Category Archives: Jim Gillen

We meet with a Mercedes Benz dealer a few months ago and I was surprised to hear that they sell most of their new cars based on the payment, not the price of the vehicle.

So based on that we built a tool that allows dealers to input:

• Loan rate as a percentage
• Down-payment as a percentage
• Length of the loan
• DOC fee

The system allows to input separate rates for new, used, and CPO.

As you can see in the screenshot we added the monthly payment to the VDP (in this case calculated from the vehicle’s MSRP) but we can also add it to the SRP and we can send it in the feeds to our CraigsList tool for the ads.

The system ads the disclaimer to all the vehicles which is also modifiable by the dealer.

With this tool you also have another level of price customization; for example we can have the MSRP in the system, calculate the payment, but don’t display the MSRP (just show the payment).

In order to use this tool you must use Autobase as your data provider (calculations are done in the Autobase server) and DealerLab for websites (all the mapping so far has been done to our systems), and Autoclassified Solutions for the CraigsList postings.

The tool is free to our clients, please contact Logan for more information @ [email protected]

The post WEBSITE-Free payment tool appeared first on Paramo Group.

We meet with a Mercedes Benz dealer a few months ago and I was surprised to hear that they sell most of their new cars based on the payment, not the price of the vehicle.

So based on that we built a tool that allows dealers to input:

• Loan rate as a percentage
• Down-payment as a percentage
• Length of the loan
• DOC fee

The system allows to input separate rates for new, used, and CPO.

As you can see in the screenshot we added the monthly payment to the VDP (in this case calculated from the vehicle’s MSRP) but we can also add it to the SRP and we can send it in the feeds to our CraigsList tool for the ads.

The system ads the disclaimer to all the vehicles which is also modifiable by the dealer.

With this tool you also have another level of price customization; for example we can have the MSRP in the system, calculate the payment, but don’t display the MSRP (just show the payment).

In order to use this tool you must use Autobase as your data provider (calculations are done in the Autobase server) and DealerLab for websites (all the mapping so far has been done to our systems), and Autoclassified Solutions for the CraigsList postings.

The tool is free to our clients, please contact Logan for more information @ [email protected]

The post WEBSITE-Free payment tool appeared first on Paramo Group.

We meet with a Mercedes Benz dealer a few months ago and I was surprised to hear that they sell most of their new cars based on the payment, not the price of the vehicle.

So based on that we built a tool that allows dealers to input:

• Loan rate as a percentage
• Down-payment as a percentage
• Length of the loan
• DOC fee

The system allows to input separate rates for new, used, and CPO.

As you can see in the screenshot we added the monthly payment to the VDP (in this case calculated from the vehicle’s MSRP) but we can also add it to the SRP and we can send it in the feeds to our CraigsList tool for the ads.

The system ads the disclaimer to all the vehicles which is also modifiable by the dealer.

With this tool you also have another level of price customization; for example we can have the MSRP in the system, calculate the payment, but don’t display the MSRP (just show the payment).

In order to use this tool you must use Autobase as your data provider (calculations are done in the Autobase server) and DealerLab for websites (all the mapping so far has been done to our systems), and Autoclassified Solutions for the CraigsList postings.

The tool is free to our clients, please contact Logan for more information @ [email protected]

We meet with a Mercedes Benz dealer a few months ago and I was surprised to hear that they sell most of their new cars based on the payment, not the price of the vehicle.

So based on that we built a tool that allows dealers to input:

• Loan rate as a percentage
• Down-payment as a percentage
• Length of the loan
• DOC fee

The system allows to input separate rates for new, used, and CPO.

As you can see in the screenshot we added the monthly payment to the VDP (in this case calculated from the vehicle’s MSRP) but we can also add it to the SRP and we can send it in the feeds to our CraigsList tool for the ads.

The system ads the disclaimer to all the vehicles which is also modifiable by the dealer.

With this tool you also have another level of price customization; for example we can have the MSRP in the system, calculate the payment, but don’t display the MSRP (just show the payment).

