Finance isn’t sexy but it can be the be the deciding factor for a knife-edge sale

As an F&I trainer I get this a lot, comments like “It’s not a sexy subject Andy”, or “How the hell will you make a whole day of finance interesting?”

Well that’s pretty consistent feedback and has been for the last 37 years, but recently I got a new one from a delegate. She said “How have you made this one boring subject last your whole career?”

OK, so first off that made me feel about 102, and second it made me realise something I hadn’t really thought about too much. You see, there are literally thousands of you in the automotive retailing sector. Thousands of you that are truly passionate about cars, the metal, the shape, the colour and the sounds of the damn things, the fuel, transmission, suspension and the sheer performance. You know who you are, the stattos of the business, the nerds of our world with a curious excitement around everything to do with the tangible asset at the end of each customer interaction.

This is the light-bulb moment, formed from one idle comment from one reluctant delegate forced to go on a finance course with a loud Mancunian powered by diesel and passionate about paper. I’m the Chuckie geek.

There, I said it so it must be true.

Learning to love the numbers

Now I don’t expect many of you reading this piece to be as enthusiastic as I am about finance, but embrace it, make it work for you and you will very quickly learn to love it – as it is so very much more than a shed load of paperwork and a few quid commission.

First, finance allows you a secondary point of access to the customer’s buying decisions, a different gateway to the deal rather than a simple binary yes/no transaction request.

The second allows you to add a second face if you want to – either to close a closable deal, to shrink a gap to simply make the deal do-able or to provide a confident solution to the one hurdle that the customer hasn’t yet prepared for, especially in the event of a spontaneous purchase.

The third is to convert that binary yes/no deal from a large value to a smaller digestible one looking at monthly payments rather than the entire cost – the simple principle of bite-sized chunks which our customers continue to tell us they still value.

The next (anything over three starts to confuse me) is the sale of add-ons, added value products and insurance policies that reassure the customer that today’s decision to buy from you is a good one. Your customers are buying a new car for many reasons, business, commuting, social and status, even fun, but their decision process is almost always a simple balance process, with the payoff of “will the good feeling I get every day be worth the risk?”

Building brand recognition

Every one of your customers is assessing the risk of this transaction which factors in you as a retailer, you as a person, the brand they are buying and the brand they are buying from, and all of the associated brands that you demonstrate you work with. This is why selling F&I can help every deal, every time.

Critically, this can be, for some customers, the single most important reason they deal with you, because of brand recognition. Think about every brand you see in our business, think about the huge spend committed to marketing with price boards, posters, signage and so much more. Now think of the simple awareness of brands at shows, on telly, at sports events and on t-shirts as sponsors.

Those brands are building value in order to help tip the balance in the customer’s mind at the point they are making a purchase decision.

It is the same with funding, and our competitors such as the banks and direct lenders are damn good at it. They not only tell our customers how reliable, solid and upright they are, they tell our customers how downright daft we can be sometimes. If you allow this to happen in your business you will always have to work harder in order to tip the decision scales in your favour – this can take time, cost margin and even lose deals that were do-able.

• Be trustworthy, be professional and make use of those brands that have shared their values with you.
• Be as excited about ‘how to pay’ as you were about the performance of the car.
• Use your partner brands and leverage them, let them be seen from the outset.
• Share with your customers who you deal with for funding, and discuss funding with every customer.

YOUR ACTION PLAN

• Use finance to get a different angle on a customer’s purchase
• Take the opportunity to present a second face
• Use it to break down the risk
• Display the same enthusiasm as you would when talking about the car itself