Inventory Pricing: With or Without Incentives?

[CFrentzen]

How do people go about pricing vehicles online and what works / what doesn't?

 

[CFrentzen]

Does anyone have experience pricing vehicles differently than the simple Asking Price and would be willing to share that here?

 

[ghen]

One of my managers recently told me he prefers posting MSRP on the web and "contact us for internet price" or "mention our website when you call for special pricing"

Take that as you will. Currently we don't add in incentives to our web price mainly because it would be a hassle to keep up to date.

 

[ryanlucia]

One of my managers recently told me he prefers posting MSRP on the web and "contact us for internet price" or "mention our website when you call for special pricing"

Take that as you will. Currently we don't add in incentives to our web price mainly because it would be a hassle to keep up to date.

I think this is a good idea, however I found that most dealerships will do that and the managers tell you not to give the price over the phone. So what happens is people call the sales guys on the floor and ask "whats the internet price?" They aren't going to give it to the inet guys so he either tells them he can't or he makes up a price.

Defeats the purpose. If you do that everyone at your dealership should be educated on how to handle that call if they get it.

 

[ryanlucia]

How do people go about pricing vehicles online and what works / what doesn't?

If you do enough research with your prices you can feel confident that your prices are the best. When people call you say "we spend a lot of time researching the market and this car is in excellent condition with maintenance records but I can honor the $100 off coupon on the website. If you did it right than you will get a lead from your coupon pop up or whatever you use. This worked great for us. Our used car manager bought the cars right and spent a great amount of time researching the market on autotrader.com, Cars.com etc....I would sell about 18 to 20 used cars a month from that method and it was very easy.

Think as a buyer....You are going to first try to find the exact car you want and then call. Have you tried to buy a car through autotrader lately? You get a lot of "sorry it's sold". Now you get a little anxious and you start calling on your second and third favorite colors and willing to pay a little more. Go ahead pic a car and start calling around trying to buy it.

We made about $2000 to $3500 a car on the front. If we didn't buy the car right we weren't scared to price it out at $1000 $1500 over cost. Too many dealers set up in the DMS to price every car at $2500 to $3000 over cost. Thats stupid and lazy!