Since our last feature release announcement, the Product Development team has been working long hours creating, testing, and tweaking a brand new platform that will change the way car dealers price new vehicles. We're calling it the SweetPricing Matrix.
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Nearly every new car buyer shops online before ever stepping foot on a dealer lot. This online shopping is about one thing. Finding the right vehicle at the lowest price possible. It is no secret that price is king.
Savvy dealers know full well they need to advertise attractive online pricing to have more conversations with potential buyers. They are using a few techniques to make this happen. Some are subtracting manufacturers' incentives from a base price, often invoice, for all stock. Others are being more particular, and only advertising such low ball prices on certain vehicles. A few dealers are going a step further by increasing discounts as vehicles age or even including a portion of Holdback for some cars.
These strategies certainly bring consumers in the door, but they are riddled with problems. Discounting every vehicle with the manufacturer incentives works great for some cars, but a dealer loses negotiating position and critical profit margin on scarce and premium vehicles. Changing incentive advertising and including Holdback from car to car solves the negotiation and margin problems, but requires manual pricing changes and is very time consuming and error prone.
Regardless of the strategy used, there is another major problem car dealers face - state governments require that each incentive be articulated and disclaimed when advertising prices for new vehicle. This barrier completely turns some Internet Managers off to publishing the best prices for their new vehicles, leaving those dealerships out of the car buying conversation for many consumers.
So what are the available solutions? Until now there hasn't really been one. We are changing that with the introduction of the SweetPricing Matrix.
SweetPricing Matrix Features
Customize Discount Types and Disclaimers
In order to properly disclose how a vehicle landed on a certain advertised price, you will have a few different discount types. Dealer Cash, Manufacturer Rebates, Financing Incentives, Military Discounts... The list goes on. Some dealerships have special programs like Trade Assist or Monthly Specials.
With our Pricing Matrix, multiple discount types can be defined. You can also choose to add a disclaimer to any discount type, which is especially useful when advertising special financing or military incentives.
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| Discount Type Customization |
Create Detailed Pricing Rules with Engines, Packages, and More
The simplest pricing rules involve pricing vehicles based on Year, Make, and Model. Oftentimes, this is not granular enough for advanced pricing rules. AutoSweet's tool allows you to segment vehicles even further with Age, Model Codes, Package Codes, and even Engines. Better yet, we have created a super simple interface that shows this complex information in an easy to read format.
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The Rule Builder takes complex vehicle codes
and presents them in an easy to read fashion. |
Define Custom Pricing Formulas - From Simple to Advanced
We've had some early adopter customers running the Matrix for the last few months. Each uses a base formula that applies to all new vehicle pricing, but they all have very different formulas. One dealer wants to take Invoice Price less Manufacturer Rebates for most of their vehicles. Another wants to do the same, but for any vehicles over 200 days old, they would like to bump their Dealer Cash discount half of Holdback. A third dealer wants MSRP - Dealer Cash - Rebate - 300.
Every dealer has a formula that works for them, financially, and our Matrix can handle just about any you throw at it. Sticking true to our principles, we keep it simple to use.
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| The Formula Builder helps create simple or complicated functions. |
Use Holdback in Pricing Strategy
Traditionally, Holdback has been considered a sacred pool of cash that is non-negotiable. In fact, consumers usually don't know that such a thing exist. Some dealers, especially in highly competitive markets, want to leverage a vehicle's Holdback to draw in customers.
With the SweetPricing Matrix, you can do just that. Roll 50% of Holdback into aging vehicles under a custom discount name. Do you need to make end-of-year or end-of-quarter sales volumes? Add the entire Holdback amount to your Dealer Cash discount to make units fly off the lot. It might not be a technique you employ all the time, but it's a feature you can't live without when you need to move inventory.
Automatically Apply Pricing Discounts
New vehicle pricing is now hands free. During every DMS polling job, pricing rules will be run for each vehicle. The only manual intervention needed is to change rule definitions. You can even run a weekend sale then revert to the non-sale pricing with a few clicks.
Review Applied Discounts
Automated Pricing can be a nerve-wracking concept. Especially when we are dealing with products that retail for $20,000 and up. Because of this, we are providing transparency though a new Inventory Manager feature, Discount Review Mode.
When using this mode, you can see what discounts are applied to vehicles and why those discounts were used. It is the best way to audit pricing rules and ensure your new vehicle pricing is in order.
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| Use the Discount Review Mode to see which pricing rules were applied. |
Quickly Adjust Discount Prices
Adjusting discount values due to market conditions or changing manufacturer incentives is a breeze. Much like editing vehicle prices in our Inventory Manager, simply click and edit discount prices in the list of pricing rules.
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| Quickly review rules and edit incentive pricing. |
Show Discount Details on Websites
Perhaps the most important feature, due to legal requirements, is that we articulate how a vehicle's advertised price was derived when displaying it online. This information shows on websites we host by default. We also export discount details to third party website providers - up to 24 times a day, so vehicle pricing is updated in nearly real-time!
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| Discounts are articulated and disclaimed online. |
Our initial users have been shocked by the amount of time and headache they have saved since we turned them on to the SweetPricing Matrix. More importantly, they have seen an increase in showroom traffic and sales. We would love to give you a live demo of the tool and show you how you, too, can save time, energy and maximize margins on your new vehicles. Give us a call at 614-459-3558 to schedule an appointment.
