With today’s technology and resources, you can prep your car like a professional and sell your vehicle more easily than ever before.
Follow these simple helpful hints below and you could be on your way to increase the selling price and decrease the time it takes to sell your vehicle.
Setting a Selling price
Setting a selling price is obviously very important. A price too high warrants no interest. A price to low loses you money. So a good place to start is Kelley’s Blue Book. Remember this is only a starting price and not an end all. You need to remember that supply and demand plays a big part in the price also. If there are few vehicles in your market with the options available on your vehicle, then you could get a premium price.
You need to research your local market. Search through local classified vehicle ads found on sites like Chicagolandauto.com. Chicagolandauto.com is a local classified used car website for the Chicago area. If you are in a different market, look for a local website with used car classified ads. Search these ads and look for a vehicle with the same (or close to) miles, options and even color.
Once you come up with a selling price, the next important item is your low price. What is the lowest price you would be willing to take for this vehicle? Again remember supply and demand. If you start getting a lot of calls, you shouldn’t have to negotiate to your lowest price. If your not receiving a lot of inquiries, you might have to lower you rock bottom price when someone does make an offer.
It’s Time
There is the old saying in real estate – location, location, location. In the automobile industry it is appearance, appearance, appearance. When someone is looking online at your ad, they tend to look at the pictures first and read later. If the picture looks bad, the probability of someone passing up reading your vehicle goes up. If they come to look at your vehicle and see it is dirty, smelly or some other appearance flaw, this will push them away. A couple good tips to get your vehicle in prime selling shape are:
• Clean You vehicle on the outside
• Wash
• Wax
• Shine your wheels and rims
• Clean the windows
• Clean your vehicle on the inside
• Vacuum
• Clean the windows
• Wipe the Dashboard
• Take out you items. Don’t leave the vehicle cluttered with your belongings.
• Make sure the trunk is clean, the spare is intact and filled.
• Make sure all fluids on the car are topped off
• If you have any lights out, replace them
Your vehicle’s History
You can tell a buyer all day long what you did to the vehicle, but he/she will not care until they actually see your records. Make sure you have all your records neatly organized and easy to read. Now a buyer can see that you actually took care of the vehicle. Just remember to cross out your credit card information on the receipts.
Another history item to consider is buying a vehicle history report. This can be a good selling point if the title is clean. Now a buyer can not only see you have all the records and took care of the vehicle, but they also see in writing the title is free and clean. In addition, it will show all accidents and proof of what the vehicle has been through.
Time to Let Others Know it is for Sale
There are many ways to let others know your car is for sale, but the three best ways and most efficient ways are:
• Word of Mouth
• Online Advertising
• Window Sticker
Word of mouth –
Let your friends, family,neighbors , co-workers and others know your car is for sale. They may know of interested buyers. The plus is you now have people who will help you find buyers at no additional cost.
Online Listing –
With the internet becoming more and more part of our everyday life, a great advertising medium is to post your vehicle online. First, listing your vehicle online is a great way to direct towards your target audience. There are many places to list your vehicle online, but the best places are the free websites that deal strictly with used cars and have lots of traffic. Every market has one of these websites. For example, chicagolandauto.com lets users sell their vehicle for free in the Chicago area. Again the plus to this type of advertising is maximum exposure and free of charges.
Window Sticker –
Not everyone looks online, reads the paper or looks at other forms of advertising. Putting a for sale sign in the back side window is a great way to advertise to a local market. When you drive and when you park, people will see you are selling your vehicle. The people you get to call you are very interested because they all ready know the price and they have seen it first hand. Again the great part, this is FREE
These are three great ways to advertise your car for free. So before you spend a lot of money trying to sell your car, try these ways first to get maximum exposure for FREE.
There other ways to advertise your automobile, but some of these cost a lot more money. Here, you have to weigh the costs versus the benefits. These costs eat away at your overall selling price. Just because an advertiser tells you they reach 3 million people, doesn’t mean it will help you. What good is it when these people are from all over the country. You don’t care about people in California seeing your add when you are selling in Chicago. Your emphasis is local direct advertising, not national.
Your Online Ad and showing your Vehicle
Taking Quality Pictures
Remember– Appearance, appearance, appearance! Take great pictures of your vehicle. Remember most people look at the photos before they read your description. Great quality photos will let your buyer stay focused on your vehicle and not wonder off to someone else’s vehicle. Also, if you don’t have a digital camera, you can always use a film camera. When you get your pictures developed, just ask them to convert your pictures to digital. They will give you a CD you can use to upload your pictures to your online ad. When you take pictures of your vehicle rember the following points and you will have great looking photos:
• Take the pictures in the day, the sun acts like a natural light to enhance the look of your vehicle. Just make sure the sun is not glaring off the chrome on your vehicle.
