The lead is legit. Most of the crap that comes through my classifieds sites are the shipping company check fraud scams that are common to craigslist. Scammers are easy to spot from my point of view, though, because they never request information for just one vehicle.

I understand your point that generating the lead and getting that potential on the phone is sometimes more important than satisfying their need for information ASAP.

I’m not a dealer. My job is to market cars and generate leads for dealers. The adjustments to ads that I plan to make are not just a result of this single lead, but the summary of requests over all the leads that enter my database.

For example, I love the fourth question asked, how long has the car has been for sale? Autotrader has their “newly listed” badge now, but I’m taking it a step further with “originally listed” and “last modified” timestamps–how long has the car been for sale AND how fresh are the description and photos?

The sites I run also include private seller listings, where the length of sale is more important than for a dealer.

I guess what I’m tying to say is that while my job is to generate leads, it is also my responsibility to cut out the noise and “plz send pics” emails that probably won’t lead to sales.

I’m also working on the closing price requests. A large percentage of email leads ask for an out-the-door price. I know dealers hate this, especially the ones in Jeff’s comments this week http://www.dealerrefresh.com/my_weblog/2007/10/how-i-should-ap.html, but with the proper wording and the right attitude this is something that USED car dealers can take advantage of.

That’s all beside the point though. Let’s get to your original question. I’ve done a lot of experimenting, and I see two ways to go about classifieds. You can either hit a few “hot points” and have a short description or you can have a lengthy, all-inclusive description that answers anyones questions up front. I’ve found both to have pros and cons.

A short description will naturally leave out info that someone wants to know. When they contact you, that’s a lead for you to work.

A more descript ad can have all the info the customer is looking for, but in my experience they still ask the same questions, even if they could get their answer by reading the ad. Some people will read through all the info you provide, and as a result some of the people that ultimately aren’t interested won’t waste your time with calls/emails.

I guess what I’m getting at is that if I were writing the classifieds, I would keep them fairly brief with just a couple of hot points like “Well below book value, all service records available, just in on trade – won’t last long at this price” and then drive traffic to your entire inventory by adding something like “for more photos, info, and $500 off this vehicle visit our website at http://www.yoursite.com“.