GAP

We should offer Gap insurance to every customer so they can make an informed decision.

In this session we talk about hooks that can be used early in the sales process,  which then help you to explain the details of your Gap product later. 

Last but not least we then cover some objection skills.

Here are the highlights:

{04:45} What level of asset protection?

{06:11} Protect the whole car

{07:34} 2 Car Flip

{09:15} Hooks

{15:11} Phone Insurance

{18:58} Feel, Felt, Found

About Symco Training:

Symco Training was founded in 2000 by Simon Bowkett and it was his belief that the business had to offer its clients something different. That difference was clear to Simon from his days in the dealership when he experienced many sales trainers who had all the answers, but were unable, unwilling or both to actually show the delegate how they could be implemented. It remains the ethos of the business today. You see, Symco only employ trainers that are committed to delivering not only in spiring and insightful training, but are equally as happy to demonstrate these skills and techniques with real customers in your own showroom. We believe in order for sales training to be effective and in Simon’s words ‘real world’, it needs to be tried and tested in the only place it matters the showroom floor. There is no room for theory when your goals are for your team to sell more cars, hours or parts and retain more profit. In dealerships around the world the focus applied by many of the sales executives is to try and sell a deal. Symco specialise in getting your teams to focus on selling themselves, the product and then supporting this with the deal.

