How to Buy a Car Without Losing Your Shirt (eBook)

Jay Hamilton (Autor)

eBook Download: EPUB

2017 | 1. Auflage
102 Seiten
Publishdrive (Verlag)
978-0-00-004160-9 (ISBN)

Infos

When you walk into a car dealership to look at cars, who has the advantage? Does the customer have the advantage, since he has the money? Not on your life! Even if you buy a new car every two or three years, the salesperson who is about to greet you talks to at least three or four customers EVERY DAY! The dealer has this down to a science, and you don't. This book tells you what to watch out for.

Textauszug

 

CHAPTER 1:

GENERAL INFORMATION

When you walk into a car dealership to look at a new car, who do you think has the advantage? Does the customer have the advantage, since he has the money? Not on your life! Even if you buy a new car every two or three years, the salesman who is about to greet you talks to three or four customers EVERY DAY! He has this down to a science and you don’t. This booklet cannot make you a wonder buyer. The thing you must do is to be firm, and remember everything in this booklet, and that will be difficult. It would not hurt a bit to practice, with someone else playing the role of the salesman. (Role-playing is one of the first things a new car salesman does, before they turn him loose on the sales floor.) It might not even hurt a bit to “buy” a few cars from other dealers before you go to the dealer you want to buy from. Repeat players have all of the advantages, and you want to turn yourself into a repeat player before you play for real.

Choosing a dealer may be even more important than choosing the car, and the chances are you could live with something other than your dream model car if the dealership were more attentive. You should ask all of your friends who have bought cars lately what they think of the dealers they bought from.

You should find out if there is a high turnover of personnel at the dealership. That is a common problem in the automotive industry. If the salesman leaves the dealership a month or two after you buy a new car, you have lost a lot of leverage. The salesman will ask you to send him any friends who are about to buy a car—and he means to send them to him personally, not just to the dealership. This is because he is paid a commission on every car he sells. That commission is not like the commission a salesman in a retail store might get, of about 5% of the purchase price. The car salesman gets a commission of 25 – 30 per cent of the Gross Profit on the deal. The more money he makes for the dealership, the more he puts in his pocket—and he gets a considerable chunk of the difference. If you send him a few customers, he earns a lot of money by keeping you happy. Don’t be shy about asking him for a referral fee, known in the trade as a “bird dog” fee. These days that fee is likely to be $100 per closed deal. It certainly should be no less than $50. It is best if you take your friend in there and personally introduce him, or at least call the salesman BEFORE the friend gets there, so there is no doubt that the reason this customer saw that salesman is because you sent him in. For your information, the bird dog fee is generally paid by the dealer and does not come out of the sales rep’s commission. This kind of potential relationship is enough to keep the salesman who sold you the car, interested in any problems you have with the car after you get it home. If he leaves the dealership, you have a lot less leverage in case of problems.

For this reason, I do not recommend buying a car over the phone, or over the internet. I have seen books which advise you to talk only to the “internet salesperson.” Poppycock! In dealerships where I have worked, every salesperson was entitled to sell over the internet, and from internet offerings I have seen, that appears to be a common thread. But if there were an internet-only salesperson, they would most likely not be on commission, they would be a low-salaried employee, with little knowledge about cars and/or the workings of the dealership. They would be simply an order-taker, not capable of helping you choose a model that is right for you or anything else. Also, like dealerships which advertise that every vehicle is pre-priced, and their sales people are not on commission, the price includes an average markup, which gives the dealer the kind of profit he expects to make on every deal, and you want to hold him to less profit than that. If you read this book through, and understand the process, and get some practice before you negotiate for real, you should have no problem in working the dealer down to a much lower profit than those single-priced dealerships, or internet salespeople, will be permitted to offer you.

