Stock These Cars To Close More Subprime Deals

To take your subprime sales success to the next level, it’s essential to stock the right inventory. We want to make sure your customer succeeds with a solid, affordable and reliable vehicle that will help them re-establish their credit. As such, it’s important to know the top vehicles being sold to subprime customers. By having the makes and models that work for these customers in stock, you’ll be ready to rock when they roll onto your lot.

Additionally, it’s particularly important to know which vehicles are being sold to subprime buyers in your specific region. We know this because our data indicates that there are significant differences amongst the top subprime vehicles when both national and regional data sets are compared. Tailoring your subprime inventory to your region’s preferences will automatically give you a huge advantage.

So if you’re looking to increase your subprime sales’, analyzing your inventory against what is selling in your area will give you the insight you need to make it happen. And to show you how to take this strategy to the next level, we’ve gathered data that shows which vehicles work best for both consumers and dealers.

Comparing National and Regional Top Subprime Vehicles

To start, here is the national data for top-selling subprime vehicles, based on what our consumers have purchased in the last few months:

Now take a look at which vehicles are being sold the most to subprime buyers in Phoenix, Arizona:

It’s interesting how the 2016 Kia Forte that tops the national list doesn’t even show up in the Phoenix data. A lot of dealers see the Forte as the go-to subprime vehicle, but in Phoenix, AZ, the Nissan Versa is apparently the car to stock.

What should you stock in Dallas-Fort Worth, Texas? According to the data below, that 2016 Kia Forte is back on top. But two different pickup trucks have made the list, along with the 2016 Subaru Forester:

Now that we’ve shown you how you can use region-specific data to boost subprime sales, let’s take it another step further and look at how this knowledge can help you increase profits.

Finding the Best Subprime Vehicles in Your Region

In the tables below, we’ve taken each of the top-selling subprime vehicles and cross-referenced them with recent auction value (RAV) data.

We’ve included the NADA Clean Trade for each vehicle, the recent auction value and the difference between these numbers.

The logic here is pretty simple. Basically, you can create a nearly fool-proof auction strategy by doing three things:

• First, get hard data on which vehicles are being sold the most to subprime buyers in your region.
• Next, book these vehicles and subtract their recent auction values from their NADA Fair Trade values to find out which makes and models make the most sense for your consumers.
• Finally, make sure these vehicles are solid, affordable and reliable so your customer will be successful in re-establishing their credit.

Sounds like a pretty good game plan, doesn’t it?

If you need region-specific information for your subprime department, we can provide valuable data. We also offer all of the additional tools and information you’ll need to support your subprime sales.

The team at CarsDirect and Auto Credit Express understands the importance of finding the right lenders, maintaining the right inventory and using the right processes to get the job done. For a personalized market-analysis report for your dealership, fill out this form, or give us a call at 888-535-CARS (2277).

These are the Top 10 Subprime Lenders

If you have a subprime department, or are in the process of building one, you’ll want to get connected to the biggest and best subprime lenders. After all, the more lending resources you have, the better your chances will be to get those subprime deals done. But how do you know that you’re connected with the best lenders?

The Leading Subprime Lenders in the Nation

As the nation’s leading subprime lead provider, generating approximately 250,000 credit applications a month, Auto Credit Express has great insight into who the most active lenders are in the subprime space. Here’s an insider’s list of the current top 10 subprime lenders in the country:

It’s essential to be familiar with these national players in the subprime market.  But nationwide lenders can only take you so far. There are a host of smaller regional lenders that can help grow your subprime business. Depending on where your dealer group is located, your top subprime lenders can vary significantly. Which brings us to…

Finding the Top Subprime Lenders in Your Area

If you have been sticking to our list of top national subprime lenders and haven’t been working with smaller lenders, you probably haven’t been reaching your full potential.

Luckily, our Auto Credit Express experts are able to identify and rank the top subprime lenders for any specific region in the U.S. For example, here are the 10 lenders in the Tampa-St. Petersburg (Sarasota) Florida metro area that had the most sales in the past 3 months:

If you’re a subprime dealer in the Tampa area and you’re not working with any or all of the lenders listed above, you’re likely not reaching your subprime potential.

Knowing which subprime lenders have the highest rankings in your area is essential if you are trying to attract subprime traffic. The team at CarsDirect and Auto Credit Express can get you the most up-to-date lender rankings for your surrounding area. For a personalized market-analysis report for your dealership, reach out to us at 888-535-CARS (2277) today. We’d love the opportunity to share our insights to help you grow your subprime business.

3 Common Lead Conversion Mistakes

Internet leads are a part of daily life for today’s dealers, but many still struggle with simply getting a hold of the customer. Sometimes, going back to basics helps identify why conversion rates aren’t higher.

