[[:encoded, "Our special guest today is Tony Langenderfer who is the head of Expert Auto Consultants, Inc. I affectionately call him, The Car Dude. He is a widely recognized automobile expert. He has exhaustively studied the automobile industry and continually keeps up with the latest information about new model cars and trucks as well as private and government research and test results. Armed with a computer and an encyclopedic knowledge of the automobile market, Tony acts as “buyers’ agent” for clients, saving them considerable time, hassles, and money. His clients save money because his firm is able to negotiate more favorable prices and terms than the most buyers. Enjoy the interview with Tony and leverage his services should you need to buy or lease a vehicle.\n\nFor more information about how Tony can assist you with your vehicle buying or leasing, call 865-777-2277 or email him at cardude@IBuyCars4u.com. \n\n\nTo help keep you focused on the activities that produce the results you want, subscribe to The Accountability Coach Blog at www.AccountabilityCoachBlog.com. \nInvest in the 30-day Self-study Course so you can begin achieving your goals in the time frame you want so you can have the life you want. \n\nGet started by going to: http://www.accountabilitycoach.com/bw/30dayStudyCourse.php \n\nAim for what you want each and every day!"]]
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Aim for what you want each and every day!
Anne Bachrach
The Accountability Coach™
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(upbeat music) - Hello and welcome to the Accountability Coach podcast, where we will discuss topics, ideas, questions and issues related to having a totally balanced and successful life. This is Anne Baccrack. Today we have a special guest. I believe in leveraging resources whenever possible. It doesn't hurt to have someone or people help you get to where you wanna go in life. So you don't have to possess all the expertise that's necessary. And we can't know everything there is to know about everything anyway. Well, as an ex-IBM or I'd leverage technical experience and expertise for my clients all the time. There was no way I could ever know everything about every system or piece of software there was. However, I did know the people who were the experts. So when I needed them, I leveraged their knowledge and skills. Today, our special guest is Tony Langendorfer, who is head of the expert auto consultants. I affectionately call him the car dude. He is a widely recognized automobile expert. He has exhaustively studied the automobile industry and continually keeps up with the latest information about new model cars and trucks, as well as private and government research and test results. Armed with a computer and an encyclopedic knowledge of the automobile market, Tony acts as a buyer's agent for clients, saving them considerable time, hassles and money. His clients save money because his firm is able to negotiate more favorable prices and terms than most buyers. I personally have used him. Welcome, Tony. - Hi, how are you? - I'm doing great. I was so glad that you could take the time today to talk with us. - I appreciate the opportunity. - Let's just start and let our listeners know a little bit about if you'd share with them your background and how you got started in this business. - Well, cars are my passion. I'm into cars big time. That's what I enjoy most in life, other than my family. Basically, my business was born out of a need. I like to get new cars as often as possible. And as most people know, when you purchase cars new and they depreciate it, you drive them off the lot. And it's hard to turn a car over every couple years and get out of it without getting hurt financially. So what I did was I learned as much as I could about the process of buying them and buying cars that hold their value and that type of thing. And I was able to actually leverage that into where I can get out of cars every few years and not get hurt too bad. That's how I started in it. And once I did the first one, I probably read eight or 10 books on how to buy a car. And when I did it and went in on my first one, it basically went off just like it did, but it took a lot of time. I spent three months talking to different dealers and going through it, practice runs, what have you. But when I did finish with that first one, when I drove off a lot, I felt great. In talking to most people, they tell me that when they drive off, they're just never sure. And that's a normal feeling that you would have. But I felt pretty confident. I thought I did just what I was supposed to do. And I ended up from that. Everyone I talked to, when I told my great experience, they all said, well, I'd rather go to the dentist and have root canal than have to buy a car. And that's where I kind of put the two things together and thought, well, maybe I could do this as a business since I enjoyed so much. And also would help me live vicariously through my customers and helping them purchase cars was kind of like me purchasing another car almost. I started out working with a large auto host sailor. And what he does is he buys cars from dealers that they don't have any use for it, that they wouldn't try to sell themselves. He would fix them up and either flip them to another dealer or take them to an auction and sell them to a dealer there. And that's where I started to get some experience with the business from that. And when I did start a business, everyone thinks that people that are in the car business are not trustworthy. I didn't want to be that way, so integrity to me means everything. I thought I could try to turn this around single handling. And there is somebody in the car business that you can trust and that will do things right by you. - We've used you before and it's really a great service that you offer. I especially love it when they come and deliver the car to us. - Can't beat that camera. - So we don't ever have to even go to the lot to pick it up. I've also done work with my mother-in-law and helped her get her first car and made sure that that was delivered to her home as well. So she didn't have any hassles of going on to the lot or talking to anybody other than you. And it is a great service and experience. Let's talk a little bit about how you actually do save the client's money. Let's talk about the whole process. How does it work from start to finish? - Well, I like to get involved with people at the front end. A lot of them think, well, I need to go out and find out what car I want first before I call him. And actually I prefer to work with customers at that stage when they're just thinking about which car should I get. 