Stories from the Sales Frontlines

wlbrown9

I agree with that. Just have to keep an eye on the bottom line to make sure you don't get stretched out too far. Hard to do sometime if you try and keep up with anyone, especially the Jones :-)

1racefan

The Jones' hang out over in the "Chronic Car Buyers Anonymous" board, and I avoid that like the plague - LOL.

P.S. - coming from a guy, that if I were rich, I would have a different car for each day of the week.

jipster

It's been a couple hundred posts since anyone has delivered an actual sales story... hosts included. Finance is a fun and exciting topic I know(yawn), but does anyone out there have anything remotely close to an actual sales story?

british_rover

Nope....

We missed our 5K bonus by one car and are going to try and make it up this month so we can collect the full 10k just after the first of the year.

mark156

Hope you make it BR!

That's nice of them to continue the November offer into December! The $10K bonus will come in real nice I'm sure!

How many cars do you have to sell for December to meet the bonus requirements?

Good Luck! Mark156

british_rover

It was a two part goal stretched over Nov-Dec.

Sell 18 used cars and 22 new cars in Nov get 5,000 dollars spread equally among the six people( three sales guides, two managers and one receptionist) in the sales department.

December is the same goal of 18 used and 22 new.

If you miss out in one month you can still collect the full 10,000 dollars for both months if the combined total of used cars equal 36 cars and new cars equal 44.

We were one new car short for last month and delivered exactly 18 used cars so we need 23 new cars this month and 18 used cars to get the full 10,000 dollars.

Right now we have five new cars and six used cars sold.

jipster

Well, your story does have some drama to it, and it sure beats finance. What's your typical December sales numbers look like? Right now your on pace for 21.75 new cars sold.
If Santa picks up a couple Super Sport Range Rovers Christmas Eve, you should hit your mark.

british_rover

December is normaly pretty strong but it is such a short sales month hitting 41 cars is going to be hard.

The 22/18 goal was about 23% more cars then we have ever sold in a month before.

audia8q

I can't help with an exciting story but I can tell you that just about every customer in the past 30 days has been wearing a tin foil hat. Apparently aliens are doing their car shopping in Connecticut this year.

british_rover

Yeah we have had some odd balls too.

So far none have been very painful though just strange. Now in October we had some real painful people and some of those painful people carried into the start of November.

jmonroe

...5,000 dollars spread equally among the six people( three sales guides, two managers and one receptionist) in the sales department.

Other than keeping the store running smoothly, making sure you sales guys don't miss any phone calls, and all the other important stuff that has to be done, why should the 'receptionist' get cut in on this bonus money.

jmonroe

guest

Why should the receptionist get a cut? Why don't you/me/we get a cut??? Here we(about 10 of us) are motivating British Rover and cheering him on to an almost unattainable sales goal. That should be good for at least a $10 gift certicate at Hooters. :shades:

corvette

Woah, the "unknown" poster... Kind of like the headless horseman.

snakeweasel

ie - 16K car,

You are aware that if you don't make a downpayment you will spend the first 4-5 months paying off the tax title and license. So unless you make a pretty good downpayment you will be upside down for a while even with a zero percent loan.

phinneas519

Or, if you wanted to be optimistic, you could consider that while you are paying off some of the TTL initially, you are simultaneously devoting some of your payment to the car itself. In the same manner you could also say that you've been paying off the car for x number of years and in the last 6 or fewer months you'll finally be taking care of the TTL. It all depends on how you look at it, but in the end it's all the same stuff getting paid for.

