Eyes On The Road

A Message From Tom Cross, President

After many years, Black Book recently changed its branding motto from “Timely, Independent & Accurate” to “Because You Can’t Afford to Be Wrong.” While it would be understandable to think this is just a marketing tactic of little significance to you, I assure you there’s much more behind this message than initially meets the eye.

“Because You Can’t Afford to Be Wrong” is the driving force behind our business philosophy that supports everything we do. We take this philosophy very seriously, and put real resources behind it, because in the end it’s all about you and your business.

In today’s information-driven society, events that happen halfway around the world often have a near-immediate impact at the pump, on the lot, and in the lanes. We’ve seen this happen recently as world events unfolded in Egypt, Libya and Japan contributing to price volatility in the automotive market. This volatility makes it easy for dealers to get whipsawed if they don’t have access to the most relevant market data.

In the past, the marketplace could be more forgiving of inventory mistakes and valuation errors. But in this ultra-competitive market, mistakes can be exponentially more costly and dangerous. With so many savvy competitors out there going after the same customer, why self-inflict your own wounds?

It’s our job to make sure that doesn’t happen. When you look closely, you’ll see a host of improvements and innovation that backstops our commitment to providing you with the best market data available. Take our Mobile Solutions™ apps, for example. To our industry-leading Daily™ updates we’ve recently added vehicle history reporting and second generation VIN Scanner capability.

But “Because You Can’t Afford to Be Wrong” goes beyond technological improvements. We’ve also increased the number of auctions we monitor and coupled that with a 10% increase in the number of survey personnel that physically attend those auctions.

These investments – requiring real resources – prove that our motto is much more than just a marketing slogan. It’s our guiding principle. It has been since 1955, as it is today, as it will be in the future. And that is something that will never change.

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