• Make sure you have a good background, such as grass or something else that looks nice. You don’t want a dumpster or some other unflattering picture in the background.
• Take a picture of the front, back, side and from the corner of your vehicle.
• Also take any close ups of defects like major scratches. (only post if you have extra room to post these pictures) Don’t worry about minor defects like a tiny chip or scratch.
• Take pictures of the inside, especially the dash board or any other pleasing features you have in the vehicle. Remember to make sure the lighting is good. Again, take your items out of the vehicle before you take the pictures.
Your Vehicle Description
Now that you have the buyers attention with the appealing pictures, it’s time to let the buyer know as much as possible about your vehicle. A buyer wants detail. Remember to make your ad interesting as people tend to have short attention spans. So if they get bored in the first sentence or two, they will just move on. Also, don’t write a book for the description. Be descriptive, but don’t go on and on about the item. For example instead of saying. “I bought this 6 cd Bose stereo system and had it installed last year.” Just say “Bose 6 CD changer, 1 year old.” Also let the buyer know if the vehicle has any major defects. This way you can save yourself and the buyer a lot of time, diverting unwanted phone calls and wasted visits to see the vehicle. Below are good points to consider for information and detail about your vehicle:
• Remember your selling your vehicle. Give a good sales tune to your ad such as “fun sports car” or “great gas mileage” Use something catchy for the buyer.
• Let the buyer know of any modifications or improvements you have done to the vehicle.
• As noted earlier in this document, let the buyer know you have all the service records and maintenance records.
• Let the buyer know about the wear and tear items such as tires, battery, etc. If you have replaced the battery recently, let them know. Same with tires and other items
Now come the emails and phone calls
Now that your ad is live (from the advertising methods above), you should start to receive emails and phone calls from interested buyers. Be prepared to get a lot of different questions. If there is a question you don’t know, let the buyer know your not sure and will get back to them with that information.
Be honest with every question, don’t lie to get them to come over and see the vehicle. You will just waste your time and the buyers time.
Making the Appointment
Once the interested buyer wants to see the vehicle, you will have to set an appointment with them. Two keys to setting an appointment:
First, set a defined time such as 6:00p.m. Don’t just say sometime in the afternoon. A defined time is more of an appointment and you will keep more appointments that way. Also make sure you get their phone number as well. This way you can always confirm the appointment with them. Let them know if they need to cancel or reschedule the time, to please call you in advance.
The key concept to the appointment is having everything ready, such as your vehicle being clean and service records all together. Another important piece of information is having your car value printed out. That way they can see you’re not just pulling numbers from the sky , but instead have a valid reason for your price.
Now that the buyer is at the appointment, they will naturally want to take it for a test drive. Make sure before they drive the vehicle you see their driver’s license and proof of insurance in case something happens. It is for both of yours protection. Also try to have a good route planned out ahead of time, so the driver can really feel the car during different driving conditions.
Coming to an agreed upon price
The time has come to come upon an agreed price. You know what your vehicle is worth and the buyer knows what they think it is worth. So now is the time to talk. When the buyer tries to talk you down, let the buyer come up with their price first and reason why they feel it should be lower than your price. Remember you thought ahead of time and already know the lowest price you are willing to go.
The buyer main complain that there are chips or the tire treads are worn. This is when you need to tell the buyer that this is natural wear and tear and is no more than you would to expect to find with a vehicle this age, unless the buyer is right. You can also come back with your vehicle reports that have shown you took great care of this vehicle.
At this point you might come down a little, depending how you feel, but stay strong as there are other buyers out there. By this time you should see how popular your vehicle is. If you’re getting a lot of calls, you probably will not have to come down in price a lot.
If you end up negotiating an agreeable price and the buyer wants you to hold the vehicle, you should get a deposit from them. Also have them sign an agreement, which you can pick up from any stationary store.
Making the sale final
Now that you both have agreed to make the sale final, the payment time has arrived. If you get cash or a money order (cashier’s check), you can pass the vehicle over to the buyer by signing the title. If you were paid via check, make sure the check clears before signing the title. Also, if at any point you do not feel comfortable, don’t complete the transaction. I would be cautious of other types of payment methods.
Once you get the desired payment method, you will need to present something called “A Bill of Sale” for both parties to sign. Again this can be picked up at any local stationary store. Another good place to see what else is needed is your state DMV, in Illinois it is http://www.cyberdriveillinois.com/. For you local dmv, you can search any major search engine by typing your state followed by dmv.
Important other factors:
First remember to cancel your insurance once you transfer the title over to the buyer. Why pay for something you don’t have.
Finally, have fun selling your car and remember to put yourself in the buyer’s shoes. That way you understand what they want or would like to hear.
Happy selling!
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We are a free classified website for buyers, sellers and dealerships in the Chicago and Chicagoland area. To learn more, please visit http://www.chicagolandauto.com
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