Glass half full or half empty? Maybe just a quarter full?

snakeweasel

Doesn't matter how you look at it, unless you make a downpayment at least equal to the TTL you are immediately upsidedown on the loan. If you buy the car from a dealer you will also have some immediate depreciation to boot (you will never sell it for what you paid for it).

traindriver

snake, robr, dino, jmonroe, et.al.----

Thanks for your input; each reply had some good tips/insight.
--------------------------------------------
As for financing being "boring", I agree... to an extent. It doesn't make for quite as interesting entertainment as reading about the latest nutcase to walk in the dealership.
OTOH, I get a certain amount of personal satisfaction when I am able to wade through the hype, (mis)information, marketing, etc. to find the proverbial "best deal" on whatever product or service that I am considering for purchase. I do not find it boring at all to know which gas station is cheapest, which credit card has the lowest APR, which store has Charmin on sale, which bank has free checking. Any information that allows more George Washingtons to (ethically) stay in my wallet is pretty interesting to this ol' boy.

Anyway, on with the sales stories..... Has the cold weather kept the nuts and flakes at home?

phinneas519

Well, technically, yes. If you consider the TTL to be part of the car or the car to be a part of the whole purchase, then I agree. In fact, I also agree that even if it were the car without TTL, you'd still be upside-down because that car depreciates as soon as you turn the ignition and pull into the street.

y2karl26

I have one for you. I'm in Southern California.
I had a guy a really shifty one come into my office a few weeks ago. He was acting really wierd, shaking a bit, talking really fast, twitching, the kind of stuff you see on COPS but just subdued enough to think that just maybe he has some kind of affliction and he can't help it. He comes in and sits down with one of my sales guys to talk about cars. He's there for 15-20 minutes and I see him looking around just a bit too much. A minute or 2 later 2 police cruisers come rolling onto my lot. I go out side to se what he deal is and it turns out that a guy robbed the gas station down the street...300 yards down the street! Yes, that robber fits the desripction of my guy! I walk inside and one of my sales guys points to the computer room and the police go and drag our guy out of it. Turns out he was on coke and had a bunch of heroin on him! :surprise:
One of my guys is the world's biggest smart [non-permissible content removed]. As soon as the robber saw the cop cars he tried to hide behind a pole in the middle of the lobby?! My sales guys walks up to him and says,"what are you doing?" The robber just looked at him. My sales guy told him that unless he wanted to spend the night in jail he better find a new place to hide. The robber took off with my sales guy in pursuit and hid in the bathroom. My sales guy gave it a couple of minutes and knocked on the bathroom door and said, "Dude, like they're not going to look in the bathroom first?" He finally "hid" the robber in the computer room where he was of course pointed out by my sales guy who was just and [non-permissible content removed] to this high as a kite robber! Hilarious! I wished I had been inside for it!

y2karl26

Remeber the 2007 Cobalts carry that new 100,000 mile warranty. I'm nearrly positive the 2006's DO NOT have that feature!

jmonroe

Well, technically, yes. If you consider the TTL to be part of the car or the car to be a part of the whole purchase, then I agree.

I hope you don’t mind if I weasel into this discussion (sorry about that ‘snake’).

You say “technically” and the way I look at it , technically, practically, arithmetically or any other way you want to look at it , total is TOTAL. If you paid it, that’s your TOTAL cost and you can’t hide it by cutting it into smaller pieces. :surprise:

I like to keep things simple.

jmonroe

phinneas519

Yep, that's it boiled down to the simplest form. I was just trying to save face. Can't blame a guy for trying!

jmonroe

Can't blame a guy for trying!

Around here you can!!!

jmonroe

plekto

About the total purchase price, I meant out the door for that price. Tax isn't ever going away, so it's always part of the "base" price or should be factored in as such.

The thing is that a few year old car with a decent downpayment - say a $12-16K car with 2-4K down, it'll be right-side up on the loan in virtually no time - and selling a car you just bought in 4 months isn't going to happen anyways.

A new loan? You're upside-down on most of them until the last year. Better hope something doesn't happen to your job or life during years 1-4.

Shoot, even a used $16K mercedes is a better deal than most anything new as the initial 50%+ of the value has gone away. In the case of a 8-10 year old S-Class(last of the big square ones), it was 60-80K new. Now it's $12-15K. In four years it'll be worth, what? $9K? Okay, makye $8K? Given a ~$300 a month payment, that's your entire planned depreciation for four years paid off in one year.

