If you hold or participate in a four to five day off-site sale, you should expect to sell about one-third to nearly one-half of the display capacity (refilling sold units throughout) and your “sellable” inventory (pieces in a good relationship to both ACV and book). If you are not achieving this number, and your inventory is “sellable,” then you need to examine your ad campaign and expenditure as well as how you “structured” the event. These sales numbers are realistic, however, if you don’t also have a sound advertising and marketing plan, and make sure you have enough and the right salespeople working your event, you probably won’t see these kinds of sales.

 

Very simply, you need to have one salesperson to every eight to ten vehicles displayed; if you don’t, you will lose sales. The average sales person sells three (2.7-3.8) vehicles during an off-site sale; that means if you want to sell 30-35 cars during your event, you will need 10-12 sales people or about one to every eight to ten vehicles on display (about 100 vehicles). These numbers may seem high, but sales events are not like a normal day at the dealership and after producing over 600 sales events, I can assure you these numbers (any of them) seldom vary much…regardless of market size, weather, market conditions, etc.

 

It is essential to have the right ad campaign and the right budget, media mix, and creative execution for you event or it won’t matter what kind of inventory and staff you provide, you will not see many sales. Lots of firms will tell you they have the greatest ad campaign of all time, but what really matters is how they’ve performed for other clients. Pick a firm that has experience with automotive and has ran successful campaigns…and especially for sales events before, then let them do their work. Remember it’s not important that you like the ad campaign, what is important is that it brings customers to your event.

 

You will also need to set a budget for your event. You don’t want to waste your money; on the other hand, if you don’t spend enough you won’t have the traffic you need to make your event profitable. The number I use is $400-500 per unit delivered. That means if you want to sell 30 vehicles, you would need to invest $12,000 ($400 x 30) to $15,000 ($500 x 30). Now that is serious money, but if you spend less you will not see the traffic you need to sell those 30 units.

 

Properly “structuring”, planning, and executing a sales event is essential to its profitability. You can do it yourself or hire a company to do it for you, but whatever you do be sure that you invest the time and money needed to make your event the maximum profit. Otherwise you’re wasting your money…and you will likely blame the notion of doing these events.

 

Remember…“When an archer misses the mark, it is never the fault of the arrow.” Good luck and good selling!

 

Mike Conley is President of Conley and Associates, Inc. He can be reached at 800-928-0001 or at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .