Used machine dealers wanting to buy....................

So how many folks actually sell to a used machine dealer? I get inundated with offers looking to buy. WTH? Seems the last coupla years it has intensified. Earlier this year I called on a used mill. Salesman asks if I'm upgrading and selling anything. Yup, gonna send a Haas down the road if I buy something. Sales guys gets all squirrely and excited. "We'll buy it from you. Top dollar paid." Top dollar was half of what anything I had seen out there. And of course he wanted to sell it off my floor, not come and get it. How bad does anyone want to get screwed to actually sell to some of these guys?

I've always sold to somebody wanting to use it, not somebody wanting to flip it. The guy who's going to use it expects to make his money from using it; the reseller has to make his money from you.

I'd scrap a machine before I sold to some of the resellers...

Those guys don't buy from small shops, i.e. the kind of shops people posting on the forum own or work in.

Big companies like Cat and GM have contracts with dealers to liquidate their equipment. They wrote it off years ago. they just want it out of the way.

Other companies find it easier to trade in old equipment. Once a company reaches a certain size, getting rid of old equipment becomes a real hassle.

exactly what ewlsey said. just went through a similar thing with used camera gear. both the store buying/trading for it and I know full well they'll mark it up quite a lot. but selling that stuff is their day job. i need it gone, for the best net value to me (dollars back, trade value, sales tax reduction, space recovery, for use of time.) some very exotic stuff gets sold by other means.

it's like trading in a car - you could *always* get more money selling it to the right buyer - if you could find them timely, persuade them you aren't a car abuser, and so forth. and you have the space to store/display it and the time means to keep it looking spiffy. so you are probably ahead in value/time to just trade it.

people trolling on the phone used to seem a little weird to me, but of late, people are calling me up to ask if I want to sell my house (used to be just letters) - so there's apparently market demand, which creates a demand for brokers/agents.

I still have a fax machine so I get routine faxes asking for used equipment like that. I quit talking to the cold callers because of lowball offers or no interest in what I had. Seems like those guys find an item then look for someone who is looking for that item. I have sold a few things to dealers and been happy however. Dave at Hildebrand Machinery has bought a few things outright from me and traded a few others and it worked well for both of us. He has a large audience and can sell things I can't find a buyer for, so he's earning his profit.

Lots of time MT dealers are useful.

A:
My customers bought a new machine, had an old one of very low commercial worth.
The very good UK MT dealer arranged for everything, paid everything, paid in advance.
Sure, they only paid 5k€.
But scrap would have been 500€.

And a local buyer endless hassle with this, that, help, problems.
Since the very good MT dealer played fair -- so did I.

It happened that 2 pneumatic chucks had not been shipped with the machine.
I went out of my way, and so did the customer, to fix it.
The MT dealer deserved our best effort, and rightly got it.

--
In business:

My experience is that 95% of the time doing "well and good" is more profitable.
Often a lot more profitable.
Charging up front for it, honestly, with a grin and a guarantee, has worked for me, 28 years.
Charging (quite steep) high prices has been better.

I then assure the buyer I myself will always fix *anything* at my cost - happily - immediately.
And did do so when needed.
The buyer *knows* I can afford to fix issues and *knows* I have a major incentive to do so.

david n said:

Sales guys gets all squirrely and excited. "We'll buy it from you. Top dollar paid." Top dollar was half of what anything I had seen out there.

Click to expand...

Please repeat after me:
"Money talks and bull$hit walks"

Sales is, was, and always has been, a numbers game - and the most important number when it comes to being a successful salesman (in the sense of getting paid) is the number of phone calls made and/or new contacts met in a day.

My 'hit rate' or 'closing rate' can be 1%, and some other guy's could be 10%. But if I talk to 100 people a week and he only talks to 10, we'll sell the same amount (all other things being equal, which they almost never are.) Because I understand this, I can kind of appreciate the guys who are really hustling, even if it's only making phone calls. If you think it's easy, pick up the phone and call strangers for the rest of the day trying to get them to buy something you're selling. You better have thick skin for all of the guys (like most of us) who pick up the phone.

That said, when I was still in sales I was a big believer in the Zig Ziglar approach: integrity is your greatest asset as a salesman, and you can't be truly successful selling anything you don't believe in. Obviously not all salespeople are believers in this - or more likely, not many are.

As to what you think of as a ridiculous low-ball offer: I happily pay $5 for a gallon of milk at the corner store on my way home instead of driving 5 or 10 minutes out of my way and walking through the entire grocery store to buy it for $2.50 - it's a convenience I'm happy to pay for, and I come out way ahead after factoring in my time.

If, as a shop owner, you start putting a dollar amount on everything you do, you'll be amazed at what you spend your time doing. A 'big' company would probably use $100+/hr for a manager/executive at a small-shop owner level person (the billing rate for engineering or project management, including overhead, in the automation world is typically $100-$150/hr.) So when you spend a week (or a lot more than that, broken up over the course of months) of your time selling a used machine to get top dollar, subtract $4,000 from whatever you sold it for. And it takes your time and attention away from the things that actually matter, of course.

Pretty much all of the used machinery salesmen I've talked to or asked about things seem to be a rung below used car salesmen. Plus as a buyer, usually anything of value that you may purchase with a machine from an owner would get stripped off and sold separately.