Consider whether your dealership suffers from these common errors:

• Working too many leads – Sales reps have too many leads to work through, and “cherry pick” who they think the buyers will be. They don’t have a defined sales process by which they are held accountable. (For example, how many dials/day, talk time/hour, and conversion rate to appointment, with follow up for no-shows.)

• Calling customers at the wrong time – Sales reps can focus too much on getting through every lead every day and forget that if they consistently can’t get a hold of someone at 10am every day, for example, that they should try the prospect at a different time. It’s important to focus on prime contact hours – look at mornings before work, lunch, evenings after work, and weekends.

• Method of contact – Many sales reps don’t try to text the customer. Or they reach out only via e-mail, and if calling leave bland messages that don’t elicit a return call. They don’t examine their customers’ behavior to understand what the best opportunity is for contact.

At CarsDirect, we’ve sold hundreds of thousands of vehicles through our brokering business without ever seeing a customer face-to-face. When optimizing your lead conversion processes, consider the above points, and remember: Dealers need to step into the customer’s buying process, not force the customer to their selling process.

Cross Shop Close-Up: 2014 Maserati Ghibli

Fiat is betting big that its once-dormant Maserati brand will grow to sell 50,000 cars annually. A big part of those hopes rests on the company’s new more compact – and more affordable – luxury sport sedan, the Ghibli. Priced from $66,900, the Ghibli is poised to strike in a competitive North American market. The Ghibli is intended to compete with high-trim performance versions of longtime stalwarts including the BMW 550i, Audi S6, Mercedes-Benz E550, and Cadillac CTS Vsport.

Touting a Ferrari-built, twin-turbo V6 engine, an interior adorned with rich Italian leather and woods, and available Bowers & Wilkins 15-speaker audio system, Maserati hopes to lure buyers from the more traditional offerings in the segment with an exotic nameplate and a focus on performance.

But is Maserati’s new entry connecting with these buyers? To find out, we used exclusive CarsDirect cross-shopping data from the past three months to take a look at the top five vehicles currently cross-shopped against the 2014 Maserati Ghibli.

(The percentages refer to the percentage of total Ghibli shoppers who also cross-shopped the alternate models listed. For example, 13.9% of buyers who shopped a Ghibli also shopped a GranTurismo.)

Maserati GranTurismo: 13.9%

Maserati Quattroporte: 13.3%

Tesla Model S: 9.0%

Porsche Cayenne: 6.6%

Jaguar F-Type: 6.5%

CarsDirect’s take: The top two vehicles cross-shopped against the Ghibli are higher-priced models from Maserati’s own stable, meaning that many buyers are considering the Ghibli as a low-cost option to get a Maserati into their garages.

However, the Ghibli is also appealing to those interested in hot-selling high-end vehicles such as the Tesla Model S and Jaguar F-Type, indicating that the Ghibli is getting the attention of buyers interested in the latest-and-greatest high-end offerings. These buyers are more likely to know about the Ghibli than buyers of the more traditional competitors the Ghibli is targeting (such as the upper-trim versions of the BMW 5-series), which are missing from the list.

Maserati is currently offering attractive lease rates on the Ghibli in many markets, and sales are up considerably as a result. As more Ghiblis hit the streets, we wouldn’t be surprised to see the Ghibli poach more of the traditional high-end midsize luxury sport sedan buyers the brand hopes to capture as awareness of the model grows.

Want custom cross-shopping data for the vehicles you sell? Contact us at 866.852.3784 or connect@carsdirect.com for a customized cross-shop report.

An Exciting New Day at CarsDirect

It’s been an exciting time for us here at CarsDirect and at our parent company, Internet Brands (see the official announcement here). To think back on the days when we needed to sell 10 more cars on the last day of a month to secure our next round of funding, but if we didn’t… gulp! Well, we made it through those early days, and here we are almost 15 years later getting ready to close on a sale valued at over $1.1 billion. This wouldn’t have been possible without you, our dealer partners, and we thank you for your dedication and loyalty in helping us evolve to where we are today.

Over the past decade, and especially in the past few years, we’ve turned our focus to the media side of car buying by producing top quality content for our consumers to fuel our phenomenal growth. Internet Brands has continuously invested in CarsDirect – and the entire Internet Brands Automotive Group – to ensure that we stay ahead of the innovation curve. As we look toward our bright future with KKR as a partner, we continue our laser focus on the mobile customer, and how they want to connect to dealers and get their information. As we’ve explored over the past few months (and continue to explore this month in our article about using text messaging as a marketing channel), the online consumer is showing us that they are changing, and we’re leading the way to give them what they want.

Here’s to another 15 years of growth and innovation with the success of our dealer partners as a top priority!

Todd Dearborn
VP Sales, CarsDirect
(310) 280-4282
todd.dearborn@carsdirect.com