A former preacher, Rick McCormick can be blunt and not a little passionate when he thinks it’s needed, and he apparently felt his audience at Bobit Dealer Group’s recent Agent Summit needed it.

“A lot has changed, and it’s not just because we’ve been through a pandemic,” he said as he opened his talk on how finance-and-insurance sales have shifted. “The reality is, have we changed?”

No one answered, so he answered himself: “We’ve almost gone backwards instead of forwards.”

At the back of the room at the Cosmopolitan in Las Vegas, McCormick had beforehand laid on a table a colorful array of socks as swag for those who attended his talk. Curiously, each pack contained just one sock, whose wrapper suggested, “Let’s pair up! Your products + Our training! WOW RESULTS! To make it a pair, visit booth #423.”

Perhaps consciously, perhaps not, the socks seemed to connect with his point about backward progress. Some of the agents in his audience maybe needed his guidance about how to move forward instead.

One way to go in that direction, he advised, is to help F&I managers get in tune with today’s customer, whom he said has changed dramatically.

“Their expectations have changed, completely changed.”

To meet those expectations, he said, F&I managers must achieve what he calls the master level, and he gave layers of steps to achieve it.

Infomaniacs

First and likely foremost, today’s customer is hungry for information and doesn’t need only F&I sales staff to give it to them because most are adept at doing their own research. And that includes baby boomers, contrary to stereotypes some salespeople may still nurture, McCormick said.

“We used to say if you’re over 60 years old you don’t want an iPad, you don’t want technology. Better not say that to a 60 year old … they love it.”

Customers are also now more discerning about information that’s shared with them, he said.

“Here’s what they want and what we tell F&I managers all over the country: They want more, they want more information, more concern from the person that’s talking to them.”

It might have felt like a lot of pressure, but McCormick pressed forward, elaborating on what all else he meant by “more.” He explained that more is necessary to achieve the master level in F&I sales.

“They want the experience to be better. They have all these elevated expectations. Their attention span’s a lot shorter. Because of everything on their phone, they can get an answer in 30 seconds,” he said. “After about the first 90 seconds, they think, ‘I wish they’d quit talking.’”

But more doesn’t mean too much information, either, McCormick continued.

“F&I managers need to answer questions in sentences, not paragraphs.”

Because, as they hold forth on the products they have to offer, the customer is “coming up with 20 different reasons to tell you no as soon as you shut up.”

And if they started their shopping online, they don’t want to have to redo things once they get to the dealership.

Show Up Again

Still, just because F&I salespeople shouldn’t talk too much doesn’t mean they should fade into the background, McCormick said. Quite the contrary. He related that some of have done just that since the pandemic reversed the profit-building power between F&I and the sales floor, pumping up the latter to the point that some F&I professionals considered themselves demoted, in a manner of speaking.

“Before Covid, we finally got the F&I manager out of the F&I office and out on the floor,” said McCormick, who observed in some dealerships that F&I staff got the impression they were interrupting deals if they deigned to appear outside their offices.

“You can’t be a master sitting back in the office,” he said. “You’ve got to move the F&I manager back out of the office.”

At this point in his talk, McCormick returned to a subject he briefly touched on earlier: building relationships with customers, a point he emphasized as being as important as filling one’s mind with useful information to share with them.

“Connections are 10 times more powerful than closing,” he said.

Of course, a friendly manner and a desire to get to know the customer aren’t enough on their own. Customers still want information, but not just any information.

“One thing customers want is insight,” he said. “Insight’s something you can’t get on the internet. Give them something they can’t look up.”

As an example, he told the story of the last time he had to buy a new laptop computer. Like the typical customer he spoke of at the start of his talk, he did his research before he darkened the door of an electronics store, narrowing his choices to two models after about eight hours of internet searches. Then he set out to make his purchase.

As he handled samples of both models in the store, a salesman approached to ask if he needed help, but McCormick said he’d done his research and was just deciding which one he liked best. The young man told him many customers returned one of the models but never the other one, insight McCormick ran with as he took the “other one” to the checkout counter, though it cost $300 more than the frequently returned model.

Masters of the Craft

But getting good at F&I sales isn’t the point at which McCormick advises stopping in one’s development, even if the professional is the best in the group. Instead, he recommended continuing to what he considers the top 3% of the sector, or what he calls mastery.

“Dealerships are demanding higher and higher and higher numbers,” he said. “They’re demanding that professionals become masters.”

Agents can help F&I professionals reach that level, he said, by identifying the areas each needs coaching in, helping them develop effective communication skills, regularly sharing expectations, and building in practice time and accountability.

“I don’t worry a lot about numbers,” McCormick said of the coaching. “We focus on effort.”

If an F&I manager has a growth mindset rather than a fixed one, is trying to stay up-to-date on the market, knows how to get customers’ buy-in and can help customers figure out their needs, his or her numbers are going to go up, he said.

Masters focus on people, not the products they’re trying to sell, learning as much as possible about each customer. And they also emphasize each customer’s ownership experience by making their time in the F&I office a learning experience instead of a presentation that they attend.

These sector standouts also provide current, real-world examples that the customer can verify on their own, engage customers in conversation instead of talking at them, and generally work on improving themselves continuously, McCormick said.

Agents can help facilitate master-level development, he advised, by asking F&I managers a series of questions:

• What have you learned in the last 30 days?

• How deeply and intentionally are you connecting with customers?

• What are you building?

• Have you set a goal that will stretch you?

“The three Rs syndrome is deadly,” McCormick said as he started to close his talk. “Resistant, rusty and in a rut.” And mastery, he believes, is the remedy for it.