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Comments
Costs you two minutes and an email.
No thanks, I have plenty of normal customers to deal with.
Those of us who sit here all day and take these emails can usually smell them a mile away.
Ed
I've worked internet sales before and I can tell you, there are a lot of people with time on their hands.
landru knows what he is talking about!
Never heard from the guy. Car sold this Saturday for the ad price.
; )
Mackabee
;^)
; )
Mackabee
My point is, a local dealer group that I have dealt with does have a "true" internet operation. I make contact with the internet rep, who checks availability and sets the price. But, if you want to see (or buy), they make an appointment with a specific contact (salesman) at whichever brand showroom you need.
From experience, the internet rep has nothing to do with the actually "sales" process, and the salesman has all the particulars already (sent from the internet rep), so they really are doing nothing more than showing you the car and filing out some paperwork.
Actually, I have no point, I just felt like sharing my experience.
2020 Acura RDX tech SH-AWD, 2023 Maverick hybrid Lariat luxury package.
I guess there are some people out there that are crazy enough to abuse your time, but I would think most people that contact you really do want to buy a car ( I have never contacted a dealer except when I was interested in buying a car). Again no disrespect intended to you or your colleagues but IMO your comment "Too much hassle for not enough dollar" is probably a more accurate picture of the situation.
BTW, glad you decided to join back in. Your comments and insights are greatly appreciated, at least by this poster.
Mack, not sure about the phone number thing...LOL I want to stay annonymous til the last possible second
stickguy...that sounds like the way an internet dept should work...no saleman's or customer's time is wasted
Other than that, I agree with you, Mack. When a customer is ready to buy, they can send an e-mail to a dealer offering an exact OTD price, just like your considerate, but misinformed, customer did.
Hey, Landru, I see that you are beginning to master the art of internet sales. Glad I could help.
Bob
And bobst, I never had a complaint about Cliffy's store when I was online. Just what do you consider badgering?
Stickguy, we have the largest and most successful internet operation in the Southeast. We've been doing this longer (and better) than anyone. We have made a lot of changes in the past 2 years that I've been here, and its probably better than ever. Here is how it works with us: We have 12 (number varies) guys here who are part of the internet department. We are either salesmen or managers, not order takers. If you use our time and expertise to get information and a price, it would show a little courtesy to allow them to "fill out the paperwork" and earn a living when you buy your car. The "E-commerce" model you're talking about is used by smaller dealerships that don't have enough leads to justify a complete dedicated department. We're working over 2,000 a month, on average.
Mass and Bobst, The way I see it, the leads that I get that are completely filled out, including phone numbers (which part of Auto-by-TEL is so hard to understand?) are the ones that warrant my time and attention.
You would be stunned at how many leads we get that say "Highlander" on them.
Well, lets see, there's about 40 different combinations of what you could get in a Highlander, care to elaborate? A phone call solves this in 5 minutes. My time is valuable, and I don't play a stupid "what's it going to get you to come to the dealership today" game. I am a 60wpm typist, but I run out of patience playing email games back and forth on options and pricing. Either you're a serious customer offering a realistic price on a vehicle, or you're not. The quicker we determine which, the sooner we can get things wrapped up and go on to the next one.
Now, I'm not trying to sound short or abrupt here, I'm trying to sum it up. I've got a very high CSI and I'm very good at what I do, but I try to cut out a lot of the fluff for you guys here.
Ed
Mackabee...when a shopper won't give me a phone number, I know they are a non-serious buyer. They just want to hide behind a keyboard. Not always, but most of the time.
I'll never badger a person on the phone. I'll leave a couple of follow up messages. If they don't return my calls, I'll figure they already bought something or they weren't serious.
A couple days later the sales manager called me at work and started giving me the hard sell about how great Toyotas are. After several minutes, he said something like, "OK, lets cut to the chase, how much are you willing to pay for the car?" I said we weren't sure if we even wanted the car, but he kept right on talking. Finally, I told him I had to get back to work, and hung up.
