When Bel Air, MD-based BSCAmerica Auction Group first launched its online salvage sale on LiveLane.com, management deliberately set its sights low. “We knew it might take some time for our buyers to embrace the concept of completing a transaction on the Internet,” explains Vic Yancone, senior vice president. “We expected to have to ‘prime the pump,’ so in the beginning even selling a few vehicles got us excited.”

Within 12 months, however, the pump was flowing freely. Buyer participation and sales steadily grew, and within several months BSCAmerica added a second weekly LiveLane salvage sale to accommodate the 800 percent growth in buyer participation and sales volume. “We’re pleased,” says Yancone. “Our view is that these are incremental sales.”

Yancone never doubted the salvage buyers’ Internet savvy or enthusiasm for the online sales medium. “Buyers told us long ago that they wanted to download the information and images so they could share it with others in their own distribution channels,” he explains.

In response to buyers’ promptings, BSCAmerica began posting salvage sale previews, complete with vehicle descriptions and photos, on its Web site in the late ’90s. “It let buyers expand their purchase options on auction day because they had the opportunity to pre-sell,” Yancone says.

According to Yancone, listening to clients rarely results in failure —which accounts for the new “Buy Now” option on all vehicles listed on BSCAmerica’s interactive-bid LiveLane salvage sales. “Some buyers can’t wait until the end of a sale to complete a purchase,” he says.

Similarly, BSCAmerica lets clients decide if and when they want their salvage vehicles to appear online. “Some prefer to list salvage on LiveLane before the physical auctions, while others opt for a post-sale listing,” Yancone says.

Both strategies work, which he credits to BSCAmerica’s strong pre-sale marketing. “LiveLane sales are an easy step because we’re able to integrate them into our existing structure of fixed auctions,” he says. BSCAmerica markets its LiveLane salvage sales at its physical auctions, via the corporate Web site, and through monthly mailings and announcements at physical sales.

BSCAmerica also announces upcoming LiveLane sales via broadcast e-mails that include links to sale previews.

SIDEBAR:

Seeing Is Believing

Indiana Auto Auction in Fort Wayne reports that clients have embraced the electronic condition reports and inventory visibility they’ve gained via the AutoIMS.com Web-enabled inventory management.

According to fleet lease

manager Mike Kirila, clients give high ratings to the systems’ on-demand accessibility. “They can see a condition report, with digital photos, any time they want and see the good, the bad, and the ugly on that vehicle,” Kirila says.

“An off-lease individual can go back to a fleet manager and actually show the damage he’s being charged for,” he continues. “You can’t see a blown engine or a bad transmission, of course, but you can show collision damage and neglect as well as normal wear and tear.”

Kirila says the system simplifies the process for Indiana AA as well. “We didn’t need AutoIMS to teach us how to do an electronic CR because ours had been computerized for 12 years,” Kirila says. “But all of our customers needed different

information and formats. We now use one system — AutoIMS — instead of 17 systems.”

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“When buyers receive that e-mail, participation is just a click away,” he says.

Not everything sells online, however. In analyzing sales trends, BSCAmerica quickly realized the best-selling vehicles are no more than five model-years old. Yancone says the nature of the damage also influences the sale.

When it comes to selling salvage online, Yancone says you can’t list too many photos.

BSC America uses AutoIMS.com’s LiveCRwriter tool to generate electronic condition reports, which include digital photos of the vehicle as well as damage close-ups. According to Yancone, BSCAmerica typically includes four to six digital images of a listed vehicle. “It’s important to show both the damaged and undamaged areas of the vehicle, because people buy these cars for many reasons,” he advises.