When it comes to car sales, there is more bad advice out there than on practically any other subject. All of it is well-intentioned, but little of it is written by anyone with any experience in car sales. Most of it won’t make it any easier for you to buy your next car. In fact, it will probably make the car buying experience a lot more difficult and time consuming than it needs to be.
Take a recent article in The Washington Post titled “How to Buy Cars Via E-mail.” The author begins with some good advice: “Start by researching cars online to figure out what make and model appeals to you.” That certainly makes sense to me. But then she repeats the same worn phrase found in a dozen other place s: “If you still aren’t sure about what type of car you want, schedule a few test drives to get a sense of what the cars are like in person. But don’t buy anything until you’ve done more research [emphasis mine].”
Why not?
Why not go ahead and buy? Let’s say you’ve been doing on line research for a few weeks, and two or three vehicles stand out in your mind as ones you might. Let’s say you go to the first dealership, drive the car at the top of your list, and find that, to your surprise, you like it. In fact, you and your husband absolutely love it. So . . . why leave? Why not allow the salesperson to give you a price right then and there?
And what if, fifteen minutes later, the dealership has shown you a fair amount for your trade and given you a fantastic price on a new car, a price even lower than you expected? On top of that, they’re offering you an interest rate that’s lower than the draft you have from your credit union, and the payments are right within your target range. Why not go ahead and buy?
I am reminded of a story told by comedian Dave Gardner. In it, a young man boards a bus to the city of Chicago, because he’s heard that Chicago is a land of opportunity where the streets are “paved with gold.” When he gets off the bus he starts walking, having no car and no money. Pretty soon, he comes around a corner and spies a fifty dollar bill lying on the sidewalk. Believing there’s plenty more where that came from, he says to himself “I’ll pick you up tomorrow.”
Yes, there may be a better deal around the corner. Or the next corner after that. Or, that deal may be gone when you come back for it. You may do hours and hours of additional research over the next few weeks and find that, in the end, nothing beats the first car you drove and the first deal you were presented. It has been my experience that people who walk away from truly great deals to do “more research” seldom end up being more satisfied. When you’re at the point where you’re actually driving cars and talking numbers, doing more research usually only does three things:
- It confuses you, because of the sheer amount of information about cars available on the internet.
- It extends what is perceived to be an already painful process.
- And it often causes people to lose out on the deal they had, because the car has been sold or the incentives have changed.
Please understand, I am not telling you to buy the first car you see. Chances are the first car you drive will not end up being the car you drive home. I am, however, telling you to be open to the possibility of buying a car when you go to a dealership. Give your salesman a chance. Let him make his best presentation. This is how he makes his living. And if you get a great deal, don’t reject it solely because you just started looking, or because the experts tell you to “do more research.”
The author goes on to write “Contact as many dealers as possible that carry the car within a reasonable driving distance . . . Not all of them will respond, so casting a wide net — it can be as many as 40 or 50 dealers — will help you have options.”
Really? Contact 40 to 50 dealers? Let’s think about that for a moment. That means, at a minimum, you’ll be getting 40 to 50 phone calls from salespeople within minutes of sending out your emails. And, if those salespeople are anything like me, they won’t call just once and forget about it if they can’t reach you. They’ll call two, three, four, five times a day for as many days as it takes to actually reach a human being and try to sell them a car. After all that’s how we make a living. So in reality, your 40 to 50 emails may generate 120 phone calls on the first day. And that’s just the beginning. At most dealerships, your information will stay in their “CRM,” or customer data base, as an “active lead” for up to three months. Do you really want your phone ringing off the hook for the next three months?
But let’s say you don’t include your phone number. Let’s say you only give them your e-mail address and specify “No Phone Calls!” That means you’re going to get at least 40 to 50 e-mails from dealers, all doing their best to earn your business. Let me ask you this. Is buying a car your full time job? My guess is it isn’t. My guess is, you probably have a job, and that takes up at least 40 hours a week. If you have children, they take up most of your free time, and if you’re single there’s all that fun stuff you like to do, which probably doesn’t include corresponding with car salesmen. By sending out 40 to 50 e-mails to car dealers you have just created a new part time job for yourself: going through a ton of wasteful material to find “the pony:” that one offer worth responding to.
Here’s my advice. Send out no more than 10-12 e-mails. And really, 5 or 6 should do the trick. Assuming you’re shopping the same brand and the same model, there isn’t going to be enough difference in price between the first and the sixth dealership you contact to make it worth your while to reach out to any more than that.
Finally, the author writes, “Once you’ve narrowed your choices down to one or two offers [my emphasis], it’s time to go see the car.” This, to me, is the single biggest mistake you could make. Price should not come first. Selecting the right vehicle should come first. But everyone whose process is “internet based,” meaning they try to do it all by computer or I-phone, focuses almost exclusively on price first and vehicle second.
What’s wrong with that? Well, what’s wrong with that is that generally, people don’t buy a price. They buy cars. And a car is a lot more than just price. They cannot be properly evaluated sitting in front of a monitor. How it feels when I see it, sit in it, and drive it is what’s important to me. So why spend all this time on line, doing research and sending out dozens of e-mails to dozens of dealerships, asking for detailed price quotes . . . when you’re not even sure you want the car? That’s putting the cart before the horse, if you ask me.
My advice: Do your research. Narrow your options and settle on a price range – a range and not a specific price — you can afford. But start driving cars earlier in the process, not later. Eliminate the ones you don’t like, based on whatever criteria you use. Drive the ones you like more than once. Once you find the vehicle that’s right for you, then ask for a price. And if you get stopped along the way by a great deal, take it. Otherwise, you’re wasting your time and everyone else’s.
And above all, don’t stress and have fun!
The post Car Salesman Confidential: Why Not Just Buy If You Like It? appeared first on Motor Trend.