To find out more visit

www.symcotraining.co.uk

Welcome to the Selling and the Motor Trade Podcast, an association with Symco Training. This is the weekly podcast where we share best practice tips and ideas on how to sell more cars, improve your service department and generally put more profit into your dealership or dealer group. I'm your host, Simon Bowkett. As some of you probably already know me as Skippy, I will start by saying thank you for taking the time to listen to this podcast. Do you have an appetite for an open sales training program? You see, we normally run our sales training programs for dealer groups or manufacturers so we can get enough people in a room to make the training cost effective. But every year I get lots of people saying, oh, I've got one dealership or I've got just two dealerships, I've got three salespeople that could really go through your training program. And we're often saying, I don't know how well it's going to stack up for you. Now you have options. You could also go to Amazon and get the book Words That Sell Cars. It's a great book and we have lots of clients give that to every salesperson when they start in the industry. Of course, you could always go to our signature sales fitness training program. If you listen to our podcast, we plug that all the time. It's cost effective because it's only £299 for three months of digital online training that gives your salesperson a great start in their career. You could do that. But what is an appetite for an open physical training course? Now guys, we have to run that course interactively. It's not one of these courses where your salespeople sit there, cross an arms, just listen to it board throughout the day. It won't be death by PowerPoint. So that sounds like something you'd be interested in. Go to our website. It's simcotraining.co.uk. Look for the tab about open courses and you get all the details you need right there. Hi, and welcome to another episode of Selling in the Motor Trade. This episode comes with a warning. We're going to talk about a product called Gap Insurance. Now this podcast goes out to everyone around the world, America, Canada, lots of Australia, as you imagine, with an Australian accent, South Africa, UK and Ireland. And you need to make sure in your state or your country that you are legal with what you need to do. I live in the UK and we have the FCA. It's a financial conduct authority. And some of the things it might not be relevant in your state. I know in America, every state has different laws there. So again, run these ideas past your management team before you use it. We're going to talk about a product called Gap Insurance. Now again, we're not going to go through the whole process on how to do this because, quite frankly, we just don't have time. And also, there's so many different products. Now Gap Insurance, if you're relatively new, we need to quickly get across what the concept is to a customer. And there's lots of different levels of Gap Insurance. With Gap Insurance, you have some that just will pay off the finance. People owe on the car if the vehicle is a total loss. Some products will return you to the invoice or what the customer paid when they pick the car up. In the UK, so often dealers will sell a product called Combined, which will pay you back to the invoice price, what the customer paid, or the finance, which is ever the greater. Now, that product tends to be quite strong because some of our customers might be in a negative, equity situation and they need it. So again, that's the warning on this one. Please check with your Gap provider. Check with your management team. Can you use some of these techniques for your customer? You might have to talk about a demands and needs with your customer before you start talking about any insurance product in your state. If that's the case, make sure you do it. In your dealership in Ireland, I'm speaking to some people there, it might only be the business manager who is regulated to talk about this product. If you're in that dealership there, actually go and have a look at the next episode because you might not be able to do any of this. So make sure we're legal here. And also, I've got to tell you, I want to talk about selling Gap Insurance, not jamming it into a deal. I don't believe in this. Oh, when the good news, sir, that's fully protected. And the first time the customer knows about it is at the end. Guys, that's not selling. Let's tell people what the product is and let the customers decide if it's a benefit for them. The first thing I want to do is I want to make sure I offer this product, offer 100% of the product you got to offer to 100% of your customers, 100% of the time. It's called the 300% rule. Okay. We just got to let customers know what we have there. We're not talking about high-pressure selling here. Okay. This is just like McDonald's. You heard me say this before. You go through a McDonald's drive-through. You wind your windows down. You ask for your big Mac meal and they turn around to everyone and say, certainly, do you want to go? Large. Who they say that to? Everyone. Okay. But they don't cross the line. They don't say, why don't you go large? It looks like you normally go large. Of course, you'll want to go large. No, they just offer it every single time. I believe that if we're offering a Gap Insurance to some of our customers, don't we have a right to offer it to all of our customers? So the sales process, you're going to talk about some books early on on Gap. You're going to let people know exactly what the product is. But then I'm going to talk about the objections to it. So you might turn around and say to a customer, hey, Mr. or Mrs. Customer, what level of asset protection do you have when you're a car? And I like that phrase, what level of asset protection? It almost implies that everyone's got it. And when people say, sorry, what's that? That's something most of our customers have. Everyone knows that insurance companies love taking the money, but they don't like paying it back out. Let me show you what I mean. A cheeky question, Mr. Customer, Mrs. Customer. But what size television do you have at home? It doesn't matter what the customer is. Ah, 50 inch. Okay. Can you imagine buying that 50 inch TV from Harvey Norman? You take it home, you start mounting it to the wall and you drop the whole thing. And that smashes everywhere. How would you feel? Yeah, I'd be gutted as well. Now you can't claim a warranty because you dropped it. So when you finish crying, you speak to your household insurance company. They say, yeah, no worries. We'll send you out a new one, direct. Sure enough, three days later, the box turns up. You're all