Why do the sales managers rely on outside photo vendors to take photos for used and new vehicles? Used car managers are extremely busy in selling cars and meeting monthly quota and managing sales reps. Very often, vehicle photos are missing for more than 30% of the used cars on website, AutoTrader.com, and other online sites. Used car managers take time to address the issues with photo operations and some times they are helpless.
“
After firing my photo taking vendor and started taking more photos for used cars and new cars, and even taking videos and uploading them to YouTube, my customers started liking our inventory online
The aim of this article is identify what all a successful used car manager complains about missing photos for vehicles and what more he/she wants for ideal marketing. Here are some myths busted by successful used car managers when it comes to in-house vehicle photo operations.
Used Car Manager Wishlists and Complaints on Photo Operations
-
Myth #1: Typical sales managers complaint – we do not have staff to take photos in-house.
Sales managers want photos and videos for all new and used cars immediately afte the vehicle is added to the website. DealTimer provides the same powerful tools used by external photo taking companies to in-house photo rep to take photos instantly.
When an outside photo rep spends about a 3 hours per week or 12 hours per month to make $2000 per month, it is almost like $150 per hour or $300,000 pay per year salary. But this is the job of photo rep, who rately gets paid no more than $40,000 per year. Even if we offer a small fraction of that amount, more than half a dozens sales reps will be ready to click the camera for photos, and rest is all automated. As there is no need to login to the system, even the vehicle detail rep or lot rep can start taking photos by spending mere 3 to 4 hours per week.
-
Complaint #2: We do not have photos for more than 30% of our used cars.
When an outside rep comes weekly once or twice, a traded-in vehicle has to sit there on the lot with no photos for 4 to 6 days. If it is raining on the day the outside rep is scheduled to come and take photos, some of the vehicles could be sitting in the log for 10 to 15 days with no photos. If you have internal rep to click the camera in 2 minutes, photos are there on the Website, AutoTrader, Cars.com, etc in matter of couple of hours.
-
Complaint #3 from managers: we wish had taken more photos per vehicle for certain expensive vehicles
With our in-house photo solution, clicking camera to take 40 more pictures only consumes extra 3 minutes maximum per vehicle. Rest of the photo operations is all automated. There is no need to select the vehicles, drag and drop the photos, and upload them. DealTimer in-house photo tool takes care of it. It is just matter of extra clicks for additional photos. Online customers would love dealers taking more photos, so that they can find the details like wheels, extra convenience and luxury buttons showing up in photos, photos of installed options, and packages, etc.
-
New car manager wish #4: We want to start taking photos for NEW vehicles too
This can be easily accomplished for no additional cost. The in-house photo rep can take photos for 100 new vehicles in matter of 6 hours in a month, saving dealer over $1500 to $2000 for new vehicle photos. Dealers may pay mere $100 additional amount per month for 6 hours of their time to the detail rep to take pictures for new vehicles. DealTimer solution does not charge additional fee for new vehicle photos! All this solution costs mere $245 per month.
-
Used Car Manager wish #5: Can we start taking video clips for new and used cars.
It is absolutely possible. With our smart camera technology, the in-house photo rep can shoot 30 second video clips or we can create video from images taken.
-
Used Car manager concern #6 – we can not keep reminding our in-house photo rep to take photos on a regular basis.
There is no need for reminders. Our system has an option to generate reminders to the photo rep and send the list of vehicles ready for photo taking operation and copy the message to the used car managers. This way, the photo rep is reminded and it keeps the person reminding if not done on timely manner. Usually, reminders are needed in the beginning only. Once the photo rep gets used to take photos, it becomes a routine task after 30 days.
Myth #7: What we are paying is peanuts to external photo reps!
That is not all true. We all wonder how much money, a life insurance agent makes from $25 monthly insurance premiums. If the dealership can take initiative to take in-house photos, your dealer principal will see about $400,000 extra profits in his/her bank account by cutting external photo vendor fee on each roof top.
If you have 4 or 5 stores in the area, you are talking about serious amount of profits over a million dollars in 10-year period wasted! It is not about justing loosing $400,000 extra profits in 10-year period. These extra profits of $400,000 on photo operation alone would appraise the store at $1,000,000 more, if you plan on selling the store afte fixing all money leaks. This is what fixer-uppers do when it comes to real-estate. It is time to do fixer-upper surgeries on money loosing dealerships and sell them back to bigger chains for millions of dollars of profit. If you are innovative, DealTimer has more than 80 tools to do surgery on vendor bills and stop all money leaks! When it comes to technology, Dealers and Managers do not have a clue how money gets wasted by signing up lengthy and expensive contracts on simple technology tools from technology vendors.
