I just finished one of my coaching calls with a pre-owned salesperson from Perth who asked me, “How can I improve my closing ratio on leads I get from interstate? Especially when their email includes a silly offer on the price?”

From my experience, this is a common challenge in pre-owned departments. They advertise a great vehicle on carsales.com.au which is fairly rare, priced right, and ready to sell, only to get multiple enquiries well outside an area we could drive to and show them the car.

While there is no one magic answer here that will close all deals, here are the 5 things you must know to overcome this challenge. In these points I will use the real world example I was given of a customer from Queensland enquiring on a 2011 Toyota Hilux that is in Perth.

This is where you need to put yourself in the customers shoes. If you were to do a search on carsales.com.au today for a Preowned Toyota Hilux it brings up 4119 search results. Obviously no one is going to look through all those vehicles. So instead, they refine the search down to location and price, and model. 

So let me take the example of a SR5 Hilux in Queensland between $15-20K. I still have 27 options to flick through… If I see nothing I like in that search, I can remove the state option and it takes me to 99 options. A lot of vehicles!

If you truly put yourself in the customers shoes, for you to actually enquire on a specific car out of the 99 you just looked at, you must be pretty keen on that vehicle! 

So when a customer offers you a crazy price, they aren’t a waste of time, instead they are someone who is keen on the car but knows dealerships give deals and therefore they are going to try their best to get the best deal on the right car possible.

It is so important you know what your cars are competing against. If the Hilux you are selling is rare with really low kms, lots of additional accessories, or the only one in that colour on the internet, you are going to be able to use the fear of loss close. If you have a white dual cab SR that there are 100 of in your area, you will use a different technique when selling.

My first question when getting in touch with the customer that enquires is to ask them, “have you decided it’s definitely got to be the Hilux SR5 or are you open to other options. This does 2 things. 

Firstly, do they need to be sold on the benefits of the SR5 over its competitors, and if so, I can use reviews, video walk arounds and spec sheets to be able to build desirability for that car. 

Secondly, if gives you the option of using other vehicles you might have on your books to offer an alternative if the price they want is unachievable.

This is one most smart used car salespeople will already use daily, but when a crazy price is offered, instead of starting the negotiating by saying, “can you be flexible?”, you would instead use the information gathered in your needs analysis to ask, “surely mr customer, based on all the benefits and features  that we’ve discussed and you said were important to you, you can understand why we are asking this price?” Or use your research to sell the price based on what else is out there.

Selling based on the total cost of ownership is something that is becoming very common in the fleet departments of dealerships but isn’t used enough when discussing pre-owned vehicles. This will include resale value, servicing costs, fuel costs, reliability factor and desirability when selling it. 

Many customers make a decision to buy pre-owned based on them not wanting to lose all the money on a new car depreciating. This is why it’s so important to ask them, “how long are you planning to keep this car?” 

Let’s say the customer says 5 years. You could then use the close, “the great thing about going for the SR5 model we have here is even though you might pay a little bit more now, when you go to sell the vehicle in 5 years as long as it still has good kms and is in great condition, what you have to invest here over your budget you’ll get back when you replace it.