If you don’t close the sale, no one wins! Whether it’s selling financing, selling vehicle service contracts, selling guaranteed asset protection, selling tire and wheel protection, selling a key replacement, selling pre-paid maintenance or selling exterior product protection… if you don’t close the sale everyone loses (especially your customers)! Dealer financing and F&I products must be sold. The cold hard fact is most customers lack certainty, and they’re not able to fully grasp the gravity of their finance and insurance decisions without help from a qualified F&I professional.
Unfortunately, too many F&I managers struggle with winning more sales because they haven’t developed and mastered the best close. Without a doubt, there is no shortage of word tracts and scripted F&I sales closes. Some of which are very helpful, but others are really bad and can even be borderline offensive. Words matter, but words without congruency fall on deaf ears. Contrary to popular belief, the best F&I sales close will never be read out of a book or a training manual.
The best sales close cannot be mastered in a staged roleplay session. The best F&I sales close is your personal feelings about your product or offering!
Here is the million-dollar question: Are you certain? In other words, are you personally sold and absolutely certain that your customers should have what you’re selling? Top F&I producers believe in themselves and their offering so much that they’re on fire to ensure that their customers are protected and set up to truly enjoy their vehicle! Sadly, over the years I have met countless F&I managers who were not certain, who did not fully believe in themselves or their offering and were consequently stuck operating at a level far below their potential. If you are ready to take your performance in F&I to the next level, you must invest in getting certain. Certainty is not just a state-of-mind, it’s a state-of-being. F&I professionals who are certain celebrate what they do daily, they commission themselves to something bigger than themselves, and they commit to mastering their craft!
Celebrate what you do daily!
To truly succeed in F&I, you must enjoy each challenge and you must believe that you are creating a better tomorrow for your customers. Plain and simple, if you don’t love what you are doing, your customers won’t love what you do and it will cost you a lot of sales. The good news is that everything you sell changes lives whether you realize it or not. The best dealerships create a culture of changing lives by purposefully seeking out and highlighting the stories and testimonials that demonstrate how their people and products impact lives. Whether it’s that special finance customer who can finally buy their first home because you helped in building their credit, or it’s that single parent who just suffered a major repair or loss but their kids won’t suffer because you helped in protecting their budget, or it’s that customer who seems to have everything but enough time and you helped in providing a V.I.P. ownership experience that’s simple and worry-free. If you want to increase your level of certainty make a daily effort to speak with your service advisors, with your warranty claim representatives, and follow up with customers after a claim. I think you will be surprised to find how often your products make a critical difference in the lives of your customers and their families. Celebrate what you do daily because your financing and F&I products make a difference!
Commission yourself to something bigger than yourself!
It is no secret that meaningful work leads to waist-up engagement, personal drive, and certainty. Everyone wants to be part of something special, something grand, and something bigger than themselves. Other than the money, why do you work as an F&I manager or director? Just about every F&I professional that I’ve ever met was motivated by the money, but the top producers were also driven by their work itself. Certainty comes from knowing without a doubt that what you do matters. What is your why? What cause are you commissioned to? Saying that you are motivated to provide for your family is a cop-out. Just about everyone has a desire to provide, and there are a lot of ways to make money. It’s not enough to be motivated by what you get for what you do you must also find motivation in what it is that you do. For some, their why and driving force is making a real difference in the lives of their customers, for others, it’s serving and improving the community where they live, for others, it’s impacting the industry as a whole. Once you commission yourself and define your why, life will change. You will become more certain; and you will enjoy more energy, greater achievement, and personal satisfaction from your work. What you do matters!
Commit to mastering your craft!
The more you do the more you can do! No activity is wasted if you are learning and investing in yourself. Everyone gets the same 86,400 seconds in a day, and once they are gone they are gone forever! How do you use them? From the applications to the contracts, to the selling process itself, much of what is done in F&I is highly repetitive. The lenders all tend to ask the same questions and the customers all tend to have the same objections. Face it, there is no excuse for not being fully prepared to handle the challenges of the day. You will never reach high levels of certainty if you are always fighting to keep your head above water. In F&I, what you do from 8:00am to 8:00pm may generate your income, but quite frankly it is what you do from 8:00pm to 8:00am that determines your income. Top producers communicate with more certainty because they don’t have to think about what to ask, or what to say. Due to their preparation and commitment to mastering their craft, top producers are able to be in-the-moment with their customers and focus on how they communicate. To increase your level of certainty you must regularly read your contracts and program guides, you must study your sales process, you must review objections from the day, and you must invest in your communication and leadership skills. Predictable and dependable performance comes from preparation. Raise your performance standards and your certainty with follow!
In any selling situation, if there is rapport, the one who is most certain will ultimately influence the other. We all know that selling is the transfer of emotion, but you cannot give someone something that you don’t have. The best F&I sales close will always be your personal feelings about your product or offering! You will find skill at all levels of F&I, but you will only find certainty at the top! Remember, certainty is not just a state-of-mind, it’s a state-of-being. F&I professionals who are certain celebrate what they do daily, they commission themselves to something bigger than themselves, and they commit to mastering their craft!
