Did you recently take on (or consider) a loan of 84 months or longer on a car purchase?
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Stories from the Sales Frontlines
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Keep in mind, if folks keep there cars until they are paid off, they will need continued service, parts, etc at the dealership. So, if the dealer was losing a little out front, they are going to pick it up out back.
There are so many types of buyers that I think everything would fall into place. A person leasing ever two years, in a sense, has a paid off car and is ready for another
I'm a little late to this party, but here goes..
Dwilliam's point: If people keep cars until they have positive equity, overall tax revenue would significantly reduce for the government.
Mark/Snake's point: Not so.
Now maybe snake's professor got the Nobel prize for his economic theory, but it's obvious that in general, if people started living within their means, the great state of the USA can only support about 1/2 the jobs it currently does.
It's gluttonous consumption that keeps the economy afloat.
(Maybe the professor got the Noble prize (not Nobel) )
It's not the PC answer, but I'd do the same as you. Sometimes a bird in the hand isn't worth two in the bush!
You took the words out of my mouth.. Including the test drive, I was in and out of my last deal in just under an hour and a half. Salesman spent maybe 45 minutes to an hour with me... Even if the guy only made $100 on the deal, that is not bad for 1 hour worth the work... BTW, I am one of those people who research the crap out of a car and have a good idea on the numbers and what number I am looking for. Although I usually work mostly with the Internet sales department...
When I was doing the other commission sales job, I would have loved to figure out how to determine that. Because I had my fair share of enthusiastic folks who were essentially just yanking my chain, unenthusiastic folks who wound up buying, and, of course, a few people for whom I just lost the sale somehow.
But nobody I ever worked with could say for certain "This person *will* buy", although it was much easier to learn who *wouldn't* buy.
Talk to everyone; that's my theory.
He finally settled on the G35 sedan, about 3 hours after we'd decided that would probably be the best car suited to him. Then he couldn't decide on a color so he asked me to line up his favorite 4 so he could see them next to each other.
Then when I finally had him settled on a car, he didn't want it because it had 22 miles on the clock so it "wasn't new" in his eyes. Luckily I found an identical car with 8 miles on it. He still complained about that (I never saw one come in with less than 5 on it) but said he could live with it.
So, we had to test drive the latest one I found which was fair enough. The store policy was no sale with no test drive.
Then it came down to the numbers. He named his price (thank heavens). He wanted $500 over invoice. My SM could see I was suffering so he wrote it up at that with no arguments. Of course it wasn't that easy. Our price was $400 more than his reasearched price. The dreaded ad fee again. So it was out with the Infinit invoice and 30 minutes of accusations over fake invoice prices and why should he pay the ad fee if this particular car hadn't been advertised. We ended up taking another $200 off and he accepted that.
One good thing about the whole deal was that he had no trade. Then, while he was waiting for F&I, I made the mistake of mentioning the Infiniti satisfaction survey. Like most of the industry these surveys were 100% for pass or anything else for fail. Also, our bonuses were tied to these surveys. You needed 96%+ average to qualify for volume bonuses so these things were vital. Of course, Dr. Kildare wasn't having any of this. He never ranked anything 100% because it implied perfection and left no room for improvement. Then again, he was an avid golfer and let me know that he could be persuaded to change his mind for a couple of boxes of the golf balls we sold. Those were $36 each so I gave up $72 of my mini for a good survey.
Off he trots to F&I and takes 4 hours (on a Saturday remember) arguing over every detail, phoning his brother (a bank manager) to read over every line of small print in the sales contract and the loan agreement.
Finally, after 10 hours, he drives off into the sunset. Over the coming week he 'phoned me over 20 times with questions about the car, complaints about it's condition (it was spotless), etc. Get the survery in a month later. Everything is marked fair (50%) or good (75%). The funniest one was "Did the sales consultant spend enough time..." which he marked as fair and wrote a comment in about me rushing him and not showing him enough choice of vehicles. Needless to say, that pushed mine and the stores average down for the month and I lost all my bonuses, probably about $3000.
At least it taught me one lesson that still sticks with me. Some customers are just not worth having.
Not to rehash a point but if they don't spend their money on a car they will spend it on something else and generate more tax revenue.
2011 Hyundai Sonata, 2014 BMW 428i convertible, 2015 Honda CTX700D
However, it is nice to hear that our CSI scores are so important. On our last two car sales, I gave the sales people perfect scores and added in complementary verbal comments as well.
