Selling cars is not as hard as some people make it sound. If you can carry a coherent conversation with people, prospect well, understand your inventory, and can help your customer find the car he/she needs at a payment and down payment close to their budget, you can have a very lucrative career. I would say just those simple things practiced concisely and consistently should have you selling 12-15 cars per month, but what makes you a real automotive sales professional selling 20+ cars each month requires some problems that fall outside of that box.
When was the last time you had a customer who did not have money for his down payment or had another monthly payment that was keeping him from being closed on the payment you were showing him? How creative were you able to get? Have you ever taken a riding lawnmower in on trade?
I had a customer in just last Saturday looking to lease a new Honda CR-V. He was fairly reasonable about what he was looking for, had just a little bit of money down and wasn't looking to get a fully loaded vehicle for $200 a month like some people I have the misfortune of speaking to.
The problem we had, however was that he was trying to trade an older SUV that he had taken a personal loan out against, and that lender was holding his title as collateral. The entire time we knew we were dealing with just over $2,000 in negative. Wouldn't make for a problem getting a deal done because the customer had good credit, and after a brief negotiation the customer agreed to a payment about $40 higher than he had initially hoped because we had actually shown him a nicer version of the vehicle than he had come in asking for because our 2015 inventory was running low.
Through the process of readying the paperwork I called to get the customers exact payoff and found that he actually had a loan with the finance company that held the title to his vehicle of just under $5,700. The lender would have released the trade title for just the $3,100 but the customer would still have a payment of over $140 for the remainder of the loan.
We took a shot at offering to pay off that entire loan for the customer and instead of having a payment of $340 and a payment of $150, the customer left with a lease payment of just $432 and that included extended warranty and other protections for his vehicle investment.
That's a happy customer that will remember how we creatively solved many of his problems, and he won't hesitate to be back when his lease up or send other customers to us in the meantime.
When was the last time you had a customer who did not have money for his down payment or had another monthly payment that was keeping him from being closed on the payment you were showing him? How creative were you able to get? Have you ever taken a riding lawnmower in on trade?
I had a customer in just last Saturday looking to lease a new Honda CR-V. He was fairly reasonable about what he was looking for, had just a little bit of money down and wasn't looking to get a fully loaded vehicle for $200 a month like some people I have the misfortune of speaking to.
The problem we had, however was that he was trying to trade an older SUV that he had taken a personal loan out against, and that lender was holding his title as collateral. The entire time we knew we were dealing with just over $2,000 in negative. Wouldn't make for a problem getting a deal done because the customer had good credit, and after a brief negotiation the customer agreed to a payment about $40 higher than he had initially hoped because we had actually shown him a nicer version of the vehicle than he had come in asking for because our 2015 inventory was running low.
Through the process of readying the paperwork I called to get the customers exact payoff and found that he actually had a loan with the finance company that held the title to his vehicle of just under $5,700. The lender would have released the trade title for just the $3,100 but the customer would still have a payment of over $140 for the remainder of the loan.
We took a shot at offering to pay off that entire loan for the customer and instead of having a payment of $340 and a payment of $150, the customer left with a lease payment of just $432 and that included extended warranty and other protections for his vehicle investment.
That's a happy customer that will remember how we creatively solved many of his problems, and he won't hesitate to be back when his lease up or send other customers to us in the meantime.