Dealing with Salesmen

The classic line from car salesmen is "What will it take to get you to buy this car?" Expect this question when you go to a showroom floor. It will come sooner or later. So use it to your advantage.

The reason that salesmen ask this question is to know what to discount. If you say that I want to pay less, than they will give you a slightly better price. On the other hand, if you are very specific, their options become limited. An example of this would be "I want $9,000 for my old car, I'll buy the new car for $15,000 and I don't want the sports package that you keep trying to sell me." Believe this if you believe nothing else in this book. The same question will come back to you. You may use a different approach. "Why don't you let me buy the car under these terms" is another good way to get around this question. With this approach, you can throw the ball back into his court.

Tip: Do not fall for the inevitable rebuttal to these statements by the salesman. A typical response from him/her would be something to the effect that he has to bring something better to his sales manager. This is a lie! He knows the limits that he can go to. He's trying to break you down. When confronted with this blatant attempt at deception simple state, "You'll have to do better than that or I'll take my business elsewhere." If he disagrees or balks at this, LEAVE.

Another common trick among dealers is to know how much you plan to spend and how you plan on paying for it. They may even circumvent this and assume that you plan to finance the vehicle by asking how low you want the monthly payments to be. Not only is this a trick to see if you have the money to pay upfront but also to get you to forget about the true price of the car. They may also use this information to make the monthly payments seem lower by extending the financing for more years. This can be very costly to you.

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