excited. But when you open up inside, it was just a 40 inch TV. Now, how would you feel? Yeah, almost ripped off. But that's exactly what motor vehicle insurance has been doing to people for years. They're just paying you back whatever they reckon they could get away with. And most of my customers want to protect that whole car, not just a small amount. Insurance company wants to offer you. But listen, don't worry about now. It's just something for you to consider later. Now, guys, that is not your full presentation. It doesn't replace the graph you've been shown to do, the balance sheet approach, the pie graph. There's so many different ways to visually show a customer what it is. But what it does is it opens people's minds up to listen to it. You see, gap insurance has been sold in most markets for, it's going to be around 30 years now. The first time you start doing your graph on gap insurance, how often does customers say, oh, no, I've seen that before. No, no, I'm safe driver. I won't need it. So you might do something like the TV. Or if you've ever been on any of our value added training programs, you'll know I love the two car flippy flip. I have to apologize now. If you're listening to this, working out, going for a run. If you listen to this, driving a car to work, you won't be able to see what I'm doing now. But hey, listen, this is a visual one for a customer's face to face in your dealership. We might turn around and say to the customer, and Mr. or Mrs. Customer, what level of asset protection do you have? You're looking for it. Sorry? What's that? Well, that's something most our customers have, because everyone tells me that insurance companies love taking the money, but they don't like paying it back out. Let me show you what I mean. I've got two identical cars here. They're identical in every way. Which car would you really prefer to buy? Now, if you listen to this, I'm just holding up a card that has two cars on it. One is 12,000. One's 12,399. Of course, everyone's going to say the cheaper one. Agree with them. I don't blame you. I do exactly the same thing. It's now two to three years down the track. Your vehicles are total loss. Now it's car, would you prefer your insurance company to pay out on them? Right then, again, if you're listening to this, two cars, one's got the original 12,000. The other's down at seven and a half. Of course, the customer's going to say, for the one at 12, you see the difference is that one's just got asymptection. And all asymptection is it's kind of like new fold insurance for the next three years ownership of your cash guy. Give me an example. I've got a TV at home that's, I don't know, it must be nine years old now. It's got a remote control with sticky tape on the battery door, so the batteries don't fall out. If that television was stolen, do you think I'd expect my insurance company replaced with another nine-year-old TV? I'd expect a new one. Do you know motor vehicle insurance is one of the only insurances I know that if it's a total loss, they'll give you back whatever they reckon they can get away with. That's why most of my customers won't protect the whole car, not just a small amount the insurance company wants off of every year. But listen, don't worry about now, it's just something for you to consider later. Now, both of those we would talk about they're a hook to talk about this product later on. And you might do both of those around the customers trading their part exchange. Or if you're presenting the car, you talk about any safety related item. You're talking about the crumple zones on the car. You're talking about the active lane departure warning system, the smart city brake control. Okay. If you talk about safety, you might turn around and say, how, listen, if that happens to your car, the good news is with asset protection, we can buy your whole new car. We can't buy your new leg or worse still. Oh, sorry, I take it. You have asset protection in your car. Again, it's like, what? Why is something most of our customers have? Because everyone knows that insurance companies love taking the money, but they don't like paying it back out. That's where we're using these phrases we talked about before. Most people, everyone knows, everyone says, everyone tells me, there's an old saying. If everyone else is doing it, maybe I should do it. Again, you're not selling it. You're just putting a seed in there or hook there. Okay. To open people's minds up to listen to your presentation. Now, before presentation, quite frankly, we can't do it in this medium. Okay. Because you need to see too much on a flip chart. Go to our sales fitness program. Speak to the company. Simcoe training. The easiest way to get hold of this is that Simcoe training and talk about the training content that we've got there for your team, if you want that. Let's just go right to the end and look at some objections on it. Okay. Here's the first objection. Throughout our presentation, we like to satisfy the customer's fundamental need for comparison by comparing how much they're paying for insurance on their car, for comprehensive motor vehicle insurance, compared to how much this product is for three years. Because so often you might be selling gap insurance for something like 500 euros. But the customer's only paying 600 euros a year to ensure the car. They just don't see it as good value. So throughout our process, we will turn around and say, hey, Ms. Customer, over the next three years of comprehensive, sorry if I could say that word, comprehensive motor vehicle insurance, you're paying 600 a year. That's 1800 over the next three years. This is just working out the equivalent of 166 a year over the next three years, or 499 for the whole program. Okay. So what we do is we're comparing how much for 12 months of motor vehicle insurance compared to 12 months of as protection. Or if you've got a customer pays it monthly. Okay. Mr. Customer is paying 7-equid a month for insurance. Okay. They're comprehensive motor vehicle insurance. This product at 499 works out at 1386 a month. Okay. So what we want to do is compare three years of motor vehicle insurance compared to three years of as protection. Or 12 months of motor vehicle insurance compared to 12 months of as protection. Or one month of comprehensive insurance compared to one month. Now be careful legislation. Most of the time the customers will have to pay the whole lot up front. They'll have to pay three years cover in one hit. Okay. So don't say the customers can pay monthly. Don't even imply they can pay monthly because they can't. Okay. Some countries we work with do have a 0% offer where people can pay a deposit of normally 180. And they can do it 