Interested in Automotive Sales School? The Black Book Guide to the Cars Canadians Want

The Canadian Black Book (CBB) is primarily used as a members-only service for finding the values of new and used cars in Canada. However, it does a lot more than that, including handing out industry awards and providing dealerships and the public with valuable data about car buyers.

Becoming familiar with the CBB can offer some important insights to those who have automotive sales careers. Below we’ll look at what the Canadian Black Book does.

The Canadian Black Book Is Often Used to Determine the Value of Vehicles

The CBB is most famous for calculating how much vehicles are worth. For example, the CBB provides a guide to residual value that dealerships use to set lease terms. Residual value is how much a vehicle is worth by the end of the lease term, so it’s the amount at which the customer can choose to buy the vehicle for when the lease is up. In addition to dealerships, many auto manufacturers and banks rely on the CBB’s residual value guide for determining lease terms.

Additionally, the CBB calculates wholesale prices for vehicles. This is the price at which a dealer may choose to buy a vehicle either from a manufacturer or at auction. As such, it’s an especially important value for anybody in automotive sales school to understand as it largely determines how much a vehicle at a dealership needs to be sold for in order to turn a profit.

Automotive Sales School Graduates Can Use the Black Book to Learn About Industry Trends

While determining the residual and wholesale value of vehicles is extremely important, it’s not the only thing that the CBB does. It also provides dealers and the public with important insights into the industry.

For example, each year the CBB hands out the Best Retained Value Awards. These awards highlight vehicles that retain the highest percentage of their value after four years. As such, they are a useful source of information for both dealers and the public when determining prices for trade-ins and used cars. The awards are divided into dozens of categories based on market segment and vehicle type. For example, at the 2019 awards, the Ford Mustang won in the Sports Car category, while the Toyota Camry won in the Mid-Size Car category.

The awards also reveal a lot about the industry overall. For instance, the 2019 awards showed that small pickups retain a higher percentage of their value, at 73 per percent, than any other type of vehicle. And Japanese vehicles are the best overall at retaining their value, followed by European and North American vehicles.

Finally, the CBB provides data and research into Canadians’ automotive purchasing habits. Recently, for example, the CBB released a report into car buyer demographics in 2019. This report found, among other things, that a third of Canadians would consider purchasing a vehicle entirely online and that older Canadians are far more likely to own or lease a vehicle than younger ones are—although younger Canadians are more likely to buy a vehicle within the next two years. Such data can be very useful in your career after automotive sales training as it provides insights into your customers, which in turn can help plan sales tactics and marketing strategies.

Are you interested in a career in the automotive industry?

Contact Automotive Training Centres to learn about our car sales training in Toronto.