Customers repeatedly compare their car and truck buying experience to getting a root canal. I wonder if they can accept that they are 99% of the car buying problem? I'll leave 1% for the absolutely brain damaged dealer who can't make it the easiest buying experience of your life using my advice. I'm jeff sterns of www.jeffsterns.com as well as www.dealermouth.com. See jeff's inventory at autoexact.com. Jeffsterns.com is a fee based company that helps clients spending an average of $200,000 per vehicle transaction get a car quicker and easier than someone sending $25,000. Make sense? NO!!! Please sit back and accept this free car and truck buying advice. Without exception, friends, family and clients who have used my advice to the letter have reported back to me with amazement at how darned easy it is to make a deal and how difficult they had been making it to make a fast easy pleasant deal.
The first thing you do is decide where and with who you'd like to do business with. Yes, that's the first decision. Most of you think that driving, calling or emailing around for the "best price" is the way to start. Pick your favorite dealer. Location? Service reputation? A salesperson you like? You're now half way done. Next decide what you want. Whether it be by reading about it or going to the lot to look, decide that first. Do drive. Do tell the salesperson that you are in the deciding phase and it's not now about money. Resist your primal urges to ask about price. It's just not relevant now.
Now you know what you want. You know where you want to get it. you have an almost guaranteed chance that you'll be able to do business at a great price at your 1st choice dealer. And fast.
Now find out what invoice is. Edmunds and other online sources have this and it's as good as it gets for pirate information. That's right. It's pirated information. Do you really think that a manufacturer is going to say to their new dealer..."yes, congrats and welcome to the xxxx brand family! Yes, we need you to build a $7 million dollar building, stock a few hundred thousand dollars worth of parts, buy a whole bunch of special tools to work on our cars, fly your mechanics all over God-knows-where for training as well as your salespeople and oh yeah, buy a few million dollars worth of start up car inventory. We recommend spending $50-100k per month trying to get customers in. Good luck! And oh yes, we WILL be providing your cost information to the public just so it's not too easy. Sign here."
So get your online invoice information so that you can determine if you can afford this thing at all. And oh yes Einstein...add in a fair profit (you wanted to avoid the root canal, right?). What's fair? If it's a high production vehicle like a Chevrolet or Mercedes, 1% is fair. Low production like BMW, maybe 2%. Just coming out? Low availability? 4-5% is very reasonable. More if a dealer trade locate is needed. This would be determined upon where the car will come from and what means will be used to collect it. (will it be driven? Transported? Open carrier or enclosed? Yes, Martha, you need to eat this. Time to stop being quite so grabby) You are not going to ask what the dealer will sell for. I can write 10 pages on what the real best price is. What you are going to do is offer a profit. A margin. Some black ink. Explore lease and finance scenarios again, to determine that you can handle it. You aren't going to hit it on the money so for you engineers out there, get over it.
Sample scenario: you have determined that you like the Pontiac G-something. You like the salesperson at a dealership. You call that salesperson. You make a date. You show up on time. You tell the salesperson that you will buy this car now if the price is agreeable and what the car needs to be and in the name of time, you'd like to have the manager come in with the invoice to the desired vehicle in hand. Assure the scared salesperson that your intent is to offer a fair profit and buy the car.
This is a $30k car so tell the manager that you will pay $250 or 300 over invoice (that may or may not exactly match the online invoice that you saw. If it has a VIN, it's real) minus rebates.
He will say yes or no. Don't cop an attitude if he says no. If it's a difficult car from an availability standpoint, get flexible. If there's 10 of the same one out there, don't. Just leave and go to your 2nd choice store and try the same. If they both say no, raise it up a hundred or 2 and go back to your first choice dealer.
That's it! I've been told about 5 minute deals. No more than 15 minutes! Good luck!
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