In order to use this tool you must use Autobase as your data provider (calculations are done in the Autobase server) and DealerLab for websites (all the mapping so far has been done to our systems), and Autoclassified Solutions for the CraigsList postings.

The tool is free to our clients, please contact Logan for more information @ [email protected]

The post WEBSITE-Free payment tool appeared first on Paramo Group.

We meet with a Mercedes Benz dealer a few months ago and I was surprised to hear that they sell most of their new cars based on the payment, not the price of the vehicle.

So based on that we built a tool that allows dealers to input:

• Loan rate as a percentage
• Down-payment as a percentage
• Length of the loan
• DOC fee

The system allows to input separate rates for new, used, and CPO.

As you can see in the screenshot we added the monthly payment to the VDP (in this case calculated from the vehicle’s MSRP) but we can also add it to the SRP and we can send it in the feeds to our CraigsList tool for the ads.

The system ads the disclaimer to all the vehicles which is also modifiable by the dealer.

With this tool you also have another level of price customization; for example we can have the MSRP in the system, calculate the payment, but don’t display the MSRP (just show the payment).

In order to use this tool you must use Autobase as your data provider (calculations are done in the Autobase server) and DealerLab for websites (all the mapping so far has been done to our systems), and Autoclassified Solutions for the CraigsList postings.

The tool is free to our clients, please contact Logan for more information @ [email protected]

The post WEBSITE-Free payment tool appeared first on Paramo Group.

One of the problems with Craigslist working from a feed and having to pay $5 a vehicle is that is made in unaffordable for new cars to post the entire inventory.

To solve that problem we just developed a selection tool, free of charge included with your Craigslist service.

The tool allows you to select the cars that you want posted, save them, and we take it from there.

As an example, it will cost you $250 (Craigslist charges $5 per vehicle posted) to have 50 new cars in their system for 30 days, but I think it is a great way to push lease offers, sale units, commercial inventory, etc.

For questions about CL please contact Jim Gillen @ [email protected]

The post CRAIGSLIST-Free new car tool appeared first on Paramo Group.

One of the problems with Craigslist working from a feed and having to pay $5 a vehicle is that is made in unaffordable for new cars to post the entire inventory.

To solve that problem we just developed a selection tool, free of charge included with your Craigslist service.

The tool allows you to select the cars that you want posted, save them, and we take it from there.

As an example, it will cost you $250 (Craigslist charges $5 per vehicle posted) to have 50 new cars in their system for 30 days, but I think it is a great way to push lease offers, sale units, commercial inventory, etc.

For questions about CL please contact Jim Gillen @ [email protected]

One of the problems with Craigslist working from a feed and having to pay $5 a vehicle is that is made in unaffordable for new cars to post the entire inventory.

To solve that problem we just developed a selection tool, free of charge included with your Craigslist service.

The tool allows you to select the cars that you want posted, save them, and we take it from there.

As an example, it will cost you $250 (Craigslist charges $5 per vehicle posted) to have 50 new cars in their system for 30 days, but I think it is a great way to push lease offers, sale units, commercial inventory, etc.

For questions about CL please contact Jim Gillen @ [email protected]

The post CRAIGSLIST-Free new car tool appeared first on Paramo Group.

One of the problems with Craigslist working from a feed and having to pay $5 a vehicle is that is made in unaffordable for new cars to post the entire inventory.

To solve that problem we just developed a selection tool, free of charge included with your Craigslist service.

The tool allows you to select the cars that you want posted, save them, and we take it from there.

As an example, it will cost you $250 (Craigslist charges $5 per vehicle posted) to have 50 new cars in their system for 30 days, but I think it is a great way to push lease offers, sale units, commercial inventory, etc.

For questions about CL please contact Jim Gillen @ [email protected]

The post CRAIGSLIST-Free new car tool appeared first on Paramo Group.

I wanted to gather a few thoughts about the 1st week in Craig’s List for the dealers.

This is a near-perfect ad:

2010 Acura MDX

1) Up to 24 photos per vehicle.

