Quote:
Originally Posted by qba335i
As a sales person you have to create value/experience to justify the higher price. People are willing to pay if they see value. The internet made it easy to shop around - if you can't compete on price, you have to compete on service.
|
The bottom-feeders don't care about service. We sell plenty of X5 M50i and X7s to folks several hours away and make nothing on them, just to be competetive. The fact that someone will buy a car from 8-hours away simply means they've shopped everyone in between and price is all that matters.
I've also lost sales from people calling from hours away because the quote they already had was $2000 below cost, and yet they were still shopping. No one ever asks about service but eventually the model of sales you all deem outdated will mean as you travel there will be no BMW dealers except in large metro areas. We were Jaguar dealers once, too, and they chose the metro model and offered us to stay as a service facility without any sales. We dumped them. Porsche tried this decades ago when Peter Schultz was president. They wanted all on-line orders with factory-owned central distribution points and all dealers would simply be service dealers. Dealers refused and most state franchise laws prohibited it. Tesla started fresh with this model, without the service facilities. If that's a model you like, then more power to you.
I own over 20 BMWs and like the idea of still being able to walk into a local dealership and order a windshield for a 35-year-old BMW and get it the next day without paying shipping. That all goes away if dealerships don't survive.
Fine with me, after 44-years in the business, I'm done with it. BMW owners always joked the cheapest thing on a BMW motorcycle was the rider. Car owners know the cheapest thing on a BMW car is the nut behind the wheel. I just call it Wal-Marting of America. You get what you deserve.