Service Advisor Tactics to Eliminate Sales Objections with Tal Riesenfeld (Service Drive Revolution)

So we're gonna talk about three ways to sell more parts and labor with zero sales objections, zero sales objections, zero declines. And I want to introduce everybody here to one of the founders of Sunbit, Tal. Hi, Tal. How are you doing?

Good. Nice to meet you. Thank you for having me.

Yeah. So we were talking about this on an episode before, and your name's come up from a bunch of clients. And actually Jeremy uses you in his shop. And when we were talking, it's just fascinating what a great tool this is. I have experience having outside financing when I was running a BMW dealership. And this brings me to the very first point of what we're going to talk about today, of three points that I think each have their own distinct.

Nuances, but will drive revenue in different ways. And so we used to sell a ton of accessories after the sale. So the customers would buy a 7 Series, they would opt not to put wheels on or do anything and buy an X5, and they'd opt not to have the DVD player and the headrest. And then six months later, year later, maybe they got a promotion, maybe they got a raise, but they would come in and. And then they would add wheels, they would add accessories, and we would sell a ton of accessories in the service drive by offering financing. And so how much of your business is actually financing accessories and how does that work? How do you approach that and see that from your point of view as basically a bank? Right?

Yeah. So accessories isn't the biggest part. We'll talk about the two other things later that happen more, you know, the big jobs and stuff like that. But accessories for me is a want to have versus a must to have. Right. So the customer wants this. Does he want to spend $1,000 today? And the way usually we see dealerships using financing in that method, it's basically splitting it up into as low as. So you can buy this for as low as $50 a month, which is very different than going $1,000 out of pocket. So accessories, I look at it mostly as a way to upsell and. And to make the customer comfortable that he can buy what he wants. Again, I'm using the word wants purposefully and not need to go out of the whole expense today. Out of his pocket?

Yeah.

Have you used it for that, Jeremy, or you're not really. You're not selling a lot of accessories, right?

No, we're strictly general auto repair, so we're using it pretty much 100% for breakdowns and additional things that need to be done on the car. Additional concerns so. But it's been awesome.

So then that's the second one, is you're gonna sell.

Bigger jobs that you normally would get declined. And you were sharing a stat with me that 72% of the customers that use Sunbit say that they wouldn't have had the repairs done if it wasn't for having that option of financing the work. Right. Talent.

Yeah. And I think another stat to look at is that 40% of Americans don't have access to $400. Right. Before we talk about why they use Sunbit to buy this, but think about this number. 40% of Americans, $400. And I'm not talking about this period. I'm talking three months ago. Right. So when that's the case and the customer gets hit by a big repair that he knows he needs to get done, the car is not going to drive out of here without it. You know, that's where that option comes in the most handy. And yet 72% of them say that without this option, they wouldn't have fixed their car.

What is happening now with this coronavirus.

Epidemic? How much do you think your business is going to increase because of the fact that people are strapped? They now have gone without paychecks for two weeks or a month, and then their car breaks down. How much more do you think your business is going to increase during this?

Yes, so I think it will. I think people are now going to be faced more with, do I fix my car or pay my rent? So we're very happy to offer them an option. What we see. So first of all, we do see a drop in traffic, like everybody did, but relatively our drop in traffic was about 20 to 30%. And I know dealerships are seeing a bigger drop in traffic, which for me means that you have less people, but more people are using this option, which is a good thing. And I expect the next few months, as business is starting to grow now, and we all see that more customers are going to be thinking twice about how do I maintain more cash in my pocket. So we do expect to see growth, and we're seeing growth in this period.

What are the clients that you have that are selling using this tool of financing to sell bigger jobs? How are they doing it? And having such high closing ratios, what is it that they're doing? How are the advisors presenting it? What's the winning process that you've witnessed?

First of all, something that's surprising, and maybe Jeremy will back me up here. Our average transaction is $700, which means, yes, you use it for the thousand five hundred. But you use it for the $300 and $400 transaction. So when people say big jobs, big jobs is a relative thing, right? So that's one thing to keep in mind. It's not getting used only for last resort. Now, you asked a great question, and the funny story is you can have two dealerships, one next to each other, same car make, same brand, same product. Right. And performing differently. And the biggest thing first of all is, do you offer this? Right. When a customer walks into the dealership to buy a car, they know they're going to have six ways to finance it. It's not that obvious when they go in to fix their car, right? So the first thing is just, Chris, do you offer to the customers? Does the customer know there's an option? That's the number one thing. The second thing is, when do you offer? Because if I wait for Jeremy to say, no, thank you, I can't afford it, and then I offer it. Jeremy's on defense at this point, and he might just want to end that conversation, and he's not listening. When I say no, I stop listening. I don't know about you guys. So one of the things that we see is that the advisors and the dealerships that do the best with this, they relatively offered this upfront before a problem even came. And one of the best practices is, you know, when you do the 360 inspection, just let the customer know, hey, Mr. Customer, if we find anything today, we have payment plans. That's all. You don't need to do more than that. I always tell the customer heard you, right? But then when the price comes into play, then he can go in and lean on that and ask you, hey, tell me more about that payment plan that makes sense.

