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Comments
If you sell 6 used cars for a total of $10K in gross 4 new car sales is the difference between making $2500 and $3500 plus the $400 in mini's, plus 10 units here raises your car allowance another $100, not counting if the manufacture happens to have a spin going on. So in the big picture new car sales are important.
Now if you sell 10 new Fusions in a month and thats it their is going to be allot of month left at the end of the money.
We also make gross on New truck sales. It is nothing to make a $1000+ deal on a Super Duty truck. They still have decent mark up left in them.
Now back to your regularly scheduled program of "life styles of the rich car salesman".
I had to read that twice.
GP
Mack+
We have spiff going on this week though that if these chuckle heads don't hit it they should all be fired. 7 days 40 is the qualifier. We have 18 sales people so they need to all sell two with the big guns picking up the slack.
1 pays $250
2 Pays $500
3 Pays $750
4 Pays $1000
Sell two stinkin cars in a week and get paid $500 extra
I have an easier time handing some one a dime for four sales then I do a nickle for two.
Hey Mack, you forgot holdback, I want that off too....:)
Mack
Plus free oil changes, hat, and coffee mugs :surprise:
GP
LOL... Don't ask! :P
GP
Amen to that.
Even though our management puts nece spiffs on aged used cars, usually weekend spiffs are a joke - sell 10 cars and get $5,000, or sell 5 cars of each brand ( we have 4 brands) and 5 used cars in one month and get $9,000. It might as well be $50,000, the only way to do it is to buy 10 cars myself...
Hat?? HAT?? I didn't get no stinkin hat! :mad:
2019 Kia Soul+, 2015 Mustang GT, 2013 Ford F-150, 2000 Chrysler Sebring convertible
What I really want want is a free car, If I ask for that will the salesperson say "no"?
If they can say no to that, I think they would be capable of saying no to whatever other offers, as well.
Makc
You can keep the hat and the coffee mugs. I want the oil but given to me in cans. By the time you'll have given me the equivalent of my 3rd oil change I'll be able to pay off the car note.
jmonroe
'15 Genesis V8 with Ultimate Package and '18 Legacy Limited 6 cyl
So in this day of email quotes and fleet mgr. based Internet sales, I find myself a little guilt-ridden about trying to squeeze a below invoice price out of a fleet mgr. after taking a sales person's time to show me the car, test drive it, etc. Remember, I said a Little guilty. What I'd like to do is get the two or three best email quotes, walk into the dealership and talk to the salesperson that first showed me the car and ask him to come close to the lowest price. I don't care about the finance guy, the closer, the sales mgr. etc. making more than what's in my lowest quote. But how much over the lowest Internet quote is reasonable to comp the Sales rep for his/her time? Or am I trying too hard to be a nice guy here and should I just go for the lowest price, pitting the rep against the Internet mgr?
BTW, I'm talking about about a $30K - $35K MSRP here.
I don't think that upping your offer a little bit is going to be much of a reward for him. He will probably only receive 25% of it. Why don't you go with your best price, have him match it and then give him some cash to thank him for helping you out.
Then the question comes back to you. How much is he worth to you? He's going to be making a mini deal (minimal commission), so how much cash will you give him?
Good question and thanks for the post.
-moo
I'm sure the dealerships have rules against you comping the sales guy directly, but if he's willing to take it, those rules don't apply to you. You could always just send him a $50 dollar gift card in a thank you note, telling him how much you love the car.
As far as giving a salesperson a tip, I honestly had never considered that, although it might be a good idea. I have a friend who is a regular "bar fly". He always gives the bartender a big tip after the first drink. He does this not because he is being generous (on the contrary, he is one of the "cheapest" people I know). He does this because he says that this assures that the bartender will look out for you for the rest of the night. Even if the place gets crazy busy, you won't have to wait for your drinks!
;-)
I sell Porsches at Hennessy Porsche now. I'm right down the road from you!
What's the update? Did you give him anything extra? I think that it is great to reward the salesman who initially got you excited about the vehicle.
-moo
BTW, my mother lives in the Chicago suburbs and she bought a 2008 Honda Accord EX-L sedan 4 cyl automatic over the weekend. She did all the work by internet and phone and went to the dealer only to drive the car around the block before buying it for a few dollars under Edmunds invoice.
Now that I've heard of before.
Thanks. I had pretty much come to the same conclusion that the Internet Dept. is the way to buy. Curious though as to how both sides of the dealership co-exist. Seems like great deal of possible competition internally within the shop, no?
