2:06 pm, November 13, 2023
Identifying ways of boosting profit margins is part of a used car dealer’s stock-in-trade, but the opportunities for franchised dealers are few and far between.
This is how Jato’s Sales Link can help – and no, we’re not just talking about new ways of making a quick buck on aftersales products.
Jato has been providing the international automotive industry with market-leading knowledge and data since 1984. It works with the biggest carmakers in the business, and through association has been helping dealers since day one.
But now it wants to help franchised car dealers directly grow their businesses with its Sales Link insights tool.
‘We provide dealers with a market view of what’s going on around vehicle sales, transaction prices, auction uptake, discounts, and prices,’ explains Sales Link head of Sales Link, Paul Hilton, in the video at the top of this story.
‘We’re collecting that data from DMS feeds on behalf of a number of major dealer groups, so dealers can log on and then look at metrics around, for example, electric vehicles, the brands they sell or the brands they don’t sell.
‘The beauty of this is that’s it’s real and up to date data.’
Hilton continues: ‘There are lots of insights tools for used cars, but new cars is important too. When we look at the volume of new car sales today – and certainly the sorts of offers and discounts that are in the market – there’s a lot of data that dealers should be using to make better informed decisions.
‘Those decisions might be as simple as “Am I speccing the right options on vehicles compared to other dealers in the market?”. We’ve got all of the proprietary spec data, and we know all of those equipment options for OEMs; Sales Link combines all of those assets with the dealer’s own data as well as our market data to give real insight into what’s going on in the market.’
It’s not just vehicle options that the tool can drill down into, but also discounts and sales performance relative to the market. It can analyse thousands of transactions a month to identify the types of cars that are selling quickly.
And, of course, selling cars more quickly, understanding those market trends and identifying what discounts are being applied can result in a big boost to profit margins.
The tool is free to use and can be viewed separately or be plugged into a dealer’s DMS so it can be compared to the dealer’s existing data and be analysed.
Elsewhere in the video, Hilton explains in detail the challenges dealers face with OEMs sometimes offering fewer trim choices and options post-Covid, and the innovations Jato is currently working on and products it intends to roll out in the near future.
Click the video at the top of this story to watch the full interview and to find out more about Sales Link click here
