A Promising Premiere For Provision ProfitTime At NADA

I received some very encouraging news about our new Provision ProfitTime product, which we’ll be officially launching at the National Automobile Dealers Association (NADA) convention this week in San Francisco.

The upshot: ProfitTime appears to be living up to its promise as a metric and methodology that can help dealers push back against margin compression, while increasing their sales volumes and gross profits.

The take-away follows a survey we sent to dealers who’ve been using ProfitTime for the past several weeks. We asked dealers if they’d recommend ProfitTime to other, non-competing dealers and what observations they’d offer about their early ProfitTime experiences.

On the first point, we found that dealers, overall, would recommend ProfitTime to other dealers. On a 1 -10 scale, with 10 representing the highest likelihood to make a recommendation, ProfitTime dealers offered an average score of eight, which suggests some satisfaction with their ProfitTime experience so far.

On the second point, dealers offered what I consider to be promising evidence that ProfitTime is making an important difference in their used vehicle operations. Here are some of their comments from the survey:

“I think ProfitTime is a great ‘next chapter’ for vAuto dealers who want to continue to be proficient with their inventory management strategies.”

“ProfitTime has completely changed the way we appraise and buy cars. We use it on every appraisal.   ProfitTime works. Period. Our average gross in just three weeks has gone up. We hold firm on our Platinum and Gold units. Even on our Silver cars. Our management team has bought in 100 percent. It’s great to have a plan for each unit from the minute we take it in.”

“Loving it. Unbelievable results right off the bat.”  

The survey comments also revealed some of the inevitable adjustment/uncertainty that arrives when dealers adapt to change:

“We are still evaluating how vehicles are scored (with ProfitTime) and what impacts the score.”

“Working through getting comfortable with it.”

“Our profit did go lower at first, but I can see it coming up now that I stick to the model.” 

To be sure, the feedback comes from early adopter dealers. They are typically more receptive and willing to make changes to their dealership operations than their peers.

Still, I’m encouraged by the early reviews. They suggest that ProfitTime’s reception will be positive at NADA.

I’m off to the airport, and look forward to meeting dealers and friends at the vAuto booth (#1620S). Safe travels if you’re going to NADA, and I hope to see you there.

dalepollak.com

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