March 2009 - Feature
13 Ways to ‘AccSELLerate’ Your Sales Process
How to get there faster, have more fun and give customers a better experience.
By Mark Rodgers
If you asked most dealers how to make a motorcycle
faster, they’d say, “It’s easy! You can add a performance exhaust, air cleaner,
jet kit, hot rod download, performance cams, bore the cylinders, use lighter
pistons …” Ask a business manager how to speed up his or her process and your
questions will probably be met with a blank stare.
Most F&I managers couldn’t tell you how to speed up the
process because they’ve never been asked that question before. That’s why I’d
like to introduce you to a new term: AccSELLerate.
AccSELLerate is a verb
that can be applied three different ways: (1) To increase the speed of sales,
(2) to cause a sales close to occur sooner than expected, or (3) to develop or
progress your sales or sales skills more quickly.
Now remember, a verb
denotes action. This is an important distinction because many salespeople think
a sale is something that happens to them. They won’t admit it, but you can hear
it in how they describe their process.
I attended a retailing
symposium at which an executive from Target made a terrific point: “Retailing
is pretty simple. It has two basic components. There’s the shopping experience
and the checkout experience. The former you want to make as long as possible;
the latter, as short as possible.”
No disrespect to the profession, but F&I is definitely
the “checkout” portion of the vehicle-purchase process. That means we need to
make it as efficient — and effective — as possible.
I spend time with literally hundreds of dealership each year.
One of the most common complaints they have about F&I is how long it takes
to complete the process. For some stores, it takes two or three hours. Unless
you run into some really complicated situations and stipulations, it really
should take only about 25 or 30 minutes. With that in mind, let’s look at 13
ways to help you shift your F&I interactions into high gear.
1. Establish Duties
In stores large enough
for two distinct departments — sales and F&I — the salesperson should sell
the bike. The F&I person should sell the financing of the unit and the
back-end protection. For smaller stores where the salesperson does it all, you
can still create a delineation between these processes (i.e., sell the bike
first, then the financing).
When sales and F&I are intermingled, the sales process
gets bogged down. For example, a salesperson who tries to sell an extended
service plan while on the showroom floor isn’t helping to speed things along.
As a matter of fact, the salesperson might be slowing things, especially if he
or she gives the customer incorrect information or faces an objection he or she
can’t handle; thereby, creating a preconceived notion of the coverage or your
dealership’s approach.
Rather, the salesperson should surface the need. This can be
achieved by simply telling the customer: “Do you have the service plan on your
trade? Our dealership looks favorable upon trades that do.” Once you do that,
you can move back to what’s important — selling the motorcycle!