So you got to educate them up front, kind of. You got to open the door.

100%.

Yeah, Jeremy.

Yeah. I think, Tal, you're absolutely right. I think, Chris, one of the things that a lot of advisors fail on with additional finances, they use it as a life ring. They try to use it to save the sale, and that's the absolute wrong time to do it. And Tal's absolutely right. When a customer says no, they said no. And basically, whether it's the reflex or not, you're pushing against resistance, and you don't want to get in that battle with the customer. So the way that I, you know, I go back to my days when I took over my very first gas station. How did I grow sales so fast? Well, I went out on the gas drive, and every customer had an oil company card, had a $700 credit line in the back of the shop. They just needed to know that we worked on cars, and they could use that card to pay for their purchases. So this is something. Hey, guys. How's it going, everybody? He did it again.

Oh, my gosh, Tal, we have a Zoom hacker. I don't know if you've heard about this, Jeremy.

I've got one for you.

Okay.

Knock, knock.

Who's there? Etch. Etch who? Bless you. Please go get tested.

How do you find your place again, Jeremy?

I want to know who's in charge of it for Chris. We've got to go first.

We were talking about going to Burning man, right?

No, we're not going to Burning Man. Yeah, absolutely. We were talking about using financing as a life ring, and we don't want to use that to save the sale. You want to bring it into part of your pet, the dog, when you're doing the initial intake. We're different than most traditional repair shops. We're different than most traditional dealerships. We're 100% client focused. We want to match our goals to your goals. We've got a complete program for you. We even offer affordable payments, not financing. That word financing really turns consumers off. So what I love that Sunbit has done, their team educates us. They came in and did a full day of training with our shop and our advisors. And I can't tell you, Kris, how many times we were doing role playing. And that word finance, it kept coming back up. They go, oh, no, hold on. That's not the word you want to use. You want to use. We offer flexible payments. And the thing that I love is, look, get it, get approved, because you got 30 days of no interest. And if you want to pay it off, pay it off in two weeks, who cares? But at least then you have it. You don't have to tap into your rainy day fund.

Yeah.

Is that a cappuccino you're drinking?

No, just black coffee, bro. I'm not fancy like you, but I don't know that I've ever seen anybody drink more espresso and Red Bulls and Monsters all at the same time than you. I miss having you in the studio.

I'll take the crown. I know. Let's open it back up. Newsom would be proud of us for opening.

Is there anything else you guys would add to selling big jobs?

Yeah. You know, I was listening to Jeremy, and a thought passed through my mind. One of the big things is explaining to the advisors and Jeremy I think you like this, that this is an amenity. It's an amenity or offering. There's coffee in the lounge, there's a shuttle, and we have payment plans. And it's the mindset. I'm not offending Chris by letting him know that we have payment plans, and I'm not offending Jeremy by letting him know that we have coffee. And it's that mindset. So I think many times it's the mindset of the advisor, and you're giving your customer service, you're giving an amenity, and if you treat it that way, then the conversation happens early on. Right. Then the mindset is, I've got a way to help you. And I can tell you a few stories of what happens when an advisor offers it and people, they appreciate it. So I think that's the second thing. It's offering it up front, but it's also treating it as an amenity with your body language. And I think that does wonders.

Yeah. There's a big difference between it being an amenity and it being an insult. Right. So when you introduce it is crucial to that. Okay. The next one that I had number three on the list was selling more tires and maintenance. And you'd be surprised, but just like Tal was saying, I've seen it work over and over again that customers don't understand that tires are going to be $1,000. I know, working at a BMW dealership that it's unbelievable how many customers buy a 3 series and they can't afford $2,000 for run flat tires. And they don't really do a great job of explaining to you when you buy the car, they tell you maintenance is included. You're not going to have any out of pocket money. But the truth of the matter is, if somebody goes from a Toyota Camry to a three Series, they wear the tires off really quick because they're excited about the performance. And they in there at 20,000 miles and they need a new set of tires. And then they come in and it's like, oh, well, that's going to be $2,200 installed. And they're like, what? And like you said, the average person has $400 or the average person can't spend $400. What. What was that stat?

They don't have access to $400.

Yeah. So I think that we're losing maintenance sales and we're losing tire sales because we're not taking that into consideration. And I think if this is a product that you have and you introduce it up Front, you have lots of ways to go later on. It isn't just big repairs. It can be when they decline tires, too, that they're like, oh, well, you can get them done today. You can be safe and make payments over time. You don't have to wait until you save up a couple paychecks because that's really what people are doing, is they're saving up paychecks.

