How do you send a price quote?

[Alex Snyder]

Now that my corporate life is behind me I've had some time to chat with old dealer friends, do a little car shopping, and make a few new dealer friends. It was a lot more difficult to do all that while my name was attached to an organization that sells to dealers.

On one hand it sucks to see that 98% of what happens in 2018 is exactly the same stuff we were doing in 2001 with AVV's Webcontrol + a CRM like AutoBase/HigherGear/etc. On the other hand a lot of shady shit I used to be encouraged to do is mostly out of practice... probably due to the fact that those things are quite illegal today.

I mention "shady shit" because my desk managers, in 2001, had zero trust that a price sent via email, or given over the phone, was going to win us a customer. Paranoia leads people to do weird stuff. At least in 2018, the paranoia doesn't seem to be as bad. So, in 2001, I NEVER EVER gave a customer an out the door figure. Nor a trade allowance; not even a ballpark. Today, one must disclose every bit of a payment quote to be legally compliant, so I'm curious what you're being encouraged to do.

P.S. @Alexander Lau you are a vendor, so please don't jump into this thread unless you want to discuss your dealer days as a nostalgic old man

 

[Brendan Dolan]

When I ran the internet teams, and in my store, I trained everyone to answer the customers question, and reinforce a reasonable why buy from us. When we'd give out info, it was plain text in the body of the email, with no attachments. Customers can't always figure those out.

Keep it basic, double spaced, bold the information you want them to see (selling price, lease payment, etc) and then follow up with them if they don't move forward.

I sold cars to high income earners in NorCal just north of Silicon Valley. The shady shit didn't work, but the free exchange of information and justification of the price did.

 

[Alex Snyder]