'Cause you could throw at me, what are your needs? And from there, I can give you a short list of three or four cars that I think would best fit what it is you're trying to do, whether it's your lease, buy, purchase, if you keep your car for three years, if you keep your car for 10 years and the wheel is falling off. I can help narrow that down to a list. I need a four-door sedan, this side. I already know that stuff and I can help short list all the research you're gonna have to do on the internet to try to come up with a list of cars to look at. Once we do have those, talk about that and come up with a couple of cars. At that point, I would contact dealers in your area that sell that brand to car. I would get a contact person's name and phone number. I'd call you back. We set an appointment for you to go in. That way when you go in, they know you're coming in Tuesday at 1230 and you're gonna drive Chevy Malibu. They'll have that car sitting there ready for you. Normally when you go in on your own, they're gonna spend a half an hour qualifying you with questions before you, you'll ever see a car pulled up after they make sure you're a real buyer and what have you and they go through the high, how you doing and my name's this. And this way, they'll be ready. You can be driving a car within five minutes of hitting the dealers lot. And then that, once you've driven the car, I want them to show you the features and benefits of the car, but they will understand that you are not buying that car that day under any circumstances and that if they are to try to push you or want to give you a hard time about buying it, if we do decide on that car, we wouldn't be buying it from them. So it's actually good for them too because then the heat's off of them. In the car business, it kind of works as when you walk in the door, they feel like they're never gonna see you again if they don't sell you a car right at that moment. So when I let them know that you won't be buying it under any circumstances, you'll be actually leaving and going to drive two or three more, that takes the heat off of them so they're not pressured as well. And even better than that, when you leave, you do not have to leave your phone number so that they call you every day asking if you bought a car yet, have you bought a car yet? They will have my contact information and know that all of our future contact will come through me first so you don't even have to leave a telephone number with them. Once you've driven the three or four cars, again, we can talk, you can tell me what you thought about them if you have any other questions. I'm very up on the model so that I can talk intelligently with you, you pick the car that you want. At that point, I'm going to call, depending on where you live in the metropolitan area four to six dealers at least, that sell that brand a car. I'm going to get all the information as far as selling prices and anything else that might be in the transaction. If you're financing, I would help you get rates on that as well. I'll come back to you, we'll go through everything and here's what I found. A lot of times, you want certain equipment with a certain color and it's not available out there. So we'll go over and talk about, say, the six dealers that I called, here's what I found based on how close they have a car to your specs and the price and how far away they are. You and I will say this is the one we want to buy from. At that point now, we can trade information with the dealer. We'll go ahead and usually either by email or fax then him the information that he's going to need for you to come in and do the delivery or the paperwork, like your driver's license, your insurance card, your registration if we're transferring a plate. And then again, we're going to make an appointment. We're going to be there Tuesday at 4.30 to pick that car up. At that point, he has a day or two to get all this stuff into the computer system before he pulls you in. If you just walk in off the street, he has to immediately take a copy of your driver's license, your insurance card, your registration. Someone has to input that information into the system before the finance manager can ever bring you in. Again, you're wasting, who knows, a half an hour, an hour if they're really busy and you're going to wait in line with everybody else. I like to make an appointment. They have all the information that they need. You should get into a finance manager within a few minutes of getting at the dealership unless there was somebody in before you that took a little bit more time than he should have. Everything you will have all the information that you need to look at the paperwork and know that it was everything that you and I spoke about. And the other thing I do is I make that same appointment with myself that Tuesday at 4.30 for that hour or hour and a half that you'll be at the dealership. I am available to you by cell phone. If you get in there and something has changed or you don't feel comfortable, you had a question. All you have to do is time out, pick up the phone, call me, I'll be available to take that call for you. Normally you're in and out in under an hour where if you went in cold, you could very well be in the dealership for three to five hours. It's not unheard of. So we're trying to make everything as easy as timely and when you walk out, you will know that you got a great deal. - That's fantastic. - So I know you have up front, like if people aren't sure about the kind of car that they want, you have a specific process or questionnaire that you go through to make sure you understand exactly what people like, what they don't like, right? - Exactly, 'cause I don't want to go off and waste my time and come back with stuff that's going to waste your time. So we would discuss all the things that are important to you. Again, I would try to lay out what I think