HAHAHA, ease-up there my fried Clay! The video is a gag -- just meant for a laugh (love this movie!!).
Ok, I've calmed down. Just feel like I am getting attacked and ridiculed for something that works very well for us. In fact, we just make $8,000 on the front end of a used 2010 Camry this morning, so I guess there are still some baby seals out there.
But, yes, I work in New Jersey. Two of our three direct competing Toyota dealers offer ridiculously low prices that we simply cannot compete with on a daily basis. Therefore, we choose not to.
Of course, they lean on their disclaimers and have a generally poor reputation.
This is where we differentiate ourselves from our competition. It means we can't make deals with people shopping the lowest price. I'm not sure if Suzuki in Wichita has to deal with competitors 15 miles away in each direction that will take $1,000 losers to make a deal, but that is what I deal with daily.
I'm not sure how often you have to fight about price over our CPO car that is perfect vs. their car which is $5,000 less, not certified and has a tiny disclaimer stating that the price is for finance deals and includes $2,000 down cash or trade - but I do.
The only think I can do is teach my salespeople how to say "no". The only chance I have of getting someone into my dealership is to NOT give away all the information. Because, once I give up everything I can do - I have lost. They have no reason to visit us and I have given them a ticket to shop us out of making a sale.
So, maybe it is my location that makes us the way we are, but our dealership can't win on price. Instead, we win on value and reputation. We win on repeat business and an excellent service department. We win on having the best trained floor and internet sales staff. We win on having a desk manager that can hold gross and make money. We win because we have 20 Toyota President's Awards and close at 40% store-wide.
Every day is a struggle, and I look at dealers selling on price in my area as too weak to be able to fight it out every phone call and overcome every objection just to set an appointment.
But, I have no doubt that if we are in this competitive of a market - we could make a killing in less competitive markets. That is why the process is more important than price. Because, if I know that I can't win on price, but I am still successful and have higher than average closing rates, then I know what we are doing works.