Your used stock is selling itself. Badly.

Picture the guy who's going to buy your car. He's on the couch. TV's on, he's not watching it. Phone in hand, thumb going, half asleep. It's 11pm.

He is not standing on your forecourt in the sunshine while a salesman talks him round. He's scrolling. And he's deciding, in about a second and a half per car, whether yours is worth a second look or a flick past.

That's the actual moment of sale now. Not the test drive. The scroll.

So let's talk about what he sees when he lands on your listing, because for most dealers it's a bit grim.

Eight photos taken on a wet Tuesday

You know the ones. Car parked skew against a wall. Puddles. A wheelie bin photobombing the back left. Half of them are the dashboard at an angle nobody's head has ever been at. One's a blurry shot of the boot for reasons known only to God.

Here's the thing. Those photos aren't neutral. They're not just "not helping." They're actively telling the buyer something, and what they're telling him is "we couldn't be bothered, and we probably couldn't be bothered with the service history either."

He doesn't think that consciously. He just feels it, and he scrolls on.

Photos are the whole game on a used car. Get a clean spot, wait for decent light, wipe the bloody thing down first. Shoot it properly. Outside front three-quarter, the money shot. The interior from the driver's door. The dash with the mileage showing, because that's the first thing he wants and if you hide it he assumes you're hiding it. The boot open. The engine bay. Any damage, shown honestly, because a scuff you photographed is a scuff he trusts, adn a scuff he finds himself is a dealer he doesn't.

Twenty good photos beat eight bad ones every single time. It's free. It just takes giving a toss.

And while we're here, one house rule worth stealing. Put a jar on the counter in the used department. Every time somebody uploads a listing with their own shadow stretched across the bonnet like a chalk outline at a crime scene, that's ten bucks in the jar. Same for a wheelie bin in shot, or a thumb over the lens. It's a bit of fun, nobody's actually getting fired over a shadow, but funny how quick the photos get better when there's a jar involved. Buy the team a case of something with it at the end of the month. Everybody wins, especially the cars.

"1 owner, FSH, must be seen"

That's not a description. That's a shrug in text form.

Every listing on the internet says one owner, full service history, must be seen. It's white noise. The buyer's eyes slide right over it because he's read it four hundred times tonight already.

Tell him something real. Why is this a good one? "Same lady owned it from new, school run and back, never seen a gravel road." Now I can picture it. "We did the brakes and a full service before it went up, so it's ready to drive home today." Now I trust you a little. "Tow bar already fitted, tinted, and the tyres are barely worn." Now you've answered three questions I hadn't even asked yet.

You don't need to write a novel. You need to write like a human who's actually looked at the car, not a bot filling in a form.

The one thing nearly every listing leaves out

The price. Or rather, "price on application."

POA is the single most annoying two letters in this whole business. The buyer's on the couch at 11pm and he wants to know if he can afford the thing. That's it. That's all he's asking. And you've decided to make him phone a salesman tomorrow to find out, as if the friction is somehow working in your favour.

It isn't. He's not going to phone. He's going to scroll to the next car, the one that had the guts to show a number. You didn't build suspense. You lost the deal to the dealer down the road who just told him.

Put the price on. Every time.

It comes down to this

Your used cars are already out there working the night shift for you, whether you like it or not. The only question is whether they're doing it well or badly.

A good listing sells the car while you're asleep. A bad one quietly convinces people to buy somewhere else, and you never even know it happened, because he never called to tell you he didn't call.

The stock's the same. The photos, the words and the honesty are what's for sale. Fix those and you've fixed your used department without touching a single price.