Hi everyone, I’m new to leasing and working on negotiating my first lease. I’ve reached out to a few dealerships, and I’m running into a few problems:
They always want me to come in or call them, and I’ve learned that’s a big no (from personal experience getting trapped in dealership for 2.5 hrs for a test drive)
When I ask them to send lease details (I try to be specific as possible), I don’t get them
I couldn’t find the emails of managers on the dealer websites, so I had to fill out one of those interest forms - now I have like 3 different from the same dealership reaching out to me and it’s hectic trying to keep track of all those convos
I realize I’m probably doing something wrong, so I’m curious what suggestions/tips people have for emailing and communicating with dealerships. Does any have a template for their first email? Thanks!
Just making an offer will cure a lot of your problems. Do your research before reaching out so you know what offer is realistic. Just CALL (calling is most effective IMO because it shows you are real and it skips most of the online BDC people) and say, “I am interested in stock #1234 and am ready to purchase it at $X per month with $Y due at signing for this term. Here is my zip code.” If they say yes, buy it, or they will most likely counter and you go from there.
I can say as a salesperson, I would be much more interested in working with someone who is making an offer to buy than someone asking for a generic lease quote who will ghost me if I am $1/mo more than another dealer 1000 miles away.
if you make offers and they dont counter or laugh at you, you managed to eliminate the dealers that will waste your time with games. most straight shooters will counter with a decent offer as long as your offer is reasonable and you can go from there
My biggest success was with dealers I was able to establish a rapport with. If the dealer is hard headed or behaves like he is too busy closing deals, just cross him or her off your list. Once you have good personal relationship the rest is easy. The best of dealers will listen to you and get back to you when they have a great deal you will sign. I won’t even post here some of the deals I have got, including two I have got last month. I compared to numbers posted by others and it looks like no one was even close. But remember: each make/model is different, some cars just have terrible MF, low RV and high demand, so you are not likely to get a great deal on those at this moment. But if you have a patience and can wait, eventually you will get what you want.
As to test driving and coming to dealership: I never do this to go get a car, I signed most of my deals by getting the numbers, applying for credit and doing everything over the phone/online. But occasionally I will visit a dealership, just to meet the sales team/manager, let them know I am not bluffing or playing around, leave my contacts and forget about it, until I get a call one day to come and get a car I want at the price I want. And when that day comes I go there the same day.
I will agree that getting caught in a web of multiple email threads from “product specialist” and “customer specialist” and “e-commerce manager guy” all from the same dealer is annoying. I just thought I was particularly good at screwing up their CRMs or something.
And yes, the ghosting sucks, too. Had a dealer I’d been talking to off and on for a month or so. They had a car I liked this week and they gave me a good offer. All I wanted was to clarify and get the same thing, but for a different lease duration.
“If that works, then I’m ready to go. I’m coming to buy a car this weekend, so just get me those final terms.”
Nothing.
Next day, I text. Nothing.
I email his boss and the sales manager, who he had left visible on a previous message in the thread.
I just wanted to come buy the car. Or at the very least, confirm the numbers and confirm the car was there.
Never heard from them again. So now I’m buying the same car from a dealer 20 mins down the road.
Or what about the time last week when I called a dealer’s main sales line and asked for an internet sales manager. They put me through to some dude. It went to his voice mail. I recorded my name and number and said I was interested in a lease on XYZ vehicle.
Guess I wasn’t convincing enough, because I never heard from the guy.
I recommend additional research and read up here. Your query is recurring one and has been discussed multiple times. I.e. following was recent discussion on effective way to communicate with dealer:
All 3 of your points were part of discussion that you will find helpful.
You’ve gotten good advice re; making offers and using a human touch, but the other thing to remember is that you’re dealing with individual human beings, and not machines that invoke responses by running business rules against the words you choose, in order to formulate a canned answer.
And dealers’ business models aren’t all the same.
And often the motivations of management at the same dealership will be different at different times of the month, depending on how they’re tracking to sales goals.
It’s much more important to understand what the car should cost, and be willing to move on when it’s clear that you won’t even get into the right ballpark.
Find the SITEMAP on their website… sometimes the managers are buried in there as a separate page.
Also use LINKEDIN and search the personnel of that dealership. I usually find the Sales Manager on there and shoot him a message. And if you’re lucky the actual principal owner can be found as well … doesn’t hurt to message them either if possible.
Once you’ve done that, management usually knows you’re not going to play games coming into the dealership and you’ve done your homework.
I never dedicated time to search for sales manager. They are the ones who would contact me, once their sales reps tried their best and couldn’t sell me a car.
Your posting your questions, reading answers and reading other topics/threads is part of the research. You can’t just jump into lease calculator without knowing what the current market on a particular make and model is. Edmunds has place where you can ask in real time what is the ongoing MF/RV under any terms for any car, they have dedicated threads for each make and model. Carsdirect will give you a basic idea about ongoing lease for most of the cars you might be interested in and will tell you if whatever current special is an overpriced lease or not. Once you do your comprehensive research you will get a sense of what the car is truly worth, and then you can look up current discounts, use the lease calculator, make a proposal, wait for better times and etc. Key is to gather as much information as you can, and I would encourage you to ask questions and read what others, more experienced hackers, post.
Congratulations on always being seeked out… unfortunately that’s not been my case. I guess it depends on the car and the demand for it. Dealers want the path of least resistance to close deals.
I did the negotiation in person, at the end I told the dealer “I am ready to sign right at this moment, if you can get close to this figure”. They say “let us think about it, will reach out tomorrow by noon”.
The day after: crickets. I call at 1.00 pm, they say “the manager is lookign at figures now, trying to get you something”. We will get back to you before the end of the day. No call.
So, I call the day after. The salesperson says “I have been very busy, here is my personal cellphone number, call me here later”. I do. No answer.
I leave a message the day after, and I realized I have been ghosted.
SF Bay Area, of course, what else would you expect: customers, here, are essentially a nuisance, given for granted and flat out treated like garbage. We are expected to walk in with a bag of $ and to offer more, just for the privilege of talking to the salesperson.
And to be clear, my offer was completely reasonable, and we were only ~$50 away from a deal; in fact, I eventually got better overall terms from a dealer just 15 miles away.
No matter how much good will and trust I put into it, and being the “sales guidelines” ideal customer who would say “yes” to the proverbial question “would you commit to buying today” (never understood why they would ask such a question, anyway), the dealer didn’t even make the effort to make an offer.
I wouldn’t put it that way, that I was always being sought after. GM’s couldn’t care less about me. What they care about are the leads and where those leads are going. If they see multiple follow-ups and zero commitment from you, they want to know if there is something they can do to make you buy the car from them. That’s when GM’s call, and it usually doesn’t happen for a week or two after you last spoke with their sales rep.
By the way, a lot of “hot cars” are rusting on the dealer’s lot, you can log in to dealer’s website and start tracking their inventory starting today. A LOT of the same MB GLE’s were sitting on the lots of dealers I looked up for the past 1 month or so. They are desperate to sell them, there is just not reasonable incentive from the manufacturer to make that happen. So even “hot car” dealer’s GM’s will reach out to you right now, but you won’t be able to get a reasonable deal on them regardless.
Don’t ever fall for it. Some of those salesmen read the “how do you pick up the girl and screw her in X days” instructions in yellow magazines and think they can apply the same principle when dealing with their customers. They don’t ghost you, they play with your head assuming you will perceive it as a “value” and get desperate running after them. You calling them the next day and after was your mistake. I don’t even know if dealer ghosts me, I contact 28 to 35 at the time, I don’t even remember which one I spoke with last, so when I get a call my fist question is: which dealership are you with?
