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Inventory acquisition is one of the biggest challenges facing dealers today—and it’s not getting easier. In a recent podcast, Micah Tindor joined Chrisey O’Hara to unpack this issue following their visit to NIADA, where acquisition was a hot topic among dealers. “Auction and lease volume is down,” Tindor explained. “That leaves dealers with one option: turn to the consumer market.” 

In this article, we’ll break down what’s driving the inventory crunch and how dealers can build the muscle to overcome it. From auction shortages to shifting consumer behavior, both experts focused on how Kelley Blue Book® Instant Cash Offer (ICO) is helping dealers navigate the squeeze. 

The average consumer takes 77 days to sell their vehicle¹, but 56% of Kelley Blue Book® ICO users sell within the first three weeks. ² As Tindor points out, most dealers only follow up on trade-in leads for seven to 30 days—leaving a 47-day gap where potential deals can slip through the cracks. 

Building the Consumer Acquisition Muscle 

Today’s consumers are more informed and more selective. “The average consumer has 2.6 cash offers at the time of sale,” said Tindor. “While both Millennials and Gen Z are now seeking between four and six cash offers”.³  

And while the average consumer takes 77 days to sell their vehicle, 56% of Kelley Blue Book® ICO users sell within the first three weeks. “Over half of our clients are still converting within three weeks,” Tindor noted. But the remaining half? That’s where dealers need to work to build up their follow-up muscle.  

Most dealers follow up with trade-in leads for just 7 to 30 days. That leaves a 47-day gap where potential deals are slipping through the cracks. 

The Inventory Squeeze: What’s Causing It? 

The traditional sources of inventory are drying up. Auction volume is dropping. In fact, “…with off-lease being down by 36% in 2025 and estimated to be down by 27% by 2026, there are simply fewer vehicles flowing back into the market,” according to Tindor.⁴  

With fewer cars available through auctions and lease returns, dealers are increasingly turning to consumers. But sourcing from consumers isn’t just a shift in strategy, as Tindor explains, it’s an opportunity. 

Tools Dealers Can Use for ICO Follow-Up Activation  

Effective ICO follow-up begins with having the right foundational tools in place. These capabilities are essential for any dealership looking to flex those muscles and confidently follow up with expired offers. With these tools, dealers can ensure they’re staying engaged with consumers and maximizing every opportunity to acquire quality inventory. 

CRM Email Journeys  

• Automated Drip Campaigns: Set up time-based email sequences that trigger when an ICO expires.  

• Personalized Messaging: Use dynamic fields to include vehicle details, offer amount, and expiration date.  

• Behavior-Based Triggers: Re-engage customers who opened previous emails but didn’t act. 

SMS/Text Campaigns  

• Quick, direct follow-up with high open rates.  

• Include prompts to schedule an appointment.  

BDC (Business Development Center) Call Scripts  

• Equip BDC reps with tailored scripts to follow up on expired offers.  

• Include talking points like updated market value, trade-in options, and appointment scheduling.   

Kelley Blue Book’s ICO platform is helping dealers close that gap with tools designed for today’s market realities, too.  

Automated Follow-Up with RE-ENGAGE 

• Automatically send personalized email campaigns after an offer expires to keep your dealership top-of-mind and improve conversion rates.  

Coming Soon More Motivation for Consumers…   

A new set of tools to encourage and motivate consumers to visit a dealer will be launched in Q3. Post-expiration email follow-up will enable conversions beyond the expiration date—helping dealers close that 47-day gap and stay top of mind for ICO customers. ICO customers will be automatically added to email journeys that encourage them to re-submit their offer and continue the process of selling or trading-in their vehicle.     

The Bottom Line 

Inventory challenges aren’t going away—but they are evolving. Dealers who adapt by mastering consumer acquisition and leveraging tools like ICO will be best positioned to thrive. 

Now is the time to act. Build muscle. Close the gap. And let Kelley Blue Book ICO help you source smarter. 

Ready to Build Your Muscle? Reach out to our team to learn more about what’s included with your Instant Cash Offer and other exciting enhancements coming soon.  

Get Started. 

¹Source: 2024 Disposal Survey  

²Source: 2024 KBB ICO Transactions  

³ Source: Cox Automotive Research & Intelligence 

⁴ Source: Cox Automotive Data 

Cox Automotive hosted an electrifying event at the legendary Circuit of The Americas (COTA) in Austin, TX—bringing together top automotive minds, dealer partners, and Cox Automotive leaders for a high-octane experience that fused insight with adrenaline.

This wasn’t just another industry event—it was a showcase of how Cox Automotive is driving real, innovative, and measurable change.

