In this episode, I unpack Auto Trader’s move to make Deal Builder mandatory and ask the question dealers care about: who owns the customer and the deal?
You’ll hear:
- What Deal Builder actually does (reserve for £99, PX, finance) and why Auto Trader says those journeys convert better and often happen after hours.
- The real-world headaches dealers are reporting: reservation timeframes, cars marked “reserved”, and customers vanishing over a weekend.
- Why “omni-channel” is right in principle—but the line blurs when a marketplace inserts itself between you and the buyer.
- Data control worries when PX and finance run through a third party—and what happens at renewal.
- The money question: it’s free until end of 2025… so how will it be monetised next? Plus the background noise on rising platform costs.
- Practical alternatives and diversification routes so you’re not over-exposed to a single source of demand.
If you’re pro, anti, or just unsure, this one gives you the questions to take back to your team.
About Symco Training:
Symco Training was founded in 2000 by Simon Bowkett and it was his belief that the business had to offer its clients something different. That difference was clear to Simon from his days in the dealership when he experienced many sales trainers who had all the answers, but were unable, unwilling or both to actually show the delegate how they could be implemented. It remains the ethos of the business today. You see, Symco only employ trainers that are committed to delivering not only in spiring and insightful training, but are equally as happy to demonstrate these skills and techniques with real customers in your own showroom. We believe in order for sales training to be effective and in Simon’s words ‘real world’, it needs to be tried and tested in the only place it matters the showroom floor. There is no room for theory when your goals are for your team to sell more cars, hours or parts and retain more profit. In dealerships around the world the focus applied by many of the sales executives is to try and sell a deal. Symco specialise in getting your teams to focus on selling themselves, the product and then supporting this with the deal.
To find out more visitwww.symcotraining.co.uk
Time, welcome to the Selling and the Motor Trade podcast in Association of Car Without. The online car-changing destination. Together we share tips and ideas on how to sell more cars, improve your service department, and generally put more profit into your department, dealership or dealer group. I'm your host, Simon Bowkett, or some of you might already know me as Skippy. Firstly, I just want to say thank you for taking the time to listen to this podcast. Hi, and welcome to another episode of Selling and the Motor Trade. Today I want to talk about all things auto trader. And you see at the moment when we're recording this, auto trader has got their deal builder product. They've been trialing it for a while.
They've been offering it to more and more dealers, but now it's mandatory. That's right. So auto trader said you've got to have deal builder. And I'm going to say from the start of this podcast, Selling and the Motor Trade is a podcast for dealers. So of course, this episode is all going to be focused on the dealer relevant insights from a consumer. Great. I think it works really well. And of course, auto trader is a consumer. That's number one. That's what they want. And also, this is not knocking deal builder. I suppose I just need to get my head around and understand it. We've had lots of dealers, lots of clients, pro and against it.
Is it good? Have auto trader gone too far? Are they trying to do what we're trying to do? So let's just go on explore deal builder and how it's going to work. So let's start off by saying the online only retailers. In recent years, everyone's talking about online only. That's the way it's going to be. It was going to be a mouse to house, I think. But I think it's fair to say, Kazoo, Cinch has almost shown that those purely models where it's online only. It's small. And I think it's a shrinking segment. The consensus is that on the channel is the future. Customers want to the convenience of online, having look online, starting their process after hours, but still complete it in a dealership.
I think the trend is that people want to start their process online, but actually they want to make sure that they complete it when the customer's there. So let's have a look at deal builder. Deal builder, a digital retailing solution integrated in the vehicle adverts. So essentially, it lets the customer do much of the purchasing process online before they even get to the full court. So you can configure a deal, add a part exchange valuation on it. The customer can reserve the car for £99. And of course, if they reserve that, that's reserved with auto trader. Not the dealer. I suppose that's the bit I kind of struggle with. I like the idea of a customer reserving a car.
