Neaty, I have worked for other main dealers (BMW Corporate sales and then Merc). I started at BMW with zero sales experience. Fleet or corporate is not a bad place to start as most of your business is conducted over the phone,email and fax so it's big numbers and teaches alot about organisation and time management which then work well for retail sales.
Adamb - Discount on labour will vary from dealer to dealer. Alot of it depends on what mechanics (sorry technicians) the retailer has. Most of our guys now are "new school" and have been trained by VW with all the latest computers and diagnostics. If your local dealer is lucky enough to still have old school mechanics who fix things with spanners not computers they may well sort you out. It will also depend on how busy their workshop is. They would rather sell discounted hours than have techs sitting around drinking coffee doing nothing.
The discount/cash/part ex thing is a biggie. I will start a thread on this tomorrow. In a nutshell.....
We get commission on selling cars. I really don't want to start discussing how much though. (it is not as much as you'd think tho because....)
We get commission on selling finance products. Therefore starting your opening sentance to the salesman with "it's a cash purchase, whats you best price" is not what he wants to hear.
Part ex - As a rule, it makes no difference whether or not you part ex. Obviously if it's a late VW then we'll resell it but don't think that you can use this as a bargaining tool. The only thing we concentrate on is selling you a car. We enter into the same negotiation when selling on your part ex don't forget.
What a salesman really wants to hear is "i've got a car to part exchange and I know you won't give me what i'm expecting for it but I'm going to finance the rest using VolkswagenFinance". The customer who sits down and says " i've got no part ex and it's a cash deal, whats your best price" rarely gets a deal as good as someone who is honest. We know that 78% of all new cars are bought using someone elses money. Be it bank,credit cards, personal loans or dealer finance.
I will defo start a new thread on teh dos and donts of haggling in the morning.
VWmd