Right, Chris? I'll pass the question. I'll ask you a question. When somebody says no, or Jeremy, why does the customer say no? You just said, hey, you need tires, and the customer says no. What reasons are they?

Well, the first one is that reflex where they weren't expecting that they needed tires today, so you hit them out of the blue with it.

I agree with that. It's a surprise.

That wasn't, that wasn't the, that wasn't the answer you were looking for, though.

I know the answer. I know the answer I was going to give probably isn't the answer you're looking for either. But I think when I was an advisor, a lot of. I didn't get a lot of no's as an advisor, but the advisors next to me that did was because they didn't trust them.

They hadn't made friends with them, they had no equity.

I tend to agree when I fix my car and somebody recommends something, there's three things. First of all, do I trust recommendation, And I think you're talking about equity. But Chris, do I trust you? Are you, you know, are you helping me or. That's the one thing. Second thing, there is some, some time aspect here. Am I in a rush and I need to get home in 15 minutes? But the third thing is cost. Right? And I always tell the advisors, chris, if I'd recommend you a new set of tires for free, right. Would you take them? Probably. You would? More likely. So I think the big thing is just, you know, we can't help with the trust factor. And, you know, and the time factor is what it is, the cost factor, which specifically for me with tires. And again, do I really need the tires? You know, my car drove in here and it could probably drive out of here today. So that's. It's between the trust, the cost, and the money.

Yeah. Well, I always find it interesting, you know, an exercise I will do when I go into a dealership tal is I'll go to the cashier booth and I'll just say, where are the cars waiting to be picked up? And I'll go, you know, I'll go through and I'll look at declines. And then the next day I will call those declines after they picked up their car, and I'll just say like, hey, Tal, I saw you were in here yesterday and we recommended breaks and we're just trying to get better. I'm just curious why, you know, why you didn't have it done. And most of the time they weren't told until they showed up. Most of the time like, well, I showed up and they told me. And so, you know, a lot of it. And it comes back to what we were saying earlier about planting the seed early. A lot of it is in how we communicate and how we control the narrative, right? If I, if I have a customer and at write up, I tell them, hey, we're going to check out your car. If we find anything else, I'm going to let you know. I have a much better chance of selling work than if I just call them and say, hey, my tech notice that you need this, this, and this. Like, well, I didn't ask you to look at that. Right? And so it's all in the framing and the communication. If we don't call them early enough, if they don't trust us, all of those things add up to, to an outcome, and it all matters. But the fact of the matter is, is in today's day and age, a lot of people are, are ashamed of the fact that they can't afford $400 or they can't afford $700 or let alone $1200. But they want to be safe and they don't want an unforeseen breakdown. Right? Jeremy talks about this stat that the average car sitting right now, that's about 12 years old. So the average car on the road is 12 years old, needs three hours worth of work on it as it sits. So every car out there needs about $500 worth of work or so right as it sits right now. And it's not that people don't want to get it done. They don't want that eating at their subconscious. Like, hey, I hope it doesn't rain because I need tires. It's just we haven't made it convenient or we haven't presented it in a way that, that they can't say no. And that's what's great about this tool, is that we can present things in a way where they don't say no. It's easy, right? I don't consider myself an amazing salesperson. Like, I think Jeremy is a way better salesperson. Way better with his language than I am. I'm kind of an introvert and I just want to put myself in a situation where I don't get a no without ever having to be really, you know, really good at selling. And this allows you to do that.

So. And here, you know, Chris, there's a. We had an example two weeks ago on this where. And this kind of helps advisors understand how they've got to the transaction. You know, there's 10 points to this transaction. The appointment, the drop off, the sales are made at the initial drop off when the customer brings you the vehicle. So we had this Dodge Ram that was brought in and it was misfiring. And during the write up, we went through it, found out they had owned the truck since it was new. It's kind of a secondary vehicle, but they use it for fun and towing the boat and all that. And then it came to the conversation. The customer threw up an ejection early, which was, if this is a big repair, we're not going to fix it. We're done with the vehicle. So two days later, found out it has a bad engine. And this is a $14 to $20,000 repair on this truck. This is a huge repair. And we offered, you know, I basically made the presentation. He goes, there's no way I'm fixing. I said, hey, we have flexible payments. Let me send you a link, just see what you know. We talked about that at drop off, see what happens. So he got approved for 2,700, which, you know, was one of our larger approvals at this time. And here's what happened. He calls me back and I'm like, he's not going to fix it.

Right?