And... salespersons make more profit in general off of used vehicles than new ones, so it works best for everyone

graphicguy

BR......what you need is a good, hard snow. That should jump start things.

A quick update on the Cadillac saga.....apparently, filing with the BBB got Cadillac's attention, finally. I got 3 phone calls...one from the Cadillac zone manager, one from the Cadillac zone service manager and one from a Cadillac Customer Care manager.

I explained to all of them that all 3 dealerships I took the car to did one or all of the following....

1) Denied any issues existed
2) Refused to find the root cause of the electrical issues
3) Didn't understand why I was upset that every 3 days, the car wouldn't start

The zone sevice manager tried to scare me by stating he wanted me to take the car back to the dealership to have the interior ripped out so they could check every wire.

The Customer service rep and the Cadillace zone manager asked me what would make me happy. I told them I wanted them to return my Mother's purchase price to her and to take the car back. They said they weren't in a position to do that, but asked if we'd be willing to take a new Cadillac instead. I was frank with them and told them of my Mother's inability to renew her driver's license and her illness. While they were sympathetic, in essence, they said that wasn't really their problem. I understand their position. They're right. It's not their problem.

So, it looks like no matter how hard I try to thin out the stable of vehicles populating my garage, once they hit my driveway, they seem to multiply like rabbits.

I have until 12/15 to tell them what, if anything, I want from their selection at the Cadillac dealership. Depending on what, if anything, I see that might be something I could use, they'll make a determination on whether to do a swap.

Or, I might stick to my guns and see if I can get my Mother's money back. She said she doesn't care, at this point, one way or the other.

phinneas519

Why not let them lemon law the old Caddy, give you whichever new one and deal with that one when you get it? By deal with it, you can keep it or simply trade it in somewhere (virtually new) or just sell it back close to full price. Just because you get a new car from them doesn't mean you should keep it if you don't want it. Unless, of course, that new car would be upside-down if you did try to unload it.

cccompson

graph, your demand is simply not realistic here given the tremendous depreciation of late model Cadillacs. Even in a successful lemon law arbitration now the manufacturer will want to deduct X cents per mile driven from the buyback to settle the case. Same thing could well happen even if you get into (and win) litigation.

On the other hand, their offer is not all that generous either - perhaps theyll discount something a couple of grand more and sell a car in the bargain. Of course, they'll then still have to deal with your mom's car.

My thought is try to get them to buy it back for whatever it's fair market value is now (if it wasn't having problems) plus a hassle money factor of whatever you think is appropriate (say several grand).

kiawah

Take the new one, and immediately put it up for sale without racking up any miles. You'll rid yourself of the old problem vehicle, get a new vehicle with full warranty, and it will make an excellent vehicle for private sale.

Obviously won't be as good as getting your purchase price back since you'll have to discount it below dealer invoice on equivalent to move it.....but will make a nice purchase for someone really in the market.

british_rover

Yup that is what I suggested doing back a couple of weeks ago by doing a trade assist with caddy and the dealer.

jmonroe

I got 3 phone calls...one from the Cadillac zone manager, one from the Cadillac zone service manager and one from a Cadillac Customer Care manager.

Now that’s what I call Cadillac service. They actually need someone to handle each of those services per zone? Might explain why they cost what they do. I think the money would be better spent training there mechanics technicians (sorry, that’s what they like to be called now), sounds more high tech but most of the time their not up to the challenge. Are they?

The zone sevice manager tried to scare me by stating he wanted me to take the car back to the dealership to have the interior ripped out so they could check every wire.

I hope he didn’t use the words, “ripped out”, but I’m with you because that’s probably what they’ll do.

So, it looks like no matter how hard I try to thin out the stable of vehicles populating my garage, once they hit my driveway, they seem to multiply like rabbits.

Did you ever think about going into the biz? Of course you will need two like cars since mixed breeds aren’t worth to much.

Or, I might stick to my guns and see if I can get my Mother's money back.

