leboncoin messages: the method distilled from 10,000 seller conversations

On Monday morning, before the first bonnet is even open, you open leboncoin. Fourteen messages waiting since Friday evening. An hour and a half later, everyone has an answer. And of those fourteen contacts, several have already bought elsewhere.

Not because your vehicle was presented worse, nor because your price was higher. Because another seller replied on Saturday at 6 pm.

We worked on this subject with more than 100 car sellers across France, on a base of more than 10,000 messages received. What these exchanges show is simpler, and more awkward, than you would expect: it is not that sellers answer badly, it is that they rewrite, every day, for years, the same answers to the same questions.

What a morning of catching up really costs

Ask a seller how much time he spends on his messages and the answer rarely adds up. Response time is not counted in minutes spent typing: it is counted in the number of times you break off from what you were doing.

You are with a customer in the showroom, you reply between two test drives, you pick up a thread started two days ago that you no longer remember. Every pick-up has a cost, and every pick-up chips away at the quality of the reply.

The real cost sits in three places:

• The delay. A message received on Saturday evening and handled on Monday morning arrives after the buyer’s decision, not before. That is what the first fifteen minutes measure.
• The repetition. Writing a variant of the same sentence forty times a week is time nobody invoices.
• The inconsistency. On Monday you answer fast and short because the pile is high. On Thursday you take your time. The buyer only ever sees one thing: the reply he got.

That third point is the most expensive one in a team. Two sellers at the same dealership do not give the same answer to the same message, and nobody notices, because those conversations are never read back.

100 sellers, 10,000 messages: what these messages show

Looking at the messages these sellers received, the same thing keeps coming back: requests almost always fall into four families.

1. Availability — “Still available?”
2. The silent favourite — the listing is saved, compared, followed. And nobody writes.
3. Negotiation — “Is that your best price?”, asked before the vehicle has even been seen.
4. The request for information — servicing, timing belt, history, part-exchange, financing.

Four families. Thousands of messages. And every time, a reply written from scratch.

The method was born from that observation: if the requests are predictable, the answers can be too. Not to answer mechanically, but to stop having to think about the wording, and to keep your energy for what matters — securing the appointment.

Availability: confirm without closing

It is the most frequent message, and the one handled worst — precisely because it looks easy.

“Hello, I’m interested in your listing, is it still available?” “Yes, still available.”

The reply is accurate, polite, fast. And it ends the conversation. The buyer has his information and has no reason to write another word. You have neither his number, nor a slot, nor the faintest idea of his plan.

What that message really says is not “is it available”. It is “is this worth my attention”. He is waiting for a signal, not a service-desk reply.

What changes everything: confirm, add a concrete reason to come over, offer a precise slot. Three elements, three lines. “Yes” only does the first.

A precise slot beats an open invitation. “Drop by whenever you like” asks the buyer to make the effort of deciding; “tomorrow at 2 pm or Thursday at 5 pm, which suits you?” only asks him to choose.

The silent favourite: interest that does not convert on its own

A listing can collect favourites without producing a single message. The buyer saves it, compares it, comes back to it — and writes nothing. Many sellers count only the messages they receive, and conclude that the listing is not landing.

That is a misreading. Saving a listing already means the sorting has been done. Those buyers are no longer discovering the market, they are making up their minds. But nothing in the listing gives them a reason to take the step now.

When one of them finally writes, days later, the reflex is to treat the message as a first contact. It is the opposite: he knows the listing by heart and is not waiting for more information. He is waiting for a reason to act right away — an available test-drive slot, a part-exchange to value, a point he could not check on the photos. This is the logic of follow-up tempo: what moves a contact is not frequency, it is having a reason.

Interest that lasts is not a sale on its way. It is a sale waiting to be prompted.

Negotiation: the price always comes too early

“Is that your best price?” — often the first message, before any visit, before any technical question.

Two habitual reactions, equally expensive. Give ground immediately, then negotiate from a weakened position. Or dig in — “price not negotiable” — and lose a buyer who was simply testing the ground.

A discount request sent before the visit is not a negotiation. It is information gathering. The buyer wants to know who he is dealing with, and whether discussion is possible.

The principle: never negotiate a price on a car the customer has not seen. Not out of posture, but because value cannot be defended in writing. It is defended in front of the vehicle, with the service book, the history and the real condition in plain sight. Answering a discount request therefore means acknowledging the question, setting the frame, and bringing the discussion back where it can be held: the appointment.

Requests for information: answer without losing the thread

Servicing, the timing belt, the number of owners, the warranty, part-exchange, financing. These messages are legitimate, often precise, and this is where time disappears fastest: each reply is a small file.

Two traps. The first: answering partially, which triggers a second question, then a third, and a conversation that drags over three days without ever producing an appointment. The second: answering too much, in a wall of text nobody reads, which replaces the visit instead of preparing it.

The right measure is to answer fully what was asked, then tie the answer to something that can only be verified on site. Written information should make the buyer want to come and see, never spare him the trip.

A part-exchange request deserves separate treatment: it signals a buyer who has already pictured changing vehicle. A written estimate, given without having seen the car, commits you to a figure you will have to correct later — the worst way to start a relationship.

The three-beat reply

The four families are handled with the same structure. That is what makes the method fit on one page.

1. Confirm — answer the question asked, plainly, in one sentence. A buyer who senses evasion stops there.
2. Add — give one concrete element he does not have: a point of history, a warranty, an availability, a detail verifiable on site.
3. Propose — always end with a precise slot or a closed question. A reply that ends without a proposal leaves the buyer carrying the follow-up.

The structure invents nothing: it is what the best-converting sellers do naturally. The method only makes it explicit, so that it no longer depends on how tired you are on a Friday evening.

The 10 ready-made replies are the direct application of those three beats to the four families of requests. They are written once, adapted to the way you speak, and reused indefinitely.

Standardise without robotising

This is the objection you hear every time: “if everyone answers the same way, it shows, and it rings false”.

It would be fair if you standardised the words. What has to be standardised are the decisions: within what delay you answer, what is never handled in writing, how a message ends. The vocabulary stays the seller’s own.

In practice, in a team or a network:

• Set a shared response time, weekends included, and a clear rule for absences — a message picked up by a colleague beats a perfect message sent on Monday.
• Share the 10 ready-made replies, and ask every seller to rewrite them in his own words. A reply you have not rewritten is a reply you will not use.
• Read back the conversations once a month. It is the only way to see what buyers actually receive.
• Do not push your services in the first message. Financing, warranty, part-exchange: those arguments count, but after the appointment, not before.

A seller trained in this method does not answer faster because he types faster. He answers faster because he no longer has to decide what to write.

Where to start tomorrow morning

You need no software, no subscription and no budget to apply what precedes. Three actions are enough for the first week.

1. Read back your last twenty sent messages. Count the ones that ended in a phone conversation with the buyer. The result will tell you where your appointments are lost.
2. Write your four base replies — availability, the favourite who finally writes, negotiation, request for information — applying the three beats. Keep them in your phone’s notes.
3. Book yourself a reply slot on Saturday, however short. That is where the gap with sellers who wait for Monday opens up.

Getting the method

The method sheet fits on one page, and the 10 ready-made replies are ready to be copied, pasted and adapted to the way you speak.