Early in his career, my dad learned a valuable lesson that he would often repeat: “If you buy right, selling is never the problem.” Easier said than done, right?

I watched as he got creative by purchasing several Nextel two-way pager phones that he then
passed out to various new car dealers in our area. He told them: “When you’re trading for one, page me. I’ll tell you what it’s worth — then I’ll come buy it.”

Cultivating those relationships and constantly working to streamline our buying process is what transformed our small family lot into a competitive regional dealership. We were able to avoid buying from auctions as much as possible, which eliminated extra costs like acquisition fees, transportation, and post-sale inspection fees. It also empowered us to buy more of the vehicles we actually wanted, not just whatever was available at the auction that day.

We relied on this approach for years, but as the market changed, our buying strategy needed to change along with it. More competition at auction and across dealer networks, higher acquisition and transportation fees, and widespread inventory shortages have not only made vehicles more expensive but harder to find.

Buying cars from the public was always part of our brand, but we started to see private-party acquisition as fundamental to the future scalability and viability of our dealership. That strategy has taken multiple forms over the years, from incentivizing salespeople to building different iterations of BDCs. Where we are today is a personal point of pride and what I consider to be the best model for institutionalizing PPA into a dealership.

In this White Paper, I’m going to share how we combined the right people, processes, and technology to create the Vehicle Buying Center (VBC™) — a PPA ecosystem that is currently responsible for buying over 100 cars a month from the public.