70% of shoppers have a trade. Franchise trade capture runs about 34%. Everything in between walked onto your lot, talked to your people, and left with the car it came in with.
Nobody had to find those customers. Nobody had to buy a lead. They were there.
Why the gap is not about price
The reflexive explanation is that the customer got a better number somewhere else, and sometimes that is true. More often nobody made a real number at all. The appraisal happened late, it happened once, and it happened in the middle of a negotiation about a different car, which is the worst possible moment to be asking somebody to take less than they hoped for.
By then the customer has an anchor in his head from an instant offer he pulled up on his phone in the parking lot, and your first number is arriving after his expectation is already set. You are not making an offer. You are answering one.
You are not making an offer. You are answering one.
What actually moves it
Stores that fix this fix the count first, not the number. More appraisals, earlier, on more of the traffic already in the building. The 2:1 appraisal rule is the cleanest version of that, and the dealers running it capture at better than 53%.
Twenty points of capture on the trades already in front of you is worth more than any sourcing channel you could go buy, and it costs nothing to acquire the customer twice.