If you have a love and enthusiasm for vehicles, then there is no reason why you wouldn’t be able to run a profitable business selling cars. Although your interest will undoubtedly prove that you know a lot about the vehicles that you are thinking of selling, you will need more than this to actually sell professionally.
To succeed in this line of business, you are going to need to consider a few major factors – some of which may not have occurred to you.
#1 Website for customers to visit
Every modern business requires a website, as it is one of the main methods of attracting customers to your business. Of course, a website for a vehicle-selling business has to have more than the main page to encourage visitors to take a closer look at what the business has to offer.
This is why it is so important to enlist the services of a qualified and experienced web designer to create your website. They will be able to ensure that your pages load quickly to reduce bounce rate and that your website oozes professionalism.
#2 SEO and marketing strategies to attract potential customers
Once you have your website, you are going to want potential customers to find it easily, and this is where SEO comes in. Hiring the services of a well-established SEO agency is a no-brainer, as they will be able to produce results quickly by ensuring your website climbs the search engine rankings quickly. It is a well-known fact that the majority of people who use search engines will rarely look past the first couple of pages, while most will actually only look at the first page to pick the businesses they are going to use. This means that you need to get your website on the first page as quickly as possible.
Of course, you should hire the services of those that can provide you with quality marketing strategies so that you can start making money and growing your business as soon as possible. This will then allow you to purchase more stock and therefore increase your customer base exponentially.
#3 Social media profile so you can engage with interested parties
You are also going to need a social media profile. This is mainly due to the number of people accessing social media platforms on a daily basis. Engaging with these people and growing your following will no doubt get your business noticed. However, it is important not to go in with the hard sell with every post you create; instead, add some posts that are informative or educational to inspire interest in your readers. If creating posts for social media isn’t really your forte, you can hire people or businesses to take care of this part of your business for you.
#4 A location to sell vehicles from
You are going to need premises from which you will be able to sell your vehicles. Whether this is a full-blown car showroom or a corner plot with an office will depend on your budget. However, you should ensure that the location has the facilities where you can take excellent photos of your vehicles and maybe even videos for virtual tours, which can then be loaded onto your website for your customers to view at their leisure.
This will increase your potential customer base to include those that cannot make it to your bricks and mortar site but still want to purchase a vehicle you have in stock. Of course, for this transaction, you will need your website to be able to take orders and payments, as well as your business being able to deliver your vehicles to their new owners. Additionally, having a total loss calculator on your website can help customers get an estimate of the value of their trade-in vehicle or insurance claim
#5 Secure storage solutions for your vehicles
If your site is not large enough for a huge number of vehicles, this is not a problem. If you wish, you can rent a secure holding space to keep the vehicles you have for sale while they are not on display. For this to work, you will have to make sure that you can get a vehicle that a potential customer wants to view at your business location within short notice, so you should consider that before you decide on your storage location.
Keep in mind that your stock is going to be worth a lot of money, so security is everything, regardless of whether you choose to keep your stock on your site or at someone else’s. Check that there are CCTV cameras around the site and that they are working and cover all angles of the yard. Ask how the site will be made secure when there is nobody around, and make sure that you are totally satisfied that your vehicles will be as well protected as they possibly could be.
#6 Transport facilities to move your vehicles around
Whether you are moving your vehicles between your selling site and your storage facility or from your selling site to your new home, you are going to need the services of a shipping company that offers auto transport. Delivering or moving the vehicles around yourself is not practical when running a business; it will take time, and all the time you are not at your retail site, you could be missing out on passing trade. Also, a dedicated auto shipping business will be able to offer you a choice of methods for transporting your vehicles. For instance, they can be driven under trade plates which will use gas and add to the mileage, or by trailer, where they will not.
Over time, you can hire other vehicle enthusiasts to work for you. Still, when you first start out, it is likely that you will be on your own and use local businesses such as mechanics, car paint sprayers, panel beaters, and professional valets to get your vehicles into tip-top condition before you sell them to your customers.
So, to wrap it all up
There are various things that you will need to think about when starting your own automobile-selling business. Hiring the help of experts and taking heed of their experience is a good idea, and it will enable you to get your business off of the ground quickly as well as build a satisfied and happy customer base. This will allow you to concentrate on the areas of your business that you are good at and share your love and enthusiasm for the vehicles with those who are looking to buy.
