Most dealerships close 3 to 4 percent of their Kelley Blue Book Instant Cash Offer leads. Ask around the industry and you will hear that number described as doing a good job.
David Long thinks that bar is on the floor.
David Long is the COO of Vehicle Acquisition Network (VAN). He has been working instant cash offer leads since before they carried the KBB name, back when the product was called Trade-In Marketplace, and he ran it across roughly 50 stores during his years at DGDG and Hansel Auto Group. Since then he has helped launch more than 100 dealership buy centers. The process David Long coaches closes KBB Instant Cash Offer leads at 10 to 15 percent.
I sat down with him this week to ask what separates the stores that convert ICO leads from the stores that complain about them. His quotes below are lightly edited for length and clarity, and every claim is his, from experience.
Early on, David noticed something about the leads themselves.
"The car is never fully and accurately represented by the consumer. They miss something, either overtly or inadvertently. So I know automatically that their car is going to be worth more money."
That is not a knock on the offer. The Instant Cash Offer is a real, redeemable number, built from what the seller typed in. When the seller leaves out the tow package or the fresh tires, the offer is doing its job with the information it was given. The gap is the dealer's opportunity: put trained eyes on the actual car and pay for what is really there.
He tested it.
2,498 of 2,500
By David Long's count, 2,498 of his first 2,500 instant cash offer leads had room to pay the seller more than the initial number, almost always because the seller under-described the car.
That flipped the whole conversation. While most stores open the call with logistics, scheduling the inspection and nothing else, which every seller hears as "the number is about to go down," David's team called with the opposite message.
"We decided we would just call customers and tell them the truth: your car is most likely worth hundreds, if not thousands, more. Customers would say, I had a feeling it was worth more. And then they'd come in."
That is the difference between a seller who shows up curious and a seller who never picks up the phone. David's close on that call is one line: "Is today good, or is tomorrow better?"
This is the objection David hears from every desk, and his answer is auction math.
"You're going to go to the auction and pay three grand more for the same car, plus the buy fee, plus transportation. Why don't you pay the seller a grand more and skip all of that?"
Paying above the initial offer is not generosity. It is buying the car below what replacement costs in the lane, from a seller standing in your service drive instead of a lane you share with every dealer in the region.
Every dealer asks this. David has no patience for it.
"Have you ever seen a market where customers weren't unrealistic? So what you'd be saying is, what if customers are exactly like customers have always been? You do your job. You show them the evidence. You teach them what they need to know. Here's all the market data."
The alternative, David Long points out, is the strategy most stores are already running:
"You can close at 3 percent and then complain that they're bad leads. You can go that way, too."
When David walks into a store that wants help with its ICO program, he asks four questions. "Most dealers have zero idea. They generally don't know."
| Metric | Target | What it measures |
|---|---|---|
| Response time | 2 to 4 minutes | First contact after the lead arrives |
| Response-to-response time | 2 to 4 minutes | Your answer after a seller replies |
| Contact rate | 70 percent | Leads your team actually reaches |
| Duplicate leads | Track them | A duplicate usually means the seller refreshed an expired offer or came back through another door. |
That refreshed offer is the hottest hand-raise in the pile, and most stores delete it.
And underneath those four sits the number David says surprises everyone: attempts. In David Long's coaching data, it takes an average of 21 contact attempts to convert a KBB Instant Cash Offer lead, and the real range runs from 8 to 80.
"If somebody had told me ten years ago that it takes 8 to 80 attempts to convert one of these leads, I would never have believed it."
"I thought four or five attempts and I was golden. That doesn't even scratch the surface," David says.
Ask David what a struggling ICO program looks like and the answer is structural, not personal.
"Poorly looks like pushing it through your sales team or your BDC. It goes into the round robin, and one minute the salesperson is a salesperson, the next minute they're a buyer. That doesn't get it done."
What works is one person who owns the lead completely, and whose only job is buying cars. David's rule for routing every lead in the store is simple:
"If it's a lead without a vehicle of interest, it's a buy center lead. If it's a lead with a vehicle of interest, it's a sales lead. There is no confusion or ambiguity around this."
And that dedicated buyer says so, out loud, to the seller: "What you do with the money is completely up to you. I'm not in the sales department. My job is to help you maximize the value of your car, even if my company doesn't get it."
Most stores get this wrong even after they start measuring.
"Knowing the numbers does nothing on its own. Knowledge without action doesn't do a lot of good. The numbers tell you where your attention needs to be. Then you have to systematize the follow-up."
The last ingredient is the one David says gets underestimated most: leadership engagement. The strongest operators he works with spend a quarter or more of their time in the buy center. I have seen the same thing in our own network: the GM at Elk Grove Subaru told me acquisition is his most important focus, because the cars a store buys feed everything else it does.
Everything David outlined above is measurable, and almost no store measures it. That is exactly the gap VAN's KBB ICO integration was built to close:
David tells stores what to do. The software makes it hard not to do it.
See how the VAN + KBB ICO integration works, or book a demo and bring your last month of ICO leads. We'll walk your four numbers together and show you where the gap is.
Most dealerships close 3 to 4 percent of their KBB Instant Cash Offer leads. The process VAN COO David Long coaches, built on fast response and a dedicated buyer, closes at 10 to 15 percent.
Within 2 to 4 minutes, and just as fast every time the seller replies.
An average of 21 contact attempts, with a real-world range of 8 to 80, according to David Long's coaching data.
KBB ICO leads usually fail for structural reasons, not lead quality: they route to salespeople or a BDC instead of a dedicated buyer, first response takes hours instead of 2 to 4 minutes, and follow-up stops after 4 or 5 attempts when converting the average lead takes 21. Fixing routing and speed is what moves stores from 3 percent to double digits, according to VAN COO David Long.
A dedicated buyer in a buy center, not the sales round robin. If a lead has no vehicle of interest, it belongs to acquisition.
David Long is the COO of Vehicle Acquisition Network and has launched more than 100 dealership buy centers over a 13-year career working instant cash offer leads, including roughly 50 stores at DGDG and Hansel Auto Group. Read how his coaching played out at Lakeway Auto Sales' buy center results.