vAuto Podcast

This webinar, “Don't Let Historic New Vehicle Troubles Haunt You Today” presented by Bethany Johnson and Alicia Rudowyj, gives you the tools to work smarter, not harder, in this new era of new vehicle incentives. Get best practices from top-performing dealers and the tools they use to help you accurately and efficiently apply the right incentives to the right vehicles faster.

In this vAuto podcast, Lee Segal, general sales manager at Rodland Toyota, Everett, WA, details how the dealership uses a blend of online and physical auctions to efficiently wholesale roughly 100 vehicles a month. Segal details how the dealership’s multi-channel wholesaling strategy strengthens the store’s ability to acquire vehicles from customers and feed their retail inventory. Segal also highlights wholesaling best practices he follows to build relationships and trust with buyers and deliver an optimal return for each vehicle they wholesale.

It’s a head-scratcher: Despite ample inventory and relatively strong demand, new vehicle sales aren’t living up to expectations. What gives? vAuto’s Derek Hansen and Chris Hanna provide answers and practical next steps in the Q3 edition of vAuto’s Live Market View. Get a quick view of how affordability, risk-averse lenders and more-difficult-to-manage incentives put the onus on dealers to move metal. Hear best practices to more effectively manage your new vehicle investments—all with an eye to help you capture a greater share of your market despite the headwinds.

In this vAuto podcast, vAuto Performance Managers Jim Tourigney and Patrick Wright detail best practices to help dealers avoid the five most-common merchandising missteps that result in used vehicles not moving when they should. From rethinking the role merchandising plays in your sales process to an over-emphasis on re-pricing rather than re-merchandising vehicles, Tourigney and Wright offer practical pointers to help dealers gain efficiency as they get more from their merchandising and related promotion efforts.

Bonus: The pair also distill key distinctions between merchandising new and used vehicles to better engage their respective buyers.

In this vAuto podcast, Scott Crompton, Marketing Manager for Victory Automotive Group and Dustin Corder, vAuto Performance Manager, share how they work together to help Victory drive success across its nearly 45 stores in 10 states.

Crompton details how Victory establishes operational guidelines and key performance indicators (KPIs) to ensure individual rooftops serve the broader group’s interests as they make vehicle acquisition, appraising and pricing decisions.

Crompton also outlines how he manages and measures the group’s marketing spend in traditional and digital channels to support individual rooftops and the Victory brand.

In this vAuto podcast, Alicia Rudowyj and Bethany Johnson, who work with vAuto’s new vehicle incentives and solutions teams, discuss how the new vehicle landscape has shifted to include a larger share of Vehicle Information Number (VIN)-specific incentives to help dealers move aged inventory.

Rudowyj and Johnson detail how the shift away from a one-size-fits-all approach to incentives by some OEMs creates pricing and inventory management challenges for dealers. Hear their recommendations on how dealers should assess each new vehicle’s risk profile—and the vehicle’s likelihood to receive an incentive—to ensure their pricing, merchandising and inventory management decisions should combine to connect with today’s affordability-minded new vehicle shoppers and buyers.

In this vAuto podcast, general manager Walt Kelsey of Kelsey Chevrolet, Greendale, IN, shares how he and his team engineered an impressive turnaround in their used vehicle department. In early 2024, Kelsey’s inventory had nearly twice as many vehicles in stock as they were selling, with more than 100 units over 60 days old and underwater. It was a post-pandemic, wake-up moment.

Kelsey outlines how he and his team attacked the distressed inventory, reasserted a more disciplined approach to pricing and appraising and faced significant financial pain as they put the department back on a money-making track. Kelsey’s experience and success offers a what-to-do roadmap for dealers who find themselves with an out-size share of distressed, over-age inventory.

In this vAuto podcast, dealer Mark McKie of McKie Ford Lincoln and Greg Plank, Senior Team Leader of dealership operations for vAuto’s Performance Management team, discuss some of the playbook principles McKie and his team enable to drive new and used vehicle success at the dealership.

McKie discusses his strategies for maintaining a tight turn on used vehicles that drives his dealership’s 1.5:1 used/new sales ratio. McKie also shares how he keeps his team focused on strategic objectives through daily management meetings and collective walks of fresh trades to finalize plans to get them retail-ready. On the new vehicle side, McKie outlines how he aims to optimize allocations and keep pace with changing incentives from his OEM partner.

In this vAuto podcast, Tim Hlavenka, national sales director for Rick Case Automotive Group, shares how the organization has grown used vehicle sales while maintaining its top-tier new vehicle performance. Hlavenka outlines how the group looked inward—to fresh trades—to source used inventory for retail sale and how the group determines the rooftop that’s right to retail each vehicle from Day 1. Hlavenka also discusses how ProfitTime GPS helps his team properly identify and manage the turners and earners to grow used vehicle volume and gross, while helping the group achieve its new vehicle objectives.

Dealers are feeling a profitability pinch in new and used vehicles as new vehicle supplies grow and potential buyers face their own pocketbook pressure. In the Q2 edition of Live Market View, Derek Hansen, Vice President of Operations for Cox Automotive and vAuto, and Erin Keating, Executive Analyst of Economic and Industry Insights for Cox Automotive, share practical pointers to help dealers manage new vehicle profitability through more efficient allocation, incentive and merchandising management. They also share tips to help dealers stock, price and sell used vehicles to optimize each unit’s ROI potential in a market where depreciation has returned.