The Car Salesman's Four Square Write Up - Down Payment

The next square in the Write-Up process is the down payment. This section is designed to have the customer commit to what they would like to put as a cash down payment. Even if the customer has Equity in their trade-in the salesman is trained to discover how much cash customer has. 

 

The salesman will use the same process as the trade-in square but this time they will begin by presenting the customer with a very high hit-figure. Normally, they will tell the customer the bank would like to see 25% of the purchase price as a cash down payment. 

 

In this example the salesman uses a $7000 “hit figure”. Most customers will not want to make a large cash down payment and the process will continue until the salesman extracts the amount the customer will want to put down.  In this illustration the customer offers nothing as down payment.

 

This section will provide the salesman with insight as to the buyer’s preparedness. A customer that has been planning to buy a car many times will have thought about how much money they would put as a down payment. Salesman often will prefer the “impulse” commitment, meaning the customer has not done any pricing research. These customers will almost always not make a cash down payment.

 

Then they move to the final square: the payment.