Playbook, car dealership
The number in the windscreen is not the number on the invoice
Nobody in this trade publishes a price list, because there is nothing to list: each car is one item and its figure belongs to that registration alone. What can be published is everything that goes on top, and that is the part the buyer discovers late. A dealership answering price questions well is not quoting cars, it is explaining the difference between the advertised figure and the on the road figure before anybody drives in.
Why this is not the general answer
The handling pattern for pricing questions holds across every trade. What follows is the part that does not.
- There is no rate card behind this answer. A used car is a single item priced on its own condition, mileage and history, and a manager can reprice it during the afternoon, so any figure held in indexed material is a copy of what was true earlier.
- The gap between the advertised price and the on the road price is a convention of this trade rather than a trick, and it is made of named, publishable items: a documentation or admin fee, the first registration cost on a new car, the road tax for the period, and sometimes plates or delivery.
- A price question about a new car is a specification question in disguise. Trim, paint, wheels and options each move the figure, and the buyer has almost always priced a version slightly different from the one they are describing.
- The moment an answer here turns into a monthly figure it stops being a price and becomes a credit illustration, which is approved wording published as a block and never something to be assembled a sentence at a time.
How it arrives
- how much is the blue one on your website
- is that price on the road
- do you charge an admin fee
- is the road tax included in that
- can you do anything on the price
- how much extra is the metallic paint
What has to be indexed for this to work
| The live advert for each car, pointed at rather than copied | Where the listing for a vehicle lives and how often it changes. The listing is genuinely current in a way any indexed copy is not, so the material should teach the assistant to send somebody to the advert for the figure instead of reciting one. |
|---|---|
| Everything charged on top of the advertised figure | The documentation or admin fee, the first registration cost, road tax for the period, number plates, delivery, and anything else that appears on an invoice but not on the advert. State for each whether it applies to a new car, a used car or both, since that split is where the confusion actually lives. |
| The options and trim structure for the new models you sell | Which items are standard on which trim and which are cost options, so the assistant can say that a colour or a wheel is extra without ever being asked to price a build. A buyer told that metallic paint is an option stops assuming the entry figure covers the car in the photograph. |
| Your published position on the price itself | Whether prices are fixed, whether there is any published offer running, and what the answer is when somebody asks for money off. One written sentence stops six different improvised ones, and it keeps the discount conversation with the person allowed to have it. |
The reply
The figure on the advert is the price of the car itself. On top of that there is a documentation fee, and on a new car the first registration cost and the road tax for the period go on as well, all of which are set out on our pricing page [1]. Metallic paint and upgraded wheels are cost options on that model rather than standard [2]. I cannot total those into an on the road figure for a particular car, and I cannot put anything into a monthly form. Send me your name, an email and the registration you are looking at and sales will come back with the full figure.
It names each item that sits outside the advert with the case it applies to attached, because new and used behave differently and a single sentence about fees teaches the buyer nothing. It refuses arithmetic and monthly figures in the same breath, which keeps the credit line from looking like a special exception the buyer might push at.
Where it stops
The trigger. The buyer names a car and asks what it would cost to drive away, asks for money off, or asks what it would be a month.
I can tell you what goes on top of an advertised price but I cannot total a car or put a figure into monthly terms. Leave me your name, an email and the registration and the sales team will send you the on the road price.
It stops answering before it guesses, says who will pick it up, and asks for the one thing that makes a reply possible. Nothing about it reads as a dead end.
Never say this here
Out of bounds
- Never give a monthly figure, an interest rate or anything that reads as an illustration of what a car would cost to finance, because that wording is approved as a block and a chat window cannot reproduce it.
- Never present a price from indexed material as the price today, since a car can be repriced in the morning and an indexed copy has no way of knowing.
- Never state that an advertised figure is on the road, or that a fee is included, unless the pricing material says so for that category of sale.
- Never agree to a discount, a price match or a figure held until the weekend, because the price of a single item is a manager's decision and not a conversational one.
Questions
- Can it quote the price of a specific car from our website?
- It can read out what the advert said when the page was indexed, and that is exactly the problem. Prices on individual cars move. Have it explain the fee structure, which does not move, and send the buyer to the live advert for the number.
- Why can it not just add the fees up for somebody?
- Because the sum would be a quote for one car, made from a price that might be stale and a fee list that varies by category. A wrong on the road figure is not a mildly annoying error. It is a customer who drove in expecting one number.
- Is publishing the admin fee not just inviting an argument?
- You have the argument either way, and the version where it happens at the desk with the paperwork out costs you the sale. Buyers who read the fee on the site ask about it and then buy. Buyers who meet it at signing feel caught.
Keep reading
- Everything for a car dealershipStock moves daily and finance adverts are regulated, so this is mostly about what a dealership assistant must never claim to know.
- Handling pricing questions in generalPublished price versus the price for this buyer. Bands, ranges and from pricing, and why a firm number for unscoped work is the damaging failure.
- A car is not a parcel and there is no tracking numberTwo very different waits behind one question: a build slot the dealership does not control, and a used car sitting in the workshop before handover.
- Which piece of paper the customer is actually afterA sales invoice, a service bill and the registration document are three different pieces of paper, and customers ask for all three using one word.
- The order is signed, the car is in the queue, and they want outA signed order for a car being built to one buyer's specification is a contract with terms on it, and the deposit is the part everybody is asking about.
Try it on your own material
Upload a document or point it at your site, paste one line of HTML, then ask it something only your business could answer.