We’ve all heard the hype around Carvana, and their mission to change the way consumers purchase vehicles. In the end, there are likely some learning lessons from Carvana for dealers, and I would argue that this has created much of the drive around digital retailing solutions.

As Carvana’s model is built around delivering used vehicles to remote customers, dealers should be concerned how this may be increasingly impacting their business. And with third-party classifieds sites like CarGurus, who are willing to allow Carvana stores 100 miles away to have local listings in your market, dealers need to keep a close eye on their market creep. But how can dealers monitor how even a remote Carvana store may already be eroding their market share? The simple solution is one that has been around many years, Cross-Sell reports. In case you need a reminder of what Cross-Sell reports are, they are monthly reports of vehicle-sold-data where dealers can keep an eye on what their competitors are selling. There are other similar tools in the market, but I’m partial to Cross-Sell, as I was with Dominion for many years and know their data turnaround and quality is best in class.

For dealers in my home market of southwest Ohio, they may be concerned how the Columbus Ohio Carvana store may be grabbing their local market share. Using Cross-Sell’s online tool, pulling this data takes only a few seconds:

Here is a look at the query screen, pulling year-to-date data on the number of vehicles Carvana has sold in Ohio. Due to data entry issues, you can see both “Carvana” and the misspelling of “Caravana”. No big deal, it is easy to combine this data later in a spreadsheet.

Next, we are taken to a screen containing the actual data. My next step would be a quick click to  download this data into a spreadsheet for further analysis. Dealers should not only focus on zip codes Carvana may be delivering into, but also look at their typical vehicle mix and vehicle age. A best next step would be to pull these reports every month and to build trending reports by zip code to determine how Carvana may be increasingly eroding market share by key zip codes.

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