Appraise This!

There are numerous pros and cons to trading in your former vehicle at a dealership when purchasing a new one. If you decide in favor of trading, here's an important tip that'll help you during the appraisal process...

Turn Around!

That's it! Just turn around and face away from the person doing the appraisal!

Here's the psychology behind what THEY do during the appraisal. The Used Car Manager will do a walk-around of your car, looking for the slightest dent or ding or flaw in your soon-to-be-former pride and joy.

If he finds anything wrong (or, sometimes, even if he doesn't), the Used Car Manager will pause and grunt or snort or give other indicators of displeasure.

His goal is to bait you into believing you're trading in a pile of junk that will be an embarrassment on his lot. He may ask if your car has been involved in an accident. Even if you truthfully answer "no", he might respond with a "huh!" or "reaaaaaally?" that makes clear the fact that he doesn't remotely believe you.

The point of this entire exercise is to plant seeds of doubt in your mind about the true worth of your old car. Then when you get the dealership's low-ball offer, you'll glumly accept it without protest and they'll make another $1000 or more off you on the deal!

So the absolute worst strategy during the appraisal (and also, unfortunately, the most common) is to follow the person appraising your car around and subject yourself to their critical eye and comments.

Now here's the psychology behind what YOU are going to do. You're simply going to remove yourself from the appraisal process! If you can't see or hear their real or imaginary criticisms, then your mind can't be affected by them.

Heck, when I bring a car in for appraisal at a dealership, not only do I turn around and face the other way, I also walk many steps away and pretend to make a call on my cell phone. I don't want to see or hear anything from the Used Car Manager that'll make me feel my old car is worth less than I know it to be worth.

One of my clients told me she now does the same thing when she sells anything of value--whether an unwanted appliance or when she holds a garage sale. She turns away while they look over whatever she's selling. Then when they approach her and offer a lower price because of some flaw or another, she simply smiles and repeats the original price.

Try it and discover for yourself how well this works for you...then share your results in the Comments section if you desire!

Show Me The $

Top sales professionals are well aware of the psychological power and emotional symbolism of the Dollar Sign...and so they avoid it all costs (heh-heh!) during negotiations.

There's a subtle, yet significant, difference between this...

$2500

...and this...

2500

The first represents a real amount of money--a direct reflection of your bank account or credit.

The second is more abstract. Without the "$" in front, it's just a number.

Few people other than professional mathematicians can really conceive of a pure number without reference to anything else and hold it fixed in their minds. A number all by itself has less meaning--and, most importantly--less emotion for us. And if a sales pro can separate your money from your emotions, they'll have a better chance of making a sale at your expense.

Disassociating customers from the actual value of their money is a cornerstone of Mickey Bucks at Disney's theme parks. (It's not really money...just colorful pieces of paper with Mickey Mouse's picture on 'em!) And it's the foundation of the Chip system in Las Vegas and other casinos worldwide. (Ordinary people who wouldn't dare plop down $150 in cash on the outcome of a single spin of the wheel think little about wagering a little pile of white, red and blue chips in amounts that can be staggering.)

Here's how to use the Disappearing Dollar Sign to your advantage on your next major purchase:

At some point in your negotiations, your salesperson will make an offer (it could be their first offer, it could be the twentieth; the principle remains the same) in writing. They might push a piece of paper in your direction with numbers such as this on it...

22,780

Or perhaps this...

1500 down

390/month

If your salesperson knows what they're doing, they will have already placed a pen on top of the written offer for you to sign it.

Now, they're trained to say nothing at this point. Their entire goal is to wait you out in silence and hope you to sign the offer, thus closing the sale. 

As will often be the case as you discover how to turn the sales process around in your favor through reading, "How to Buy A New Car at Used Car Prices!", your goal here is exactly opposite from the person trying to sell you something!

YOUR GOAL in this moment is merely to re-associate yourself with the value of the money on the offer so you can make the best buying decision for yourself.

