Why Does It Take So Long to Buy a Car? Car Salesman Confidential
There are several reasons, but suffice to say, it’s best to block out half a day.
Back when I was selling Volkswagens, a couple came in to look at a new Passat. They picked out a dark blue SE with a beige interior and drove it. Then the woman spotted a gray one with a black interior and wanted to drive that one, too. When we got done, they seemed to like the gray one, so we went inside to look at the numbers. After about half an hour of haggling, we came to agreement on price, and I asked the man, who had been the chief negotiator, to sign on the dotted line.
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At that point his wife said she had seen a dark red car out there that had caught her eye and asked, “Do you mind if we drive that one?” I really didn’t want to add a third car to the mix at that point, but I knew if she wasn’t happy, we wouldn’t have a deal, so I said sure.
When we got done with that test drive, we went back inside and worked the numbers on the second car. Just when her husband was about to sign, the woman spoke up again. “You know, I really don’t think I’d be happy with a red car. Do you mind if we look at the blue one again?”
What could I say?
Finally, after our fourth test drive, we agreed to a price on the blue SE, and the husband signed the paperwork. The instant—and I mean the instant—he laid down the pen, he looked at his watch and said, “Do you know how much longer this is going to take? We’ve really need to get back to the house.”
This taught me two valuable lessons. One, make sure the buyer is “landed,” or settled on a particular vehicle before you start negotiating.
And two, the customer doesn’t perceive what they’re doing as taking any time. They only perceive what the salesperson is doing as taking up their time. In my experience, it takes approximately three to five hours to buy a car at a dealership. Realistically, you have to block out half of your day. And the question everyone asks me is, why does it take so long?
There are a lot of reasons, but it comes down to four things, three of which we’ll discuss here.
1. The Salesperson
The salesperson is the shepherd of the entire buying process. He or she knows how everything works (or is supposed to) and gently guides the customer through the process of picking out a vehicle, negotiating the price, completing the paperwork, and delivering the car. Ideally, they do this in such a way that the customer selects the right car for them and never feels pressured, and everything happens in a reasonable amount of time.
But salespeople are human, and sometimes we make mistakes. The customer may tell the salesperson they have a budget of $400 a month ... and an inexperienced salesperson shows them a $40,000 car, which is roughly $800 a month. Total waste of time.
Gathering the correct information is also critical. If a salesperson enters the wrong info into the computer—say, the wrong zip code—that could mean the taxes are calculated incorrectly, and the customer’s payment could go up a few bucks a month. That kind of little mistake has killed many a car deal. Worse, if the salesperson enters the wrong VIN, or vehicle identification number, it can result in all the paperwork having to be done again. Talk about angry customers!
Unfortunately, management can also be a bottleneck. When a dealership gets busy, sales managers can become overwhelmed with the sheer volume of work. One of them might get pulled away to deal with other matters, like a "heat case" (angry customer) in service. And God forbid you should try to buy a car during football season. Some managers may be more interested in talking about the big game than getting your paperwork done.
2. The Finance Department
As soon as a price is agreed upon, the salesperson goes into overdrive. First, a lot of documents must be collected—driver’s licenses for all buyers, proof of insurance, the title to the trade, etc. —and the customer needs to fill out a credit application. The salesperson has to get the car gassed up and taken to detail to be cleaned. Then the hardest part for many people begins: the wait to get into finance.
The finance department is where all the final paperwork is prepared and signed. It would take an entire article to explain everything a finance manager does, but here’s a quick overview:
The finance manager submits your deal to lenders and gets your loan approved, your vehicle registered in the correct county, your sales taxes paid, a license plate assigned to your car, temporary tags issued, and a myriad of other things. And of course, they also try to sell you wonderful products, like extended warranties, tire and wheel packages, etc., etc.
You never see any of what goes on in finance, but it’s a huge amount of work, and it all has to be perfect. The amount of time it takes is exacerbated by the fact that the different software used in the finance department often doesn't always communicate with what the salesperson uses. So a lot of your info usually has to be entered by hand. This takes time.
Contrary to popular belief, dealerships don't make you wait as a deliberate tactic to wear you down. It's in our best interests to get you in and out as quickly as possible. We want to sell as many cars as we can, so speed and efficiency are critical. Making you wait only hurts us. Also, the longer someone waits, the greater the chances are that they’ll change their minds. We don't want that.
3. The Delivery
Finally, just when you think you’re done, you have to go through the delivery. In the old days, the delivery process consisted of the “Three Sees.” See the car? See the keys? See ya! Not anymore. These days, every manufacturer has a lengthy delivery process that is designed to help them get good surveys.
But the process is far too complicated and time-consuming. At one dealership I worked at, there was a checklist we had to go through that consisted of nine modules, each covering 15 different features of the vehicle, some including short videos the customer was supposed to watch. Then we had to enroll them in a subscription satellite service and an online accessory ordering tool, set their first service appointment, and introduce them to a service adviser.
Whew. Try doing all that at 9 p.m. with starved and exhausted customers. Frankly, we’ve reached the point of “task saturation” when it comes to what we expect a customer to sit through when they buy a new car. There simply isn’t enough time in the world to pack all the things a manufacturer and a dealership want to pack into a delivery. It needs to be shortened.
Next time we’ll examine Reason No. 4, the customer’s role in all this, and how you can get in and out of a dealership quickly.