The way our pay plan is set up a SP needs to sell 4-6 used cars with $2K plus grosses and then look at new car sales as a way to pad the numbers to get to the units you need (10) to reach the 35% level retro to the first unit. If they get 14 they go to 40% retro. So if you look at it as a whole new car sales are very important.
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.
Let's not disturb the myth that car salesman are all getting filthy rich. If customers find out that we only make on average $200.00 per car, they may feel sorry for us and stop comparing us to pedophile priests. [not kidding]
Now back to your regularly scheduled program of "life styles of the rich car salesman".
I make a good living. I am not a rich man but I am compensated well for the hours I work. I tell people all the time I work a 40 hour week, the only problem is I do it twice a week
I hate those type of pay plans where you have to sell a certain number of used or new units to get your unit bonuses. Here we have to sell three used cars or no unit bonus. To me a unit bonus is a unit bonus, if I sell 15 cars and they are all new or used I should get paid for the unit bonus. Same thing with spiffs, the moon has to be aligned with Jupiter and the sun has to be on a full solar eclipse to get paid on them. Who comes up with this stuff? We had a spiff last month on the last week of the month which happened to end during the week. If we sold 60 cars on Saturday and Sunday then the spiff would pay out. All I had to do was look back at the previous Februaries and see it was not going to happen. Past performance predicts future results. Mack+
Here is the thing about spiffs. A successful spiff from management stand point is the qualifier is 60 and you sell 59
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.
Now that's a spiff I can handle. I sold two and almost a half today so I would probably hit the 1k spiff. Got another one on the fence for tomorrow. When spring rolls around I get going. It must be the flowers in the air or something, it just gets me going. Even some of my old car mates noticed that. I think I hibernate in January and February, then wake up with a healthy appetite. L:) Mack
Here is the thing about spiffs. A successful spiff from management stand point is the qualifier is 60 and you sell 59 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...
The way Toyota Motor Sales USA is punishing the sales people with their skewed customer surveys we try to please the customer any way we can and exceed their car buying expectations. Makc
I guess Toyota believes that their autos are so superior to the competition that they will sell well in spite of the salesperson therefore warranting their choice on how they evaluate dealerships and their salespeople.
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
Sorry if this has been covered before. Not a regular visitor (yet).
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 think it would very good to reward the salesperson that originally showed you the vehicle with your business. Take your quotes and talk to him about them.
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?
Thanks. Didn't know how "legit" it was to do something extra for the rep. BTW, can you reveal what you're selling these days? I live up the road from you in Alpharetta
I would e-mail the sales guy and tell him that if he can get w/in $100 of your best quote w/in 24 hours, you're ready to go. If you're cheap, ask him to match it or beat it by $50. He'll either want the sale or he won't, but you're doing him a favor by giving him the opportunity to match your best bid.
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.
If I encounter a particularly good salesperson who seems to be the type who goes above and beyond, I'm likely to pay a little more to make a deal with them. Before you start calling me a saint, that is for purely selfish reasons. I have done enough car deals to know that having a quality salesperson helps to make the deal go more smoothly (the paperwork gets done properly, there are no surprises at delivery, etc).
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 thought church sales were limited to cakes and cookies. Learn something new everyday. Are the purchases tax free since the church is a non profit entity?
Haven't completed the transaction yet. I decided to wait another 30 days or so (know how much you guys LOVE to hear that!) but I'm coming out of a BMW subsidized lease on a Z4 and no matter how hard I looked couldn't make the numbers work rolling the $1200 or so left on the lease into a new one. I know my guy is disappointed but I figured I get back to him post-quarter close and keep things moving. Will end up doing something though.
It's just friends helping friends. Sometimes when you have something to sell you get it announced and in the bulletin at church. It's sort of a joke that the only things you really want come from the old ladies selling their dead husbands' things -- hunting gear, fishing rods, tools, etc. The Civic was owned by a guy who needs a pickup and didn't use it much. 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.
A reporter from a large newspaper hopes to speak with consumers who just purchased a used car vs. a new car because you were looking to save money because of the current economic conditions. If you just bought a used car, please respond to ctalati@edmunds.com with your daytime contact information no later than Friday, April 4, 2008.
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?
The biggest competition, if there is any, has to be between the sales staff and *other dealer's* internet sales managers.
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."
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.
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.)
It's the same side, not different ones. 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.
So you're saying that the Internet guy writes his own deals? and/or the deskman wasn't in a good mood so he wouldn't pen the deal for the floor guy?
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.
i think every dealership does it differently. some have dedicated internet managers who do have the power to desk their own deals. some just have a regular salesperson who still has to see the manager to get the numbers. the internet is a great tool, but it doesn't always guarantee you your best deal. depending on the dealer though, it may be a very good and easy 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.
What's more interesting is if the internet deal could be beat with a little more negotiation or was it the bottom price? I know that answer depends on circumstances but my belief is that no dealer would give their rock bottom price on the first go around whether it be internet or face to face. Unless of course they were low balling.
our internet deal was pretty aggressive. every so often we'd get negotiators who wanted to grind out a few more bucks, and sometimes we'd let them (especially if we were trying to hit a volume bonus) and sometimes we'd just let them know that was it. but again, its different at each dealer. i took all my research from you guys here on edmunds to present to the owner to indicate what people were looking for in an internet shopping experience, so we were able to come up with a great aggressive price right off the bat. originally she wanted to do the whole "why don't you come down and we'll talk price" routine, but i definitely did not think that would fly.
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.
In trying to support Edmunds, I clicked on a link here to find a local GMC dealer while looking for a 2002 Yukon Denali. This site quickly identified one of two dealers in my area. Still not sure today as to why it picked only one of the two.
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.
So you're saying that the Internet guy writes his own deals? and/or the deskman wasn't in a good mood so he wouldn't pen the deal for the floor guy?
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.
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.
Well, I am a Sales Manager and I do still personally work with my old customers.
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.
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!
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 :-)