When we bought our 1999 Accord, however, I was not pleased when the sales person tried to cheat us out of some options we had paid for. We eventually got the options we wanted, but I gave them a very low CSI score, with zeros on some categories. I have always hoped that it affected them financially, so maybe they would be less inclined to cheat buyers in the future.
You showed great restraint in not strangling the good doctor. Maybe, you should have shown up at the golf course and gotten those golf balls back in mid swing.
What percent of surveys come back 100%? I would think it very few unless you told the customer it was pass/fail. I remember our salesperson "asking" for a good survey. But, she never mentioned she needed a perfect score. Consequently I marked down on 2 or 3 areas where I thought improvement needed...would probably score a 90-94%. I would have given it to her had I known.
This stung just a little bit.
A few years ago I was finally able to afford my dream car, and went shopping for it. I timed my buying so that I'd get a good deal on it (bought one of the last "old style" Maximas around), but the problem with this buying method is that the selection isn't the best(I will probably buy an '09 Maxima, right before the redesigned '10s hit the lots).
Well, it just so happened that a local dealer had the exact combo of colors and options I wanted, so I did the deal. The only problem with the car is that it was a DX from Wisconsin (I'm in Michigan), so the car had 330 miles on it. That part didn't bother me, I wasn't buying a sports car. What DID bother me was that it had a front license plate holder, which the salesman assured me they would take off when I took delivery on Monday (it was a Saturday).
Well, I show up Monday night, and the plate is still on there. I ask him what the deal was, and he says he wasn't able to get it into the body shop today, and if I wanted we could do the delivery the next day. Considering this was the car I'd been waiting for my whole life, of course I took delivery and figured I'd just take it off myself.
I get it home, and do all the obsessive things I do with a new car. Read the manual cover-to-cover. Check that the tire pressure is spot-on what the in-car placard says it's supposed to be. Look at the engine, check all the fluids. Put the stereo presets in, and play some CDs. Put in my rubber "Maxima" floormats, special ordered from a place online (it was March in Michigan, after all). And lastly, take off the dang license plate holder.
I was horrified to see that the holder was fastened by not one, but two giant screws. I take it off, and there are now two holes in my brand new bumper (I'm not sure if I thought the thing was held on by osmosis or what
So I call my salesdude the next day, and start talking crazy talk like getting a new bumper put on. I hear him smiling through his voice, and tells me to get over there. He had had the body shop paint-match two small plugs, which he then popped in the holes. It looks perfect.
Yeah, he got a perfect CSI. However, veedubgirl, please do not underestimate the anal-retentiveness of people paying big money for a brand new car. :P
The doctor story is a nightmare but not unheard of. That is the customer I was talking about but not even to that extreme. You showed WAY more patience than I would have with him. Like 9 1/2 hours more (^: Don't worry - that will all come back to him in one form or another. Bad things happen to bad people.
I can usually tell within 5 minutes what I have - 15 years of Toyota sales not to brag but doing 25-30 vehicles per month helps. I also find that has gotten easier as people lives become more cluttered with work, family, interests and such they just don't have the time to stroke around yanking chains. They tend to lay it out there faster if you are asking the right questions. Plus I don't have the time to play the car game either. Maybe my approach has something to do with that?
But this was in-store, limited promotional work. Aside from the commission aspect of it, it's a completely different animal.
I sure hope it did - I was very unhappy with the dealership I bought my last car at, and not so happy with the salesman I dealt with (and way less happy with others that I dealt with at an earlier time), and my survey reflected that - but only in an apporpriate manner.
I like the idea that perhaps the dealership was hurt because of a poor CSI survey.
That was down to my lack of experience at the time. I still had all the "customer is always right" stuff ringing in my ears from training. Also, my SM was one of those guys who believed in us making mistakes and learning from it.
BTW, what exactly classifies a sale a "mini"?
Not a chance...We all get spoken to like that. I have seen worse in other shops.
There is normally an inverse relationship between the amount of time spent with a customer and the amount of money you make. Full list sales are normally pretty quick and painless but mini deals are almost always slow going and very painful.
It really sucks when you sell a 45,000 dollar vehicle to someone and only get 75 dollars on it then they trash you on the survey so you don't even get any bonus money either.
CSI scores are even more important for mose european makes as the CSI score is tied into the bonus money the dealership recives as a percentage of the vehicles invoices that are sold for the month.
European brands typically don't have a holdback percentage like domestics and asian brands do. A bad CSI score means you don't get any money back from the manufacturer after a sale.
Then you have land rover that not only ties that money into CSI scores they also tie it into audits that they do once a quarter.
