Women Negotiate Better Car Deals Than Men
Yes we can negotiate a better car deal!
I don’t know how I missed this exciting news from NPR back in February of this year, but it’s what we’ve been saying all along at She Negotiates.
Women who prepare for a negotiation by learning what the seller’s needs, constraints, interests, concerns, costs and profit margins are can cut as good a deal as any man.
And that’s not just true in salary negotiations. It is turning out to be true in the new car business.
According to a recent report from NPR Morning Edition’s Sonari Glinton, women not only negotiate harder bargains than men when it comes to vehicle purchases, but also they do more extensive preparatory work. Conventional wisdom has always placed the automobile in the realm of the masculine, but the emergence of the prepared and educated female customer has changed the way car dealers sell cars and the way car manufacturers market and design them.
viaNew Car Negotiations: Are Women Better than Men?
The most important fact to know when negotiating a new car price is how much it costs the dealer to keep the car on the lot every day. This is called a “flooring cost” and when you use those two words with any car salesman, s/he knows that you’re hip to the jive and can’t be hoodwinked by the usual car sales tomfoolery.
Here’s everything you need to know before you negotiate the purchase of your next new car.
Never go without preparation and you’ll blow the dealership away.
When you know what the dealer’s profit margin is and how much it will cost him to keep the car on the floor if you don’t purchase it today, you don’t have to worry about being “taken” or feel as if you’re “taking” someone else.
You’re getting the car at a fair price and the dealer is making a fair profit.
It often helps reluctant car negotiators to know that most of the profit from the sale of a new automobile is not in the sale but in the post-sale maintenance services.
So buying a car is a little like buying a Kindle. Amazon should be giving the darn thing away for free because the profit for Amazon is not in the sale of the e-reader but in the sale of books from its online bookstore.
So don’t waste any sympathy on the car dealer when you cut its profit margin as thin as possible. That dealer will make plenty on the five years of repair services.
If you don’t keep that car for five years, chances are good that you’ll trade it in to that same dealer and buy an even newer one (though anyone with any car savvy will tell you never, ever to trade it in since you can get such a better deal selling it yourself).
We’re proud of you, ladies!
Keep on negotiating out there and we’ll be closing the wage and income gap before we know it!