I’m far from a master negotiator - I used to own Saturns. However, when we were looking for a used car, we had a price we were willing to pay. The dealer wouldn’t come down to it, so we walked, and actually went to eat at a restaurant next door which we had been to before but lost the location of. They called, alright, and we got our price.
It is very instructive to be in a situation where you don’t want to buy at all. (Not cars.) I did this once for a vacuum cleaner salesman who came to my house, and once for a timeshare deal. It is rather astonishing at how much the price can go down if you keep saying no. I know cars aren’t nearly so overpriced, but most people don’t find the real bottom.
I’ve posted this before, but I didn’t deal with any of this bs when I bought my car. I researched what the invoice was on the car, whether Honda at the time was a buyer’s or seller’s market (to see if they’d need to make deals or not), and what a fair amount to pay for the car would be.
I researched which dealers had the specific car I wanted within 250 miles from me. Then I sent emails to the internet sales contact close to the end of the month when they’d be trying to hit their quotas. Told them I was definitely buying a car “this week” (in my case), I wanted “this” specific model and package, that I was contacting all the dealers in my area with that car, and that I wanted their best price.
When I got the responses, I blew off the guys that didn’t even try and gave me a ridiculous price. The three that gave me aggressively good prices from the start? I went back to them each and said, “This guy is willing to give me x. How much are you willing to beat his price by?”
The guy who gave me the best price (with no bs like doc fees) got my business. He asked me if I wanted their financing. I said it depended on what they offered. I got 2.9% for the term of my loan (which was much better than what I’d gotten on my own) thru Honda.
All of this was done via email. All of it. I went down and signed the paperwork and drove off with my car. (Well, there was five minutes of “no, I’m not taking the extended warranty, not even for eighteen bucks a month”.) It took less than 45 minutes at the dealership.
Don’t shop cars in person except to test drive cars.
ETA: I paid $90 over invoice. That was for the floormats.
This is my experience as well…but it usually only happens toward the end when you are getting down to the final price.
Also, if you go to a dealership too far from your home area and they know this (and in a metro area ‘too far’ is not that many miles away), they will not take you seriously…assuming you are using them to keep your local one honest and wasting their time.
The point of my anecdote was more that if you put a signed check in someones hands, the effect of seeing that money, and the fact that the check is already made out and ‘ready to go’ does have a powerful effect on your negotiating position. In any case, IMHO you should know what you are willing to pay and offer it, and be ready to pass if they won’t meet your price. At worst you can try again in another month, maybe their sales will be down. Going back and forth ‘dickering’ over the price is a frustration that is better avoided.
As for the ‘master negotiator’ in relation to my father, I gave his bona fides in sufficient detail that I think it makes a strong case that he was an exceptional negotiator. They do exist in the world, and not all of us are exaggerating when we say we have known one. My father was filled with human flaws, but 10 years after his death his reputation lives on in his (admittedly specialized) industry because of his skill as a salesman.
In my family, my mom is the MASTER NEGOTIATOR. She has no shame, she’ll tell the salesperson that her babies will starve if she has to pay $5.00 more. She does her homework, has her financing in order, but sometimes it’s embarrassing to sit with her because she’s such a pit bull. We all talk about the time Mom tried to bargain over a bake sale cake at our local church. We threatened to leave her and make her walk home if she didn’t spend the $10.00 full price.
All of this seems like a lot of work. I go online to Consumer Reports, enter the car and options I want, then get their price. Then I call local dealerships and tell them that CR number is the highest I’ll pay. Lowest price by tomorrow wins.
Show the guy a check, made out to the dealership, signed, with your desired price. Tell him “I only brought one check.” Then be willing to be pleasant, and walk out if that doesn’t work. Unless you get ridiculous about the amount, you will eventually get your car. Ideally you should have done all your price info checking, and set your deal at an achievable, but good level for you. If he doesn’t want it, there probably is someone who does.
Wow: 33 posts and this is the only one that approaches non-opinion territory. If you haven’t worked in the business, then it’s quite likely you’re all talking out of your asses. Yes, some of that tactic goes on, but the sales manager usually controls what that vehicle will sell for and gives final approval for the deal. When I sold vehicles, I had no idea what the dealer’s bottom line was. While this may be unusual, not having all the information is not that uncommon for salesmen. Even if you have some idea about how low the dealer can go, there is no way to keep the stats for a large inventory in your head.
Try this: go through your house and assign arbitrary prices to 20 different items. Come back in a day or two and try to regurgitate those prices. Now imagine all of those same items with two dozen different options in every combination imaginable. We carried an inventory sheet that had the dealer’s asking price, but that was it. We had to run all offers past the sales manager, and he had to approve the deal. There are far more effective ways to manipulate a customer than to run some tired old ploy that everyone thinks they know about. And most people don’t even know they’ve been played.
Thanks for all the responses. Seems that there is some level of actual discussion, but a fair amount of posturing, based on the responses here. [EDIT: Chefguy’s post certainly indicates it could be more discussion than posturing. Interesing. ]
I went in last Saturday to a local dealership with my mind set on a car model that I’m interested in. the goal was just test drive and determine which options I wanted. The salesman helped me out and we figured out that what I wanted was available on the lot. Afterward, he discussed cost to me and financing. I had already discussed this with my bank, but he offered me 0% for the entire loan period which is hard to beat.
Without any attempt at negotiating (beyond telling him repeatedly that I wasn’t planning to purchase for another week or two), he dropped the price nearly 2 grand. That effort required 6 trips into the managers office, the last of which verifying that he’d hold the price for 1 week as long as no one else came along and buy the car before then.
Which is what prompted the question in the first place.
Anyway, Thanks for the great responses to my first GQ post
If you want to see how that price fairs to what others are paying go to edmunds.com new car pricing. Just make sure you know the exact model and what options it comes with.
Many of the old practices are now against the law. Salesmen used to take the customer’s trade-in keys to have the mechanic check out the vehicle, then throw the keys up on the roof and claim they were misplaced. This kept the customer on the lot far longer. Or they would park his car back in a corner and hem it in with other cars, then claim the guy who has the keys went home sick.
Any salesman today who uses worn out tactics like “what would it take to put you in this car today” type nonsense is not going to be making his mortgage payments on a regular basis. People are far too attuned to clumsy sales tactics that were invented as far back as the 1920s, and are offended by what are seen as cheap tricks. As I mentioned before, there is sophisticated training available to sales people that focuses on the customer selling himself the vehicle rather than the other way around. It’s more honest and more straight-forward, but in the end it’s the customer who makes his deal.
The sales manager tactic described by many in this thread makes no sense, if you scrutinize it. A tactic like that would be too easily exposed by merely talking to the manager himself. Nobody is being held prisoner in that little room. Accompany the guy to the manager’s office, if you want to. Hell, our manager was on the floor, sitting behind a glass partition, easily accessible to anybody who wanted to talk to him.
I highly recommend anyone interested in how the car sales business works to read this kind of long, but highly worthwhile, article about a guy who tried out a couple car sales jobs.
