The Backstory of Offer

TradePending continues on our mission of “simple automotive” with the launch of Offer, previously known as The Buying Platform.  Offer reinvents the process for consumers to value their trade-in and sell their car to the dealer, and how dealers deliver firm offers to purchase pre-owned vehicles.

We initially launched the “alpha” version, dubbed “Sell it Now”, to quickly gather market feedback, while landing dozens of customers. At the 2021 virtual NADA conference, we launched the “beta” version, dubbed “The Buying Platform”, and proceeded to impress dozens more. 

The newly christened Offer is the first installment in a series of new products that will help dealers acquire more used car inventory. The product blends seamlessly with our core website conversion tool, Trade, for trade-in leads, while maintaining an elegant and high-converting website experience. 

Our 3,000+ customers prove, along with their car-shopping customers, that they value our “retail-down” vehicle valuation methodology. Dealers absolutely love the transparency and configurable single-price offer solutions our process allows. The fact that we build the dealer’s brand, instead of competing with them directly for trade-in leads, is a big differentiating factor as well.

The Problems We Set Out To Solve

Terrible Website Conversion

Dealers previously had to choose between two types of trade-in solutions

1. One type asks minimal questions in order to maximize conversion rates, but provides less specific trade-in values. 
2. The other solution asks consumers an unchangeable set of 50-100 questions in order to arrive at a more specific trade-in offer. This lengthy process can create more qualified leads, but absolutely destroys website conversion. 

Non-Customizable Solutions Create Inaccurate Values

The #1 most important feature for a trade-in tool, according to hundreds of dealers in a recent survey, is accuracy. As odd as it sounds, accuracy can mean two separate things.

1. Accurate, based upon the local market. This is where our approach of using local retail “ask” prices for our valuation methodology, rather than regional and national averages, truly shines.
2. Accurate, based upon what a dealer is actually willing to pay for the vehicle. The questions and deductions in the lengthy trade-in questionnaires can’t be customized by dealers. This results in offers that dealers don’t believe in, resulting in a ridiculous dance between dealers and consumers about who will pay more for their trade-in, KBB or the dealer. The values from these rigid solutions don’t match a dealer’s buying strategy or local market conditions.

Extremely Competitive Environment

CarMax, Carvana and Vroom turned up the heat. They’re making aggressive offers to acquire used car inventory. Consumers are absolutely comparison shopping your trade-in offers to theirs, and the highest price wins. Single price solutions that can’t be changed means a large chunk of the in-market shoppers are invisible to you. They’re not engaging and not showing up because your values are too low and can’t be adjusted.

Offer solves all of these problems, resulting in both higher quantity and higher quality, highly engaged leads.

Meet Offer

With the launch of Offer, TradePending elegantly incorporates a high converting trade tool (Trade) and a customizable trade-in offer process into a single integrated experience. This keeps website conversions up while providing dealers with greater flexibility to customize their questions and deductions to deliver “accurate-to-them” trade-in offers. 

With a few clicks and ten seconds, a consumer instantly sees the value of their vehicle in their local market, along with other comparable vehicles for sale. This process is TradePending’s current Trade product for trade-in evaluations. 

The consumer can then choose to receive a more specific value for their trade-in by answering a few additional questions, which is where Offer begins. The dealership can customize the questions to reflect their current buying strategy and local market conditions. Dealers can also adjust the costs and fees for a trade-in, as well as the deductions based upon the questions answered, to reflect their actual costs and competitive environment.

How is This Different from other “Guaranteed Offer” Solutions? 

The new class of used car retailers have pulled out all of the same stops – “get a guaranteed offer”.  Dealers must compete – There are three big differences between Offer and the alternatives for consumers, and we’ve already hit upon two of them.

1. Keep Website Conversions High – Capture trade-in leads first, then let consumers choose to go farther for a single price offer.
2. Adaptable / Flexible / Configurable – deliver accurate values based upon your buying strategy and local market reality.
3. Transparency – Build trust and brand equity as consumers see more information about their vehicle than from anyone else, while they stay on your site instead of being redirected to or influenced by a 3rd party brand/portal.

If you’d like to see Offer for yourself, let’s find a time to talk.