You're welcome, Carl.? I never seem to see lousy bargainers.? My average customer could out-negotiate Condoleeza Rice, and a lot of them really enjoy it.? It's a shame that the car biz and apparently the RV biz require negotiating skills.? The reason, of course, is trade-ins.? You don't need negotiating skills to buy a table saw or a computer.? Just do your research and shop around.? But then there's no trade-in then.? The car biz used to be like the RV biz seems to be now, with big mark-ups to make handling trade-ins easy.? But they're pretty much gone now.? Lexus still has large markups because they haven't changed dealer agreements since they started.? At the time they figured if they were going to get dealers to invest in this new line they would set up an agreement that would make them rich.? Our line, on the other hand, has gone from 20% and no holdback to 7% payable gross with holdback.? It's a lot harder to give a person what he believes his clapped out, dented trade-in is worth (that's "excellent" on the Kelly Blue Book website, isn't it?) when you have 7% and need to keep a little.? In the old days you just put $X too much in the trade-in and didn't discount the new car? by that $X.? It's called over-allowing.? That's what RV Dealers do.?
When I started here if people asked for 10% on a replaceable car in stock with no trade, we had a deal.? They're still asking for 10%.
People will tell you they paid too much for their house or their wife's diamond, but they have to be able to tell people how they beat up six car salesmen to get the deal of the century.
I remember a customer coming in referred by a friend.? "I want the same deal he got."? I thought that would be easy and just gave him the same deal on the same car.? He was profiting from his friend's bargaining skills, and I was getting a quick, if? cheap, deal.? He blew his stack.? His friend had exaggerated his deal quite a bit.? Showing him his friend's contract didn't help.? He left in a Huff.
Unfortunately I don't sell Huffs.