2) No HTML (so no links, color text, etc)

3) Formatted text is available (lists, bold, larger font, etc)

What would make this ad perfect (which we are working on as we speak):

Adding the state disclaimer (DOC fee, etc).

Adding a URL (can’t hotlink, so I have doubts about the value of this)

Inventory view:

http://bellingham.craigslist.org/search/ctd?userid=10808959

Notice that in the inventory view Craig’s List now identifies your dealer with an unique ID, in this case 10808959

Be careful having 2 companies or even an employee postings ads if you already have the entire inventory posted. Several dealers have called stating that their ads got put on hold for having the same VIN posted several times. The accounts (you as a dealer since they have your tax ID number) will be on hold for one year (this is the time that they have always used in the past to put an account on hold).

Make sure you don’t have employees posting ads in the by owner section. Craig’s List could just delete those ads but they could also identify the VIN or the name of the dealership and put it on hold. So far we don’t have news of this happening but the ‘by owner’ section has an exponential larger number of postings so I think there is a backlash coming.

Some of the people at PGI believe that based on current policies you can post a vehicle and re-post it (pay again the $5) 48 hours after the first posting. The advantage of this is that your new posting will make it to the top of the listings. First of all we don’t know if this is correct, Craig’s List may see your cars posted 8 times for the month and chose to delete your account. But secondly and most important the volume of postings is much less than half of what it was before deeming-in my opinion-the extra posting useless. If someone wants to push the envelope a little bit I would renew the ads on the 15th day mark.

New features:

Craig’s List just added yesterday the “see my other postings” feature (see the add above again and look at the top right corner). This feature indicates that they now feel about your cars as an “account” while before each posting was its own. This also shows the they are not done with changes and more updates to the system could be coming soon.

Steven Warren went as far as saying “Craig’s List is looking more and more like Backpage and adding all its features”. Only if Backpage had the same traffic Craig’s List has.

The cost of this:

$5 per ad and we charge $395/month flat to take care of everything (postings, deleting ads, updating ads, etc).

If you have 100 cars remember that you need to load all of them at once making the first month a little bit more expensive. After that we just post new cars as they renew or a new units come to the system on a daily basis.

If I was the new car manager I would put a $500/month budget towards new (we don’t charge more for managing that) and I will have at 100 units as a presence at all times.

Dealing with the CL account:

We can take care of the Craig’s List account for you or you can open the account yourself, manage the money (pre-load the account) and we will take it from there.

Call Steven or Jim today at 425.379.0483 today to get started.

The change is finally here, today is the first day of CraigsList charging for postings in the automotive by dealer section.

You have several choices for posting;

Post one car at a time; build the template, add the car, pay the $5. For this you don’t need one of the new accounts with Craigslist, you can post with the old accounts. The only change is that at the end of the process you need to pay the $5 fee.

PGI Auto offers a tool that will automate the ad creation and data pushing making the manual process as easy as possible. Our tool is $200/month and you can post as many cars as you want (still have to pay CL the $5 per car).

Your second option is to have a posting account with CraigsList. For this you will need to set up a credit card with them, add your tax ID number, address, etc and buy a bulk group of ads (lets say 100 ads for $500).

With this type of account we can semi-automate the process so for $395 PGI Auto will post your inventory and delete the vehicles as they get sold.

Recomendations:

I have seen several companies claim that they can post an ad for $5 and then use that ad as a car gets sold to update the photos and content therefore having a second car advertised without paying another fee to CraigsList.

I don’t know how much money you can save if this is possible (a couple hundred dollars) but at this point in time when CraigsList is identifying who post, how much, etc I wouldn’t risk getting my dealership blocked.

If there is one thing I can tell you about CraigsList is that they will not care that you are blocked, as a matter of fact there will be no one to talk to about it.

If budget allows, post your new cars too. 100 ads for $500 is cheap. We don’t intend to charge more for more ads, your $395 fee covers everything (counting that CL is not IP sensitive anymore).

Call Steven or Jim today at 425.379.0483 today to get started.