Buying a car is a process and not one to be taken lightly because leaving out or skipping a few details can cause you to spend much more money than you need to spend. One of those details is when to buy a car. After being in the car business for many years you come to understand the process and why some car buyers pay thousands of dollars more for the same car than others. There are many ways that this can happen, but the one I want to tell you about is timing or when to buy a car.

The automobile retail business operates on a monthly basis, meaning that everything they do, sell, finance and pay their employees revolves around their monthly performance. Sales goals, bonuses, commissions and salesman pay plans are calculated by the month. Therefore each month the sales staff, including the sales managers starts out at zero and everyone is on the same page. In the car business it doesn’t matter what you sold last month or last year, the only thing that matters is what you sold this month. For this reason when to buy a car for the best deal can make a difference.

When a new month starts out in the business of selling cars there is a little sigh of relief that the month is over and the new month is starting. The stress level is lower for the salesmen and sales managers because they are not looking at their sales and trying to figure out how to reach their goals by the end of the month. This is one aspect on why when to buy a car is important, but not the only reason.

The car dealership, much like any other business depends on the flow of traffic that comes through their showroom. So the first week of the month the sales people and sales managers are more focused on making larger profits on each car they sell rather than how many cars they sell. However there is a drawback to this mentality because if they try to too hard to make big profits they are likely to sell fewer cars. Read the rest of this entry »