Toyota’s Future Sales Overview
The automotive industry is currently driving through some difficulties and challenges. Sales departments are checking those numbers constantly, and certainly different factors are affecting them. I went to a car dealership, more specifically, to Toyota of Doral, in Miami, Florida, and talked with German Zamora, who is the Sales Manager of this important location for the Toyota company here in South Florida. He has more than 22 years of experience in this sector, and he explained me some of the general uses of data in the automotive sector, and the causes of recent decreases in car sales. I hope you like it!
Jesus Acosta 0:00
Hello, my name is Jesus Acosta and I’m about to interview her German Zamora who works for the Toyota dealership here in the route as a sales manager. Welcome to FIU News Visualizations. German, how are you doing today?
German Zamora 0:10
I’m doing great. Thank you. Yes. Good to meet you.
Jesus Acosta 0:12
Nice to meet you. So tell us about your experience. What’s your job role? Can you describe it for us?
German Zamora 0:17
Sure. No problem. I started back in year 2000. I was a salesperson, did pretty well actually still already 23 years and adding. After a few years, I went into the finance, I did some financing, work there for three years until they moved me into a sales manager, it’s a job that I love. I like to work with people customers, enjoy very much what I do, even though is very tough and hard because you have to work six days a week. But it’s a job that I enjoy very much. I like working with people. I’m a “people’s” person. So that’s something that I like to do.
Jesus Acosta 0:54
Well Mr. Zamora, it’s a very demanding job as we can see here. So based on on your job, I can see that you work with a lot of numbers, pretty much on a day to day basis.
German Zamora 1:04
Yes, numbers is one of the big reasons because that’s the way we make money.
Jesus Acosta 1:08
And numbers lead us to data, how do you start to work with numbers and data here in the Doral dealership?
German Zamora 1:14
Well, it was something that always caught the attention that I wanted to I love cars myself. And actually I collected classic cars myself in I always wanted to know about dealing in selling. And once I started, it was very addictive. But at first you have to do the rapport with the customers. Once they come into the door and you greet them, first we have to listen to the customer to what their needs in want. A lot of times customer may want something that they cannot afford. So we have to know what we’re going to put them in. We do that once we walk in with a customer to the bank to show him the cars, and we start getting some information about them. If they ever financed a car before? If this is their first car? what do they need the car for? If it’s a car just for an individual it’s a different situation. So a lot of times people come looking for something, and they ended up leaving with something else. In a lot of times, especially these days with the interest rates that are so high. Values of cars are going up very much. So, it’s making it more difficult for us. That’s why we need to know what the customer could afford. Because they may want a Toyota Fortuner or a car that is $50,000 on average now in value and expect to pay $400 a month, it’s very unrealistic. So we have to kind of bring down the customer to reality, and tell them that maybe they might have a choice of maybe buying a lower valued car.
Jesus Acosta 1:14
Well, that’s very interesting what you said Mr.Zamora, in regards to the interest rates at this time, and how you have to adapt to the different situations from the customer. Is there a way to from you to gather that data? Do you use a system to kind of figure out that information?
German Zamora 2:55
You can go into consumersreport.com, and it kind of gives you a rough idea of what’s going on, especially with the car payments. An average car payment until about a year and a half ago, it was around maybe $350 a month, now it has gone up to maybe $740 a month. Average car payments are actually doubled because of the interest rate, and because of the car values they have gone up.
Jesus Acosta 3:16
These are pretty much the caused that have a big role into changing the spectrum of car sales in general.
German Zamora 3:23
There’s one other thing also, because now the governments around the world, they want to change us to electric cars. Because anything is going to be hybrid, you know, even though 100% electric not, but hybrid still is part electric and part gasoline. But eventually they want us to roll over into an electric car. So, the components to make that work, may take a little bit longer than what they expected because they want us by maybe 2026, to be all electric. So I think it’s going to be taking longer than that.
Jesus Acosta 3:56
Going back to the car sales. How do you keep track of the car sales, within a day, within a month?
German Zamora 4:04
Right now, you cannot predict what’s going to happen. Why? Because there’s no inventory years ago or two or maybe two years ago, we kind of knew what’s going to happen on January you know, if we’re going to be selling more cars. Before we used to sell between 400 to 480 cars, new cars only, not including the used ones a month. So with the used and everything around 600 cars. Right now we are less than half that. So, the current market value right now is so undecided to what’s going to work, and what is going to happen. Last year, we kind of lost track because let’s say in December, we should have a big month. And sell around 600 new cars. We ended up selling only 305 cars. So right now we don’t know what’s going to happen, very unpredictable. And also the credit value from people credits are very, very down, especially what we call beacon scores. You don’t see that many 720 and better beacon scores. So that makes it tough. In interest rate, even if you have a level one as your best interest rate, you’re going to be getting 7%. And a car is still a necessity. Unfortunately, transportation is the tool for work. Without a car, we aren’t able to do anything, especially transportation is not as big as it is in New York City. In New York City, you don’t need to own a car, but here in Miami you do. So it’s making it difficult for people and harder, because it’s not only car values. Now everything with the food, with home values, but a car is still a necessity.
Jesus Acosta 5:40
And what information or data, let’s say it’s a hypothetical scenario, would you like to have to make better an accurate predictions, so that way, you can keep a better track?
German Zamora 5:51
Market data, and not even Toyota knows what they are going to do. Right now, their projection is to get their new electric models out. And the only one that we have coming out, they are having big problems with the car. And most of them come out first in California, they already came out, and they have to bring them back in. Why? Because the tires were falling off. So the electric market value is really driving us crazy to what is going to happen with the Toyota market now. against many other brands, like Hyundai and Kia they already got most of their electric cars out. So they’re doing pretty well. So we kind of lose in some kind of market from them. So it’s very unpredictable for me to tell you, what analysis, or what I’m going to expect next monthin sales. We don’t know, we just don’t know Unfortunately. I’ve been here in this business 23 years, and we didn’t see ourselves this way. Last month normally, we get told you’re going to sell 205 cars this month. Last month, they gave us only that we needed to make 143 cars, that means that we’re not going to get that many cars in inventory. Normally in January, we used to get told by Toyota that you need to sell 350 cars this month. And that’s what we are supposed to do. But now, they lowered that to a big time number less than 50%.
Jesus Acosta 7:24
And how does Toyota determine that information with the amount of cars you need to sell?
German Zamora 7:29
They determine what’s available but unfortunately, there’s technology what happens is too much technology. And then the technology takes a while we call computers now car doesn’t have a computer has two computers. With those computers come in what we call the chips. Nothing will work without a chip. Same thing to your cell phone the same thing. Everything else around us with technology works with a chip. Chips are quite expensive now. So, they’re building more expensive cars instead of being cars less expensive. So too much technology, it kind of brings us some kind of trouble now.
Jesus Acosta 8:02
Mr. German, just to close up the interview based on your experience with sales, finance, and also data. What advice do you give to those students who would like to get into the business and area sector within data analytics,
German Zamora 8:17
We still need to do a lot of work on, so for new students coming in, it’s going to be a challenge. But it’s a great challenge. Because anyway, we need a car. You know, it’s part of our lives like we need a phone now. Its part of our lives. So let’s continue
Jesus Acosta 8:31
let’s keep going that’s the message. Well, thank you Mr. Zamora for having the time to talk with me about sales and finance in the car business here at the Doral Toyota dealership. I’m signing off, Jesus Acosta for FIU News.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai
