We’ve all dealt with a car salesman who wanted us to sign our life away on an overpriced import, but there’s a good chance that’s literally happening in Iraq right now.
Reuters reports that Islamic State fighters have taken to running car dealerships as a way of making money, now that allied airstrikes have cut off much of their oil-generated income. (Read More…)
I come before you today to state a simple truth, a truth that is so obvious that it doesn’t even need to be said, yet it has never been properly addressed. The car franchise dealership, as we know it, is broken.
It’s too bloated. It doesn’t live in the now. It spends far too much to acquire its customers. It doesn’t focus on the things that matter. Some OEMs wish that they could eliminate it. In most cases, it’s owned by a guy whose only achievement in life is having been born to the owner of a car dealership.
It’s also the only business in America that intentionally operates in a way that is frustrating and oppressive to its customers. You could never run any other business in America the way that a car dealership is run. The posted price means nothing. Virtually no two people will pay the same price for a car. Even once the price is finally negotiated, surprises keep coming to the point where virtually nobody is entirely sure if he or she got a fair deal on his car.
But it doesn’t have to be this way. If I owned my own dealership (and, honestly, could I really be any worse at it than 90 percent of the guys who own dealerships?) here’s what I’d do to help my dealership make more money, sell more cars, be more ethical, increase customer satisfaction and loyalty, and even have more fun doing it.
Price is the deciding factor in many new car purchases, so it’s no surprise that dealerships do all they can to advertise the lowest number possible. While the internet has given consumers a lot of power when it comes to purchasing a new car, many consumers still fall for age-old pricing tricks.
One of the easiest ways to reel people into a dealership is to set up an advertisement for a decently optioned popular car at a sale price significantly lower than MSRP. This advertisement will usually be the lowest in the geographic area and would cause a loss for the dealership if sold. The way that deceptive dealers get around honoring the advertised price is by specifying a single stock number that qualifies and then asking a friend or relative to put a deposit on that specific vehicle as soon as the advertisement goes up online or in print.
Jeep dealers heading out to Vegas for the brand’s biennial show in August may have a grand surprise waiting: the 2019 Jeep Grand Wagoneer.
Imagine over 500 cars at your disposal, and you pick the exact ones you want to test on the open road.
There are no mind games. No bait and switch tactics. Nothing but you going to a computer, figuring out the most worthy candidates, and letting a salaried employee fetch the keys and answer the relevant questions to your car search.
Sounds too good to be true? Well, it’s already happened. There’s only one problem.
The place that does it primarily sells used cars, not new cars.
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