Price Quotes

[tima]

Hello all:

Looking for best practice for responding to request's for price quotes. Like all of you I'm sure, our internet coordinator's receive many calls each day asking for our "rock-bottom" price. They typically then t/o the call to one of our internet sales manager's. They then go ahead and quote the customer.

My sense is that is this is what the internet customer expects. This of course goes against what we learned coming up in the car business about quoting price over the phone.

I have read that some dealers "range" the customer and this seems acceptable to the customer.

Any thoughts?

As always, thanks.

 

[Craig]

I think it depends on what your contact form says or your inventory description.
If you say something like "click here for pricing" or "request your internet price"...... then you need to quote a price.
If you say "click here for a pricing range"......then quote a range.
If you don't want to email pricing, don't advertise that's what you do.

Problem is I don't know how often a "click here to get called and pitched for an appointment" button gets clicked.....maybe some a/b testing is in order?
Maybe a "click here to check availability and schedule test drive" button makes more sense.

We send a price when a customer request a price and then follow up to work for the appointment.....because that's what we tell them we're going to do.

 

[MullerToyota]

Hello all:

Looking for best practice for responding to request's for price quotes. Like all of you I'm sure, our internet coordinator's receive many calls each day asking for our "rock-bottom" price. They typically then t/o the call to one of our internet sales manager's. They then go ahead and quote the customer.
My sense is that is this is what the internet customer expects. This of course flies in the face of what we all learned coming up in the car business about quoting price over the phone. I have read that some dealers "range" the customer and this seems acceptable to the customer. Any thoughts? As always, thanks.

I think the decision is ultimately the store's decision, but you have to understand that most people go online to look for a quote. If you don't provide one to them - then do you expect them to give you their time? Doubtful.

Now, that being said - if your quote isn't relevant to what others will quote that customer - they probably won't give you the time of day.

Our policy is to give everyone a quote based on a few hundred dollars above or below invoice - depending on the market. This gives us the chance to try and use that to position ourselves to get to speak to the customer.

Keep in mind that the quote is kind of like a newspaper loss leader. The job is to get us to talk to the customer and to set an appointment. Once they are in the store, a competent salesperson should be able to put them in a different car in order to make a profit. At the least, we can sell the car they receives a quote for.

However, I don't recommend giving away the farm. In no instance will I quote them a specific lease or finance payment or trade-in value. They need to show up for that info.

The quote then, is the hook - and it is my internet sales consultant's job to sell the dealership and the appointment.

 

[danoneil]

Are you asking how to handle a incoming phone call from someone looking to get a price quote ? Or are you asking our opinions on how we handle price quotes with incoming internet leads ?

 

[tima]

Thank both of you for your response and opinions. Now that I think about it, I might like to hear perspectives on both phone and incoming leads.

 

[CAORYAN]

Tima,

I have tried both and here is my feedback on the A/B testing I did.

Don't quote price -
If you don't quote price you have to overcome by personality and excellent sales skills. You have to offer something as important as the price in order to secure the appointment. Your job is to find out what their "most important" feature/benefit/hot button is while on the phone. If you can accomplish that you "may" be able to get that customer in the door without quoting price. If you don't handle this perfectly you lose this guy/girl 95% of the time. From my experience if this person shows they don't ask for you because you weren't willing to help on the phone you certainly aren't going to be helpful in person.

Quote Price -
This is what most people have submitted the form for or called for anyway. By giving price you now have an opportunity. "Price" is something that the GSM preaches not to quote or not to give away but his add says "LOWEST PRICES IN THE STATE". You can't target people looking for price and not offer it when people call or email in. Quoting price by itself has no value to you. Giving someone a 24 hour quote by getting their info and purchase time frame has value to you but offering the buyer a benefit along with the price brings value. You will need to separate yourself from the others he will contact. You can do this by showing how on your game you are, willing to drive the car to their work, whatever. Maybe you give away 1 year gas, make sure you mention that. While quoting on the phone always validate your quote by saying "what email can I send this quote to?". Now you have a shot with 100% of the people that contact you.

I can honestly say that I used to shop my competition like crazy and I would always quote about $200 higher. I would tell the customer why they were paying $200 more. The $200 would get you an experienced sales person, the best experience you have ever had while making a major purchase, if they were local to me I would mention the relationship and the service department. I would also mention to them I don't play games, and that before they go purchase the car and save $200 come see me and get the best of both worlds. Best sales person and then you go there and buy to save. Lets just say people would almost always buy from me. It also helped we had great inventory.

So based on my experience I would say quote prices but know your competition and know you are quoting higher. Be ok with it. Go for gross you deserve it if you do a good job. Sometimes I would split the $200 with them to keep them but still, who wouldn't take that deal.

 

[ryan.leslie]

Disclaimer: I'm just a vendor, so I can't share any real world experiences of my own. There are some folks that can skip the rest of this post now and I totally get that.

The one benefit of the Vendor perspective is that I've seen hundreds of stores wrestle with this pricing dilemma. Years ago when I was managing a market for Dealer Specialties the question was "do we price our inventory on Autotrader and our website or can we display "call for price" and get them on the phone?" No A/B testing required there any longer. No price=No calls. Why? With pricing info so readily available to the consumer they quickly make the assumption that you are asking too much for the car and YOU know it. What do you assume when you are shopping a competitor online and see a cheap car for the options and year with the mileage "unlisted?"

Two free thoughts for you:

See what everybody else is doing and do it better: Spent time with Dealix and Cars.com more recently and shopped a lot of stores, customers and prospects. This is probably a no-brainer, but if you haven't done that yet you should. See what your direct competition is doing and do it better in the eyes of your potential customers. If they ask for a price, quote them out on the vehicles up and down the price spectrum too. To Ryan's point, Differentiation is key and is especially effective when you exceed the expectation.

Put on your customer hat and rethink your process: Saw a tweet from Kershner the other day talking about a positive customer service experience. Dealership personnel more than any other profession seem to have a difficult time dis-associating from their sales identity. Cliche, no doubt, but think about what you like, what motivates you to buy when you are the customer. If you called your local electronics store to ask for a price on a TV and they told you to come on down and press the buttons on the remote before they would give you a price, I'm thinkin' you are about to go buy a TV from Best Buy at the advertised price. Even if you are the type that heads into the local joint looking forward to a negotiation, your customer most certainly is not.