So you pick up the pen. (As you do, out of the corner of your eye note how your salesperson will often literally hold their breath in excitement at the prospect of closing the sale!) Then you simply add the missing Dollar Signs next to the appropriate numbers on the page, like this...

$ 1500 down

$ 390/month

Then you put down the pen and repeat the offer, out loud, using the word "dollars" when you do so.

"Three hundred and ninety dollars a month." 

This may well be a Great Deal...or further negotiations may be required. Either way, though, NOW you know exactly what you're getting into. 

A nice side benefit from this is that you'll fry your salesperson's brain a bit, which is always fun! You'll have lifted the curtain on their little Disappearing Dollar Sign trick, and also bought yourself some time to consider the deal--since your salesperson will not usually have been trained how to react in this situation. 

And once again you'll be exactly where you want to be--in charge of the buying process, rather than a helpless victim who is being sold something!

Feel free to use the Comments section below to share with other readers examples similar to Disney Dollars or casino chips (the technical term is "Replacement Currencies") where businesses switch out your actual money with some kind of symbolic representation in order to influence you to spend more!

QUESTION: What's the Best Day to Buy A Car?

ANSWER: The last day of the month!

Like most sales organizations, car dealerships are geared towards monthly results. Quotas, bonuses, customer incentives and (my personal favorite!) bragging rights as the Top Producer are all calculated month by month.

When I was a car salesman, I enjoyed the increasing urgency in the air as each day ticked closer to the end of the month. This was where the rubber met the road--literally, in our case!--and the last few sales were made that could mean the difference between a decent month and a great one for both myself and the dealership as a whole.

On the final day of the month, the entire focus becomes Quantity over Quality. From the Sales Manager on down, the goal is push cars out the door, the more the better! There's no time to squeeze every last dime out of a deal...there's barely time to worry about making a profit at all! "Just get another unit on the road" is the mantra.

So for One Day Only, on the final day of the month, selling cars becomes a numbers game. The higher the numbers, the happier everybody at the dealership will be come the first payday of the next month.

There's no logical reason to buy a new car on ANY other day except for the last day of the month--where just showing up will take you a loooooong ways towards getting the best deal of your life.

Of course, not everything any of us do is entirely logical!

In future posts we'll explore in some detail how Buying is usually an Emotional Process and rarely a Logical one. And we'll also learn some specific steps we can take to use that to our advantage and turn the tables on the person selling us something so we do, indeed, end up buying our new car at used car prices!

Most businesses that pay their salespeople commissions operate on an identical month by month paradigm...including health-clubs, advertising sales and insurance.

Feel free to use the comments section to mention other businesses where readers are more likely to get a better deal by going in on the very last day of the month!

One Step at a Time...

Edwin Moses was arguably the greatest American hurdler of all time. A multiple Olympic gold medalist and world record holder in his chosen event, the 400m hurdles, Edwin Moses holds another record that's unlikely ever to be bested...

In 1977, early in Edwin Moses' career, he lost an international race to a rival hurdler from Germany. The following week, Moses ran against his rival again and won handily. Starting with that meet, Edwin Moses went on to win 122 consecutive races...going a staggering 9 years, 9 months and 9 days before his next loss!

An amazing accomplishment, to be sure, but what's even more interesting to us here is his process. 

And that process was fairly simple. He never worried about winning a given 400-meter race. Instead he focussed on excelling at a series of shorter, more manageable distances.

Before each race, Edwin Moses would walk the track and put a piece of black tape on every 3rd or 4th hurdle. When the race began, Moses didn't think about reaching the finish line before everyone else. Instead his goal was merely to run as quickly as possible to the first hurdle with black tape on it.

Once he reached the marked hurdle, Moses imagined in his mind that the starting gun had just fired and the race was just now  beginning. So his goal then became simply to run to the next marker with all the blazing speed he could muster.

And so on, all the way around the track.

