Scaling Private Party Vehicle Acquisition

Bridging the Gap from Retail to Reality

Many dealers question the viability of buying cars from private sellers at scale, assuming private sellers prefer dealing directly with other private buyers.

“If they wanted to sell to a dealer, they would just sell to a dealer, right?” Not necessarily.

Often, it has nothing to do with who they want to sell to. On paper, selling to a dealer makes more sense in every way: guaranteed money, trust in paperwork, payoffs, etc.

At the end of the day, the most important thing to a private seller is the payout. Put yourself in their shoes. They’ve checked their car’s value on KBB and seen the retail price—naturally, they’ll aim high. Wouldn’t you do the same to maximize your return?

A seller’s first pencil to the open interview should never deter dealers. Instead, it should be viewed as the starting point of a negotiation process that unfolds over time. 

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Playing the long game 

The 90+ percentile of dealers in private party acquisition understand the importance of patience. A recent VETTX study revealed a key insight: the sweet spot for acquisition typically falls within the 7-12 day window after a vehicle is listed. During this period, sellers are more likely to adjust their prices, increasing the probability of a successful purchase.

To establish a reliable & sufficient flow of private party vehicles, dealers need to play the long game and focus on building relationships rather than immediate sales.

The good thing for us dealers is that not only do these private sellers have all the appraising data we have, but so do the private buyers. When a seller lists their car for retail they won't only get beat up by local dealers, but savvy buyers as well. 

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A Numbers Game: More Than Just Transactions

Much of the skepticism around buying directly from private sellers stems from the belief that you’ll be battling sellers all day just to get a deal. But that’s not the case.

We’ve worked with dealers who hesitate to call a seller because the listing price is too high. However, just like anything else, this is a numbers game. The more offers you make, the more appointments you’ll set, and the more cars you’ll buy.

Sure, most sellers won’t budge on their retail price at first—but we expect that. What some dealers don’t realize, or fail to account for, is that it takes time for a seller to come down to reality.

As buyers, we can’t expect every offer to turn into a sale or every phone call to result in an appointment. That’s why building a robust pipeline of what we call “Ready to Sell” leads is critical. 

Dealers who understand this stop fixating on market spreads and start seeing sellers not as obstacles, but as opportunities. Every listing is a chance to acquire a vehicle.

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Acquisition First Principals 

I’ll leave you with this: if you’re serious about becoming self-sufficient and breaking away from auctions, tired of paying crazy buy fees, want to buy the best inventory, and grow the best customer base, here are the steps I would take to build a public acquisition campaign at scale: 

1. Dedicate a buyer: Assign a team member specifically to this task.
2. Leverage automation: Utilize an AI-driven vehicle acquisition management platform to streamline the process for you. 
3. Expand reach: Touch as many sellers, give as many offers and set as many appraisals as possible. 
4. Consider at-home appraisals: Not enough dealers are talking about the value behind picking up cars and driving to sellers. It’s a cheat code for buying at scale.
5. Optimize Optimize Optimize: Track everything: activity numbers, appointments to close, potential margin to actual, and optimize. 
6. Scale efforts: Increase buying radius, increase buyers, increase inventory mix. Start to build a replicable strategy that proves to increase gross as you grow.
   
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