Profiling your Salesman

4X4Dodger wrote:

monkey44 wrote:
4x4dodger Quote. "While many people hold your view. It's just not the way business works. For a business man you need to increase your bottom line. You need cash flow. If you can sell the same unit to one customer for $5k more than another... you are achieving your goal."


My post was not about running a business model, it was about why the mistrust occurs. IF there is a negotiable price on a high-ticket item, sometimes as much as 25%-30&% in some cases, the buyers will always assume the dealer is getting as much as possible out of the deal. Therefore, mistrust occurs. It has nothing to do with the legitimacy of the model.

Yes, i understand how business works, built several companies from the ground up. But when the model is based on the potential for mistrust, you have mistrust, whether you have sales is different than how the customer feels about the end result.

Even after a truck dealer closes a deal, down deep inside the customer nearly always believes he/she could have gotten a better price if they stuck it out, even if he/she loves the truck.

I understood your post perfectly, but disagreed with your premise.

As a businessman I find your equating Negotiation and price headroom with Mistrust rather confusing.

The idea that somehow having an elastic price breeds mistrust isnt really supportable. People in our society realize that this is how the game works.

When you go into a dealer you know what to expect. There is no reason to Mistrust him simply on this basis...both of you know the price is elastic. Both of you expect to negotiate.

Mistrust should only arise if he doesn't keep his word, or tries to change the terms of the deal in mid stream or other similar behaviour.

Your post assumes that if there was no negotiation and set prices there would be by default "TRUST". That is also a bad assumption.

I do not enter any negotiation on a basis of TRUST. Trust is earned by both parties over the course of that negotiation. Trust or no trust has nothing to do with elastic pricing or "No Negotiation Prices" but neither do I enter into the deal automatically mistrusting. It's the dealers Behaviour that determines this. Not his pricing policy.

Any one who walks away not knowing whether they got the deal they wanted either didnt negotiate well or has little confidence in his/her negotiation skills. It's not a ZERO SUM game both parties need to WIN. If one loses, in the long run both parties will lose.

If you negotiate from a "Take No Prisoners" mindset you will lose. If you negotiate realizing that both parties need to Win to get what they need from the deal...you both go away Happy.

We're beating this up a bit - my only contention here is that mistrust occurs for that reason, when the dealer says>>> That's my best price, and later it 'isn't' and more negotiation takes place, then the buyer has a tendency to mistrust the salesman. I'm not stating every deal has 'mistrust' embedded in it, but the root of distrust - when it occurs - comes from the idea that there is truly a bottom line price, and if the dealer says "That's my bottom line price" and then continues to negotiate beyond that, then he has lied, and the mistrust is born.

I'm sure many deals take place without that mistrust - but the deals that include mistrust stems from that negotiation procedure ...

Believe this at least, I've been involved in buying vehicles for a whole lot of years, and a whole lot of vehicles, and I've been blatantly lied to on numerous occasions - and when found out, received plenty of 'excuses' as to why I (me, that is) misunderstood the deal. Well, I'm pretty careful, and I didn't misunderstand the deal ... especially when (if) my trade is valued at one price, and the final papers come out with something less, and the salesman blames "someone else", a higher-up over whom he has no control" whom of course is unavailable now...

It's always someone else, and that someone else is a person we cannot meet, for whatever reason one can imagine.

On one occasion recently, we emailed and asked the price for several brands. We selected the one we liked, followed up with phone contact, and went with check in hand to test drive and purchase a specific vehicle - when we arrived, we were told that price was no good, even after showing the email. Three dealers we had contacted, the same story.

We then drove home, and interesting saw another dealer on the way. Walked in with our check, told the salesman if he matched the price on our email, we'd buy the vehicle. He looked at the price, walked into another office, had a chat, and agreed with our email price and we drove home an hour later with a new vehicle.

The interesting thing, all three dealers told us the same story about why the price was different - all three said, "the guy who said that doesn't have the authority to go that low." The fact it sounded like a tape-recorder, nearly identical sentences led us to believe it's a tactic to get a buyer in, and then 'high-ball' the price.

Dealers/salesman say they don't want to waste time with "lookie-loos" on the lot wasting their time 'while just shopping price" ... well, then we used the web and phone so that wouldn't happen, and we got a huge runaround when we arrived with our check ... so how could we "trust" those dealers or even take another step in negotiation.

We bargained in good faith, and brought a check. End of good faith when we arrived.

You can defend this 'negotiation' model all you want, but it only holds up if the dealer and salesmen are honest.

I can bet one thing, if the true price was posted on the window, no one would bother price shopping, and a salesman would not waste time with a non-buyer, and customers would not waste time buzzing around to different dealers and wasting everyone's time.