While many people think car dealerships are instantly profitable, the hard truth is that it can be hard to sell cars. Not only do you have to sell the car when someone comes to see it, but you first have to attract customers and manage everything behind the scenes. There are many programs that can help you scale and manage your business. These programs are meant for a specific market, but you are sure to find a program that matches your current size and needs.
Frazer
Frazer is a fairly simple program that’s made for used car dealerships that are just starting out. It doesn’t have a lot of features, but most business owners at this stage don’t require many features. It will help you with accounting in terms of paying bills and managing financing, manage your vehicle inventory and it has a wealth of forms and sales information. You can also create bank contracts for your customers.
This program is only $45 a month, which a bargain is considering how much easier it will be to manage your business.
Dealer Solutions Software
When you are ready to scale, then you’ll probably want to switch to this program. It has many of the same features seen in Frazer. This program will help you with accounting, basic management and creating forms. One of the major upgrades is that this program has features to aid in online marketing.
Not only can you easily create and manage a dealership website, but the website will be SEO-friendly, which means that it can be easily accessed through Google. The program can also create mobile websites that customers can see from their smartphones and tablets. Another interesting feature is that you can automatically upload your inventory to Craigslist.
Despite the many features and tools, the interface is very simple and user-friendly. It costs about $75 a month, which is worth the cost if you are scaling upwards. While this might benefit some small dealerships, you probably won’t use the major tools until you start getting bigger.
AutoManager
AutoManager is perfect for larger dealerships that need advanced features without spending a fortune. This program will help you manage all of the offline and online activities generated by your business with ease. The offline portion of the program allows you to process payments, quickly check credit scores and integrate all of your information into QuickBooks.
The online portion manages your inventory and marketing. You can quickly scan new cars through a smartphone or tablet. All of the scanned cars will instantly be added to your website and internal database. You can also add your cars to Craigslist, eBay, AutoTrader and over 100 other websites within minutes.
One of the most unique features is that AutoManager helps you create custom videos in a matter of seconds. The videos are preloaded, but you can customize them so that it looks like you made the video from scratch.
The price starts at $100 a month. This is meant for larger dealerships, but some scaling dealerships might also get use from it.
Making a living by selling cars is often harder than it sounds, but you can use a powerful management system to make things easier. These programs are great for nearly any dealership. Pick the one that matches your current size and see how much it can help.
Byline
Richard Fenner focuses on the auto industry and writes on a variety of topics which pertain to cars and car dealerships. To learn more about the fascinating area of marketing in the auto industry take a look at Deal Finder and their useful information.
Image credit goes to offleaseonlyfl.