A couple weeks earlier I had stopped at another Toyota dealer just to see what colors the car came in, and within 5 minutes a sales guy gave me the line, "What can I do to sell you a car today?". I said "Nothing", and he went away.
We eventually bought an Altima, which our son still drives. Since that time, we bought four other new cars, learning a little more each time, like to never give out our work phone number.
Craig, the internet rep is not a salesman. The person I dealt with (a number of times) handles all the contact (ABT, their own site, etc) but doesn't get involved in the in-showroom part. They specifically tell you who to ask for (not them). I assume they are on salary, but could be getting a cut of each deal they pass along.
It is a good operation for people who want low hassle/no negotiating pricing (you know exactly what the price for a specific car is before you walk in). may not be the absolute lowest price you could grind to, but there isn't much fat on the bones either.
2020 Acura RDX tech SH-AWD, 2023 Maverick hybrid Lariat luxury package.
She's also an invaluable resource that helps the customers and salesmen when the logistics of the sale are going on. Sort of like a den-mother.
Ed
Maybe a good idea?
: )
Mackabee
Ed
Better yet they want me to email them photographs of the exterior and interior from several angles.
Right....
I will send an email (or two) if there's no other contact information, but if I don't get a sensible reply or a phone call, you're going to the bit-bucket.
Ed
Car_man
Host
Smart Shoppers / FWI Message Boards
We use a bunch of other referral services as well, and they all get crunched into a third party program that distributes the leads, as most other lead management software platforms do. Even our website leads get sent through a glorified filter before anyone sees them. Thus, as a result, and as I've said earlier in the thread you would see that many times when you fill in the blanks on a request (regardless of the lead provider), for whatever reason, the information doesn't always come across in a usable enough manner for the salesperson to use. Sure, you can email back and forth 50 times to find every nitpicky little piece of information you need, or you can pick up the phone. It really isn't that hard.
If someone doesn't want me calling them at home, work, whatever, I'm fine with that. I always email someone my 800-number so they can call me. However, experience CLEARLY show that leads with incomplete contact information on them are the ones that don't usually sell. Sure, there are exceptions to every rule, etc, but...the whole point of using the net for this purpose is to make the purchase experience easier for both sides. Leaving information out, being deceptive about trades, etc, is not helping anyone.
In the past 200 sales or so that I've made, only *1* has not involved the telephone at some stage.
Edit:
Lets have a little review from Edmund's own article about using the internet.
These are quotes directly from the article linked on the Edmund's home page:
"Internet Experience: Five-minute phone call
Best Price Quoted: The Internet manager gave us a price on the same car of $19,310. When we inquired about additional fees he said, "I can fax you all the fees and your out-the-door cost if you like."
Savings: $999"
"Internet Experience: A five-minute phone call
Best Price Quoted: The Internet manager gave us a price on the same car of $23,533 or $300 over invoice on the same car.
Savings: $300"
Ed
In fact, of those people who have not provided a phone number in their initial contact I have sold exactly one.
90% of the time if they do not provide a phone number I never hear back from them again.
The 10% I do hear from have a chip on their shoulder the size of a small mountain.
"I do not feel that it is fair for internet salesman to fail to cooperate or communicate with a prospective buyer just because he did not provide a phone number"
You may not feel it is fair, but every person who is in sales has a limited amount of time to spend. If you provide no phone number you get lumped into the 10% catagory. Email is overused in business in general these days. I was just reading an article in Fortune about this topic...
My suggestion is this: once you get a phone number for the internet sales guy give him a call at your convienence. You can feel him out and see if you're comfortable with him/her or not. You can also get all the information you need real time, and you'll put yourself into the catagory you want to be in....the one that gets the most attention.
Just my advice on how to make your buying experience easy.... Take it or not, wishing it were someother way that is more fair will not change things.
I could understand if you get a lot of the first kind of request, however whenever I have emailed for a price quote I had researched the vehicle and provided details on specific options that I wanted. I usually leave the color open since I may like several colors and that gives the salesman more flexibility to help me.
