Getting Your Car Ready for Sale
Major auto dealers sell millions of dollars of used cars every month. They make their vehicles as clean, tidy, polished, and attractive as possible. Some call it “curb appeal.” It works!
Whether you are selling a luxury sedan or an old clunker: a clean and spiffed-up vehicle will sell quicker and for more money than one with halitosis – unwashed, grimy, and strewn with unwanted papers and moldy fast food containers. You want to seduce your potential buyer, not turn them off with a bad first impression. It’s worth the time and effort to do it right.
Be appropriate for the value and condition of your vehicle. For example, a quick wash and vacuum is probably all that is needed for a $1200 Ford Taurus. However, if you are selling an $8,000 Toyota Camry, you probably want to invest in a wax job and deeper cleaning from grille to trunk. For a Lexus or Escalade, even more tasteful care is needed.
No matter what you want to sell, do what is appropriate for your vehicle. Fronting the cash to have it detailed by a professional may pay for itself ? and even put money in your pocket. Basic services run from $15 to $50, and $100 to $300 for a full-service, professional detail job that will leave it sparkling inside and out. Don’t be shy with a professional detailer: request a price quote. Then call around for the best deal – with them, you are a buyer.
HELP! NOW!
Why go to all the work of taking photos of your car, writing a great ad, and posting it on sites like Craigslist, Kijiji, AutoTrader or Cars.com if it looks dingy when a buyer comes to look at it.
If you have other questions about:
- how to be safe on the test drive
- what form of payment is recommended (hint: don’t take personal checks)
- how to price your vehicle so you don’t leave money on the table
- how to complete the paperwork
See my new book, HELP! I Gotta Sell My Car NOW!
HELP! NOW! walk you through the NEW RULES for selling your vehicle online.
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L. James Johnson’s new book, HELP! I Gotta Sell My Car NOW! New Rules for Selling Your Vehicle Online! is available for download at BayAreaCarGuy.com.
5 NEW RULES of Selling Your Vehicle Online!
Most used car buyers have been online before they ever walk into a car dealership. Car dealers have been forced to adapt (some kicking and screaming) – by building an Internet sales department, re-directing advertising budgets, and reconsidering how they price their vehicles.
Don’t tell them I said so, but many large auto dealers do a poor job of marketing their vehicles online. They know a lot about print advertising, but fewer buyers are looking in newspapers or auto/shopper magazines – and why bother? They’re out of date by the time they’re delivered. The cars pictured may have been sold before the paper went to press!
Many “old school” car dealers simply haven’t figured out the New Rules for effectively marketing their vehicles online. Unfortunately for them, they won’t get a second chance to create a first impression.
You Can Learn, Too!
If professionals are having a difficult time staying ahead of the learning curve, you shouldn’t feel bad if you are not clear on how to effectively sell your car, truck, or SUV on the Internet. It’s barely two years since I was asked to decipher the mysteries of online marketing, and to design the best method for selling used (my boss insisted on “pre-owned”) vehicles on sites like AutoTrader, Cars.com, Craigslist, and Kijiji. Luckily, it was a forward-thinking company that trusted me to experiment, knowing I’d make mistakes that we could learn from. How else to learn?
It took a year of trial and error to develop a clean, effective format for our online postings and ads. But that was only part of the learning curve. I discovered that there is a weekly shopping cycle specific to online buyers. Unless you time your ads correctly, much of your effort could be wasted. We also learned how important pictures and pricing are to attract potential buyers and complete the sale.
Developing New Rules for marketing used vehicles online increased our sales volume, and we drew buyers from farther and farther away. Customers regularly drove two, three, and, in one case, five and a half hours one-way just to check out a car we’d posted. And virtually every customer who drove that distance bought the vehicle they came to see.
Think about it. What would entice someone to drive eleven hours round trip to look at a used car?
James explains, other than great Photos, what is needed to have an effective online ad.
The New Rules
1. Bold Headline
First, the subject line has to grab attention away from all the competing ads – and for some models there may be hundreds posted.
2. Detailed Information
The text must be clear and concise, specifying all the information a buyer cares about in order to determine if your vehicle is worth the time to look at.
3. Personal Touches
Personal touches will sweeten your posting – information that only someone who cared about the vehicle would know. These make the seller seem trustworthy. Emphasize the positive AND tell the truth about the condition of the vehicle.
4. Specific Photos
Seeing the features and accessories that your buyer is looking for will catch her attention.
5. Video Walk Around
Finally, the secret weapon that induces someone to drive eleven hours is the video walk around. It’s a simple tool I love to use, even if my customer’s in the neighborhood, and it’s easy to put together. It builds an enormous amount of trust and rapport between buyer and seller, providing a load of information quickly. I know the video walk around sealed the deal for my buyers even before they came over to see the car. There’s a step-by-step guide on creating your own walk-around in Chapter 10.
