Peter Cakebread, managing director of Marshall Leasing, said: “There is more appetite among our dealer group, and dealers in general, for ex-fleet vehicles. We are also working harder to market vehicles directly to dealers; it’s wasteful not to put decent stock into our own group.”
Marshall Leasing has a member of staff responsible for disposal to dealers. They telephone individual dealers when a vehicle is available that may interest them.
Cakebread said it would be “geographically tricky” to hold closed auctions with dealers.
Vehicles that dealers are not interested in go either to auction or local traders.
Car manufacturers give dealers first look
Major fleet car manufacturers such as Ford, Vauxhall and Volkswagen also ensure their dealers get first look at ex-fleet and ex-rental vehicles. Ford ex-rental vehicles with mileages below 20,000 are refurbished and marketed to customers via Ford’s used car brand, Ford Direct.
Those with higher mileages are refurbished and remarketed through other channels, including auction. However, less than 5% of Ford’s total used car stocks are sold via auction.
Vauxhall disposes of ex-rental and ex-company cars to its franchised dealers via its Network Q brand. It no longer uses physical auctions to sell vehicles to dealers.
“Dealers don’t need to see vehicles at physical auction, they know they are refurbished to a high standard,” said Derek Wilson, operations director at Network Q. “They can buy with confidence.”
Eighteen months ago, Network Q launched its own ‘eBay-style’ platform to sell to dealers.
Rather than a live auction, dealers can log on to the site and bid when it is convenient.
“We started taking this approach because we wanted to sell more of our vehicles to our dealers,” said Wilson. “At the time, the majority of our vehicles were going to dealers but about 20% were going outside.
“Now the amount that goes outside dealers is incidental, a few per cent.” Network Q also has a telesales team and area managers which account for more than 60% of sales to dealers.
The ‘eBay-style’ auctions make up 25% of sales while the remaining 12.5% are sold via online auctions at a fixed price.
Wilson said this flexible approach has helped boost sales to dealers. The benefit to them is that “they get a reliable supply of vehicles” and “very low preparation costs”.
“They can turn the stock quickly and free up display space,” said Wilson. He said the Network Q brand attracts customers to dealerships.
Network Q also trains dealer principals and sales managers in dealerships on how to optimise used car activity.
Volkswagen Group UK recently centralised its remarketing activity with Gary Wells, head of group preparation and remarketing, responsible for the VW Passenger Cars, VW Commercial Vehicles, Seat and Skoda brands.
It has a target of selling more than 90% of all brand vehicles within the dealer network. A dedicated telesales team accounts for 65-70% of sales to the dealer network. Previously, most sales to dealers were via auctions. Volkswagen sets a target volume for dealers to acquire and offers incentives, although these vary across the brands, Wells said.
Alistair Jeff - 06/09/2013 08:59
Using lots of local physical auctions makes sense to avoid the cost of vehicle movements for the vendors. The challenge ahead is to use 'digital' to help connect buyers nationally with the cars in ways that work with their existing daily routines. An influx of new digital sales channels will only assist the industry if these great new channels are connected - an aggregated view of the trade market produced by an independent business will allow buyers to see all vendors cars and make an informed decision on their purchase. In many ways this is more about using 'retail' experience to improve effectiveness for trade buyers. Services like Autotrade-mail's MultiSource will connect vendors & buyers like never before - MultiSource is offering an aggregated view of 12 auctions (and growing) in one simple search. Each vendor & auction business should develop their own sales channels & buyer experience and as an industry how we connect with that stock though should be better informed & a lot lot easier than it is today.....