All the Internet Sales Managers I've seen are mostly sales reps who know how to use a computer and has knowledge on how to use Outlook...duh.
I imagine it's a pain to spend an hour or two with a guy, then have him go home and get competing bids from the 10 nearest dealerships.
That said, I can't see any way that a single dealership's internet sales guy and floor guys would knowingly compete against each other for the same prospect. It would be like negotiating with a salesperson, then telling him "thanks for the offer, I will go over to the other side of the showroom and see if one of the other salespeople here can do better."
Something like that happened to us. My wife was potentially interested in a Jag X-type. Doing some early preliminary looking, we had test driven and talked to a salesman. Then a $6000 cash to dealer incentive appeared on Edmunds and I called him up and said something like: "maybe with this deal, we would buy now rather than wait, as was our original intention". He indicated that we could probably get some of that $6000 off the price. I told him I thought I'd submit a request via edmunds and see if we could get the full $6K off.
A short time later some other salesman at the dealership calls and says we can have the car at invoice minus the $6K. (She ended up deciding against it, because with the limited selection left she could not get what she wanted.)
The internet dept isn't going to give you a price that the salesperson can't.
In a lot of cases, the internet mgr has a higher gross average than the floor people do.
The primary difference is that the internet mgr tends to be one of the better salespeople/closers in the store. Plus, you can get your numbers without a lot of back and forth to the desk. But, the dealers bottom line doesn't change, regardless of who is giving the numbers.
While it's true that the bottom line at the dealership doesn't change. One seems to make it obviously easier than the other in terms of working the deal.
when i was the "internet manager" i basically had a set pricing that i worked with on all internet price requests, and i spelled it all out for the person. MSRP, invoice, discount off invoice (almost every car was about a hundred or two under invoice for internet pricing) plus tax, tags and fees (ours were $249). i let them know on what specific car, or if we could swap one in, and they could most certainly walk in with that number to see me, and that's what they'd see on the purchase form, nothing else.
that being said, the internet deal was definitely attainable with a little bit of negotiation as well.
my two cents at least...
-thene :-)
i know if i were sending a request online to a dealer, i'd want a detailed quote on the car i was looking for. if it was a good price (based on my research) i'd go in and buy, and be done with it. but hey, that's me. everyone is different.
-thene :-)
Anyway, I sent out the info using the form provided from their site which of course included my phone number. I checked the box stating contact via email only. I'm guessing you know what happened the next morning.
To my surprise I get a phone call. It's the GSM of the dealership asking me if I remember him when I bought my Silverado back in 2000 and that he's with GMC now. Same company different dealership. He says to me we got a lot of Denalis why don't you come on down and I'm sure we can work a deal out.
I can understand a salesperson pretending to be an internet manager but the GSM? That I had a hard time believing. So here I am thinking what to do. Do you believe the GSM? or do you take it like hey I said email only?
What I ended up doing was calling the GSM back and told him that I will come down as you asked only if you worked the deal from beginning to end and not pass me over to a salesperson. Course you can imagine his answer. Say anything to get that guy in the door.
No, I am saying that the deals are just worked differently.
When you have a customer in the store, you take a shot at a higher gross deal.
When the customer is online, you have to be more aggresive from the get go.
There are no hard and fast rules. A lot depends on the brand, competition and other factors.
Well, I am a Sales Manager and I do still personally work with my old customers.
I think you have it exactly right. I either want things to go the way you have described there...or alternatively if instead of asking for a quote, I choose to ask if a specific car can be sold at a specific price I want a quick yes or no answer.
I don't want to sit in a dealership negotiating for 4 hours, even if this would save me another $100. I'm not very good at that sort of thing anyway, I feel I do much better by avoiding any face-to-face negotiating.
that's exactly why i brought printouts from the various edmunds forums to the owner and GSM to show them what people are talking about and looking for in an internet sales transaction. the fact of life is that they are most likely going to shop many dealers at once. why not just be aggressive from the get go, try to be the first person to get back to them, and make sure that we were thorough and honest about our numbers - with no pressure.
it worked pretty well i think - i ranged 10-13% closing ratio on my internet leads, if i recall correctly. granted, we were a small dealer and didn't get tons of them anyways, but many of my internet customers told me they bought from us because we made it so easy.
i think the issue is that many are trying to hold on to the old way of selling cars, and want to try to sell cars on the internet like they do in the store. those stores aren't going to get very far (imho) if they treat it that way. the internet is a totally different beast. keep the same tactics on the sales floor, but the internet is for a different type of buyer.
but, im no longer in the biz - though every so often i do miss it just a smidge!
-thene :-)