BuyingAdvice.com Gives Tips on the Art of Negotiating the Best Car Deal
January 2, 2008
After conducting a series of interviews with leading experts in the field, automotive consumer advice site BuyingAdvice.com suggests setting three goals when negotiating – sales price, financing terms and trade-in value.
Salesmen and dealers interviewed say the area where most buyers fail to maximize their gains is overlooking that all three areas of a car deal are negotiable. Experts say dealers will concede in the one area they perceive as most important to the customer, only to make their profit in another area of the transaction.
"When a sales manager looks at a deal, their experience allows them to see how much profit they are getting on the deal as a whole. Very few customers have the ability to keep the whole deal in their head throughout the different phases of the negotiation. So that even what appears to be a concession may not be anything of the sort," former dealership owner Jim Smith told the web site.
For the customer to walk away from the table with the best deal, they must maximize their gains in each part of the negotiation.
To this end, Smith suggests arriving at the negotiating table with well researched information on the trade-in value of your vehicle, a competitive loan quote and on-line price quotes from several dealerships on the car you want to buy.
Sales executive Dan West likens the negotiation to a poker game and advises letting the dealership make an offer before you reveal your cards, or in this case, what you know you can achieve elsewhere.
West also says that it is important to understand that all aspects of the deal are negotiable, including the finance rates.
"Customers can fight very hard over sales price and trade in value only to give back all their gains in the finance office by agreeing to an unfavorable loan rate and terms," he says.