At each meet, Edwin Moses ran a series of 50-60 meter races. By winning each of these little races in turn, he was able to win the overall race as well--122 times in a row, against the best hurdlers of his generation! Nearly a full decade without a loss...and all as a result of focusing on smaller accomplishments within a larger framework!

Setting major goals for ourselves can sometimes feel intimidating. Whereas breaking any goal down into smaller "races" and simply excelling at each of these seems to me like a sound strategy to adopt in many areas of life, from losing weight...to cultivating a vegetable garden...to, say, mastering the techniques and strategies for buying a new car at used car prices!

Feel free to share any examples from your life in the comments section where you achieved a larger goal by breaking it down into easier-to-accomplish steps! 

Location Anxiety...

As a Junior at the University of Texas at Austin I was invited to a Halloween party at the house of some friends of my friends. I got all dressed up (as a Pirate...argh!) and found my way to the private home.

None of my friends had arrived yet and I didn't know anybody there and didn't know where anything was in this house, so I decided to take refuge by the beer keg until somebody I recognized showed up. After getting a bit lost in the complicated layout of the house, I finally spied a living room that opened up to the backyard--where, presumably, the Holy Grail of the beer keg would be located.

I walked through the living room, where a dozen or so students lounged on couches and chairs. I was quite shy in my younger years and so I studiously avoided even looking at any of these strangers as I stepped outside to the--

BAM!

I walked right into the sliding glass door that led outside!

The door was so transparent that I thought it was wide open...but, alas, no! I bounced half a step back as the students in the living room started chuckling and laughing. At me. They were laughing at me.

There are few greater pains in life than being humiliated in public!

Still without looking at any of the laughing students, I opened the sliding glass door, went outside and closed the door behind me. Without a moment's hesitation or doubt as to the course of my action, I hurried across the yard, climbed over the wooden privacy fence, got in my car and drove home for the night. True story.

A turning point in Sigmund Freud's work came when he discovered that human beings have a strong DESIRE for Variety in their lives--to meet new people and go to new places and feel new feelings. But often overpowering this desire for newness was our innate NEED for Familiarity--to see people and places we've already seen before and therefore feel comfortable around.

This is one reason why more people claim to WANT to travel than actually DO travel.

Even before beginning my studies into the Psychology of Buying, I was already well familiar with the concept of Social Anxiety--the life-long battle we all face of Desiring to connect with new people but Needing to stay close to our comfort zone so we don't end up doing things like, say, walking into a sliding glass door in front of strangers!

But one of the more unexpected discoveries I made during my journey was that humans also experience Location Anxiety.

You see, it's not just meeting new people that can make us anxious, but it's ALSO our nervousness about going into new and different locations where we've never been before.

Most of us are not conscious of this deeply buried anxiety. Yet we are biologically hard-wired to be wary of any new environment. Because you never know what's out there! There could be a sabre-tooth tiger or hostile band of Cr0-Magnons or even a smiling car salesman lurking just behind the next boulder!

Location Anxiety is one reason why so many of us have regular "haunts"...familiar restaurants or shops or night spots where we go regularly because, well, we've already been there before and we know what to expect.

While most people will certainly venture out to new places now and again, it is fairly uncommon for them to do this all the time.

Generally we'll visit a new place of business...and then return to same places we're already familiar with for a while before venturing out again. Even if the food/service/products aren't the best in the world at the locations we visit frequently, at least we already know what to expect.

So, again, we DESIRE Variety...but we NEED Familiarity.

What does any of this have to do with buying a new car?! Quite a lot, actually! 

Some years back I ventured into a Ford dealership here in Austin, TX and bought a station wagon for my then-wife. A year or so later, I returned and leased an Explorer for myself. When my wife and I eventually split up, I returned again and bought her a mini-van. The lease on my Explorer expired...and I made the bold move of returning yet again and leasing another Explorer.

For those keeping score at home, that's 4 Fords in a row!

Now, Ford makes a fine product and we got great use out of all these vehicles. However there ARE many other excellent car manufacturers out there. Yet I continued to buy Ford after Ford...without ever asking myself why?

