In today’s automotive world, dealers are not interested in hearing about the problem or wanting to know how it was created. They are primarily interested in hearing a solution. I vividly remember in my days as a dealer I was the same way.

Trade-in percentage on new vehicles sales has dramatically dropped; thus, getting adequate pre-owned inventory is a big problem that dealers face today. For decades the monthly average trade-in percentage was 55%. For example, on average a salesperson who sold ten new vehicles in one month would get 5.5 pre-owned vehicles on trade. More and more private individuals are selling their vehicles online. Most of them know that they can get more for their used vehicle via the Internet than they will get for it on a trade-in. This has caused an extreme shortage of good pre-owned used vehicles being traded for new vehicles and has caused a high jump in the prices of used cars.

We are going to have to start asking for the trade business to get it back. I recommend you take the following steps to resolve this problem:

• Determine the percent trade-in achieved over the last few month by each salesperson.
• Post everyone’s trade-in percentage and a trade-in percentage goal in the break area.
• Offer incentives for them to achieve the trade-in percentage goal.
• Set a mark between high and low average trade-in book value that is competitive with internet sales.

Remember, when searching for that needle in a haystack start in the simplest place and that’s where we dropped it. So, if we have dropped something in our sales process, first look at performance parameters or your sales force. Their numbers reflect your numbers.