It goes without saying, that because of the way the salesman gets paid, you should always talk to the same salesman every time you return to the dealer. It has become apparent to me that many customers do not realize this. But that salesman will get to know you, and—as we already noted—he will be your strongest ally in the dealership, should a problem develop. Suppose you talk to one salesman a couple of times, and then buy from someone else: the first salesman has essentially wasted every minute he spent with you. If you come back with a problem, he will NOT want to talk to you, PERIOD! If, on the other hand, you always talked to the same salesman you bought from, and he is not there when you come in with a problem, someone else may be willing to help with your problem, because they would want someone to help THEIR customer under similar circumstances. Solving a problem after the sale is not a waste of time. It is a duty they owe to the dealership. But talking to someone who later buys from someone else IS a waste of time, and a salesman who has wasted time with you before the purchase, will not want to know you after the purchase. Other salesmen may also be aware of your fickleness.

If, on the other hand, you don’t like the salesman with whom you are talking, you should ask to see the sales manager, and explain this to him as soon as you become aware of your feelings. Every salesperson has their own style, and most dealerships will keep people from a variety of backgrounds there. It is far from unheard of that a particular customer will not like one particular salesperson from time to time. But generally, there will be some hard feelings somewhere, if one salesperson wastes a significant amount of time with a customer who then buys from another salesperson at the same dealership. The customer may wind up being one of the ones hurt by those hard feelings, so please, Please, PLEASE always talk to the same salesperson whenever you go into a particular dealership. If you don’t see him, ASK for that person by name. You both will generally be better off that way. Normally, if another salesperson writes a deal after you have asked for your salesperson, the two will split the commission. It would be best if you CALL your salesperson, and ensure that (s)he will be there when you plan to arrive. Unless the shop is unusually busy, (s)he will try to avoid talking to anyone else within an hour or so of any appointment. Of course, if (s)he has left the dealership, you might want to know why, and where (s)he has gone to (something the dealership might be reluctant to tell you, since it could cost them business.)

Once, I had to leave to go to a locksmith to pick up a key, when we could not find the key for something I was selling. When I arrived back, I saw a regular, steady customer of mine in the showroom. I waved to him; he lit up in a huge grin, and waved back. As I walked out of the closing room again for a second, I told him that I would be right with him. I then noticed on the computer that another salesman was working with him. This other salesman was (in my well-considered opinion) a pathological liar. I immediately walked up to my customer, and asked him whether he had asked for me when he first came in. He replied that he had wanted to talk to me, that he had asked for me, and that he had been told simply that I was not there. The other salesman absolutely insisted that that the customer did not ask for any salesman when he first walked up to the customer. I have waited on that customer practically every time he came in to the shop, even for parts. I had the kind of relationship where I am certain that the customer would not walk into the shop without my name on his lips. He was looking at a particular model, which he had discussed with me earlier. We had the 1993 model, which had come in since he had last talked to me, in the back under wraps until we sold the 1992 unit that we had in stock. I know that this customer wanted the ’92 over the ’91 when he bought his trade. I certainly would have told him that we had the ’93 in stock. Instead, the other salesman made him a deal on the ’92, without telling him that the ’93 was in. Ultimately the deal fell through, probably because the customer sensed that the other sales rep was lying about whether the customer had asked for me, since the other salesman wanted to keep the deal for himself, rather than splitting it with me. The commission on the deal was approximately $160, so the salesman was lying for about $80. The boss will not call the customer to verify the truth. I probably will ultimately quit, and if I do, this incident will have a lot to do with it. (Actually, I did quit, and started my own computer store, a short while later, after the same salesman pulled similar stunts on both myself and the third salesman in the shop. Once he even told a customer that the third salesman was gone, “but he’ll be back in a (sic) hour…” The other salesman had gone home to watch a major race on television, and had said he might be back before closing, but he was having friends over, and there were sure to be martinis involved, and nobody expected to see him return. When the customer came back, this guy started a deal in the computer, telling the customer that it was just roughed in, and that his regular salesman would finalize things like the trade allowance. This customer, a retired professor, was buying four or five vehicles a year from one particular salesman in this dealership. Store rule was that...

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 3.12.2017
• Sprache: englisch
• Themenwelt: Kinder- / Jugendbuch
• ISBN-10: 0-00-004160-2 / 0000041602
• ISBN-13: 978-0-00-004160-9 / 9780000041609