What to ask before you pick a Marketplace posting tool for your dealership

The demo always goes well. Somebody picks a truck, clicks a button, and it’s on Marketplace before the coffee’s cold. What the demo doesn’t show is week three: the salesperson who never finished setup, the truck that sold Tuesday and is still listed, the price that changed and the listing that didn’t, and a manager asking the whole floor who posted today.

These are the questions we’d ask any vendor, us included, from the dealership side of the desk.

Whose account posts the car, and how?

Since dealership Pages lost vehicle listings in 2023, Marketplace posting runs through salespeople’s own Facebook profiles. That makes the account question the most important one, because it’s your salesperson’s personal account on the line, not the store’s. Meta’s terms ask users not to share their password or give others access to their account.

• Does the tool need my salespeople’s Facebook passwords?
• Does Facebook have to stay logged in on a work computer for it to post?
• Does anything get published or sent without the salesperson clicking the button?

A good answer: each salesperson logs in to their own account, the tool helps fill in the listing, and they click Publish themselves. More on why in posting from your own profile.

Is the listing legal in Colorado as written?

Ask them to post one of your own cars during the demo, from your real inventory, and read the listing out loud. In Colorado it should name your store and say it’s a dealer, show the year, make, model and stock number with the price, carry a good-through date, and keep payments and rates out. The big one is the price: under Rule 13, the advertised price has to include your dealer handling fee. If the tool copies your feed’s Internet Price straight into the price box, every listing it makes leaves the fee out.

• Does the price in the price box include our dealer handling fee?
• Where’s the good-through date?
• What stops a salesperson from typing “$399 a month” into the description?

You can also paste their sample listing into our free listing check. The full list of rules is in our Colorado checklist.

What happens when a car sells?

Listings live on salespeople’s profiles, so only the person who posted a car can take it down. Without a system, sold cars sit there for days, and every one is a buyer who might drive in for a truck you don’t have.

• How does the tool know a car sold?
• Who gets told to take the listing down, and how?
• Where do I see sold cars that are still listed?

What happens when a price changes?

A live listing keeps advertising the old price until somebody edits it, and in Colorado an advertised price has to be honored for three days after the ad last runs unless it has an end date. Price increases are the ones to worry about.

• Does the salesperson find out when a car they posted changes price?
• Do they get the new price and the new description, or just a number?
• Are increases flagged to a manager?

Our cleanup routine shows what a good answer to these two sections looks like day to day.

Can a manager see who posted today?

If the answer involves a spreadsheet, or asking around, the tool isn’t saving the manager any time. You want it per salesperson, every day, without anybody having to report it.

• Who posted today, and how many?
• Which cars sold while they were listed?
• How fast do sold cars come down?

What does a salesperson have to learn?

The best tool in the world doesn’t help if half the floor never finishes setup. Ask how long it takes a brand-new salesperson to post their first car, and whether it works for the one who struggles with your CRM.

• What does setup look like for a salesperson, step by step?
• Can they post from their phone, or only at a desk?
• What does the salesperson see each morning?

What about buyer messages?

Posting is half the job. If the tool writes replies to buyers, ask what it says when someone asks about payments. A reply that quotes a payment before anyone has seen a credit application is a promise your finance office will have to walk back.

• Does it ever write payments, rates or down payments?
• Does it give the all-in price, the same one in the listing?
• Who sends the reply?

Our guide to answering Marketplace buyers has the replies we’d want a tool to write.

What does it really cost?

• One price for the store, or per salesperson?
• Is there a setup fee?
• How long is the contract, and how do I cancel?
• If we leave, what happens to the listings already on our salespeople’s profiles?

That last one catches people. Listings stay on salespeople’s profiles after you cancel, at whatever price they had. Make sure you’ll have a list of what’s posted, and by whom, on your way out.

A scorecard to bring to the demo