What used car shoppers are looking for most of all is peace of mind. As a dealer, you should be educating your staff, and marketing your vehicles, to deliver that peace of mind. The fact that you spend internal dollars reconditioning trade-ins and from-the-auction inventory should not be withheld from today’s consumers. If anything, sharing this information with them can help improve both your merchandising efforts and customer confidence in their purchase decision.

CarStory recently released a used car marketing study as to what shoppers stated was the most important used car information they sought. Condition of the vehicle and Service History were two of the top three elements buyers wanted to know (#1, and #3 respectively).

Moreover, CarStory has been able to create a tool that reads the words within a dealer’s vehicle descriptions, and populate the information into their free CarStory Market Reports (which reside on automotive marketplaces and dealership SERPs and VDPs alike). For that reason, it is not just enough putting a vehicle through recon. You need to celebrate those items addressed by your service department online for the world to see. Shoppers will respect your transparency, and it will help build value in the vehicle. Example:

When negotiating with a used car prospect, whether they be in store, or online, sharing recon info is instrumental in building value in their vehicle of choice. Again, you should be leveraging all of the internal data, and third-party resource info, to build a customer’s confidence in their decision, and add value to the vehicle they're considering. Recon info is the rare bit of information that the shopper cannot generally find online, and yet, it is it incredibly rewarding to your merchandising and sales efforts when you share it. Little is more valuable than peace of mind.