Of course the problem I run into is that websites, including the manufacturers, allow you to option cars that are not in the market and cannot be ordered. This makes it very difficult for the buyer to get an idea of a good price.
As far as a phone number my take is this. If I send you an email with exact car and options and you send me back the lowest price in a return email, I will be calling you. I understand the frustration that the salesmen are expresing here, especially if they get an undeliverable email, but please try to understand the customer side of this. A friend of mine got a call almost everyday for over a month from a Landrover salesman after he stopped at his show room and gave him his home number (what an attitude they have, but that is another story). I have to go with car_man on this one. If I wanted to talk on the phone I would call you on the phone instead of email. Of course when I tried to use the phone before the internet got big, i still got the "come on down and lets see what we can do" routine.
I sent the same e-mail two 2 dealers...one posts here, the other does not.
I sent this e-mail out in mid august (some details omitted)
--
I am “Manamal” from the Edmunds car board. We recently bought a Sienna Minivan from one of your competitors. Now, our second car (89 Integra) is having problems. We are considering replacing it with a larger car (Camry or Accord). My question is do you have any idea what will happen with the prices for an ’03 Camry vs the ’02 camry?. We would be looking at a LE with (probably) Side Airbags and ABS. (I am not asking for a price, rather, will the price remain in the same ball park.)
----
The response back was positive; I got the information I wanted. Two seeks later, I emailed back with specifics, requesting aN LE with auto and SAB; was told that to get that I would have to buy other options (that I did not want), so got a quote on a base LE W/ Auto. Deatils were worked up in a 10 minute phone call...Two days later, I bought my Camry.
----
Second Trasaction:
Dec '01, looking for Honda Oddessey. Sent out email to three honda dealers looking for EX price quotes and if they had any to look at. Two dealers did not reply within three days, the other replied with...come on down...we can work something out. I bought a SAAB.
sheesh.
Lets also look at this another way. These leads aren't free. Our dealership pays a significant amount of money per month for them. If they aren't legitimate, then we're throwing money down the drain, right? What would YOU do if it were your money?
Ed
This is just my opinion here, but the way I see it, the days of free price quotes might be numbered. If the dealers drop the lead providing services because of the cost-benefit ratio being too low, the only way to make the business profitable is going to be to charge for them.
I'd rather work with 200 legitimate people a month than 2000 leads with maybe 200 good ones in there.
Now, here's a question for you, would you pay $20 to submit an internet vehicle request, if you knew that you were going to be getting something for your investment?
Ed
No, I wouldn't pay $20 myself, but I'd pay $5 for a service that sent my request and kept me anonymous until I requested contact.
The thing is, what am I paying for? The contact. However, I do not know if the contact is good. Now if they could give the best deal...then...
Oh wait, what is a good deal anyway? (sorry)
i think the dealer should pay the customer.
investing a few bucks would give them an incentive to respond.
What you brought up about the leads is exactly what I see as the problem. I as the customer am making a request for a price quote. I do not know, nor do I care that your dealership is paying for this lead from a third party. My perception is I am emailing you. My personal opinon is that if the dealership does not have enough money or resources to devote to a dedicated internet dept they do not need to be in that ballgame. There is way too much of this third party b2b crap going on now a days and in the long run all it does is drive up the price to the buyer. Like you said, your dealership pays for the leads. What about if my email just showed up in your IN BOX? How much does the dealeship have to pay for that? Nothing.
Now raybear has an interesting concept. I agree with what he posted. You and I have discussed this before, and I may be maistaken, but I stick by my assertion that the printed material that I recieved from ABT in 1996 said that they could get me a car at dealer invoice price, and they did. And even though I provided them my phone number then, it was not required. I just told them the car I wanted and they sent me back a prefered dealer in my area that had preagreed with them to sell the car at invoice. The dealer was using ABT to get leads that it otherwise might not have. I know this sounds contidictory to what I posted above, but the reason I bring it up is to emphasize raybears point. No I would not pay to just ask you for an email price quote, but I might pay the fee the raybear mentioned if I was guaranteed from the third party a certain price point.