is always your call, all I'm here to do is feed you the information. The great thing about this, since you're my customer, I work for you, I don't work for them. So I only care about what you care about. And that's kind of a great thing about the services that I'm only going to be interested in your needs where with a dealer, most of them would, I like to be the benefit of that, that they would be honest with you, but a lot of them are going to, you know, they're just trying to sell you a car. And of course, if they can bend things to make it sound like that's what you're looking for, they might. I will never do that because I get paid regardless whether you buy a Chevy or Mercedes or whatever, I'm still there getting paid. So my only concern is that you get exactly what it is that you need. - Right, I mean, I think people on the call right now are listening in, can really totally relate to no sales pressure. I know most of us have bought at least one car in our life, and for most of us, probably it wasn't the most enjoyable experience with the sales person. So let's talk about, you mentioned money, since since you do get, obviously get paid, how do you get paid, how does that work? - I get paid by the client, which my fee on a new car is $5.95. And what I go at it is, I feel that, or I guarantee that I can save you at least that much. In most cases, it's several thousand dollars, just depending on the car and the market for that car. But it's very unusual that I can't save you more than what you've paid me. So really, in essence, it doesn't cost you anything to use my services, yet you get all of the benefits that I can bring to the table. - Yeah, so no sales pressure saves me a lot of time, and I'm paying a flat fee instead of paying a sales person's commission, which could be a lot more, you know, as they move it up the ladder plus all the time that it takes to go. - And that's another thing why I thought about how to price this out, is that I wanted it to be a flat fee so that you can see that if I recommended one over another, it's not because I will make any more money. I'm gonna make the same amount of money. Basically, I'm just doing a job that I enjoy a lot, and I know that I'm helping people as well. And obviously, that's about as good as it gets anymore if you've got a job that you love to do. And I do feel like I am helping my clients out with a task that's not very tasteful in most cases. - Yeah, that's absolutely true. Now, you have access, I believe, to information that us normal people don't have access to, so you really know exactly how to wheel and deal for the client's benefit, because you have access to all this knowledge that we, the us mortals that don't have the right codes to have access to, isn't that right? - That's very correct. - You know what a car is really valued, how much you can really negotiate and really to be able to get the person the best price. - And that's true, and sometimes, I mean, there are cars when they come out that they're very rare in the very beginning. It's a brand new model, and it's not unknown for cars to be priced at $3,000, $5,000 over sticker, and that's just economics 101 if they've got 10 cars and 50 buyers, they have no incentive to drop the price, and believe me, a lot of people pay over sticker price on sometimes, and that's one of the things that you and I would talk about as a client, is that really that important to have that latest one, and how's that gonna affect your wallet? - Great, so let's get some perspective. Why would a dealer wanna work with you? - Well, first of all, when I call, they know that I have a real buyer on my hands, and who's going to buy a car in a reasonable amount of time. When you walk through the door, they really don't know, are you buying it today, next week, next month, six months from now, some people start to process that far out. When I call them, I let them know, we are ready to buy a car in a very short period of time, usually in the same month that we're talking about is what I like to do, 'cause things do change on a month to month basis. Also, negotiation time, I'm gonna, you would take you two hours to negotiate with a dealer back and forth, 'cause they're never gonna give it up right out of the box. They have to do the dance back and forth, and make sure that they didn't leave any money on the table. The way that I approach it and talk to them, basically five minutes, I'm gonna have my price, where they might spend two or three hours with you trying to do this back and forth, so they're gonna save a lot of time on the front end. Also, they love the convenience of scheduled appointments for both the test drive and the delivery. Let's face it, that saves them a lot of time as well. So, we're saving not only you time, we're after saving the dealer time, and why not? I mean, as long as they're treating us right, let's make their job as easy as we can as well. One of the biggest hot buttons though, is the CSI or Customer Satisfaction Index. Once you buy a car, you normally get contacted, either by phone, email, or mail, from a third party company that the manufacturer hires, to ask about how was your buying experience? They wanna know that the dealer treats you right, when you picked up a car with a car clean, that they do everything right with you, and usually you get asked about 25 to 30 questions. One through five are the answers, one being you disagree, one five being you agree the most, and what a lot of people don't understand about those things, and I didn't in the beginning either, but I learned real quick, is from a manufacturer's standpoint, if you gave him out of 25 questions, you gave him one four, because a lot of people think, hey, no one's perfect, and these guys really want me to be honest. You give him a four or a couple of fours, he failed to survey in the manufacturer's eyes, and why that's so important to the dealer is, first off, they earn cash bonuses based on your CSI. If they have perfect scores, they get paid, both the dealership and the salesperson are paid on that. So that's very important to them, that they get a perfect score. The other thing is, when the new vehicles do come out, that's when they're the hottest, and they can charge the most sticker or more for them, the dealers that have the