You’ll probably lose this battle but it’s worth a try. At least it seems they’re willing to due something, now that you’ve gotten their attention.

If need be, pick out one with lots of seats so you can take us for a ride and I don’t mean the kind that Cadillac has been giving you up until this last offer.

Needless to say but good luck,

jmonroe

jmonroe

but will make a nice purchase for someone really in the market.

Would that be you?

I'm sure 'graph' doesn't really care about providing good deals. Unless he goes into the biz. :surprise:

jmonroe

graphicguy

j.....the regional service manager was kind of a jerk. He had the service history of the car since my Mother bought it. Apparently, she had the same issues with the car from the day she bought it. She thought because she only drove it a couple of times a week, it was her fault for letting it sit for long stretches without driving it. So, she would just call the "onstar" people. They'd send out a wrecker. They'd jump it and she'd just go on her merry way.

Didn't know this until now, but when she took it in for oil changes (every 3K miles), she mentioned to the service people that the battery kept dying. They kept putting in new batteries for her. That's a total of 5 new batteries in little over a year of ownership (including the ones I had replaced). You'd think they'd get the hint that something else was wrong.

Anyway, the regional service guy din't say they'd "rip out" the interior. He said they'd have to "dismantle" it. Same difference.

I agree though. It won't be cheap, or easy to win a lemon law case....plus the hassle of going to court/mediation/arbitration (or whatever it is they do) isn't to my liking. Any other time, I'd probably fight them tooth and nail. I'm just not in the mood to do that right now.

I'll take a gander at what they've got on their lot. Take it as a replacement. Turn right around and sell the replacement and give my Mother the proceeds. I even tried to sell the STS before. Now that I know that it's not "right", I won't foist it on anyone knowingly (except the company who made it).

She's not going to get all of her money back, but if I can get a good chunk of it, it'll be alright.

It's really shamefull because when the car does run, these are very nice cars that ride, perform and handle well. Very nice materials on the inside and out. From an aesthetic standpoint, they're put together well, too.

Funny....there are those in my family that said I should have gone into the "car biz" instead of my chosen profession. If I had $50 million laying around to buy a franchise, I might do that.

Hmmmmm.....I wonder what a Porsche dealership would cost?

marsha7

man I think you are, you'd HAVE $50 million lying around... and, quite frankly, who doesn't???... a mere $50 mil???
:):):):)

graphicguy

BR....I think that's what the zone manager has in mind. He's going to offer that "trade assist" to the dealership to move out of the current STS to get into something else.

As long as no cash is coming out of my pocket to swing this, I'm OK with that.

graphicguy

If I was half the man I THINK I am, I'd be lighting cigars with $100 bills......LOL!

jmonroe

...a mere $50 mil???

Yeah, you’re right. He oughta take it out of his mattress and go into the biz. He comes around here talkin about the biz but when push comes to shove he won’t do nothin about it.

He sure had me fooled. :surprise:
jmonroe

british_rover

Yeah Trade Assist is what they will do.

The dealership owns the car for "fair Market Value" and Caddy ponies up the differance in value between the used car and the new one.
Then it becomes the Dealerships problem to fix the car.

Side note:

I find it funny when people try and threaten rippnig an interior out of a car and how hard it is.

Bah I have seen so many Rovers with their entire interiors ripped out to fix something that it doesn't even bother me anymore. Everything always goes back together just fine and you could never even tell the differance after they are done.

explorerx4

i wonder if they will offer the same sales incentive next year when the lr2 will have been introduced?

kyfdx

Is this at Camargo? Maybe they can give you something from some other Joseph dealership (Audi, Porsche, Acura?).

Or.. if you are strictly dealing with Cadillac people, maybe another GM division.. (Vette?).

Just wondering... because I think the offer of a new Cadillac is about as good as it is going to get.. You might even ask the GM of the dealership what he would give you for it, before you even drive it off the lot.

graphicguy

kyfdx.....It's T&C. I think you're right. That's as good as it's going to get.

j...I knew I could pull the wool over your eyes......