Is it a reservation or is it a deposit? I want to explore that for a little bit there. Then the customer auto-trader saying, you know, half the deal builder deals a truck outside traditional business hours. And I get that. That's where people are doing all their research and they're looking on it. Auto trader have said that sales, they complete. If you go through deal through the deal builder, they're converting about twice the rate of a traditional email or a phone call. Now, this is auto traders figures. Auto traders at 80% of the people reserved online turned into a sale. Now, that is from their trial. And I suppose I'm the question that. Not calling auto trader.
Anyone alive there. But is that because the early adopters that bought into this, the dealers I'm talking about now, were they more proactive with it? And I guess they we work with a dealer group that has a hold me function. Okay. Now lots of you guys listeners will have that as well. And I just look at the figures before hitting record on this. And actually it was 39% of the people that held the vehicle. Okay, end up in the sale. So I'm not and he that side of it at all. But again, this particular dealer group, it holds the vehicle until 12 o'clock the following morning. There's also a facility if someone has held that particular car.
Another customer still sees the car. Okay. And they can also say, Oh, by the way, can I have first rider refusal? I don't know how they would have can't remember that. But they have that. My concern is the customer on a Friday night full of Vino reserving this car for 99 pounds through auto trader. How long is it? There was some confusion out there that some dealers I spoke to said, ah, the customer can then reserve the car, hold on for 21 days while they continue doing the shopping around. Well, my understanding is not quite like that. And again, I'd love to get representative from auto trader to get their view on as well. I do understand now it's three days the customer can observe it.
But if we don't hear from the customer, or we don't get hold of the customer, we can actually just resell it. I think auto traders put a bit of hooks in there for you if we say all the time to the customer. Oh, sorry, that car sold. Oh, we've sold that. We'll be on their naughty list, I think Santa won't come and give you gifts and auto trader will come and probably try and charge you more. I'm guessing. Okay. Again, some of the online people who trialed this set at saving them probably two to three hours on every deal in time because all the legwork is done up front. The customer's done all of their valuation online.
Okay. Auto trader gain claims that three in five dealers saw reduced in the haggling of the deal builder. Okay, I get that. But if someone's going to complete online, well, I'd be amazed if anyone's still haggling after that because they're going to click online because I've agreed that that's a good price. Now, of course, it's a good price because they've already satisfied their fundamental need for comparison because they've seen that's the cheapest one there. Again, is it that race to the bottom there? And of course, three and five dealers said they've seen reduced in haggling. I mean, reducer people are still going to haggle after they hold on it. Is it I suppose it's what my first sales manager drummed into me.
Okay. Listen, if you're taking the car off sale, it's off sale because it's sold. It's not just because you're going to hold on to it. Now, also, I suppose my concern with this is shouldn't this be what we're doing as dealer groups? If we're going to decide, okay, that we're going to have 99 pounds deposit to hold that, you decide we're going to hold it until 12 o'clock the next day, we're going to hold it for good as me three months if you want. As dealers, we decide I don't anyone would do that. But surely we should hold it. Is auto trader sitting right in the middle of the dealing process? Okay. Okay, it was optional to start with.
Fine. I've no problem with that. I love the idea that lots of big dealer groups. And again, if you all listen to this, you might say, well, we kind of do this anyway. I suppose the independence and we do work with the IMDA and the IMDA have lots of independent dealers that might not have the infrastructure, the ability to go the resources to write this. So I get that. But being mandatory, that's the bit that I can't get my head around. I really love your views. This podcast goes out to about 6,500 dealers now every Thursday. So I really want to get your idea because hey, we run a sales training company, okay, and we might, I might be seeing this from a different angle there.
You might be saying, this is best thing since I spread. Or you might be like one particular dealer I spoke to said, this is complete madness. What is this all about? I suppose the next thing I need to kind of throw out there. What about the data? I've not seen anyone talking about this yet. And if they have, I've missed it. But just the consumer goes to auto trader. And they go through the whole process. Firstly, they hold onto it for 99 pounds. They have time to continue to shop around. And undoubtedly, there's people, I heard from one dealer, the person was out of the country. He held onto the car, Kay couldn't get hold of him.
