Bill Cole Automall Fuels Innovation with VINCUE
Bill Cole Automall is an independently owned dealership that has grown to include a dozen rooftops spanning across two states. The premier retailer of new and certified pre-owned Lincoln, Subaru, Nissan, Honda, Ford, and Kia vehicles, Bill Cole Automall also carries a large variety of premium pre-owned vehicles for a diverse and carefully curated inventory.
Shifting Lanes
With six rooftops in Kentucky and six rooftops in West Virginia, Bill Cole Automall is one of the largest dealerships in its region, all operating under the same philosophy and values. As the Automall continued to expand, it became evident Bill Cole needed to invest in a Business Development Center (BDC) to create more traffic at each rooftop.
“Our plan was to build a strong BDC leveraging technology with strong, intelligent people behind the scenes,” explained Jennifer Taylor, the Director of the BDC at Bill Cole Automall.
In 2019, the Leadership Team at Bill Cole Automall recognized the BDC needed to be centrally operated to provide consistent management and processes across each of their rooftops.
“It just continued to grow and then the Covid-19 pandemic hit and pushed us all forward a few years digitally,” Taylor said. “All the sudden, it became this massive operation that was much larger than we anticipated.”
Today, Taylor credits the thriving BDC with getting customers to the store so the frontline can sell more vehicles.
Speedy Success After Deploying VINCUE
To further maximize efficiency and profits, Bill Cole Automall chose to deploy VINCUE VBC to pull in all third-party leads into one place. Rather than having to have expertise in Autotrader, Car Gurus, Craig’s List and Facebook, Jennifer’s BDC agents can work collectively in VINCUE. She says, “VINCUE provides one platform, one dashboard to make everything seamless for my agents. My agents focus on understanding how to use VINCUE, not a dozen other systems, and that makes them all more productive,” she concluded.
“Our goal has always been to advertise our vehicles better than our competitors, so we pull in more traffic, and to acquire high-quality pre-owned vehicles at a great price,” said Jason Cole, Executive Vice President at the generational dealership.
With VINCUE, the frontline at Bill Cole Automall has access to up-to-the-moment data in a way that lets them buy, price, and sell more cars at a lower cost.
“There’s this vAuto philosophy that some dealers buy into that you have to lower prices to sell cars faster,” Cole explained. “The problem is that by racing to the bottom on price, dealerships may stay busy but can never be profitable. I’ve never bought into that method. As a dealer, you should never lower your price. Instead, spend a little on digital advertising and price the cars based on their value. With VINCUE, you know what the highest authentic value is, which allows you to understand the true value of your inventory and communicate it.”
Bill Cole Automall has the information and insights they need to better understand their market. Today, they are selling an average of 400 vehicles and acquiring 60 vehicles a month across all rooftops.
Cole’s advice to other dealers looking to do the same? “Buy cars from the public and avoid the auction at all costs.” VINCUE gives you market data to make better acquisition decisions, that way, you can see which vehicles are worth your investment and which ones to pass on.
“VINCUE provides a very robust tool and has set us up for success for years to come,” Cole said. “We have a very complex operation across all of our dealerships, VINCUE really worked with us to integrate our systems with theirs. They continue to improve and innovate along with us, and it’s just really made our day-to-day operations much more efficient.”
