As an F&I manager, rejection comes with the territory. It would be great if every customer enrolled in a product or two on each delivery. 

Unfortunately, it doesn’t work that way. In fact, we tend to hear no more than yes. Because of this, as an F&I trainer and coach I am asked by many F&I managers to help them become better closers and to show them how to turn a no into a yes.

I respond by telling them that if you want to be a good closer, you must learn how to be a great opener. There was a time that if you attended F&I training, much of the time in class was spent on learning word tracks and closes to use with customers when they said no. Overcoming common objections was the goal.   

I’ve been asked what the easiest objection to handle in F&I is. The answer is the one that never comes up. And there is the key to more success in F&I. 

Instead of focusing on closing, today’s F&I manager would be better served to focus on opening. The largest group of consumers today are millennials, and when you add in gen Z, you have the largest group of consumers in the world, at last count in the U.S., about 133 million strong. 

As it turns out, consumer research tells us there is one thing everyone in this group has in common, and that is they want the car-buying and F&I experience to be hyper-personalized. They want it to be all about them. 

That means that to succeed in F&I today, we need to know more about the customer if we want to personalize the F&I experience for them. Being a good opener is the key to success with this group. 

The standard customer interview isn’t going to cut it anymore. This group wants be known, and they expect you to spend some time learning enough about them so you can relate information and the benefits of your products to them in a personal way. The problem with the standard customer interview is that it is all about you, not your customer. You know the questions:

How many miles do you drive a year? How long do you normally keep a vehicle? Where do you get your service done? Are you the primary driver? Do you keep your vehicle in the garage or out in the driveway or parking space? And the list goes on. 

The problem is that these are all closed-ended questions that require a yes or no or a one-word answer. These questions are meant to help you set up your menu and really don’t give any personal information about the customer. 

These questions actually create resistance because today’s customer knows that when these questions are asked, they are asked to set up a sales pitch. The F&I manager makes it worse by giving the same “pitch” to every customer, every time.

Nothing about this approach is personalized, and the F&I manager ends up presenting features, advantages and benefits of each product, no personalization.With today’s customers, this in an average approach that will get you average results. Do we need to know this information? Of course we do. But today we need to learn more, much more. 

If you would like to be more than an average F&I manager and really find a path to exceptional, take some time to learn as much as you can about the customer before you ever speak to them. Talk to the salesperson, the sales manager, maybe get out of your office and go look at the trade, talk to service if the customer uses your service department. We can learn a lot about our customers if we put in the effort.

Now when introduced, we can confirm what we have learned about the customer while asking those menu setup questions, making the customer feel known.

That way, the right column of the menu becomes a list of products that we can recommend based on what we know about the customer. We can relate the benefits of the products to the customer in a personal way, creating value and more product enrollment.

LEARN MORE: F&I Training Fundamentals