He's already stonewalled. We're not fixing it, we're not fixing. He goes, hey, I'm not going to use your. Find us. I found the money somewhere else. I'm getting a loan over here, whatever. But he found the money somewhere else. And that was a step that got us to it. And what it was is it got him thinking of if I was going to fix a truck, how long would I drive it and then how am I going to pay for it? And a lot of times if we don't have these options, customers, you know, if they don't have 400 bucks in their savings account, they come in and you hit them with a three or four thousand dollars bill, they panic. Like, you know, planning your vacation is more of a priority than planning your financial future for most Americans, right? And when you deal with finance and you're dealing with Money. Most people can't handle the emotional baggage that comes with that conversation. And what do human beings do when they get stressed with emotions? They smoke pot or put something in their vein and check out. Right. So this is a way, it's a door to keep that conversation open and help the customer think of the other options that they have available to them. And we have one we've already talked about. It's of part. Part of how we do it. And the other thing is this. I would have every advisor, have every person in your company go through it, use it, if you don't believe in the product you're offering and you don't believe the value of it. You know, for me, when customers say, well, how much is the interest rate? I'm like, it's irrelevant. I don't care what the interest rate is. If it helps you get your car back on the road and helps you get to your job, it's worth 50,000 a year. It's worth a hundred thousand a year in economic value to you. So it doesn't matter what the interest rate is. Let's get your car fixed and get it back on the road. Let's move forward. So you've got to.

Out of curiosity, Tal, what percentage of the clients do you guys approve?

Yeah, no, thank you. That's a great question. I'll let Jeremy answer. Maybe that it's 90%. And part of the reason that's important, if I'm an advisor. Jeremy Dutch just talked about the confidence, and I know that 9 out of 10 people will get approved. Now, some people get approved for 3, 4, $5,000. Some people get approved for $1,000. But hey, Chris, he just got approved for $1,000. And we can work on the job. So the 90% approval is crucial for the customer, but also for the advisor.

Yeah, yeah, Chris, we've had approvals. I think our lowest approval was $140. And. But it helped bridge the gap to them piecing together the brake job. And, you know, it's. It's going to be different when you look at the demographics of the certain areas. Lower income areas are going to have, you know, lower approvals and all that. But for the most part, Tal's right. It's a win. It's a big yes. And these are. Some of these customers have been declined for almost everything that they've been approved for. And this is a way for them to start to rebuild their financial life and rebuild their credit one piece at a time. And then the program gets even better. You know, if they successfully go through the first program, the next time around, the program changes and there's more benefits for the customer and it ties them back to your shop, which is just great.

Yeah, that's awesome. So, Tal, anything else we left out, kind of wrapping up?

No, I think we touched the thing. I think it's going to be interesting to see how things change in the next few weeks because again, sometimes it's not one of the things that's important. Sometimes it's not that the customer doesn't have the money, it's just that he doesn't want to put all his cash right now here in the dealership because my son might fall, my daughter, you know, so I don't want. So it's going to be really interesting to see the reaction and the interactions.

So it's an interesting period.

Yeah, no, I'm definitely trying to hold on to cash myself. Right. Because I don't know what, what's going to happen. So, yeah, it's, it is interesting. Even the, the money from the government or whatever, I applied for it just because, I mean, it's a 4% loan and who knows, like, I can always just give the money right back. Right. But it's an easier lower interest loan. Well, our clients that we have, that are mutual clients, you know, said great things about you. I want everybody to understand this isn't an infomercial whatsoever, but we do at times when things are working. Jeremy and I want to provide you guys with tools that will help you sell more. And I think right now is probably the time. I would imagine you're getting a lot of calls, right, Tal, Are you turning on a lot of shops?

Yeah. I feel bad to say it in a way, but we had our best month ever from sales for signing up dealerships. So we're going to launch 230 dealerships this month, which is a massive number if you think about it. Right.

For what's going to happen tomorrow. So again, from the usage, we see a decline like everybody else. Most people are walking through the dealership. It is what it is. But yeah, no, we're excited and we're seeing dealerships get it and it's growing. It's a good time from that perspective.

So if somebody is listening to this and they want to reach out, where do they go to get more information?

The easiest thing, reach out to sunbit.com, you know, send us a link, somebody will call you, we'll walk you through a demo. It's pretty simple. The process is pretty simple.

And yeah, okay, we'll put a Also, we'll put a link in the description too, for everybody. But thanks Tal so much for coming on. It was great.

Yeah. Appreciate your time, guys. Thank you so much. And Jeremy, thank you for using the product. Appreciate that.

Thanks for building a great product, man. We appreciate it.

Thank you.

Thank you so much for watching this clip of Service Drive Revolution. Now you can catch the full episode of on YouTube, iTunes, or Spotify or wherever you consume your podcast. If you have any questions, go ahead and post them in the comments below. Make sure you subscribe and hit the bell icon so you're notified when we post new episodes. I'm Chris Collins, and you can find me on Facebook and Instagram at Chris Bulldog Collins. And I'll see you again on the next episode.