I know that I am comparing apples and oranges here. We have discussed many times before how the internet of the 90's and the internet today are different. Unfortunately buying a car today is no different from what it was in the 50's or 60's despite all of the technological innovation.
The more things change the more they stay the same.
I made quote requests to dealers within my drive radius, from their sites, links to which I got from the Honda USA site. I asked for a quote on an '02 Si, not specifying color because I didn't much care and not specifying options because I didn't want any and not including TTL. I gave no ID info other than an e-mail address I'd set up to receive replies. When the form required a phone number, I put in a fake, along with a request to contact me by e-mail only. Same thing with required address fields, other than city and state. A bunch of replies came in; I bought a car; a dealer made a sale. Worked for me. Details:
One dealer replied with a 'no haggle' price and a comment about not bargaining. Price was invoice + $500. I thanked her and deleted. Got an e-mail two days later with a better price, still over invoice. I filed it.
One dealer asked 'how I'd feel about a deal a little over invoice'. I told him I'd gotten quotes below invoice but that I appreciated his reply. He e-mailed back, "Sorry, that quote was on an '03. How about $200 under invoice?" I thanked him and said I'd get back with him.
One dealer referred me to his newspaper ad with 02's at 16K Worked for me. TY in reply.
One dealer, a big one 200 miles away, quoted 15.7K and gave the colors he had in stock. Worked for me. TY in reply.
One dealer, 500 miles away, quoted $15, 054. I asked him to confirm that was out the door, including everything except TTL. He did. TY in reply.
One dealer sent several e-mails, never quoting a price. I replied to the first one, asking for a quote - OTD, minus TTL on an '02 Si, any already installed options, and any color. I quit replying to his e-mails when no quote showed up.
I picked a deal, close by, 15.8K. Wrote the dealers who had provided quotes saying I'd bought a car in my neighborhood @ 15.8K and thanking them. Several replied with TY for the info, congrats, 'enjoy the car', etc. One is still sending me e-mail, LOL. Next time I'm shopping for a new Honda, I'll start with the best contacts I had this time; and do the same thing.
FWIW, dealers with net sites that include an inventory search and a quote request form or internet sales e-mail address can sell me a new car at a competitive price with less than 10 min time expended. One did, LOL. My sale would have been even quicker if they hadn't put out the Si with 200+ miles on it for me. It took an additional 10 min to find one with 22 miles, the same color.
Pay for a net quote? Sure! Right after dealers start paying me to come into the show room. My final price did include mats, muds, stripe, and "advertising fee" - over the 15.8K. I was told the "advertising fee" paid the net site fee. I split the advertising fee in return for the mats, muds, and stripe - saying, "Remember, 15.8K + TTL."
from saying "come on down and read the sticker!"
sure a dealer could promise to give a credible quote, but maybe to a dealer...
MSRP IS a credible quote.
unworkable
on the other hand, if the dealer were to pay the customer the 20...
i'm sure most customers would be willing to promise not to shop it (much)
that's workable
Ed
and a regular offer?
with a regular offer a customer can...
reject,accept,counter-offer,shop, negotiate, sit on, do about anything he wants to with it...
with a no-hassle internet offer a customer could also ...
reject,accept,counter-offer,shop, negotiate, sit on, do about anything he wants to with it...
except for the fact that the words "no-hassle" and "internet" transform the customer into a pacifistic, obliging zombie.
..so in answer to the question posed by this thread.
nope -can't be done.
can't beat that.
where's my 20$?
But, as stated before, the offer is usually lower than the initial offer done if you were to walk in the showeroom.
But, I have found it VERY hard to do any serious negotiations via internet/email. Most salespeople dont want to commit on their lowest price till you come in. They dont want to hand out their best price over an email.