Particularly in the last few years, dealerships have made enormous strides toward offering the experiences that customers demand, thereby advancing the industry. Jeremy Beaver, CEO of the Del Grande Dealer Group in Northern California, is joining us on today’s episode of CBT Now to learn how his dealerships have adapted and what’s happening today.
The market year-over-year has really changed, Beaver notes that, ”the used car supply remains really strong, inventory supply increases daily, and the demand, in general, has gotten softer on MSRP. Therefore, the overall market started to return back to before the pandemic. However, with the new cars that haven’t been sold over the last few years, the supply for all dealers is going to remain tough. Whether the challenges come from off-lease vehicles back from the auction, or the general auction supply.
Trade-ins
Captives and OEMs are quite optimistic about trade-in vehicles returning to dealers at market-based pricing for the 2019–2021 model years, which could contribute to a strong supply for the dealers in the U. S.” Beaver believes, “There will come a point when we look back a year or two and some of the vehicles, from a leasing standpoint, will be dropped off.”
“Our ability to find cars in our local communities has been a really critical piece for us to keep the number of supply for the used vehicles that we want.” - Jeremy Beaver
Electrification
Meanwhile, the Del Grande Dealer Group finished 2022 with over 40% EV sales, compared to Silicon Valley’s approximately 28%. Beaver adds, “We are observing a growing market for EVs in the northern California bay area as more manufacturers introduce EVs.” A further 40% of vehicles in the Bay Area are expected to be EVs during the course of the following three years, or the manufacturers will at least offer them more. Beaver expresses, “the state’s mandate will also aid to accelerate the transition to EVs over the next ten years.”
While the Del Grande Dealer Group has completed an incredible training program over the past three years. Beaver expresses, “we have a non-commissioned product team that’s focused on: looking after the visitor, having high CSI, selling F&I, and better understanding the value of car dealerships.” Since sales teams are once again engaging in in-person sales in the showroom, the dealer group set out in 2015 to concentrate on hourly pay, bonuses for customer satisfaction scores, and units sold. Therefore, they discovered the key components of the bay area were that the employees being trained in this manner were what the customers actually preferred.
