I got my lease on a 2020 M340i the end of last year. I reached out to 20+ dealers and at least got some numbers from almost everyone. Most were terrible, but a few were good. My wife’s Nissan Murano (yes, I know they are awful) is up the beginning of July, she likes the Chevy Blazer, Jeep Grand Cherokee (which she has leased before), and the Range Rover Velar. I’ve reached out to 30 plus dealerships for those models, and I’ve had a whopping 4 of them respond with lease quotes. Some of them with loaners I’ve called, chatted with, and sent emails through cargurus.com and directly through the dealership “contact me” email. I know that some dealerships aren’t fully staffed, but does this seem odd to anyone else?
Yes, apparently even with everything that’s going on dealerships have been swamped with business. Unless you’re fortunate enough to find a good deal for your wife, I would consider extending her lease until things settle down. I gave up shopping for a Jeep. Supply is low and demand is off the charts so dealers are not negotiating. Good luck.
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We usually get 475 internet requests a month (pre-covid) with a full BDC staff. And maybe 150 of those wanting “numbers” before coming in.
Last month we got over 1,000 with less then 30% staff. And what felt like 800 wanting lease numbers, trade numbers, or best price. I’m in a position where I run numbers and make decisions, but a normal BDC or sales answering those is going to have to check with the desk every time. I’m not making excuses for not responding but I know we weren’t ready for it. And I know I dropped the ball on a lot of people and still don’t have the time to go back.
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My dealership no longer has a BDC so while my team is selling cars I am doing my work along with taking on the workload of 2 to 3 others. If a customer is all over the place or not able to give some type of commitment within a day or two he/she is probably lost in the shuffle. It isn’t ideal however I don’t think I will have any BDC through the Summer.
Edit: I agree with everything @RyanS9 said however I normally get 900 leads a month and during Covid that went up a bit.
SuperEdit: Sold to someone yesterday using the LH calculator. It was the usual “I can’t get it to work on my calculator” a few times when having the entire worksheet.
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I had a lot of trouble last month getting responses from dealers. A couple admitted to me they were on skeleton staffs. This part had me questioning why, if you are getting too many inquiries wouldn’t you want to add staff back? Unless it was county health departments forcing employees to stay at home, and the dealers couldn’t figure out WFH for the sales staff?
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We were only allowed so many people in building. But it just started up so fast we were we weren’t ready for it.
The logistics of working from home are complicated. Our desking and pricing tools only work on the store network. Determining what cars are in stock and available really needs to be done in the store. We were also at this time trying to figure out the kind of deals we could and would do given the situation, And now with the inventory shortages we know we got that wrong.
Only 4 people in my store can run deals, appraise cars, and make the business decisions. Having a sales person or BDC work from home we figured wouldn’t really help us. They would just be reaching out to us with the same questions the customer would. Can we train them to do these things and trust them to make the right decisions in a week? Nope.
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