Car Selling Tips

ZigWheels.com effective tips will help you sell your car quickly and easily. Without the right tools and planning you might end up selling your car at a price lower than its market value or it could take a lot of time before you find a suitable buyer.

You cannot sell your car if you haven’t serviced your car loan yet. At least not unless you get your Finance Company’s approval, and this will entail settling outstanding loan amount and addressing other conditional loan agreements. Once you get this hurdle cleared, you are all set to sell your car.

 

The next step is finding out the right price to quote for your car. This is a bit confusing… if you price it too high, you may not get any sincere responses and if you price it too low, the car will be easy to sell but you will not get the right price for it. A good place to start is indianbluebook.com

This website offers fairly accurate estimates for every car on sale in India, right to the variant. Just fill in your car details – make, model, variant, year and mileage, and you get a ball park figure to quote. This is just the first step though. The website gives a range, high for a very well maintained car and low for a knackered example. Hopefully you aren’t one from the latter category. What you can do to narrow the pricing down to a quotable figure is research the same car posted by others on sale. If these sellers have followed the right method of car valuation and arrived at a price, they will be fairly accurate. You can also take your car to a used car dealer (they will generally quote a low price) or a car mechanic for a price quote. You finally need to make a judgement call on your quotation – slightly higher or lower than competition.

There is no harm is asking for a slightly higher price, at least to test the waters when you post a listing. And that brings us to your sales pitch.

 

Remember, you are trying to sell something that a buyer is already skeptical in buying. It’s always the case with a pre-owned car because a buyer is vary of the condition of the car even before he/she has seen the car in person. Before a buyer gets to see your car, you need to take care of a few points –

  • Make sure all minor scratches and dents are fixed. You will lose more selling a car as is than spending to fix it and asking for a higher price. It also ensure attention to your car from more buyers.
  • Get your service record and car papers in order.
  • Get the car cleaned, inside and out, thoroughly and to its details. That also means you wash your engine bay, clean your boot of unnecessary stuff and get your car upholstery cleaned of stains.
  • What makes an excellent impression is getting the car waxed and polished. It doesn’t cost much, is a DIY job, and almost instantly improves the value of your car.
  • Take pictures of your car. It’s a small effort to take a car out to an open space and get a set of shots – front three-quarter, rear three-quarter and one interior picture. These pictures can be used in your listing. We have an extensive used car listing page on www.zigwheels.com/used-car. To get your car noticed, the right price and a good picture is critical.
 

There are a couple of ways to sell your car. A rapidly growing medium is online. You can also post your listing in newspaper classified ads. Word of mouth sale of cars is quite difficult but it should be your first mode of action.

The most important thing while selling your car is being truthful about its condition. For instance, if its squeaky clean and very well maintained, use words like ‘immaculate condition’ and ‘pristine’. If it’s not as good as new, words like ‘well maintained’ work well, and if it is in tatters, get it fixed please before you sell it. Secondly, if you want it off quickly and don’t mind a low quote, use words like ‘urgent sale’ to grab attention. You can also mention if you are willing to negotiate or not in your listing.

 

You’ve made your sales pitch and a prospective buyer has liked it. That’s half the battle won. The second half is inspection time. The buyer is a stranger who is still a bit skeptical about going through the sale. You need to be friendly and welcoming to put the buyer at ease. You can indulge in a bit of small talk too. Answer all questions regarding your car openly. A buyer might also want to inspect the car from a mechanic which is a reasonable request. If the buyer is satisfied, he will broach the price topic.

If you are willing to negotiate, keep it as close to the asking price. If the buyer has come all the way to inspect your car, the buyer is already prepared to purchase the car at the price you have quoted. A slight reduction is price can sway a skeptical buyer to one with a cheque.

 

Once the deal has been finalized, you can get started with the paperwork. Payment can be accepted in three modes – cash, demand draft and cheque. Wait for the cheque to get cleared before transferring the documents. If the buyer is opting for finance, the finance company will guide you through the paper work and with respect to the RTO transfers, any agent from the RTO office or a car dealer can help you with it.