Peter Simpson provides us with an insight into the automotive sales trading world – and beyond.
Quality sells
I’ve sold the Lexus GS 450h I talked about last month, and despite the double whammy of paying top price AND having to shell out for an unexpected hybrid battery rebuild, I came out the right side. The profit wasn’t huge, but it was there, just about worth having, and a very good result really, all things considered. ‘All Things’ included a new hybrid battery being priced around £2500!
Two factors made that happen. The first was that the original battery could be rebuilt by an independent specialist rather than replaced, and said specialist provided a worthwhile written guarantee. This was important, as it negated any question of the cheaper repair being an inferior one. I knew that it wasn’t, and that Hybrid Battery Solutions battery rebuilds are every bit as good as buying a new one, but when something costs around half as much, most people’s natural expectation is that it’s only half as good.
What mattered much more though concerned the rest of the car. I’d paid strong money in the first place because everything seemed right about it – two private owners from new, 18 stamps of main dealer service history (more than one a year on average), top-spec and top condition! All of which meant that, with the battery fixed, and the aforementioned guarantee intact, I was able to advertise the car at top price – plus a bit. But despite strong pricing, it attracted plenty of interest and sold within four days!
Deliberately NOT competing on price can sometimes take a bit of nerve. For starters, it works ONLY if what you are selling is, genuinely, very special. And in this context, it’s worth bearing in mind that low ownership and or/low mileage on their own aren’t enough. The car has to be in really good condition too. But if it is special, then you don’t need to try and compete on price with people offering cars that aren’t as good.
Additionally, good cars tend to attract a better class of buyer – when I advertised the Lexus I didn’t get any of the usual “wots lowest ud tk” or offers to swap for utter junk. Nor, to my surprise, did I get any ridicule from people who couldn’t see beyond the price.
What I did get, though, was three genuine enquiries from people asking sensible questions and who were clearly very genuine buyers. The car also sold straightaway to the very first of these to view; a Director for a well-known company based in Milton Keynes who lived in Yorkshire and wanted a nice luxury car for his weekly commute down the M1. He had done his research, and after asking a couple of sensible questions, told me he was coming down and if the car was a