It was only when I combined Freud's theory of Variety vs. Familiarity with the concept of Location Anxiety did I realize that it was NOT a particular make of car I was buying, rather it was my increasing Familiarity with that particular car dealership that drew me back year after year.

That dealership--conveniently located less than a mile from my home--just happened to sell Fords. If it had been another brand of car, then once I started buying there I might well have stayed with that other brand for 4 cars in a row...or more!

I finally broke the cycle and haven't returned to that dealership in years. But even now, in my mind, I can still picture the entire layout of the place with crystal clarity. I remember exactly the location of the receptionist's area...where to find the bathrooms...the finance manager's office...the sales manager's desk...right down to a choice spot to people-watch (on a bench just outside the service bays) while waiting for my new car to be prepped.

For a couple of years before I finally "broke up" with my dealership, I craved a new driving experience...but the familiarity of the place kept drawing me back again and again.

It's well-known that the vast majority of people rate buying a new car to be a seriously stressful experience. The goal of the "How To Buy A New Car at Used Car Prices" and the forthcoming ebook of the same name is to reduce my readers stress when purchasing a new vehicle to less than zero.

And one step in that process of reducing your stress is to at least consider the idea that one of the initial causes of anxiety when you decide to go in and pull the trigger on a big purchase is the physical business location itself.

Chances are when you go in to buy a new car you're entering an environment you never been in before in your entire life.

Car dealerships can be vast places with complicated layouts and dozens of sales offices. Or they can be a one-room converted mobile home on the back of a used car lot. Either way, it's foreign terrain to you.

So what can you do about that in advance? Well, there are a couple of simple ways to become familiar with a dealership beforehand and reduce your potential Location Anxiety.

• Check out the dealership's website. Many of them proudly post photographs of their showroom and lot. Take a moment to really study these pictures and develop a mental map of the layout.

• Visit the dealership itself, outside of normal business hours...in the evenings or on weekends. Stroll around the lot and take long, hard looks at the make and model of vehicle you're most interested in. Walk up to the showroom itself--customarily a building with two or more walls made of glass--and look inside. Just absorb the environment a bit into your mind.

The crazy thing about either of these strategies is that they actually WORK!

Deep inside your unconscious mind are complex filters that examine every new person--and new physical environment!--you may encounter. These filters decide whether what you're seeing is a Match (in which case you can relax) or a Mis-Match (in which case your defenses, and attendant stress level, go up somewhat until your mind can be convinced that there are no dangers present.)

Just the fact of looking at photographs of a dealership--or walking the lot and peeking into the showroom--provides enough visual references for your brain that when you do go in for your new car purchase it will be labeled as a "Match" and your mind can focus on other, more important topics.

Such as...getting the very best deal for yourself!

Can you think of any times in your life when you might've had Location Anxiety about visiting a new place of business or even a someone's house?

Just In Time Knowledge...

A few years ago I lived in Los Angeles and worked in the motion picture business, including a stint at Concorde Pictures--the production company of legendary "B" movie producer, Roger Corman--where I held positions in Casting and, later, Development. Neither of which I was remotely qualified for...but, then, that's the entire point of this blog entry!

So one day I'm at a party in West Hollywood and I meet this French woman. I happen to speak French fluently, so I'm chatting her up in French when she mentions she's just gotten a job as the Editor on a $1 million dollar slasher film called CURFEW that's about to go into production and she's looking for an Assistant Editor. 

Now at that time most movies were still edited the Old-Fashioned way, on film...a rather complicated and laborious process that involved "synching up" a length of 35mm film stock containing the picture with a separate piece of film stock containing the attendant audio track, and then assembling this combined mess into a movie on a huge, flatbed editing table.

Before the digital age took over completely, edits were still made by cutting the film and audio stock directly and then splicing the pieces back together with tape or glue. The dark, windowless editing rooms were an explosion of short and long strips of film and audio stock hanging from racks, trailing over the edges of bins or piled one on top of the other on any available surface. Mastering the intricacies of the various technical steps of film editing generally took years of apprenticeship.