HELP! NOW!
My new book HELP! I Gotta Sell My Car NOW! walks you through the 5 NEW RULES of selling your car online. I provide a step-by-step guide for selling your car online, including:
- price your car so you don’t leave money on the table
- what sites to choose, and how to market your car for FREE
- which photos do you take and how do you shoot them
- handling inquiries and test drives
- how to negotiate like a pro
- handling the paperwork and counting the money
Your time and money is on the line. Learn from the pros – learn the NEW RULES of selling your car online. HELP! NOW! is on the way.
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L. James Johnson’s new book, HELP! I Gotta Sell My Car NOW! New Rules for Selling Your Vehicle Online! is available for download at BayAreaCarGuy.com.
Camera Recommendations for Online Car Photos
We all face specific challenges when taking photos for online ads, be it for Craigslist or AutoTrader. For most private sellers, the least expensive digital camera available today will take adequate photos. This is not true for dealers. Auto Consultan Chad Manz makes his camera recommendation for car dealers here.
For private sellers who want to get the most out of their online photos (and hopefully sell your car faster!), you need a camera that includes:
- a wide angle lense to capture the essentials of the interior
- a macro setting to capture the odometer and other dashboard features
The other consideration is having a camera that you can hold at odd angles and still see what the picture will look like.
Below are two recommendations. First, the least expensive option that still has a wide angle lense AND all the other features you’ll need for online photos:
Pentax Optio P70 12MP Digital Camera with 4x Wide Angle Optical Zoom and 2.7 inch LCD (Silver)
If you want a top of the line camera that includes a swivel (commonly called “articulating”) LCD screen, then this Canon PowerShot is the right camera for you, and the only camera that Chad Manz recommends for dealers:
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L. James Johnson’s new book, HELP! I Gotta Sell My Car NOW! New Rules for Selling Your Vehicle Online! is available for download at BayAreaCarGuy.com.
Where to Store Pictures Online?
I recommend that you take at least 30 pictures of your car, truck, or SUV when selling it online.
Primary Exterior Photo
I often take 60 or more. Car industry pros know that the more pictures you put in front of a buyer, the better the chance of them closing the deal.
Why take so many pictures when Craigslist only lets you post four pictures, and inexpensive premium site packages (AutoTrader or Cars.com) allow less than that? In my book, HELP! I Gotta Sell My Car NOW! I recommend that you post additional pictures to an online image hosting service and send prospective buyers a link to them. This can mean the difference between making the sale or not.
Why host images online vs. attaching them to an email? It’s simpler and quicker. I state in my book HELP! NOW! that responding to emails in minutes – not hours – often makes the difference between selling your car or not. If you are on the run and monitoring emails on your phone, you can respond to a buyer immediately WITH THE LINK TO MORE PHOTOS instead of waiting hours to get back to your home computer to attach pictures to an email.
2008 Honda Civic SI Mugen
Responding with such quick service grabs a buyer’s attention and lets them know that you are following the NEW RULES of selling vehicles online. Who do you think they would rather deal with? A saavy seller who is providing quick, efficient service, or the many OLD SCHOOL sellers (including dealers) who most buyers cringe from?
Also, there’s less chance of something going wrong:
- like having your email get lost in the buyer’s spam folder
- or having it blocked by his email server because you (1) didn’t resize the photos (2) you packed the email with too many pictures.
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If you get a lot of inquires about your car, you’re going to be spending a lot of time attaching the same photos over and over. It’s simpler to send a single link to every inquiry. In this way you can put up tons of pictures and let them view them until their heart’s content.
Buying a car is a big decision. People appreciate not having their process short-circuited to suit your timetable and needs.
Be helpful. Give buyers the tools they need to make a decision and support them in THEIR process. You’ll stand out as one of the good guys. Doing so has its own rewards AND will help sell your car faster.
PhotoBucket
I recommend the #1 most popular photo site in the country: PhotoBucket.com.
It’s free and you can sign up here: Image and Video Hosting – FREE.
Your pictures are accessible to anyone – if they have an account or not. Simply upload your pictures and send a link. You also get these features with your free account:
- organize your photos neatly into albums with a built-in organizer
- collaborate with family or friends to build group albums using hundreds of album themes
Kit S. with her Honda Civic
- lots of tools for photo editing
- you can resize your photos prior to emailing or uploading to other websites
- lots of effects to add to your pictures, from unique frames and stickers to special effects
- a scrapbook builder – simply drag and drop your pictures into one of hundreds of pre-built scrapbooks
- a slideshow builder so you can post your shows to blogs, websites, or your online profile
- want to add music: use the remix builder
To get your free account with the top image hosting website in the U.S. go to Image and Video Hosting – FREE.
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L. James Johnson’s new book, HELP! I Gotta Sell My Car NOW! New Rules for Selling Your Vehicle Online! is available for download at BayAreaCarGuy.com.
