This discussion, and input from all sides - novice hackrs, expert hackrs, dealers, and brokers - is probably one of the most productive dialogues I’ve seen here in a while. This is good stuff.
I’ll just add that there is nuance here and sometimes you have to feel out your approach with a particular dealer. Many love the one-and-done confident offer that is grounded in some basis of reality; others, in my experience, have to work a process to get you to that final holy grail number.
Yes but mostly because the manager will yell at you if you don’t ask. Most sales people don’t realize why they are going through the steps and just do so because they are told to. But yes, keep it short and sweet. I don’t want to hear what you found online or see your spreadsheet. Just say, “I have done my research and this is a fair price”.
My favorite is when they come back and say “you said you would do this deal”. No I said, “If I could do this deal…”
I’m most likely not physically at the dealership unless I’m signing papers. And even if I was, I walked in there on my own, I didn’t get dragged down there in cuffs. If it’s a no, then you walk. Or if it’s taking that long to accept, decline or counter offer, I walk. Simple as.
What cars were they? And saying the car has been here X days doesn’t always work. Some dealers will hold cars forever and others want a 60-90 day turn. It is a better justification on a used car than new, but it is always something you can through in the mix (I would say 6 months is where you want it really gone and before it has a birthday).
Again, for every 1 with will as strong as yours, there are 100 lurking that don’t have it. You’re not physically restrained and you can drive away, but a lot of people still spend hours waiting for the manager at sales desks around the country every day. Many dealers refuse to give a price over the phone and strong arm with “come on down”. There are good dealers that don’t, but, again, my advice is for law of averages.
On average… the average dealership wants to pull the average customer in the door and keep them there as long as possible. You leased a car for free, you’re not the average customer, I’d expect you know when to walk away faster than the average customer too.
Sure, which is why I try to share that experience in the hopes that some less experienced people will realize how much leverage they have in the transaction. People in general will accept what they believe they have to accept. The entire concept of waiting hours to get a price for a car is absurd and everyone should know that, because conversely people will usually try to get away with what they think people will accept.
There is also the simple fact that for every one of our deals that a dealer does, generally, they may need to hold gross on 10 others to compensate for it. There are exceptions, of course, but as a matter of course we operate here on the fringes of the car buying experience.
It is important to enter the water with that understanding when you’re trying to go for the bottom of the barrel pricing. If you’re willing to pay a bit more - however much that is - the process is much easier. And no, you didn’t get a bad deal (because you still probably paid less than most), you just may not have hacked a lease the way we think of it here.
EDIT to add one other thing: As with any professional relationship, acting entitled will get you nowhere. We do see that here from new and experienced hackrs alike. No one is entitled to expect that a business take a loss to earn their business. We succeed here because we capitalize on those instances when a dealer needs or wants to do that to earn money some other way. To me this is the most important distinction.
Yes to the first part, no to the second. Every second I spend with you is every second I can spend prospecting and trying to sell more cars. The only reason I like COVID is because I am not going on test drives, so I can make calls or take phone ups while someone is driving. And the faster a negotiation goes, the more money I usually make. If we spend 3 hours negotiating, it will be a crap deal where we are grinding to the last penny.
And I want my advice to go to both the lurker and the expert on here since I am offering a dealer’s perspective. As @mllcb42 and @ElectricEliminator know how to hack a deal, I know what actually works with most managers/sales people and what pisses them off.
The whole point here is to not be average consumers.
If I’m going to ask the dealer to make a minimal amount of money, the least I can do is free up the staff as quickly as possible so they can focus efforts on the average consumer.
Every moment of back and forth that I tie up is time the dealer can’t be trying to work an average consumer. I try to get everything done in 2 emails. Wasting the dealer’s time doesn’t do anyone any good.
It comes down to this, imo: if you’re going to ask the dealer to make very little money, you damn well better be asking them to do very little work.
This is the challenge from my perspective. How do you come up with a realistic % discount off MSRP? You try to look online on websites like this, edmunds, etc. to find similar deals, but that isn’t always reliable since there are variations in model years, trims, lease term, etc and you might not be able to find the data you need.
So the other alternative it to get quotes from dealers, but I’ve noticed dealers don’t like to play that game via phone/email unless you are willing to walk into the dealership, spend a few hours, and be willing to leave. Rinse and repeat until maybe you get your 10%?
Why is 10% your target? Who said anything about that being the place to shoot for? Your logic is sound to see how good you can do, but the 10% is an arbitrary number and if it’s not grounded in something from my original list, you’re gonna have a tough time.
I get that you’re not an average consumer, but this site is ballooning in popularity and mostly consists of average people. I’m catering my advice to the average user, not the 1%.
I’m just using 10% as an example. It could be whatever percentage based on your target payment or something you saw on this website.
That’s fair. From the Hackr perspective the strategy would be to reach out to as many dealers as you can to find the one that you don’t piss off. Of course that’s not the best strategy for everyone depending on how lucky you are and how much time and effort you are willing to invest.
A valid question.
Personally, I spend hours researching pricing that folks have paid over the last 3-6 months and adjust it for incentives that may not be available now. I also consider my own region (which is horribly uncompetitive), the volume of a particular dealership, the ownership of a particular dealership (corporate vs. family owned vs. high volume versions of either).
It is not a perfect science and I’m told “no” a lot more than I am told “yes” but it is generally successful. Some of it is trying, striking out, then revising your offer to go back again.
Also, remember that you’re buying a car to drive and not a deal - it is important to know when you’re close enough to be good. I don’t get the cheapest deals because that just doesn’t happen in my region, but they’re good enough for me!
This is part of why I preach normalizing every deal to pre-incentive discount at buy rate MF. It doesn’t get you the 100% answer, but it at lease flushes out the differences in lease terms, incentives, etc.
RX-Ls back in Feb. Similar to a couple of 18s LS that seem to loaners or demos right now. I do have to agree with you, that some dealers will hold for ever while others move.
This is important. I had a dealer in February give me a very aggressive offer on my Bolt LT, but it left me a little short of my goal (Net zero cost). I pushed but they wouldn’t budge so I kept grinding and got nowhere near the offer in hand. I hadn’t burned the bridge by being a jerk so I was able to reach back out to that dealer and just close it after I realized that it was silly to not do the deal over the small gap in pricing I was looking at. You can always reach back out and follow up with an adjusted offer. But it’s hard to come back at them with an offer that’s lower than what you led with.
Question for ya, have you ever asked a dealership to match a price twice?
Usually most dealers apply the rule of I`ll match or beat your quote once, but after that pound sand.
I don’t ask dealers to match quotes nor do I mention that I’m specifically shopping other dealerships. I learned quickly that it actually tends to turn sales people and managers off alike because they know they’re just going to get shopped.