If there’s one thing that Americans love, it’s cars. With over 290 million registered vehicles in the United States, there are plenty of opportunities to make a good living selling auto parts online while working from home.
With the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic, more car owners are searching for auto parts online now than ever, and this has opened up a whole new market for those who want to sell auto parts online.
Gone are the days where a driver had to go from shop to shop to find the exact part that their vehicle needs. Now, it’s much easier to search for the part online, get it shipped to a local shop, and have it installed within a matter of days for a fraction of the cost of buying the part new from a shop.
The ease of the online auto parts purchasing process has facilitated a huge increase in the number of parts being sold online, with online car parts sales being projected to bring in upwards of $19 billion in the United States by 2022.
The great thing about selling auto parts online is that you don’t need $250,000 or have to be an automotive expert to get started. However, you do need a general understanding of automobiles and their parts, such as knowing the difference between an alternator and a transmission.
In addition to having some knowledge of car parts, having a working phone, email, a website, and a merchant account are all things that will help get your online auto parts business up & running.
To be able to buy and sell auto parts online, a phone is a must-have tool to help you connect with potential clients, parts dealers, and auto shops. As your online auto parts business grows, it may also be useful to get a dedicated business number or a VOIP line.
As a Drivetrain Leads subscriber, we can help get you in touch with a VOIP company that has very affordable rates on professional lines.
Selling auto parts online will also require a working email address so people know where to contact you. This can be a free email such as one from Yahoo, Gmail, or Hotmail to get started.
When your business has gotten more off the ground, you can set up a professional-looking email hosted on your website.
One of the best ways to start drawing attention and make direct sales is to have a website. A site for your brand will help you generate your own leads in addition to the ones we supply you with.
Having a well-built website is a major factor in how many people see your goods online, and this directly affects how many sales your business is able to generate.
To get started, you don’t need a huge website with thousands of pages. A site with at least 5 pages that are optimized for online auto parts sales is all you really need at a minimum. We will connect you with a website company experienced in creating automotive sites.
Drivetrain Leads offers a subscription service to help you get started selling auto parts online by providing you with a list of warm leads to go after. The leads we provide are sent you as soon we receive them from our auto parts network all around the country.
The markup on selling auto parts online is up to you as the seller. It can range from a 25% price hike all the way up to a 300% increase in the part’s price based on factors including the market demand and how hard the part is to source.
Our leads service delivers a stream of leads to your inbox 24 hours a day. With a flat weekly rate, you’ll know exactly how much needs to budgeted on leads, so you can focus on the more important aspect of your business – closing sales.
The leads are shared between a handful of companies to keep our service as affordable as possible.
With a steady flow of warm leads, you should be able to break even from the cost of our service within the first 1-2 days of the week, leaving the rest as profit. Some sales can be so profitable that they can cover weeks of lead costs with just a single sale.
Drivetrain Leads owns an extensive network of online auto parts stores that sell everything from truck axles to JDM headlights. Drivers searching for a replacement part land on one of our sites and submit a request looking for a specific part they need for their vehicle.
From these parts requests, we are able to generate a reliable supply of leads for online auto parts vendors like yourself to go after.
All of our leads are sourced from our network of auto parts websites. For example, when a user searches for a 2002 Honda Civic brake light, they may go to Google to search for a place to buy it online. If they land on one of our websites, they may fill out a parts request form for us to find them a replacement part. Once the request has been submitted, the lead information goes straight to our server and is sent to our subscriber base.
The leads generated from our online network almost always have valid contact information in the form of an email and phone number. We can’t directly control what users write for their contact information when submitting a parts request, but much more often than not, the email and phone number are valid because the person is hoping to get help in finding a part that they may need to get their vehicle driving again.
We guarantee that we deliver real leads from real people. Rarely, we do get request submissions that do not have valid contact information, but this happens less than 1% of the time on average.
If you do get a bad lead from our system, delete it and move on. Your closing ratio will depend mostly on your phone communication skills, how you deal with people, the shipping service/costs, the warranty you offer, and how quickly & well you are able to respond to requests.