Attendees got hands-on with Cox Automotive’s latest tools, exploring how transparency, speed, and connected workflows are reshaping the retail experience. Live polls and feedback sessions revealed common pain points—like desk manager bottlenecks and disconnected systems—and how Deal Central is solving them with real-time communication and streamlined processes.

Of course, no visit to COTA is complete without some high-speed excitement. Guests toured the garages, climbed the observation tower, and hit the track in BMW M3’s—adding a rush of adrenaline to an already exhilarating day.

Driven by Innovation wasn’t just an event—it was a statement. Cox Automotive is leading the charge toward a faster, smarter, and more customer-centric future. And for those who missed it? The momentum is just getting started.

Matt Warpinski, Director of Performance Management, Xtime 

There’s no right or wrong way to use reporting. In fact, the only wrong way is to NOT use reporting. Reporting offers insights into trends and what our consumers are doing. It also helps uncover gaps in your processes by finding out if your staff is actually behaving the way you expect. 

Sometimes reporting gives us answers and results, but at other times it gives us questions. For instance, if an advisor is not using the tablet – why? Do they not know how to use the tablet? Is there a technical issue? If say that they can’t find the services they’re looking for, that means there’s a setup problem. So, the things we find from reporting give us insights that we can use to manage our day and our business and become successful.  

When it comes to managing behaviors and processes, we need to not only know what’s happening, but also analyze what is happening. As people leaders, we need to determine how we can: 

• Create a better experience for our customers who want a digital experience 

• Help our employees have a better quality of life at work 

• Gain more efficiencies and make more money 

If our customers are happy and getting a great digital experience, and our employees are following the processes and doing the behaviors we ask them to, everyone wins.  

With that in mind, we recently showcased tips for using key Xtime reporting capabilities in our 2025 Fixed Ops Focus Series: Reporting Enhancements webinar. Here is some of the hands-on advice from that session. 

BDC Appointments Overview Report 

This report is great for helping you understand what is happening every day in your BDC.  

You can filter the results by individual dealership name (or see the entire dealer group), choose a date range, see a specific call center or appointment taker name, and view the trends by day, month, week or year. There are high-level KPIs at the top: Created Appointments, Total Scheduled Appointments, Cancelled Appointments, Total Appointments Showed, and Show Rate.  

When you scroll down, you’ll see a summary page that will help you identify which stores have great KPIs and which ones might provide opportunities for improvement.  

In the details, you can drill down to look at specific appointment agents to find out what their appointment records look like. For instance, you can check to see if they have an email for every customer. We know that with an email address, there’s a better likelihood that they’ll get appointment reminders, appointment confirmations and our Invite marketing campaigns. So, emails are crucial, and we want to make sure we’re collecting them for each customer.  

If you’re looking for more work, you can export a list of all no-show appointments. Since these are people who have already raised their hands and said they want to come in, the chances of recapturing their business are good. You can use that data to create an Invite marketing campaign to bring in more service business.  

Advisor Appointments Overview Report 

This is a very useful report that helps you analyze appointment data in a lot of different ways. The dashboard shows the following high-level KPIs: Walk-Ins, Total Scheduled Appointments, Show Rate, Total Appt Dollars, Inspect Upsells, RO Dollars.  

Some of the ways to use this report include looking at online appointments to see how they compare to appointments made by advisors or by the BDC. You can see what was on the appointment when it was created, if any declined services were added, and if there were any Inspect upsells.  

Look at the volume of appointments an advisor has coming in and the dollars that were included on those appointments. Based on total RO dollar data, you can see who is struggling to sell and who is selling a lot. Once you find out which advisors are excelling at their jobs, ask them questions to find out what is different about their approaches. Then you can partner underperformers with overperformers and improve results across the department.  

You can click through to each RO to examine performance and individual service details. We make it easy for you to drill down into the information that’s presented and find opportunities to help improve how you run your business. 

Then you can ask questions of your people to find out what is different about their approaches.  

Want to do more with your reporting? 

If you’d like to explore more ways to find opportunities through reporting, contact your Performance Manager. Not an Xtime customer yet? Schedule a demo to see how Xtime reporting can help drive fixed ops success. 

What You Don’t Invest in Can Hurt Your Automotive Strategy 

If you’re only tracking what happens right before the sale, you’re missing what really brings customers in. That’s not just a theory. It’s backed by data.  

New research from our latest whitepaper, From Click to Car Sale: How Multi-Touch Attribution Improves Marketing Measurement for Auto Dealers, offers a clearer view of the full buyer journey. The findings come from a 2024 analysis of over 1.18 million car sales by Clarivoy, a leading automotive marketing analytics firm, along with insights from the Cox Automotive Car Buyer Journey Study, which surveyed more than 2,300 recent car buyers.  

