Finding good deals on cars is something that every customer wants us to do for them as their personal car shopper. The thing is that each customer defines “good deal” a bit differently. A large subset of our customers want us to save their time and by doing all the legwork for them, they consider it a good deal. A different subset of our customers are abjectly opposed to the back and forth, confrontational, “runaround” so when we handle that for them, they consider it a good deal. Another subset wants us to save them money and we are pretty darn good at doing that for our customers.
But what if we do more than that to help you get a “good deal”? What if we can sniff out problems in a car? Or catch little things that a dealership says or does to make us not recommend buying a vehicle from them? What if we read that Ford is having trouble with its supplier for power seat motors so the price for power seats is about to increase a bit as Ford shifts to a new supplier? What if the automobile trade magazines are running more advertisements by companies wanting to help dealerships increase finance department profits which tells us profits from the sale of cars is dropping so they are trying to make up those profits in finance? Little things for certain, but things that could matter to you without you knowing. These are things the little things that help make a good deal from your personal car shopper.
What if we come across an article like this: Maserati’s Priced Lower Than Toyotas? Finding deals like this is another way we can help our customers with a “good deal”. Does this example benefit everyone? Oh heck no. In fact, I doubt that we have any customers who care about a used Maserati. But our customers benefit because we are always looking for things like this.
Back when we were running dealerships, we called doing all this “finding our edge” and I spent at least an hour a day studying the car business. At least an hour a day finding our edge. Did rental companies just place huge fleet orders, because when they place big fleet orders, they are going to start flooding the used car market with their current fleet which will lower used car values. We were finding our edge so we could capture more business and generate more net profit.
My partner and I still call it “finding our edge”, but now, we use this edge for good rather than evil”. We use our edge to help our clients find not just what they believe is a good deal, but what we believe is an even better deal. We don’t want you to just be happy with the car. We want you to be happy with the car because you bought it that we can see operates fairly. We want you to be happy with the car because we were able to save you an additional $700 because the car you are buying has a larger than normal day’s supply of inventory. We want you to enjoy your good deal because you didn’t have to spend 6 hours on a Saturday cramped in an office and hammered on by a car salesman, sales manager, and finance manager. This is what you want from us. We call our company “car concierge” and we tell people we are personal car shoppers, but we are not simply purchasing off a shopping list. When you hire us, we are doing more than just looking for “black Tahoe with sunroof, tan leather interior and 4 wheel drive”. You are spending way too much money for us to be treating it like a grocery list.
This post is titled “How We Cheat The Car Buying System” for a reason. We cheat the system because we know as much or more about the car buying system as the dealership “professionals”. Dealership personnel rely on uneducated customers, or impatient customers, or customers who are willing to “just get this over with.” They spend all day trying to find customers so they can make more profit. We spend our time finding ways to make sure our customers are getting a good deal. And that’s our cheat. We are working as hard as the dealerships, but our work is done to achieve the absolute opposite for you. Dealerships want a good deal for them. Texas Car Concierge is going to get a good deal for YOU.
