This is not my own strategy, but my dads which I've seen firsthand.
He showed up on a sale day -- labor day specifically. This already sets a baseline lower price since there's usually some manufacturers rebate or other things. While other sale days work too, labor day in particular is great because they're trying to push all the leftover cars from this year's models to start selling next year's, so you can get a "new" car for less, but you have to spend more time looking through a more limited inventory.
He didn't just go any old time on labor day -- he showed up in the mid/late afternoon. This is key, and I'll explain why shortly. When he arrived, he asked for a sales rep to walk him through the whole process. He already knew a few car models he was interested in, and began spending his first 2-3 hours picking the car model itself (seeing different car models, taking a few test drives, etc.). When he decided which car to get, I was surprised, and almost concerned, because he was very uncharacteristically excited about the car he decided on, like almost giddy. It was to the point that I thought he was about to make an impulse purchase. It remember telling him privately that the sales rep must be seeing him like a wolf sees a chicken cooked in Loony Tunes, and he told me to just sit and trust him. I was skeptical, but just just watched it unfold.
Once he picked out the car, it was time to talk specifics -- any upgrade packages available to the car, extra features, warranty, etc. At this stage, he just asks, asks, and asks, like some eager buyer that just wants to know every way he can spend more money. Since he was looking for the last year's models that they're pushing out, they had a limited inventory of cars that match the specific combo of extra features plus his preferred paint color. This brought us back out to the lot again, to see cars under a streetlight because It's now gotten to be after dark. After about another half hour, he decided on the exact car to get.
It's now around 9 pm. We returned to the sales rep's office. At this point, for the past few hours my dad's been acting like some sucker ready to throw his wallet at the dealership. We sit down, and over the course of the first 15 minutes, his attitude shifts. He's all of a sudden acting more reserved, and with each additional feature he adds, he asks for a greater discount. With each refusal to go down by the sales rep's, he asks for extra features. Him and the dealer are getting really deep into tiny specifics (eg. warranty coverage on extra features, stories about past warranties gone wrong, etc.) I can see the sales rep is getting a little frustrated with how drawn-out it's all getting. To boot, my dad is pretty apathetic towards any offer the sales rep gives him -- it's always "you guys need to do a little more", or "well then maybe I won't get this/that upgrade feature", no matter how much lower the sales rep went. Everything is tentative, and the deal points you thought were handled earlier seem to keep popping back up. My dad's demeanor through this negotiation process was not confrontational, but rather he seemed more skeptical and unconvinced -- a big shift from the wide-eyed "just take my money!" sucker that he looked like when he arrived in the afternoon.
It's now 11 pm. The sales rep has several times stepped out of the room to discuss certain offers from my dad with his manager. Naturally, they are all rejected, because my dad is saying that he wants a $56k car sold to him "for something in the 30s".
I'm no expert, but I'd imagine this kind of ridiculous offer would be something that would make the sales rep think he's not a serious buyer, and so it's not worth the rep's time to push the sale. But what was different here, is the psychological backdrop of it all. Here's a sales rep who's having one of the busiest sales days of his year, and who has spent most of about the last 8 hours with this customer who he thought seemed like an eager, walking open wallet. That sales rep is not -- is not -- about to go home on this super busy sale day without making this sale he's worked ~8 hours to get, especially when for most of the time he thought this was gonna be an easy sale to a dupe customer.
At this point, the sales rep is clearly frustrated to high hell, and is going back and forth to his manager with my dad's offers which he previously wouldn't because they were too low. In that last hour, the price-point of a $56k car went from the high 40s, to the mid 40s, and finally the low 40s. At this point, the sales rep is telling him how if they go any lower they'd lose money, how nobody gets prices like this, etc. And he's not even saying it in a convincing sales rep sweet-talking tone, he's saying it sounding pissed, like my dad is wasting both of their time. Finally, the sales rep comes back after speaking to his manager, and they agree on $40,000. My dad then tells him "I don't mean to be pedantic, but I said I would only buy this car if its price started with a "3". The sales rep is taken aback, and laughing at him -- "you're going to step away from this over $1"? To which my dad replied "if it's only a dollar to me, isn't it only a dollar to you?". They actually spent several minutes on this last dollar, almost symbolic of the whole night, before the price finally settled at $39,999.
He's done this same tactic every time he's bought a car, and it always gets similar results.
TLDR: Show up late in the day, take a long, long time. No sales rep will just go home without making a sale on the biggest sale day of the year. And sleep deprivation is a powerful, underappreciated bargaining chip.
October 17, 2018 at 06:38PM