Unfortunately, when I met this French woman at the party, I'd never had any film editing training nor even been in an editing room before. In short, I knew exactly zero about how the process worked.

Naturally, I told her, in my most charming French, that I knew all about film editing and I was the man for the job!

And so she hired me on the spot!

The next day (after I recovered from the panic of what I'd just signed up for!)  I drove around Los Angeles until I found a book on Film Editing. I read the first couple of chapters closely and then reported for work. Using what I'd learned just hours earlier from this one book, I set about organizing the editing room and synching dailies and performing the various tasks expected of me. Each morning I'd read further ahead in the book and then later try out what I learned in the editing room.

A couple of times, when things got especially daunting, I found myself faced with a task I had no idea how to perform because I hadn't reached that chapter in the book yet! Perilously close to being busted as a rank neophyte, I avoided the gallows with the simple strategy of appealing to the her Gallic pride.

"You know," I would say to the Editor, "we do this task one way in America." (Which was technically true; I just didn't happen to KNOW what that One Way was!) "But tell me, how you do it back in France? After all, you guys INVENTED cinema and I'm sure your way is superior!"

With no small amount of triumph, the French Editor showed me "how it was done in France"  (which, for all I knew, was the exact same way it was done in America...but who's keeping score?!), with the end result being that I learned another task and the day was saved.

All of this happened before I'd even heard of the business principle of "Just In Time Knowledge"--which suggests that there's such a ridiculous amount of knowledge on any given topic these days that there's no real point in learning all about it unless your goal is to become an Expert in that field.

The recommended strategy is to wait until you know you're going to need detailed knowledge about a particular topic and THEN take the time to learn it. (Of course, I generally recommend giving yourself more than a day or two to acquire this knowledge if the field is fairly complicated!)

Just In Time Knowledge seems to me a pretty good rule of thumb pretty much all the time...and nowhere more so than in the increasingly complicated endeavor of buying a new car. 

However, the purpose of this blog, and the attendant ebook, HOW TO BUY A NEW CAR AT USED CAR PRICES, is not to overwhelm you with specific, just-in-time knowledge.

Rather, the goal is to share with you some uncommon principles and strategies that can dramatically improve your effectiveness at Buying--well, anything...but the focus here is on cars.

Perhaps the best way to take advantage of this blog is to read pretty much any entry and learn a new concept. Then try it out in the real world, in any buying situation. If you do that enough times with enough strategies described here, then you'll do just fine when you do finally walk into a dealership and start the process of actually buying a new car.

On another level, this blog is structured in such a way as to satisfy your conscious curiosity about the various tips and techniques I'm sharing. But the real learning naturally takes place in your unconscious. This blog's structure and the stories are designed to take advantage of your limitless capacity for learning...and later utilizing your knowledge when you most need it!

Then in the days or weeks leading up to the end of the month and your eventual car purchase, that's when you want to fill in the gaps about specific types of vehicles, financing options and so on with the abundance of specific information out there on these arcane topics.

A fantastic site that provides a treasure trove of these types of details is Jeff Ostroff's carbuyingtips.com.

But again, in my estimation there's no need to get side-tracked about trying to become an expert in all of this right now...unless, of course, your goal is to become a Professional Car Buyer.

For the amateur car buyers amongst us, if you'll simply take the time to absorb and perhaps practice some of the strategies presented here, you'll be playing from a position of strength when you get ready to finally pull the trigger on your new car purchase!

In the next entry, we'll explore the little-known principle of Location Anxiety.

Until then...thanks for playing!

-----------

Special Bonus Factoid about CURFEW, the low-budget slasher movie on which I was the Assistant Editor: The Executive Producer of the picture was a businessman named Rick Hilton. CURFEW was the only feature he ever had anything to do with, since he apparently got side-tracked by the family business...something to do with hotels! He only became famous to the public some years later when his daughter, a certain Paris Hilton, decided to dabble in the home movie business herself!

