A dealership's digital inventory is its first showroom. Many buyers only look at that before deciding to visit a dealership. And that makes good photography a must for the bottom line.
Three years ago, Titus-Will Automotive Group didn’t have a photo department or even a process. And now they do, thanks to Jacob Rose, the group’s photo department manager.
Driving the news: Rose came from the auction world, bringing a decade’s worth of experience inspecting cars, photographing cars, and building relationships with dealer groups across the region.
Then, Titus-Will Automotive reached out.
"My job was to build a photo department that was non-existent," Rose told Daily Dealer Live host Sam D’Arc.
Rose said a photo department may be one of the smallest teams in a dealer group, but it depends on every other department to function.
So, his first move was making sure every department knew who his photographers were and how to work alongside them.
Because sales, reconditioning, service, detailing, missing keys, recon timing, front-line readiness, etc., can all affect when inventory goes online.
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Between the lines: Now, Rose runs a team of six photographers, not including himself, who shoot all new and used inventory across the group’s eight locations.
Every photographer gets the same training, and every car gets the same shots and the same angles.
The crew uses iPhones running the CarCutter app, which guides shooters through OEM-compliant framing.
"I train all of our photographers the same exact way," Rose said. "It's just so we can make sure that it looks like one photographer works for our group, because we like that uniformity on the website."
Why it matters: Buyers scan fast, and a digital lot where every listing looks different forces the brain to reprocess with every click, Rose said.
So, having uniform photography removes that friction, and a buyer without friction moves faster toward a decision.
Rose aims to hit a four-to-seven-day benchmark from lot arrival to front-line photo set. To do that, he splits up the team.
Some photographers work alongside the detail team, shooting cars as they come off the line. Others float across all eight locations, handling pre-recon sets and new inventory.
Pre-recon photos, meaning those shot before a vehicle is fully reconditioned, go live with a banner overlay. The car isn't ready, but the listing is active.
"Getting any photos online at all, even if it's just the four pre-recon photos — you're getting leads in," Rose said.
The scorecard: Performance is tracked through Car Cutter's backend, which logs photo sets and timestamps by photographer.
Rose's daily benchmark is 13 to 15 final photo sets per photographer, on top of pre-recon work.
Photographers earn a blended hourly and per-unit bonus tied to volume.
Although there’s no platform locked in yet, Rose’s next goal is to bring video into the mix.
Bottom line: Consumers often see a dealer's website first, so make sure it looks good. The first step, Rose says, is getting the process done.
“Making sure the process is dialed because there's so many different moving pieces [during] the recon lifecycle of a vehicle, make sure everybody's working well together,” Rose said.
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