Sell the metal!

Car dealers are likely to go back to basics this year in order to keep ahead of the competition. The ‘sell the metal’ mentality creating hype and desire around selling large volumes of cars with massive discounts is always guaranteed to get the blood flowing.

The beauty of big sales events, despite what the sceptics may think, is that if dealers can shift cars in larger volumes the customer will always get a good deal and when dealers buy in bulk and get a better deal on the wholesale market those savings can get transferred to the buyer.

For the sales team, being able to sell 30-50 cars over a weekend is always what keeps the dream alive and as long as the business is incremental and the costs of putting the promotion together are more than covered everybody is a winner.

A colleague who decided to start the ‘sales’ season earlier this year has said it’s the most fun he has had in ages. There was bunting, buffets and champagne for anyone buying a car and big savings across his whole range of cars. Customers totally bought into to what they were trying to do and his sales team worked tirelessly along with the rest of the staff in his showroom to make the event a success.

His conclusion was everyone got what they wanted out of it and the most important thing, in these times of doom and gloom, was that everybody had fun. Customers were happy to part with their money in the party atmosphere and sales staff turned up with the winning attitude and the “we can do it” mentality.

Just for a short time all was right with the world and getting back to the basics of giving people what they want and enjoying it whilst making profit at the same time was all that mattered.

The only problem is that all his staff were so tired half of them didn’t turn up for work on Monday!