The data reveals a critical truth: most dealers are only seeing the last click, not the full path to purchase. And that blind spot could be costing them sales. 

Let’s fix that. 

Below are four of the most common digital blind spots that can distort your view of the buyer journey, and more importantly, how to correct them. These fixes can help you more accurately measure the efforts of your automotive retailing strategy and focus your efforts where they’ll have the most impact. 

Mistake #1: You Assume Your Website Is the Starting Line for Car Buyers 

It’s easy to assume that the buyer journey begins on your dealership’s website, especially when lead forms and digital paperwork suggest that’s where the action starts. But the data tells a different story: 

• Only 14% of shoppers begin on a dealer website 

• Nearly 48% start on a third-party marketplace (like Autotrader) 

The Blindspot: 

Dealers often overestimate the influence of their own websites and overlook the power of third-party platforms. That means they’re missing the moment when shoppers are most open to influence – right at the beginning. 

What You Can Do Next: 

• Audit your listings on marketplaces. Ensure they’re complete, compelling, and current. 

• Ask your team: “Where do we think our customers start – and how do we know?” 

Remember: overlooking your listings means missing out on a huge number of highly motivated buyers from the very start. 

Mistake #2: You’re Relying on One-Touch Thinking 

One-touch attribution might seem straightforward – but it’s also misleading. It credits only the final click before a sale, ignoring the full journey that brought the buyer there. 

Here’s what the data shows: 

• Autotrader influenced 55% of all car sales in the study using multi-touch attribution (MTA) 

• That’s more than double the impact seen with one-touch attribution, which showed just 21% 

Adopting a MTA strategy will reveal every stop along the buyer’s path, including how often they check out places like Autotrader. When you look at the full consumer journey, not just the starting and finish line, you’ll be able to see which digital channels are actually helping you sell more cars – which are under-performing – including revealing which ones might be doing more work than you realized.

The Blindspot: 

One-touch attribution gives all the credit to the last interaction – ignoring the digital breadcrumbs that led buyers to your door. That’s like giving the closer all the credit and forgetting the rest of the team. 

What You Can Do Next: 

• Ask your marketing partner if they support MTA.  

• Then, compare CRM-reported leads to actual sales. Is there anything missing?  

Remember: your attribution model might be overlooking the quiet contributors. MTA helps uncover which channels are driving conversions behind the scenes, telling a more complete story and helping you protect your spend and capture more ROI on each and every deal. 

Mistake #3: You Missed the “Invisible Click” 

Not every shopper leaves a digital breadcrumb. In fact, 46% of shoppers who viewed Autotrader or Kelley Blue Book listings eventually made their way to a dealer’s website, without ever clicking a direct link. 

These shoppers were influenced by what they saw on third-party sites, but chose to return later through other paths:  

• Typing in the dealer’s URL 

• Searching the dealership on Google 

• Clicking on a retargeted ad 

That means nearly half of your audience may be starting their journey elsewhere – and showing up later without a clear trail.   

The Blindspot: 

Just because a shopper didn’t click doesn’t mean they weren’t influenced. If you’re only tracking click-throughs, you’re missing the spark that started the fire. 

What You Can Do Next: 

• Use retargeting and branded search to stay visible after shoppers leave third-party sites 

• Don’t rely solely on click-through rates. They don’t tell the full story. 

Remember: By viewing and tracking the full journey with Multi-Touch Attribution, and the roughly 62 clicks on average a car shopper takes from first click to close, you’ll quickly realize what’s truly influencing that sale should be weighted in your marketing strategy.

Mistake #4: You’re Only Investing Where It’s Easy to Measure 

The biggest pitfall often lies in gravitating toward the obvious. And it’s tempting to double down on the channels that deliver quick, trackable results. But when you focus only on what’s easy to measure (or worse, vanity metrics), you risk ignoring the hidden drivers that actually move shoppers along their journey. 

The Blindspot: 

When budgets tighten, high-cost channels that don’t “show” results often get cut. But those same channels may be doing the heavy lifting early in the journey. That’s like benching your best player because they didn’t score the last goal.  

What You Can Do Next: 

• Take the time to re-evaluate your media mix using MTA insights. 

• Prioritize channels that influence early and mid-funnel behavior, even if they don’t close the sale. 

Remember: The most valuable touchpoints aren’t always the most visible. Don’t let outdated or short-term metrics steer long-term strategy.  

For the Road Forward 

If you’re only tracking what happens right before the sale, you’re missing out on what really brings customers in. Multi-Touch Attribution and smarter analytics help you see the full journey – and invest in what’s actually working.  