I said, well, surely you'll sell it to someone else. He said, yes, but the trouble is it's still marked up there as effectively sold. He said, it's going to be, you know, I was like, when some of these are sold, I keep on scrolling through and trying to find something else there. Okay. And I suppose he had a point there. But then if the customer says, yeah, I'm going to go ahead with it. Let's go down the trade in route, the product's change route. Auto traders getting involved there and value the car. Concerns me a bit when I first hear that. But if your dealer's not done that before, let me tell you, so many times a customer will value the car.
What's the word I'm looking for a lot more accurately than what our car sales people do? And that's something that we've seen with lots of dealer groups that have an appraiseer app or some sort of appraisal system there. So yet, don't get wrong. Of course, some customers do try it on. But my experience more sales people try on this describing cars to their manager. Oh, if you're a sales manager, why would you allow sales people to value the car appraise the car without going out and touching it, looking at yourself? It just amazes me. Okay. However, here's my next concern. The customer who says, yet I'm going to go ahead and go down the finance side of it.
So I reserve the car. I've got my valuation on my car. I've gone down the finance, put in my finance application. The customer has, oh no, let me rephrase that. Auto trader has all of my customers' data now. Auto trader, I think they've got a link with Moto. I'm not quite sure on that one, but they've got links to their finance company. Actually, is auto trader right in the middle of this? If auto trader, you know, certain themselves in between, okay, it blurs the line between who's the customer's, the customer of the dealers, which it should be. It's the customer part of auto traders. What happens when they're resiliating that customer when they come to in their finance agreement?
Are they going to start marketing directly to the customer? Now, listen, auto trader, it's an online platform there. Fair play. They've built it. Okay. We know that that's where customers go to start with, but I'm just concerned about who owns all the data and control of that. Okay. The other bit is, and this is anecdotally, if it's a good idea, if they like this, okay, if the deal is like it, and listen, I've got a source of someone working for auto trader. Have actually said, we've been pushing this, they like the idea of it, but not enough dealers who are taking it on. They were going out there selling the advantage of this, telling everyone how good this is, okay, it's a no-cost option, but still not enough dealers were taking it on.
That tells me everything. And then they've made it mandatory. I've got lots of dealers saying, hey, auto trader, don't force our hand. Okay. The deal builder going from optional to effectively mandatory, why did they have to do that? If we dealers are buying into this, okay, I'm going to say that talks volumes to me. I'm going to say it really worries me. Okay. I suppose other concerns about this that I've just heard out there is at the moment, it's free until the end of 2025. It was quite funny. I did hear on one of the forums there, okay, that one dealer coming and said, this is great because I actually can sell cars in my sleep.
Someone else come back and said, the only thing that happens in my sleep is auto trader keeps putting their prices up. Now, we know that auto trader, what's at 8% they're going to put their prices up in April and listen, again, I get that. Auto trader is expensive, but they've got the number one place in town that people go to, okay, but free until the end of 2025. What's auto trader going to do to monetize this, okay, is it going to be a higher package? Okay, is there going to be a commission per se model? Don't know. Is there going to be a percent on every, the cars that you have in stock? I've heard this, I think it's a bit of a red herring out there that it was banned around that I think it was a quarter of a percent of your stock was going to go to a feed or auto trader.
I heard that for a while. I think that could be false news if I'm, if I'm really honest on that one there. My concern is their partnership with a Moto Novo, a precious Moto Novo. If I'm not, my apologies again, I'll have auto trader coming and telling me there actually, Dia Billa makes auto trader very much the middleman between what we do. The results, I just like to, I'm concerned with some of the figures of what they're saying, okay, some of the dealers are very, very impressive matrix and what they're saying, some of the tried dealers there, some of the other people, maybe not as high, but they got the only show in town with auto trader, the race to the bottom, okay, the mount they're charging, the mount that we have to send to each month, if they're becoming right in the middle there, what else is out there?