Not quite. Getting a lead does not necessarily guarantee that you’ll make a sale or broker a deal. Filling a customer part request involves contacting them via phone/email, and sometimes they will respond, but sometimes they will not.
These are “warm” calls, not “cold” calls, but other brokers or locators may also be trying to contact them to close a sale. In this regard, our service works like a mortgage broker service in that each lead may get offers from different parties with varying pricing, shipping costs, and warranty information trying to compete for the sale.
Good communication skills, selling competitively-priced auto parts, being able to provide a professional brokering or locating service, and providing each lead with good information are able to close a deal once you’ve gotten a lead.
Your email response template should be written professionally so that it stands out for each potential client, but does not oversell the parts or sound cheesy.
There are many ways to improve the return on your online auto parts business. Here are a few tips that may help you grow in the online auto industry:
● Cultivate commercial connections. Every time an individual requests that a car part be shipped to a dealership, part shop, or garage, you have an opportunity to create a business relationship with that shop because you delivered a part that they installed. These commercial contacts can be great for reaching out to every month through an email or postcard to see how the part worked out for them and find out if they’re in the market for any other parts.
● Keep a database. One of the most important things you can do as an online auto parts vendor is keep a spreadsheet with all of the contacts you’ve ever sold car parts to. If you have their contact information such as an email address, you can send a monthly newsletter with maintenance ideas, deals, and other special offers.
● Start a Facebook page. Social media presence can offer many benefits for an online auto parts business. Start by creating a business social media account on a site like Facebook or Instagram, make a weekly post, and start building an online audience for your brand through social media.
● Sell extended warranties. Extended warranties can offer expanded coverage on labor and parts, allowing you to upsell your customers while giving them an added peace of mind. A majority of reputable vendors selling auto parts on sites like Amazon and eBay offer them. Why? Because they offer value for the client are profitable for the seller. Let the money you make from selling extended warranties sit in a separate account and build. When you do end up having to to honor the parts/labor covered in a warranty, the funds will be there and the customer will be taken care of.
Our Drivetrain Leads subscription will supply you with access to parts databases with over 200 million used auto parts for sale. Treat these contacts well as they can be extremely valuable resources, and you will do business with them for years.
Some vendors are easy to deal with, while others may not be interested in drop shipping parts across the country. Some yards get the parts cleaned, ready, and shipped in a timely manner, while others may just ship it as is. You will have to learn who you want to do business with and which contacts may not be a good fit.
The first thing that has to be done in both the locating and brokering process is selling the auto part to the customer. Once it’s been sold, then you can search the online databases for the part listed at the right price, decide which part you want to sell to the customer (pick at least 3 parts, so you have backup options), and then closing the deal to get the part sold, shipped, & installed. Once the customer submits their order to buy, you can purchase the part from the vendor, and when it’s ready to send, you charge the customer’s credit card and have it shipped to them.
During the process of brokering an auto part, the part will also first be sold to the customer, then you can purchase the part from a vendor, and get it delivered & installed. Being a broker gives you more room to make profit from the parts you’re selling, but it’s also important to remember that when you sell an auto part to a customer, you are the company that stands behind the part being installed. When handled correctly, most transactions will end without issue and you won’t hear from the customer again.
Acting as a locator rather than a broker, you can sell the auto part online based no what you have located in the parts databases. You tell the customer that there will be 2 charges; the first which is paid to your company for the locating fee, and the second paid to the supplier of the part. Your markup is not as high as a locator as it is as a broker typically, but since the vendor handles the customer experience after they’ve received the part, you’ve just collected a locator fee for virtually no risk at all.
Starting an organized operation will help you stay organized as your auto parts business scales up. When just starting your online business, you can use Google Sheets or another free online CRM to keep track of your client base.
It’s important to keep hold of information such as who each customer is, the location where the part was shipped to, and the vendor where the part was purchased from.
Keeping a close eye on your checking account and credit card used for purchasing parts daily is another important aspect of staying ahead of your costs. This will help you track when a vendor has charged your card or has issued you a refund, if needed.