Because in today’s market, clarity isn’t just helpful. It’s a competitive advantage. 

At Autotrader, we help you uncover the influence behind the sale – whether it’s a click, a view, or a moment of consideration that never shows up in your CRM. With 7 out of 10 shoppers visiting Autotrader and Kelley Blue Book, we’re where the journey begins. And with the power of MTA, we help you follow it all the way to the sale. 

Let’s move beyond assumptions and start measuring what matters. The data is there. Now it’s time to use it. 

See the Cox Automotive + Perficient Whitepaper 

See and download the full findings on how to improve your marketing strategy 

Sourcing: 

This data set, containing over 1.18 million sales, forms the basis for all multi-touch attribution insights presented in this whitepaper. Insights were developed using Clarivoy’s platform and proprietary analysis of this data set. For more information on the Clarivoy data, see the “Sources” section at the end of this whitepaper. 

Michael Cribbs, Lead Performance Manager 
Adrian Lui, Senior Product Consultant 

Service Multimedia Pro is a new add-on for Xtime Inspect that allows technicians to enhance their recommendations within the multi-point inspection by sharing high-resolution media including photos and videos.  

When a technician can describe their inspection using video and show customers photos and video of the worn or damaged parts they find, the result is faster ASR approvals. 

We recently demonstrated key features during our 2025 Fixed Ops Focus Series: Service Multimedia Pro webinar. We’re covering some of the tips and highlights from that session here. 

How Service Multimedia Pro Works 

Using the current version of the Xtime Mobile App on an Android or Apple device, a technician can take photos and record video that will be stored on the Xtime cloud server – not on the device. The app lets a technician click on a service within a given RO number to begin adding photos and videos. They have the option to use their camera to take a photo or record video (forward facing or front facing). The technician can also browse already recorded media in a media gallery or record an audio file. 

Some useful camera features include: 

• An HD button to change resolution.  

• The ability to click the camera button while recording a video to take still pictures.  

• Video pausing, so the technician can change locations on the car and pick up the recording from there.  

• One-hand zooming. 

Here are some recommended best practices for your videos: 

• Keep the length to 60 seconds or less  

• Lead with the license plate to catch the customer’s attention  

• Stay short and concise with the technician’s voiceover 

Powerful Editing Features 

Once a technician has taken photos and videos, there are numerous editing options which are generally handled by the advisor. 

Here are some of the ways to edit and enhance photos: 

• Crop photos or draw on the image with, for example, a circle or arrow to call attention to what you want the customer to look at. 

• Add a text box to the image and write a useful label or caption.  

• Move image elements around and scale them up and down in size. 

Video editing options include: 

• Disabling background noise 

• Trimming the video length 

• Adjusting the sound volume 

• Rotating the video orientation (horizontal or vertical), as needed.  

The advisor can also review and edit the video subtitles to make sure they match what the tech was saying. 

Once all the edits are complete, the advisor can add up to 10 total photos and videos per ASR. In your dashboard view, there will be a media icon in the service recommendation line that can be clicked to show the pictures and video associated with that ASR.  

Customization Options 

To reinforce dealership branding, dealerships have the option to automatically add a logo to images and videos. Your admin can find the relevant setting in the Xtime Schedule configure portal under Applications and Media. That’s also where you can add an introductory video to send to your customers with every video.  

Now Just Text or Email 

Using the opt-in communication method on file for the customer, the service advisor can send the ASR via text or email and include all high-res multimedia files. This is where it all pays off! Getting a close look at the vehicle’s condition and hearing what the technician has to say speeds up approvals to as fast as 7 minutes.* 

Measuring Performance 

Service Multimedia Pro includes a real-time performance dashboard for management to monitor throughout the day as repair orders move through the shop. Key performance indicators include total ROs, percentage of ROs with videos, number of inspection videos not viewed, hours sold, average RO upsell achieved, and percentage of online quotes sent to customers.  

Dashboard users can filter each column in the report by what you’re looking for and drag to rearrange the columns however you like. This real-time dashboard can be viewed by individual service department or there’s an option to view it at the dealer group level. 

There’s also a month-to-date performance scoring dashboard to show how the advisors and technicians are doing with the process of taking and sharing media. The scores are based on video utilization rate, value of services recommended, and hours sold. You can customize how each activity is weighted to align with your service department’s goals. 

Ready to add Service Multimedia Pro? 

If you’d like to build trust and transparency while generating faster approvals, contact your Performance Manager. Not an Xtime customer yet? Schedule a demo to see how Xtime solutions, including Service Multimedia Pro, can elevate your service experience. 

*Based on median approval time for dealers using Xtime Inspect and Enhanced Multi-Media, August 2023 – July 2024.