Quote:
Originally Posted by Ikaros
That's why we are doing this group buy thing. If we went in alone it would be almost impossible to get a deal on this car right at launch. But if we went in as a group, the sales rep we are dealing with might be a little more open to giving us deals because we are giving him a whole lot of commission. Now I have never worked at a dealership before but most of the time companies have competitions to see who can have the most sales, so on top of just giving him commission, we might be giving him that little push he needs to win a contest. Plus the increase sales benefits the dealership too.
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This is true, but it's a bit hard to judge how much of the hype will affect the supply/demand relationship and in who's favour.
We should be gathering as much information on dealership operations in the meantime.
Stuff like, sure one sales rep may get excited by the prospect of 10 sales in a single day (commission on ~$260,000!!!), but will the manager over-ride him?
If demand is much higher than supply, will the manager give the rep an un-movable price, since there are even more people waiting in line? (What's 10 orders at a 5% discount when you have 15 cars and 100+ people waiting to pay full price?)
Do the managers operate on an annual performance bonus system like many corporate retail stores? If so, what is the cut-off? This could affect purchase timing. Is it a dollar amount? A vehicle amount? Is it for individual dealerships or regional areas? This could affect who we want to negotiate with. If this is the case, timing a group buy to boost a manager's personal performance bonus could result in a
huge win-win (he heavily discounts just above break-even to boost numbers that pays him personally). Sucks for the little sales rep, though...
Stuff like that.
The fact that they sell cars below MSRP means they are still making money on them.
Knowing all the ins and outs of the system would be a huge advantage. But not something they'll want to share...