Notes for owners · Industry playbooks
How used car dealers should answer portal enquiries
The same portal enquiry went to three dealers. The one who replies first with photographs of the flaws, the ownership details and an EMI figure gets the test drive.
The GullySales team · Updated 3 Oct 2026 · 7 min read
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Reply with the car, not with a greeting. The same enquiry went to three dealers with the same model, and the buyer is comparing replies before he compares vehicles. Send five things in the first message: four photographs that include the worst panel, the kilometres on the meter, the ownership serial and insurance validity, the on-road price, and a monthly figure if he finances it. Then offer two slots for a test drive. Do that before the other two dealers have opened the portal app.
What a buyer means when he types "is this available"
He is not asking about availability. He is asking whether you are a real showroom, whether the photographs were honest, and whether the price on the listing is the price. Portals encourage short enquiries, so the question arrives stripped of all of that, and most dealers answer the literal words with "yes sir, available" and wait.
That reply tells the buyer nothing he did not know, so he moves to the next tab. The dealer who answered the real question in one message has already booked the Sunday morning slot. Five things belong in that message.
| What to send | Why it matters here |
|---|---|
| Four photographs, one of them the worst panel | Buyers assume a used car hides damage. Showing the scratch yourself ends that argument before the visit |
| Kilometres, year of manufacture and the registration year | They differ, and a buyer who discovers the gap at the showroom distrusts everything else |
| Ownership serial and insurance validity | First or second owner, and whether the policy expires next month, decide the price in the buyer's head |
| On-road price, including transfer and NOC where it applies | A price that grows at the counter is the most common reason a visit does not become a sale |
| An indicative EMI at a stated down payment | Most buyers in this segment are deciding whether the instalment fits, not whether the price is fair |
Keep a prepared block per car with these five, written when the car is photographed, not when the enquiry arrives. Then a reply at ten in the evening is a paste and a send, not a fifteen-minute job that nobody does after dinner.
Portal leads are shared, so speed is the entire edge
Several portals pass the same enquiry to more than one dealer, and some charge you for it. Read your own contract and you will usually find that the buyer's number went out three or four times. You are not racing the buyer's patience, you are racing two other sales executives who are looking at the same phone number.
So decide who answers after showroom hours, and say it out loud. One number, one person on it each evening, on a rota the staff agreed. A lead that waits until nine the next morning has already been to a test drive.
Answer finance in the same breath as price
A buyer looking at a five-year-old hatchback has a figure in mind that is per month, not total. If he has to come to the showroom to learn what the instalment would be, he will learn it from whoever he visits first.
Keep an indicative table for your common price bands at a stated down payment and a stated tenure, marked clearly as indicative, and say the final rate depends on the lender and his profile. You are not promising an approval. You are letting him picture the car in his budget before he has driven anywhere.
The condition report is a sales tool, not a legal document
Write one page per car when it comes in. Odometer, service records you hold, accident history as far as you can establish it, the panels that have been repainted, the tyres, and the two or three things you would tell a friend. Photograph the flaws in daylight.
This does the opposite of what dealers fear. A buyer who was warned about a repainted bumper and a worn rear tyre stops looking for the hidden problem, because you have shown him you are not hiding. And if you cannot verify something, write that you cannot verify it rather than reassuring him, because the claim he checks and finds wrong costs you the sale and the review.
What does not work
An automated reply saying our executive will contact you shortly. It buys an hour, and it tells the buyer he is standing in a queue. Calling six times in one evening from three different numbers, which gets your number blocked and your showroom talked about. Hiding the price so he has to ring you, which filters out the serious buyers who are comparing properly. And the same car listed at two prices on two portals. Buyers check both.
Also honest: no reply routine rescues a car that is priced ten per cent above the market for its kilometres. Fix the price, then fix the reply.
For example, a four-car showroom on Mysore Road
Take a dealer holding twelve to fifteen cars, with one salesman and the owner answering enquiries between them. The details are illustrative. Enquiries arrive from two portals and from the showroom's own Google Business Profile, mostly between nine at night and midnight.
Nothing about the stock is wrong. What is missing is a prepared block per car and a decision about who holds the phone after eight. Write the block the day a car is photographed, put one person on the evening shift, and the enquiries that used to be answered at ten the next morning are answered in four minutes. Days in stock is where you will see it, before you see it in sales. How the rest of that cycle fits together is set out on our page for used car dealers.
What to do next
Open your portal inbox and find the time stamp of the last twenty enquiries, and the time stamp of your first reply to each. Work out the gap and write the median on a piece of paper. Longer than an hour during the day? That number is costing you more than your advertising budget. Book the free audit if you would like us to go through those twenty with you and build the reply block for your stock.
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