Ever seen a movie that takes its characters to a car dealership?

You can almost guarantee that it’ll show them haggling with a salesperson. It’s a trope at this point, but that might not be true for very much longer. Online trade-in valuation services like Instant Offer by Accu-Trade are giving customers the information they need to be prepared once they’re at the lot.

A survey conducted by Dealer Rater for Automotive News found that 71 percent of respondents went online to determine their trade-in’s value before going into the dealership. Almost all of these people reported that the dealership offered them exactly the price they were expecting, and only 4 percent found the negotiations over price “unpleasant.”

That’s a pretty big difference from the combative relationships that we see between salespeople and customers in the movies.

And more customers are going online for valuations every day. More than half of all total customers for every car brand mentioned in the survey went online to check their car’s value first.

That’s why it’s important to have a trade-in tool like Instant Offer on your dealer site. Customers have always loved convenience, and now car buyers are demanding it online too.

Where are your customers finding their trade-in values? If it’s not on your site, then you have a problem.