The $35 Car Deal...

I was standing outside the dealership, watching my latest customer drive off the lot in her new car.

She was an adorable little grandma who lived in a small town an hour outside of Austin, TX. We'd probably spent 4-5 hours together from the time she arrived on the lot that day to the time the delivery was done and she climbed excitedly behind the wheel of her new car. On the one hand, I felt a little sad...knowing I'd probably never see my new friend again. On the other hand, I felt elated. Because once the wheels of her vehicle touched the street next to the dealership, the car was hers...and there was no returning it!

She had just bought at $38,500 luxury SUV from me. I made $35 on the deal.

Here's the crazy part--earlier that very same week I had sold the EXACT same make & model of luxury SUV to a nice couple and made $1500 on that deal!

As I waved goodbye a final time to the grandma while she sped off, I remember wondering, "What was the difference between these two deals? What had this little granny done to save so much money compared to the nice couple?"

I didn't immediately know the answer. And I wouldn't know until some years later...and only after a great deal of study and exploration.

Instead, at that moment I was mentally calculating my largesse for the month. Although technically I only made $35 for selling her a $38,500 car, this was also a Saturday AND the last day of the month. This final sale put me over the top to earn Top Producer rights amongst all the salespeople...and with that honor came a several hundred dollar bonus.

In addition, we received an additional bonus of $100 for each car sold on a Saturday, so I added that to my running total. Beyond that, I would eventually get a small finance bonus and a special bonus of $150 from the manufacturer, since she'd bought one of their "incentive" vehicles for the month.

So I did all right on this deal.

Of course, I did all right on almost all my deals! I was an excellent salesman and had been doing it for a number of years. I got my start in sales as a Field Trainer for the legendary motivational guru and sales trainer, Tony Robbins...and was privileged to learn from one of the very best.

Then I moved my young family to the Washington, D.C. area for a while and had a successful run selling luxury cars. Later, I returned to Austin, TX and spent six years in Outside Sales, selling on-screen advertising for a major movie theatre chain to local businesses. And finally I had ended up at this new dealership, again selling quality cars. 

I learned quite a bit about the Sales Process during that nine-year journey. I read every sales book I could get my hands on. I listened to audio courses by top sales trainers. I attended seminars on selling and motivation whenever I could.

But as I stood there outside the dealership, contemplating my $35 deal, I realized that I knew very little about the other side of the equation--the Buying Process.

From my perspective, I liked the nice couple just as much as I liked the granny and worked just as hard (or so I thought!) in getting them a great deal. But somehow granny was just a Better Buyer than the couple and she somehow got a far better deal--without me being consciously aware of what she'd done.

So at that moment I decided to find out.

How could I become better at Buying things, especially high-ticket items like a new car or a house or whatever? Were there any strategies or secrets I could discover to save money no matter what product I was buying?

And if I could learn how to do this on a consistent basis, could I then share what I'd discovered with others so they could achieve the same results?

I left the dealership shortly after this experience to pursue some of my other professional interests, as well as to search for the answers to these burning questions.

Thus began a journey that lasted several years and took me into seemingly unrelated fields of hypnosis, group psychology, NLP and even the world of Pick-Up Artists--the so-called Seduction Community profiled brilliantly by Neil Straus in his "New York Times" Bestselling book, THE GAME.

This blog, as well as my upcoming ebook, HOW TO BUY A NEW CAR AT USED CAR PRICES, is the result of these years of exploration into the buying process.

My goal is to share with you the tips, strategies and techniques I uncovered. If you can eventually enter just about any buying situation without fear and with the certain knowledge beforehand that you'll be getting the best possible deal and save yourself money every single time, then both of us will be most happy indeed!

I really appreciate that you're joining me on this journey. Feel free to post Comments if any of these blog entries are useful to you or even drop me a note anytime!

Oh...and thanks for playing!