Now that we have selection and I mean we really have selection. Not I like it, it’s Ok or it would work, I mean this is the car, no question, no hesitation and no settling or second-guessing. Your customer wants this car and this is the only car otherwise your not going to get too far when negotiating a car sale. I can’t stress this enough, because nobody is going to whole-heartedly negotiate on a car purchase unless this is the right car. Solid selection is required before starting any negotiations.

Car Sales Negotiation is Dependent of Proper Selection

All right, now that we have established that you have the right car selected sit your customer down at your desk, make them comfortable by offering a beverage and then lets get down to work. At this point your dealership will have a pre-determined routine for starting negotiations and I have no way knowing what that routine may be so I will use a basic scenario that can be adapted to fit the routine you use at your dealership for negotiating a car sale.

Negotiating Car SalesLets start by filling out a worksheet with some basic information such as name address, phone number/s (as many as possible for example: home, work and cell). Your worksheet should also include customer email address (because this may be your best chance to get their email) stock# of the car selected, year, make, model, color, any other pertinent information including M.S.R.P. and the spouse or co-buyers name if applicable. Also you need all trade-in information if applicable. You are going need all this information to make sure the car sales negotiations go smoothly. Some dealers require a social security number for pulling credit at this point, but I don’t want to go there unless the customer has told you that they have credit issues or if there is reason to believe they can’t buy and finance a car. Otherwise I like to wait for a solid commitment before I pull the customers credit.

This is not negotiating a car sale up to this point, but it’s where you start. If there is any hesitations by customer to provide their information then there is a problem such as you don’t have selection, they are not serious buyers, they don’t like or trust you or there are credit problems. If there is hesitation you need to figure out why before you go any farther. Start asking questions to determine the objections until you have all the information to complete your worksheet before you move forward.

Negotiating a Car Sale and Presenting the Numbers

The first step in the car sale negotiation process is presenting the opening numbers. Your dealership may be using some type of printed form to present price and payment numbers and lease options or perhaps you are still using the old four-square method. Regardless of what you are using you want to display the numbers and monitor your customer’s response. You will be covering price, payment, trade-in value, down payment and try to get the customer to focus on payment rather than price.

This is one of the things that most customers dislike the most about buying a car so it’s important to make this part as easy, relaxed and non-confrontation as possible. Your job is to get them to commit to a payment or at least price. You will very often have to cover all of the individual parts of the transaction such as trade, price and payment, but you ultimately need to address, overcome and agree on each one unless you are lucky enough to keep the customer focused only on price/payment.

Once all areas are addressed, agreed upon and there is a customer commitment the numbers must be approved by the desk manager. If the sales manager does not agree they will provide and updated set of numbers and figures and its back to the customer. The is the negotiating a car sale dance, the less you have to go back and forth to the desk the better chance you have to close the sale. From here we move on to closing the car sale.

Next Car Sales Step #7 Closing the Car Sale

Back to Step #5 Post Test Drive

Back to the Car Sales Steps

Did you read the CSP book Closing the Sale?

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