Ask a Car Salesman

[omegadan]

firstyear, not that long amazingly. I was thrust into this position when my boss had disagreements with the management and was let go. I didn't think I was ready but I was just thrust into it and hit the ground running and have been very successful thus far.
I have been a fulltime salesman for 1 month and I was working as an assistant to an Internet Fleet Manager for 8 months.
Pretty rapid sucession but its just my luck.

[omegadan]

billie, I have sales experience but not a ton. I worked retail at a luggage store, I worked at Office depot in electronics. I had never worked serious comission before.
When I was an assistant, my boss was out of the office a lot so I was basically doing all of the work to sell the customer the car. Talking about the car itself, quoting prices, doing test drives, etc.
Comissions are higher on used cars for a few reasons. The primary one is that the cost on a new car is fixed (invoice) and on a used car the cost is whatever we can buy it for. The ideal way for us to get used cars is from trade-in because we get to buy it for as cheap as possible.
Also for new cars there are 'packs' which is money taken from the gross profit to pay for detailing and for certain cars it is higher because it goes to the dealership.
This is getting long, but heres an example.
Say you sell an RX350, and the gross is $3000. There is a $500 detail pack and maybe a $200 new car pack so the profit they calculate comission from is $2300.
For an LS460 in addition to the regular packs there is a $3000 pack on the car.

[omegadan]

billie, the cars in LA are much cheaper because it is an extremely competitive market. There are over 10 Lexus dealers in the greater LA area. In other states there may be only 2 or 3 and they are often owned by the same group.
I don't shop out prices in Chicago and NYC, but my price could be $1000 cheaper or more.

[BradleyT]

What's your contact to sales ratio? IE - if you contact 50 people who have already filled out the internet form and are qualified buyers how many will you sell a car to?

[kassdog]

If I was serious about buying a new car would you suggest trough internet or in person meaning which one am I likely to get more of a deal. Personly i hate going to Dealerships because I can't stand most of the salesmen so would you be able to do everything over the internet up until I pick up the car.

CLIFF NOTE: Can you get a better deal online then live or about the same?

Can you complete the whole sales process without ever stepping into the dealership?