best CSI numbers get the most allocations of cars in the beginning, which again, is very important to their bottom line. If they can get more of those cars, let's for instance, when the Beetle first came out years back, that new Beetle, dealers that had below a 50% CSI got none in the first 30 days. Yet the other dealers that had good scores were getting a lot more of them, and they were adding $5,000 to the cost, so they made a lot of money by having a good CSI score. What I tell the dealer is, I've explained this to my client, so they'll understand the importance of a perfect score, although I will never ask my client to lie for them, but if they will give them a great experience, my customer will understand the importance of giving them a perfect score, and that's the truth. I think if they've made every effort to do well by you, we want to give them a perfect score, but that is something they'll know upfront. When they're working with you off the street, usually the people that grind the hardest are the ones that will not give them a perfect score, and they understand that, so that gives me some leverage as well with the negotiating. - Well, that's great, so there's just a huge amount of benefit from the consumer perspective, from my perspective, as saving me time, and money, and energy, and aggravation, and a number of different things, and in addition to, it really is a huge benefit then to these dealers, so everybody really wins. - It's a win-win-win, and that's what you should form businesses, is that you want everyone concerned to walk away feeling good about what we just did. - Yeah, so everybody really wins in this scenario, and everybody really enjoys it, so that's great. Now, one of the things that you might be asked from consumers, people, your clients, like me, is, hey, Tony, do you think it's better if I buy or lease, do you ever get that question? - Actually, I do a lot, and a lot of it's going to depend on how you use your car, how long are you going to have it, how many miles do you drive? I am a big proponent of leasing. I actually lease everything and have for the last 15 years, but you have to be open sometimes. The program in a lease is very important. A lot of times the manufacturer does not want a lease car, so the program is not very good, and you would want to absolutely purchase it. On the other hand, sometimes you can get a really good lease where it actually is coming out much cheaper to lease the vehicle than it would be to buy it. Again, that's me talking with you about what your needs are, how you're going to use this car, and from there I can find out if we land on a certain car. Let's go ahead and look at the lease program if you have an interest in that, and I'll explain that completely to you so that you will understand leasing. A lot of people won't do it because they don't understand it. One, I have a way of laying it out for you that makes it really easy to understand, and if it's something that will work for you, you can be amazed at the kind of savings that you could actually get by leasing versus buying. For other people, you're a long-term person, you keep your car for seven or eight years, leasing's not going to be advantageous for you, and there's nothing I could tell you that would change that. The other thing, some people just aren't comfortable with it. They've done it this way all their lives, and there's really no wrong or right answer to that lease versus purchase versus finance. It's every individual, and again, we just want to find out what's going to be best for you, to make you feel the best about the transaction, and that's what we're going to go with, but I can discuss intelligence with you, all your options, and lay it out so that you can make a good decision on what's best for you. When you talk to a dealer, if what's best for you, coincide with what's best for him, then he'll tell you that way, but if it doesn't, he may bend things a little bit, because obviously, it's his wallet or yours, and I love the one you're with. - Wow, you've given us a lot of great information, and I think the people listening on the call today really understand the benefits of utilizing your service. So, if they wanted to get a hold of you, Tony, which I'm sure they do when the time comes, and I'm sure they're interested in sharing your expertise with other people that they know as well, how would they get a hold of you? - Well, the best way I like to do is talk by phone, my phone number at the office is aircode 865777, 22-777, so it's 865-777-22-77. I also have a website up at www.ibycars, so it's I-B-U-Y-C-A-R-S, the number four, theletteru.com, so it's www.ibycars4u.com. - Well, we certainly, again, appreciate you spending your valuable time and really great expertise with us today, and I know we got a lot of great insights and things to think about moving forward, and we're gonna be leveraging you as our resource, I'm sure. - I would appreciate that, and I thank you for the opportunity. - My pleasure. To help keep you focused on the activities that produce results that you want, subscribe to the Accountability Coach blog at www.accountabilitycoachblog.com. You will find personal and professional development, teleseminars@accountabilitycoach.com, as well as a lot of other resources and tools. Choose the ones that will be of most value to you in achieving your goals, so you can be even more successful. Invest in the 30-day self-study course to help you begin achieving your goals in the timeframe that you want, so you can have the life that you truly want. Begin enjoying the experience of an even greater quality of life and total life balance. Aim for what you want each and every day. Until next time, make it a great day today and every day. Thanks for listening. (upbeat music) (upbeat music)
[[:encoded, "Our special guest today is Tony Langenderfer who is the head of Expert Auto Consultants, Inc. I affectionately call him, The Car Dude. He is a widely recognized automobile expert. He has exhaustively studied the automobile industry and continually keeps up with the latest information about new model cars and trucks as well as private and government research and test results. Armed with a computer and an encyclopedic knowledge of the automobile market, Tony acts as “buyers’ agen...
