Technology and internet access has turned consumers into multi-faceted employees.
We are all professional researchers.
We are all product analysts and reviewers.
We are all bankers. (online)
We are all travel agents, scheduling our travel and vacations.
We are even waiters and waitresses at this point due to Covid-19 rules for self-ordering on your smartphone.
As a society, we have become comfortable with self-service for many things that we relied on others to do. With technology, we can get things done more quickly than when we relied on others to do the work manually.
Vehicle buyers are these multi-faceted doers. You already know they are research experts and product analysts. They know their lifestyles and vehicle needs better than anyone and do a great job choosing the right vehicle to fit their needs before they ever talk to anyone from a dealership. Many do preliminary research on financing and leasing before any dealership contact as well.
The F&I department’s angst over digital retailing is usually about losing opportunities to increase PVR and make additional commission income. Fortunately, data helps us understand what happens when we let customers “self-serve” F&I needs online.
They use their multi-faceted employee talents noted above to assess the F&I products presented to them online. The low-pressure process allows dealers to easily use “buyer psychology” to offer perfect presentations to lead to more sales and a higher profit margin.
One aspect of consumer “buyer psychology” is that when they are presented a few comparative offers, let’s say four financing offers, they do their comparative analysis between the products offered. They select the best offer/product for their needs among the four presented and usually didn’t go outside of comparing those four offers/products.
So, when four financing offers are presented, and ALL have a full spread margin for you to work with, they will likely pick the monthly payment or rate they feel is best for their needs. No negotiations on YOUR margin, helping you increase your PVR and commission.
Not only that, our data says that customers are 8% more likely to accept your in-house financing offers. More in-house deals mean more commission income for you!
We know change can be scary but look at your self-serve habits and preferences. I guarantee that you are a consumer when you are not working deals and helping people finance and lease vehicles. You will start seeing and understanding your self-service actions.
There is one last significant benefit to a quality Retail Operating System that allows you to work online deals as well as showroom deals.
Customers do the data entry work, saving you time. The CreditIQ Retail Operating System is integrated with your current F&I software, DMS, CRM, DealerTrack, RouteOne, etc., so you never have to re-key data between platforms. This also helps you save time on each deal and prevents fat finger errors. The added speed and efficiency is allowing F&I managers to handle more deals per month. Depending on volume, F&I managers can process a few more deals a month to a few more a day. You can do the math for your situation and the monthly commission income these additional deals add to your bank account.
If you are interested in learning how CreditIQ’s Retail Operating System can help increase your monthly income, please reach out to us at – sales@creditiq.com.
