inventory. The market can change daily, and prices can fluctuate. For example, you can be losing cars because of underbidding and not even know it. An easy way you can use data to get ahead of this is through market pricing guides to help ensure you’re not underbidding (or overpaying).
One example of this is OPENLANE’s Market Guide, which you can learn more about by clicking this link. Our guide is one of the few made specifically for car dealers — but there are a variety of pricing guides out there that you can choose from.
Another easy way to gather insights is to check with your frequent wholesale partners. Your partners will often have access to resources like trend and export reports, both of which can help provide you market context and impact your sourcing strategies.
Lastly, it can be beneficial to keep up with industry publications — Auto Remarketing Canada and Automotive News Canada are two examples. They will frequently supply readers with new market data, and insights from the data. These takeaways can help with your bidding strategy, forecasting and stock requirement predictions. By looking into automotive sales data insights and trends, you can also see which vehicles are most in demand. With this information, you may decide that you’re willing to bid a bit higher than usual to secure the deal and get the right inventory on your lot.
These three methods are true and trusted vehicle wholesaling best practice. If you don’t already integrate them into your business, test them out and see how they impact your business.
Taking advantage of the right products and features
The next best practice to help you source inventory quicker is taking advantage of the right products and features. What do we mean by that? We’re talking about features that give you greater efficiency and speed in your vehicle wholesale workflow.
One example of this is placing Proxy bids — a feature that you can find in our 45-minute auctions. This feature will let you set up your starting bids ahead of a sale, while letting you cap the final bid at whatever price you want. This can be very helpful if you’re a dealer that wholesales vehicles on multiple screens. Let’s say you focus on one sale, and unintentionally lose out on a different one. Proxy bids can be very handy in these types of situations. For OPENLANE’s Simulcast sales, an Auto Bid serves as the equivalent of a Proxy Bid, offering many of the same benefits.
Another example is using OPENLANE’s 45-minute auctions “Floor Price Met” filter. This filter highlights only vehicles where the bidding has met the floor price, ensuring the vehicles will go to closing.
Putting Your Best Foot Forward
When securing inventory, be very detail-oriented to ensure the best results. On a more micro level, there are two key elements that go into this: getting familiar with your partner’s policies, and making sure you’re thoroughly reviewing the vehicle’s details before committing to the buy.
For instance, many companies have AS-IS policies — so it is critical to make yourself familiar with those policies. Knowing the policies empowers you, while saving time and money on future arbitration attempts for non-arbitratable issues.
Next, make sure you’re paying close attention to the vehicle’s details. At OPENLANE, you can view this information in the vehicle details page for each vehicle. The AS-IS indicator is identified on this page in bright red, right below the images of the vehicle — just like in the image above.
Other vehicle information available on this page is anything safety-related and mechanical, as well as exterior information, tire and wheel condition, and any special notes from the seller.
By paying attention to the policies and a vehicle’s details, you’ll streamline your wholesale inventory acquisition, allowing you to secure vehicles faster and build a positive reputation.
Need more help?
If you need more personalized support for your dealership, reach out to us. If you’re already active with OPENLANE, your Sales Rep can guide you through best practices and review your current buying strategies.
For any questions, give us a call and one of our team members will be happy to help.
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