Car dealerships, the people who generally work there and the entire process of negotiating the price of a new car, has really gotten a bad rap over the past few decades mainly because both customers and many dealer sales staff have the desire to make a sale as quickly as possible. Sorry to make your life and car dealer’s lives a bit more challenging but buying a car shouldn’t be a one afternoon affair. Negotiating with car dealers is tough but it is a necessary step in buying a car.
Once you make the decision as to which car you are going to buy, you and your car salesman/fleet manager or dealer representative (so many names for people who do similar jobs) still have a lot of work to do. Usually customers come into a car buying experience with an adversarial wall up, half expecting a man in a polyester leisure suit to come strolling up to them straight out of a time warp from the 1970’s who will make up anything and everything to get you to buy a car even going so far as to refer to vinyl car seats as “covered in fine Corinthian leather.”
Negotiating With Car Dealers Doesn’t Have to Be Difficult
While that may have been what car buying was like back when 8-track cassette players were optional extras or when Ricardo Montalban was hawking Chrysler sedans, nowadays negotiating with a car dealer is easier than ever. Now, when working as a sales representative for any automaker, it means your customer satisfaction scores are not only as important as your sales quotas; in many cases they count a whole lot more towards your overall job security. Keep that in mind when negotiating with car dealers.
This is a big change from the bad old days of car sales so if you feel you aren’t getting the right treatment from your sales representative, ask to work with someone else. Some people just don’t get along and the person you buy a car from should make you feel totally at ease.
You should feel relaxed and never do business with a dealership or salesperson that makes you feel uncomfortable, gives you incorrect information about the car or who treats you like another number. Any dealership has plenty of sales staff to find the person who is just the right fit to help guide you through the sometimes precarious process of negotiating a price with car dealers.
So, once you are finally in the dealership’s finance office, keep these five tips in mind when negotiating your new car’s pricing so that you can walk away feeling like you had a positive car buying experience.
Always make sure that you are well rested and have eaten something before negotiating with car dealers, as you need to be completely focused.
- Don’t concentrate on just what your monthly payments will be as the most important figure is the out-the-door purchase price, which includes finance charges, dealer taxes and any dealer mark-up (profit a dealer tacks on when they feel they have a popular model). Avoid paying a dealer mark-up if at all possible, unless you just have to buy that exotic car.
- Bring along an economically savvy friend or family member who you can use as a second set of eyes when going over the final paperwork. They can often help you learn how to negotiate with a car dealer.
- If a dealer is unwilling to meet your budgetary needs and won’t meet you on price, don’t be afraid to walk away and try somewhere else.
- Be kind and courteous to your salesperson and no doubt they will treat that way in return. Creating an adversarial relationship with the people you work with is never a good idea no matter what business venture you are involved in, much less one as important as negotiating the price of your car.