Secrets To Negotiating More Value For Your Trade-In

The thinking behind this seems to be that if you tell the salesperson up front that you’re trading in your car, he will somehow be able to trick you and talk you into paying too much for his car and accepting too little for your trade.  

The ironic thing about this advice is it causes the customer to lie and play games ultimately making the sales process take more time...exactly the things consumers say they despise the most about the car buying process, lying, playing games, and how long it takes!  
Well, guess what else?  It doesn't work.  The salesperson knows you’re planning to trade, and some salespeople might take that distrust as a rationalization to lie to you. 
Something else to keep in mind is this tactic adds absolutely nothing to your trade value.  Your vehicle is worth the same amount. It might actually hurt your bargaining power bringing up the trade at the end of the process rather than the beginning because the price on the vehicle you're purchasing has been agreed on. 
Another way to look at it is
 to think of a car deal as a pie. There’s only so much profit available in every car deal. You can think of the total available profit as the size of the pie. Now, you can slice that pie up a bunch of ways.  But if you take all of that pie right up front when negotiating the purchase price, that means there’s less pie left over when it comes time to talk about your trade. That means you’re likely to get less for your trade-in, not more. 
The best approach would be to tell the salesperson up front that you would like to trade your car in, but that you don't have to.  Tell them that your main concern is a good overall deal, purchase price, trade value, interest rate, payments, etc.  You never want to focus on one thing in a car deal.  If you take an honest upfront approach most salespeople will work even harder for you rather than against you which will give you a better chance of getting the best deal possible. 
Thanks for listening!
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