Face-to-Face Negotiating

As I mentioned yesterday, I did a segment for "The Greg Behrendt Show" about negotiating. I was the coach for a woman who wanted to buy a used minivan. They taped shots of us test driving minivans and poking around the car lot. All that was good fun -- like kids making a movie...

But when we sat down to negotiate a deal it became very real in a hurry. I guess that's what money does. The salesman was very cool and a good sport since we were low-balling them. What was interesting was that the woman started out very very nervous. But after about a half hour she really got into it and wound up being pretty empowered by the whole thing.

I'm not supposed to say much about this since the show won't air until October some time (I'll do a post at that time with more info). But I did want to say that it had been a while since I did face to face negotiations. Usually, when I buy cars for Edmunds, I deal with the internet manager. I use TMV pricing and make a deal in a few minutes. When you buy a used car from a dealership it's a different story. It's hard to avoid the face to face encounter. And the pricing is more of an unknown, too. It was a good exercise for me and the woman I was helping seemed to discover a whole new side to herself.

Posted by

Philip Reed September 15, 2006, 3:49 PM

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Car Negotiating