BR.....I wish I had your faith. I don't have any confidence that their service guys could get the interior apart and put back together again correctly if their lives depeded on it. They can't even diagnose a powe drain.

imidazol97

I just can't believe they can't do a troubleshooting procedure to determine the source of a drain before saying it has to be in the interior. Most places would take it and park it a while and check for drain and then narrow it down to a circuit.

Have you called SteveO to see if he has any knowledge of a problem in this car line? Or email. He states that he gets cars that dealers can't figure out to troubleshoot.

plekto

There's nothing to prevent you from getting TWO used cars for the same price, you know...

A used CTS-V for you and a DTS for her.

marsha7

And if I was half the man my DOG thinks I am... :P

bolivar

I agree.

It's a sad story when a Caddy dealer, or 3, can't find a power drain. Especially one that seems to be there all the time, since it went thru 5 batteries and multi jumps in what, one year?

Semi-intelligent pulling of fuses and use of an ampmeter should narrow the drain to one circuit. Then, you start dis-connecting components and/or breaking main electrical connectors to further isolate the drain. What is causing it can be found. Some dis-assembly required.

If replacement of one of the significant components (one of the several 'computer' modules, Onstar module, radio, etc) is needed, this should be much cheaper to GM than swapping out the car.

After killing one battery and the new replacement, even my small local Cadillac dealer found my 1995 Deville problem. Replacing the radio fixed it.

But then again - if it's a 'software' problem in one of the computer modules this may be different. See other forums for problems with 2005/2006 Corvettes with manual transmissions killing batteries. After months and months Chevy seems to have a 'reflash' of some computers' software that appears to be solving most of these cars problems.

Have you read any Cadillac forums (other than Edmunds, which have very low volume traffic) about other STS's having this same problem?

jlawrence01

Have you taken the vehicle to the place on Gilbert Ave. I have had some positive experiences with them.

Good luck in your trevails.

jmonroe

Semi-intelligent pulling of fuses and use of an ampmeter should narrow the drain to one circuit. Then, you start dis-connecting components and/or breaking main electrical connectors to further isolate the drain. What is causing it can be found. Some dis-assembly required.

I absolutely agree with this approach and any Caddy dealership or, for that matter, any garage worth their salt would approach it like this.

Way back I said something like "to fix the problem you first have to want to fix the problem". To continue plopping in batteries is insane.

You would think that GM's flagship car line would be insulted by not being able to correct this problem.

jmonroe

british_rover

I doubt it...

I just hope they keep our normal bonus plan the same for new cars when the LR2 is out. It is pretty hard to hit right now because none of our vehicles are made in any kind of volume. I have three Range Rover Sports sold this month but I can't get any Range Rover Sports so I can't deliver any of them.

I may not be able to deliver those cars till January.

mac24

Doesn't seem too smart of management to set goals for the sales staff that aren't fully dependant on their own efforts. I would think that it must be an exercise in frustration to fail to meet your targets solely because the manufacturer cannot supply the product in time to meet your bonus deadline. Not only frustrating but actually demotivating, the very last thing that management should be wanting.

british_rover

Our store is unique in the auto group as the only true highline store and the smallest volume store as well. Sometimes I don't think upper managment understands that. I wish they would have given us credit for the cars that we took deposits on last month but could not deliver either because the customers were out of the country or the cars were not on the ground yet.

I didn't expect them to but it would have been nice if they did.

lilengineerboy

I find it funny when people try and threaten rippnig an interior out of a car and how hard it is.

Bah I have seen so many Rovers with their entire interiors ripped out to fix something that it doesn't even bother me anymore. Everything always goes back together just fine and you could never even tell the differance after they are done.

For work, we were required to modify an then band spankin new '02 or '03 Q45. We had every trim piece out of the car (trunk, door cards, kick panels) in about 45 minutes with a needle nose pliers and a flat head screw driver. You just pop out the middle of the snap in piece and the whole thing comes right out. easy peasy
It didn't take a whole lot longer to put back together than it did to take apart.