Plenty of dealers dont publish prices and dont go out of business. You can call it failed logic (or bs), but its the truth of sales. The ugly truth is, out of 100's of tractors we advertise on tractorhouse.com, we may sell 2-3% from the internet. Its just not worth putting much money or time into, if you are a serious buyer you'll walk in the door. Some dealers thrive on internet sales and do very well, but their margins are probably extremely slim.
Therefore, we dont just put a set price on a machine, we'd rather get the best price for the customer based on his circumstances. We could put a set price, but like another user said it would just be an inflated price...so why bother.
This is a non-answer, and attempt to change the topic. You said it wasn't reasonable to publish a fixed cash price. I said plenty of dealers are able to figure out a way to do that without raising their prices above what competitive dealers are charging. The fact that many dealers don't publish prices and survive is irrelevant.
The last time I was shopping (a year ago) I talked to a number of dealers who won't publish prices, and invariably their initial quote was thousands more than dealers who openly publish their cash price...interesting. I also called about a machine to get a price, only to learn "it's on the way" when I said I wanted to take a look at it....odd. Other times I called and they wouldn't even give me a number over the phone, even when I told them it was a cash deal and I wasn't going to waste their time if we weren't in the same ballpark...curious.
Further, the whole "we may sell 2-3% from the internet. Its just not worth putting much money or time into" line is absurd. If you take the time to put an ad on Tractorhouse, how much more money or time does it take to list a cash only price? None.
If you can't list a cash price available to anybody, it sure says something....and it's not exactly flattering.
The truth is, the goal of sales people, like yourself, is to get people into your dealership, for a number of reasons, but one is so you can try any number of sales techniques on them that simply don't work well if you publish a cash price. You might be able to get someone into a more expensive machine with the old "what do you want your payments to be" line, or get them to finance a bigger portion to pay for additional options, or a bigger machine, etc, etc, etc. You can't do any of that stuff to the guy who shows up with your ad off the internet with a listed price and pulls out his checkbook to write the check for that amount.
The problem is dealers and sales people don't want to admit reality. Your goal isn't to get the customer the best deal, it's to make a solid profit. That doesn't mean you squeeze the last penny out of every deal, but you're not giving away $100 bills because you think the customer is a nice person.
I had an interesting experience with a large, local dealer. I called, they never called back, I drove there a few days later and found the guy I talked to....he made a polite excuse for not calling me back, then we got down to business. I negotiated a price on a machine, and after a few minutes, he said "that's the best I can do." At that point I joked that I could also use a much smaller machine as well. The salesman perked up and said "well, in that case we can make you an even better deal if you buy both." I thought I already had his "best price" but I guess I didn't. I never went back.