Get a bad enough audit score, some of which is entirely subjective to the individual auditor, and you will lose as much as a third of that money.
"Wow. I had no idea the CSI survey affected so much.
I sure hope it did - I was very unhappy with the dealership I bought my last car at, and not so happy with the salesman I dealt with (and way less happy with others that I dealt with at an earlier time), and my survey reflected that - but only in an appropriate manner.
I like the idea that perhaps the dealership was hurt because of a poor CSI survey."
Ouch!
But consider this...Especially back home in Los Angeles. How many of these vehicles actually leave the pavement? The Rovers are clearly more prestigious and probably do a better job in the field but I sure love my Commanders.
And there is a price point difference. The fact that we can't seem to sell any of them has them in the mid-$20,000s which is not a bad deal.
There is one Rover tooling around Wichita these days. I admit to some envy when I see it.
The brits and aussies use land rovers as their military vehicles, and from what I have seen they are very capable off road. I imagine these are a little different than the civilian version though.
I totally understand the correlation between good CSI surveys and bonus money. However, it is my opinion that the survey process is flawed from the start.
Isn't the whole point of the survey to figure out where things could go better? "Continual improvement" is the term that comes to mind. If every survey comes back with all 5's, how is anyone supposed to know if the buying and F&I process really could be improved?
I don't believe for a moment that every salesperson is perfect in every transaction he/she is involved in. Yet, they all want perfect scores and will go to great lengths (bribery, anyone?) to achieve it.
I just bought a Saturn last month and the survey came in the mail a couple of weeks ago. I took a long time filling it out, and did give a couple of "4" scores in areas where I thought our salesman could improve. It's my job as a customer to be honest about the transaction and to try to show the salesman or dealership where they could do better, not to kowtow to someone's need for extra money.
Same for the service survey .. when they do a good job and fix the problems the first time out, they get 5's. However, I just had my wife's car in the shop 3 times to fix the same problem and when the survey comes for that, I'll mark it accordingly.
As an individual who is surveyed for the job he does (though not compensated for the scores), I know how much it sucks to get a low grade. In fact, just today I had my boss talk to me about a "1" score that I got recently .. for a case that dealt with a product I don't even support! Burned me up for a few minutes, but I got over it.
Having said all that, I think that the story cluedweasel shared with us seems out of whack. The customer in this case drove every car on the lot, asked for (and got, IMO) really good pricing and still dinged the dealership because of some inner need to never hand out perfect scores, no matter the situation.
If that were me (and, trust me, that would never be me) and I spent 10+ hours selecting a new car, I would have given clued all 5's for the amount of work he put into the deal.
On my last car purchase, I had a fine time with the salesman but I had some issues with the finance guy. I gave the salesman all perfect scores, but not the finance guy. I hope that I didn't hurt the salesman with my scores on the financing portion. (Any idea whether I might have? This was a Honda dealership.)
You're right, it is. It's a blunt tool disguised as a fine instrument that the manufacturer uses to beat the dealer with. I would find it very frustrating to have my renumeration controlled by such a device.
The worst part is that a salesman who may have been the very epitome of honesty and truthfulness throughout the transaction, then has to ask the customer to lie on their behalf when filling out the survey, which leaves a bad taste for customer and salesman alike.
At my store, our basic commission was 18% of profit on the vehicle (near enough. There were other factors) or $250, whichever was more. The "mini" refers to the minimum commission. My volume bonus for that month would have taken me from 18% for each sale up to 26%.
I remember once seing a VW service department with customer notice that every grade other than perfect is considered a failure by the mfr. That is really stupid.
I love giving good grades, but I'm not likely to give perfect 10/10 in all categories. I may give most 10s, some 9s and some 8s. Like to differentiate between say manners of the guy/gal (say loved them) and the price he/she gave me (it was allright, but nothing to scream about). Is that bad?
2018 430i Gran Coupe
The largest aftermarket warranty company in the US will NOT sell a warranty on one for ANY price.
They used to but no matter how much they charged, they still got burned.
Having said all of this, I still like them. I just wouldn't own one.
However, I gave him all perfect scores on the survey, even "salesman's knowledge," because I suspected it was a mini deal for him and I didn't want to cut into whatever other compensation the survey might mean to him.
What I did was point out those things to him, tactfully, when I came back a few days later with the check from the Credit Union. He was surprised about the tires, said he had thought that all their cars had A/S on them. I figured telling him directly would do more good than marking him down on a survey.
