What was the gross profit margin for the company in the third quarter of 2020 
garded products across new geographic regions. This change in strategy has shown early indications of success as we are growing and winning new business with other data center customers. For example, in the quarter, we secured our first order with a major cloud computing customer in Europe for shipment in fiscal '21. This is a key component of our growth strategy moving forward.
Looking ahead, we see our markets starting to pull back a little bit, but they will remain generally positive throughout the calendar year. Within that we expect to see stronger growth in key markets as macro trend should remain strong. For data centers, strong growth continues in the colocation and cloud data center space. Given our strong presence in the UK markets, the increased certainty around Brexit should provide some stability into the general HVAC market. We anticipate UK banks to release capital funding for construction, open the door to growth again. As I mentioned earlier, our newly engaged global data center team has solid plans to grow and diversify this business with new customers in fiscal '21.
With that, I'd like to turn it over to Mick for an overview of our consolidated results and an update to our outlook for fiscal 2020.
Michael B. Lucareli -- Vice President, Finance, and Chief Financial Officer
Good morning, everyone. Please turn to Slide 7. As we anticipated and detailed by Tom, market softness continued well through the quarter. VTS and CIS segments were the primary drivers of our revenue decline, which resulted in difficult year-over-year comparisons. As reported, third quarter sales declined $68 million or 12%, of the $68 million decline over $50 million was the result of decline in truck and off-highway sales along with the drop to our largest data center customer.
Gross profit of $74 million declined 20%, resulting in a gross margin of 15.5%. The 27% downside conversion was in line with our expectations and based on standard fixed and variable cost structures. Besides the lower sales volume, CIS was negatively impacted by sales mix, resulting from the decline in data center sales. Also impacting gross profit was approximately $2 million of costs relating to the product and equipment transfers in support of our automotive exit strategy. Materials and metals had no impact on the quarter and strength in building HVAC continued, with a gross margin improvement of 120 basis points.
SG&A for the quarter was $64 million. There were two main drivers behind the SG&A numbers. First, we had lower compensation expenses this quarter and began seeing the benefits of our cost reduction plan. Second, we have the temporary costs related to our automotive exit strategy. Preparing to exit the automotive business is a complicated and expensive process, including all of the separation and program management work. To facilitate this process, we created a program management office to support all of the work streams necessary to support the business and transfer products to fully separate our plants.
As discussed previously, the auto business needed to be separated and stood up as a stand-alone fully functioning business. This required that we carve out a quarter of the company that have been previously embedded within multiple locations throughout our global VTS segment. Last, our actual deal related and transaction work stream, since launching a formal sales process, we incurred costs related to seller due diligence, accounting, legal and other advisory services. During the quarter, we incurred $12.6 million of costs related to all of this work, including the separation and sale process, approximately $3 million was primarily related to project management costs. Also during the quarter we incurred approximately $7 million of cost to separate the business. These costs included IT, human resources, accounting, tax, legal and audit fees. Last, there were costs tied to the sale process and related to seller due diligence, legal and other advisory costs. During the quarter these costs were approximately $2 million. I am encouraged that the vast 
garded products across new geographic regions. This change in strategy has shown early indications of success as we are growing and winning new business with other data center customers. For example, in the quarter, we secured our first order with a major cloud computing customer in Europe for shipment in fiscal '21. This is a key component of our growth strategy moving forward.
Looking ahead, we see our markets starting to pull back a little bit, but they will remain generally positive throughout the calendar year. Within that we expect to see stronger growth in key markets as macro trend should remain strong. For data centers, strong growth continues in the colocation and cloud data center space. Given our strong presence in the UK markets, the increased certainty around Brexit should provide some stability into the general HVAC market. We anticipate UK banks to release capital funding for construction, open the door to growth again. As I mentioned earlier, our newly engaged global data center team has solid plans to grow and diversify this business with new customers in fiscal '21.
With that, I'd like to turn it over to Mick for an overview of our consolidated results and an update to our outlook for fiscal 2020.
Michael B. Lucareli -- Vice President, Finance, and Chief Financial Officer
Good morning, everyone. Please turn to Slide 7. As we anticipated and detailed by Tom, market softness continued well through the quarter. VTS and CIS segments were the primary drivers of our revenue decline, which resulted in difficult year-over-year comparisons. As reported, third quarter sales declined $68 million or 12%, of the $68 million decline over $50 million was the result of decline in truck and off-highway sales along with the drop to our largest data center customer.
Gross profit of $74 million declined 20%, resulting in a gross margin of 15.5%. The 27% downside conversion was in line with our expectations and based on standard fixed and variable cost structures. Besides the lower sales volume, CIS was negatively impacted by sales mix, resulting from the decline in data center sales. Also impacting gross profit was approximately $2 million of costs relating to the product and equipment transfers in support of our automotive exit strategy. Materials and metals had no impact on the quarter and strength in building HVAC continued, with a gross margin improvement of 120 basis points.
 SG&A for the quarter was $64 million. There were two main drivers behind the SG&A numbers. First, we had lower compensation expenses this quarter and began seeing the benefits of our cost reduction plan. Second, we have the temporary costs related to our automotive exit strategy. Preparing to exit the automotive business is a complicated and expensive process, including all of the separation and program management work. To facilitate this process, we created a program management office to support all of the work streams necessary to support the business and transfer products to fully separate our plants.
As discussed previously, the auto business needed to be separated and stood up as a stand-alone fully functioning business. This required that we carve out a quarter of the company that have been previously embedded within multiple locations throughout our global VTS segment. Last, our actual deal related and transaction work stream, since launching a formal sales process, we incurred costs related to seller due diligence, accounting, legal and other advisory services. During the quarter, we incurred $12.6 million of costs related to all of this work, including the separation and sale process, approximately $3 million was primarily related to project management costs. Also during the quarter we incurred approximately $7 million of cost to separate the business. These costs included IT, human resources, accounting, tax, legal and audit fees. Last, there were costs tied to the sale process and related to seller due diligence, legal and other advisory costs. During the quarter these costs were approximately $2 million. I am encouraged that the vast 