Okay, what can we look at? Now, guys, full disclosure, car wow is a sponsor of the podcast. So, again, I might be tainted there and I guess a car wow, okay, I always seen them as a race to the bottom, on the new car side of it there, and they had where they were charging us, what was it, 250, 300, 300 new car deal we did, but we always seen them as the new car leading platform. But of course, they're going heavily into the news car space, okay, and this is since 2022, 2023, I interviewed John Vikmanis on this podcast, in fact, we spoke to Philip on this podcast and talked about how they might be taking on auto trader, and guys, I think, come on, auto trader's pretty big there, okay, lots of people have tried to take on auto trader, can you guys actually do that?
Well, maybe when having a look at this, maybe more dealers will look at other ways to get their cars in front of people. You see car wow, to be fair to them are coming from a slightly different place, okay, see car wow, they already have through their YouTube, you got Matt Watson, there's so many people, I think it's over 10 million people are subscribing, okay, they've also acquired Auto Express, Evo, car buyer, and that they've got another 10 million views there as well. And I've got to say in car wow, so many people go to car wow to do their research to start with. A lot of people go to auto trader as well, but three out of four visitors to car wow, I say that considering used vehicles, so we know car wow, you can actually, I suppose, a dealer can choose how they sell, when they sell and who they sell to, there's the advantage of that there, and car wow, they want to see themselves as a one stop, but you know what, car well is just one of the different models out there, and they're going to a subscription model as well, so I'm sure you've seen that, the launch and subscription model, okay, where's a flat monthly fee there, but again car wow, they're not the only show in town, okay, you got hay car, okay, now Volkswagen Daimler, they introduced this, it's high quality online news car marketplace, okay, sure, it's not as big, but they talk more about wallety there, okay, and how they work, they're not the only show in town, okay, they're not trying to put themselves in the middle there as well, you've got eBay Motors, motors.co.uk, okay, I don't know how long they've been out there, you've got gum tree motors there, they've been acquired by Cox, okay, and then by eBay, so these guys there, they're a classified listing site there, we've got the franchises, how many of our clothes come through out manufacturer, I'm looking for a used Land Rover, I'm going to Land Rover.co.uk and I'm finding out where is that defendant I can find there, okay, I'm going to say auto trader, I really love auto trader coming here, how's they, a bit more they can chew, are we as dealers going to, and I'm not a dealer, okay, but I'll work with lots of dealers, are we going to put up with this, or is this the bit where we turn on and say, okay, maybe it's one step too far, I know at the moment, and I buy in two on the channel, I like the idea of people can do lots of their start the process online, and again in our training, we talk about that all the time, but where is the in game on this for auto trader, once they've got our data, once they've got the finance data, once they've got this, what's the next step, are they resolusitating, are they talking to our customers all the time there, they're putting themselves right in between this, so I'm going to say if you're someone from auto trader, listen to this, I'd love you to come on the podcast, someone who had a trade reach out to me on LinkedIn there, I'd love to get your views on it, from me, from the outside, lots of people I've spoken to, is in the motor trade, is this madness, have they actually said this is where the future's going, we want to make sure that we're right in the middle of it, or have they actually seen some of the things that are popping up there and thinking, hey, we have to get into this now, because they may have seen the writing on the wall, can you continue just to push up the price, and by the way, this week, auto trader, they're doing well, okay, they've just released their profits and again for 2024, they're doing all right, okay, but they can continue to push it up, where else can dealers get their cars out there?
Anyway, I suppose this is more of a rant this time, but let's see how this one plays out, anyway, that about does it for now, let's see if someone from auto trader reaches out and says, no, no, no, we really are on the dealer's side, he's interested in seeing if that happens, anyway, let's see if that happens and I'll see you next time. That just leads me to say that all details of this episode and other episodes on the selling in the motor trade can be found on our website simcotraining.co.uk, go there to get a copy of our book, Words That Sell Cars, go there to sign up to a free trial of our sales fitness online sales training program.
Easiest way to get hold of me is Simon Bowkett, food linked in. Thank you.
