On a used car listing, the price question arrives before the roadworthiness question. It arrives in the evening, in four words, and it often comes from a buyer who has just sent it to six listings in a row. The seller who answers on the fly, message by message, settles each time a question he never settled in cold blood: how far do I go, and on which car. The result shows up in the margins.

One figure frames the subject. Auditing 2,241 US companies, Harvard Business Review measured an average response time of 42 hours to inbound enquiries, with 23 % of companies never replying at all (Oldroyd, McElheran, Elkington, 2011). The dealer’s problem is not answering too generously. It is answering too late, then compensating with a discount.

Two buyers, one sentence

Behind “is that your best price?” stand two different people.

The first haggles by reflex. He has not looked at the photos, does not know the mileage, and tries a ten percent cut on anything that moves. Answering him with a number opens a bargain on a car he never intended to buy.

The second has a budget, a loan close to approval, and a three hundred euro constraint. He is not hunting a deal, he is working out whether he is about to waste his Saturday. Not answering him, or answering “come and see”, sends him to the next listing.

Same sentence, opposite treatment. The only way to tell them apart without interrogating them is to watch what the buyer does, not what he says.

A discount request is not a buying signal

Osmosia’s intent scoring is built on that principle. A question about price, like a question about the warranty or the service history, is a request for information: it carries little weight. A mention of financing, a stated deposit, an “I’m very interested” carry even less than sellers assume, because those words cost the writer nothing.

Actions carry weight. A confirmed appointment with a date and a time. An explicit request to be called back, signalling a wish to leave the inbox. A document sent over: a registration certificate, a photo of a part-exchange vehicle. Precise technical questions about engine, service history, or pricing against the trade guide, which betray an informed buyer. No prospect crosses into hot territory without a concrete action.

A dealer who ranks his follow-ups on that basis no longer spends his evening defending a price against someone who was never going to turn up.

Decide before the conversation, not during it

A price is easier to defend when it was set in cold blood, car by car. The vehicle bought dear in a batch, the one that has been sitting for four months, the one that just landed and will sell itself: three negotiating positions, on the same forecourt, on the same day. Mixing them means improvising.

Four levels of negotiation openness

In Osmosia, every vehicle carries a negotiation openness level chosen by the seller. Non-negotiable: the price is firm and the reply says so plainly. Low: a symbolic gesture is conceivable, never announced in writing. Moderate: a reasonable discount is possible and is discussed by voice. High: the car needs to move, flexibility is real. Subject to manager approval: the reply keeps the door open without committing anyone.

The point is not to make a machine name a number. It is that the seller’s position is taken once and applied a hundred times, at any hour, without drifting with the evening’s fatigue. Negotiation becomes a commercial decision again, not a reaction.

What a negotiation reply must never contain

A number. A written reply that concedes a discount creates a floor: the buyer restarts from there and pushes again. Osmosia never makes an offer, never invites the buyer to make one, and never values a part-exchange in the inbox.

A market range. Osmosia holds an analysis of comparable vehicles currently for sale and uses it to argue positioning and quality. It never quotes the bounds of that range, which would instantly become the buyer’s negotiating base.

A service that does not exist. Part-exchange, financing, warranty and delivery are mentioned only when they genuinely appear in the seller’s service list. Promising a part-exchange the garage does not offer is the fastest way to lose a customer at the first appointment.

Refusing an indecent offer without losing the customer

An unreasonable offer is not negotiated, it is declined. Osmosia firmly refuses proposals far below the listed price, without offering a call or an appointment: a buyer offering a third of the price is not a buyer worth receiving. The reply stays courteous, explains that the price reflects the preparation and condition of the vehicle, and stops there. No margin is opened, no slot is given away.

Below that breaking point, the treatment reverses. The reply acknowledges the request, highlights what justifies the price, mentions the services actually available, and proposes a call or a visit. It concedes nothing in writing and closes nothing.

A word on cash payments, since the question often follows the price one: French regulations frame cash payments between a professional and a private individual. Osmosia politely recalls that framework and steers towards a traceable payment method. For the threshold applicable to your situation, refer to a qualified lawyer or your accountant.

Leaving the inbox is already progress

Written negotiation is hostile ground for a seller. Every message is stored, re-read, compared with a competitor’s. The voice, the visit, the car in front of you: that is where perceived value is settled, and that is exactly what the seller is after when he replies “let’s discuss this by phone, when are you free?”.

He still has to reply. The study led by Dr James Oldroyd for MIT Sloan and InsideSales in 2007, covering more than 15,000 leads and over 100,000 calls, established that attempting contact within 5 minutes rather than 30 multiplies the odds of reaching the person by around 100, and the odds of qualifying them by around 21. On a forecourt where the average resale time of a used electric vehicle reached 161 days in the fourth quarter of 2025 (Mobilians and Avere-France), every day saved is capital released.

Osmosia replies in under fifteen minutes, seven days a week from 7am to 11pm, applies the negotiation openness level you set for that vehicle, scores the buyer’s real intent and books the appointment when it is ripe. The seller gets back the only part of the negotiation that truly belongs to him: the one that happens in front of the car.