Ever wonder why some of your best customers never receive a survey but guys like him do?
You were "very unhappy" with the dealership but you STILL bought from them?
But they're also more of a volume dealer, so I felt like a piece of meat going through the process, also their service department is closed on weekends, and those perks that lots of other places offer, such as free oil changes and such, were never offered. Perhaps it was a reflection on the fact that I was getting such a good deal otherwise.
In the meantime, I'm taking all my service issues to a closer dealership that is open on Saturday.
Additionally, my roommate, without any consultation, responded to a spam (or popup), got an online car loan, and went to that same dealer, and fell for just about every trick in the book. I would have recommended going elsewhere, had she but asked, but it further locked into my brain that this place is hardly customer-oriented.
Bob Lewis VW/Hyundai/Suzuki in San Jose. I probably won't go back for my next car (in 10 years or so)...
What percent of surveys come back 100%? I would think it very few unless you told the customer it was pass/fail. I remember our salesperson "asking" for a good survey. But, she never mentioned she needed a perfect score. Consequently I marked down on 2 or 3 areas where I thought improvement needed...would probably score a 90-94%. I would have given it to her had I known.
When I bought my Mazda back in '03, the sales person and those in service always mentioned the survey and they made a point to mention the "pass/fail" of the survey and always give a 5. Anything less than a 5 was a failing grade. They did mention that. Every time I return from an oil change or some other service, they mail me a letter that says something along the lines of "You will soon be receiving a survey from Mazda concerning this service visit" and "Please give a score of 5 if you were happy with your visit."
For my brother it was the opposite. He ordered a Ford Focus that they got from a dealer in Michigan. He lives in Ohio,so of course there was no front bracket for the plates. It took maybe two weeks, but finally they got a bracket for the car.
Now what do you define as off-road driving? Hmhh that is a good question as it is kind of hard to define. I mean a fireroad doesn't really count I guess. Does that same fireroad count as offroad if it is pouring down rain and a 30 degree incline?
That is very subjective so hard to say. Some people say you have not been off-roading till you get stuck and have to use recovery equipment. Depending on the skill of the driver and the vehicle that could be a very broad or narrow definition.
As to the commander vs the LR3 well the three biggest things that determine a vehicles off-road capablity that can be measured staticly are
1. crawl ratio(first gear*low range*axel ratio)
2. Approach, departure and breakover angles
3. ground clearance
Commander Crawl Ratio
First gear 3.59:1
Low range 2.72:1
axel ratio 3.73:1
Crawl ratio is 36.7:1 if you combine the right set of options.
LR3 crawl ratio
First gear 4.17:1
Low range 2.93:1
axel ratio 3.73:1
Crawl ratio is 45.6:1 standard.
Commander
Approach and break over angles.
Approach angle 34 degrees
break over angle 20 degrees
departure angle 27 degrees
LR3
Approach angle 37.2 with air suspension at highest setting
break over angle 27.9 at highest setting
departure angle 29.6 at highest setting.
Ground clearance
Commander
8.4 inches
LR3
9.5 inches under diff at highest setting.
10.2 under front axel and 10.6 under rear axel at highest setting.
But yeah when you throw in that you can buy a commander for 20,000 dollars still that can't be good for resale ouch.
Cheapest new LR3 I have ever sold was $33,000 and that was a demo with 6000 miles on it.
Commenting on the the military versus civilian Land Rovers in the US at least you cannot buy the military Rovers but in the rest of the world...
You can still buy new defenders in almost every country of the world but the USA, Canada and Mexico.
Civilian defenders are pretty much just like the military ones just minus the weapons and armor. With protection edition Defenders you can even get the armor plating and in some parts of the world the weapons are optional.
A UK defender starts at 18,000 pounds which converts to about 34,000 dollars.
UK Land Rover site
I have a friend that says if all 4 wheels stay on the ground all the time its not off roading, and a purest will get airborne at least once.
2011 Hyundai Sonata, 2014 BMW 428i convertible, 2015 Honda CTX700D
I mean getting a wheel in the air is normal and is going to happen but getting completly airborne should not be happening unless you say flip your vehicle, that is bad you know, or you are in an off road race. You shouldn't be getting airborne on an oridinary trail ride but a dedicated race track is different.
2011 Hyundai Sonata, 2014 BMW 428i convertible, 2015 Honda CTX700D
Our Minis are 75 dollars and our comission starts at 15 percent after the pack which is huge since it is based on a percent of invoice.
It does - only if it's 30° in different directions for all four tires!
tidester, host