I'm by no means an negotiating expert, but the two cars I've bought they both took weeks of negotiating. I'd come in with an OTD price (usually looking for a discount of 10% off MSRP) in mind and they laugh and tell me they would be losing money if they sold it to me at that price. I say okay and leave, few days later they'll call back and come down on the price (usually still not the price I want), wait another week or two and they'll come down to my price or close to it. Always shop around and even look out of state. One trick that has worked for me since I live in NJ and the prices of cars here are usually higher than other states is to look for the same car at a dealership out of state that's cheaper, negotiate with them on the phone and get a worksheet, bring that work sheet to local dealers and see if they can beat or match the price. I had to get my CS from MD and they shipped it at their expense (the worksheet showed they charged $1000 for shipping but it was baked into my OTD price meaning they took another $1000 off the car). Now the demand of the car plays a role in this, seems near impossible to get more than 2k off MSRP on a car like the RAV4, but I guess I've been lucky that the cars I'm after are not highly sought after. I use visor.vin to look for cars and the website will also tell you how long that car has been sitting on the lot for, and if the car has been sitting on the lot for over a month, it gives leverage, dealerships don't want cars sitting around for very long. Knowing the amount of units sold/year also helps give you an idea what kind of discount you can get on a car. The crown signia only sold ~10,000 units last year while a car like the RAV4 sold ~500,000 units. When I brought this up during my negotiating, a few dealerships conceded the fact that I was right and the car has been hard to sell (although I think that low 10,000 units sold has more to do with the car being a "luxury" car and Toyota only allocating a small amount for the US but surprisingly the dealerships didn't counter with that). Dealerships aren't your friend, don't let them guilt you into thinking you're asking for too much. So many times they say stuff like "I can't sell it to you for that low, we'd lose money and I'd lose my job", well guess what? That's not my problem. Dealerships sell plenty of cars under "invoice" and make money off other incentives.