Rural Dealer Wins Top Prize in Canada

Today, TRADER Corporation announced the winner of the 2015 Driven to Perform Contest. The contest, which debuted for the first time early last year, aimed to recognize the top performing dealer in Canada. The inaugural winner was selected based on key performance metrics using the vAuto inventory management solution, including: turn rate, average days in inventory, cost to market and price to market.

“We are excited to announce Craig Dunn Motor City from Portage LaPrairie, MB as the winner of the 2015 Driven to Perform Contest. When we compared their performance prior to using vAuto to where they are today, it’s really quite impressive to see the growth transition and efficiencies the product has created,” says Robert Rath, Vice President of Business Development at TRADER.

vAuto is the only inventory management solution on the market that integrates live local market data powered by AutoTrader.ca. With over 8,500 dealerships subscribing to vAuto in North America, the solution offers unique tools to help dealers make better and faster sourcing, appraising and pricing decisions.

“I was surprised by the results [of vAuto], it’s absolutely the only reason I can remain competitive outside of major metro [Winnipeg], especially in today’s economy where there may be less consumer demand,” says Tyler Dunn, Sales Manager of Craig Dunn Motor City. The dealership, part of the Murray Group of dealerships, has been a vAuto subscriber for over 3 years and is located 100 kilometers outside of Winnipeg.”

The dealership recognized their biggest challenge prior to using vAuto was the high cost of advertising inventory to attract customers outside of their local market. Management knew they needed to find more efficient ways to attract these customers in order to decrease their average days in inventory and increase their turn rates.

“We needed a way to attract customers without spending thousands of dollars marketing every single unit. vAuto helped us realize that the only way to do this was to not only source the right vehicles that are in demand in our market, but to find the perfect price to market those vehicles right off the bat, even if it meant pricing our inventory lower than market average,” says Dunn. He admits that while it did take some time to get buy in from his team, vAuto has made a huge impact on his dealership performance, bringing in more and more customers from surrounding areas.

He adds, “Since using vAuto, we’ve improved our volume and gross per unit every year, the sales guys are happy, the customers are happy, and we continue to sell more cars.”

TRADER recently kicked off the second annual Driven to Perform Contest and invites all qualified dealerships to participate. *The winning dealership will receive their current vAuto subscription free for 2017! For more information and to sign up please click here.