0% over the next 10 months, 12 months. Every country is different there. So you might do this. But here's the first objection handling technique. If you've gone down comparison, okay, of how much this is compared to the comprehensive motor vehicle insurance, I'm going to give you some numbers here. Let's say they're paying 600 a year for comprehensive motor vehicle insurance. And this works out the equivalent of 166 a year for the asset protection. The customer says, nah, Simon, I'll leave it. Okay. So but can I ask you a cheeky question? It's the best quote you could get on insurance with 766 as opposed to 600. Would it really have stopped you when he's owned that car? Not really. Well, that's all you're talking about to protect the whole car. Not just a small amount of insurance company wants to every year. Okay. Or if they pay monthly, okay, it's 70 credit month. Okay. This works out at 1386 a month. And Mr. Mr. Mr. customer, can I ask you a cheeky question? If the best quote you could get for insurance was 83, 86, I suppose it's 17 quid a month. Well, it really stopped you when you're owned that car. Not really. Well, that's all you're talking about to protect that whole car. Not just a small amount of insurance company wants to offer every year. But listen, don't worry about it. Now it's something for you to consider later, depending where you are in the process. That's the first one I want you to try. Compare it to their motor vehicle insurance. And the line is, if the best quote you can get was 83, 86, as opposed to 70 quid a month, will it really stopped you when he's owned that car? It's a nice way to get the customers to see how much value this product actually is. So try that one. Here's another one. I tend to use this for a younger customer. And someone who's got a phone, iPhone, Samsung, doesn't matter what is, they put it on the desk. And we're going to turn around and say, the customer gets in and said, no, no, no, I'm a safe driver. I don't need that. I'll leave it. Yeah. Okay. But couldn't help but notice you got an iPhone there. If you want to buy that outright from a car phone warehouse place, from a curries, from a where are you? I'm John Lewis of the world. Okay. Harvey Norman, if you're in Australia. Okay. If you buy it outright, how much do you reckon they charge you for it? About a thousand pounds. Okay. Listen Harvey Norman, if you were to take the insurance on the phone, how much do you reckon they charge you? 1495. That's what it is currently. But 1495, over the next 36 months, that works at exactly 539. Look at that, Mr. Customer. They're charging a 539 to protect a thousand euro product. Listen, we're asking the equivalent of 1386 a month or 499, protect that 30,000 euro product. Can you see why most of our customers want to protect the whole car? Not just the small amount the insurance company wants to offer you every year. Now that 1486, if that sounds too much, if they go to Samsung, it's only 995. 995, over the 36 months, it works out just short of $360. Look at that, they're charging $360 to protect a thousand dollar phone. We're asking the equivalent of 1386 a month to protect that $30,000 car. Let's try that one again. I tend to find that works great with the younger customer. Okay. Here's number three. Now this one, please be careful. This is again on our master class technique. Okay. If we have brand new salespeople who train, I never train this on this course because you could get this horribly wrong. Okay. This is not for the lovely customer buying the last car they ever think they're going to own. Okay. This is a game for that guy that's hard work. The guy that calls you son or love. Listen, he a son listening to love. I've been driving 30 years. Don't you just want to poke that guy in the eye? I mean, many years since I've been called Sonny, but you know that type of customer and they say I've been driving them for 30 years, never had an accident. You might try this one. I stole this from a guy called Pete Smith. Okay. People turn around and say, yeah, okay. So I get that. But can I ask you a cheeky question? When you're easier today, are you going to put your seat belt on? Yeah. Why? You never had an accident. No. You put your seat belt on just in case. And you know what? I hope you never have to use your seat belt. But I hate to think you have a need for a seat belt and you're just not wearing it. Okay. It's exactly the same as this. I hope this has protection. It's a waste of your money. I hope you never have to claim it. But hate to think you have a need for it and haven't got it. And we're having that uncomfortable conversation in a couple of years' time where we both know you just need to be choosing the color of your new car by marking a big old chunk of money to get your right back up to where you are today. Listen, but the sake of 1386 a month, but the sake of 166 a year doesn't make sense to protect that whole come. Not just a small amount. The insurance company wants to offer you every year. And the time about now is just something you need to consider later, depending on where you are in your process and with your compliance structure. Okay. There's three of them. Please be careful that one. If it's not, you don't even attempt it. Okay. Oh, and by the way, if you do like it, I think you have to deliver it very subservantly, not cheeky. Okay. Please be careful that one. Okay. Number four, oldest one in the book comes from an uncle Tom Hopkins. And this one is feel felt found. I understand exactly how you feel, Mr. Customer. In fact, if I was in your shoes, I think I would have felt the same way until I found out such and such. In fact, feel felt found using someone else's experience. Okay. I always love Kevin's on this one. This was not mine. Kevin is a salesperson and a Mazda dealership in Dublin. Okay. And he tells this great story where I'll turn around and say customer says, now I'll leave it. He'll turn around and say, that's exactly how you feel. As that customer here, Mrs. Casey felt the same as you. But she said, you know what? For the sake of 1386 months, we might as well go ahead with it. They'll turn around and say, thank goodness she did. Because here's a picture of her car. It's 18 months down the truck. As you see, the car doesn't look that damaged, but all the airbags have gone off. Okay. She came into Kevin said, Kevin, the insurance companies offer us a stupid low amount. We can't remember if we went ahead with our aspects action or not. And Kevin said, I'm pretty sure you have. Let me check the archives. You're coming out the archives with a piece of paper, where it's actually on it. Okay. She burst into tears and said, you know what, Kevin? That piece of paper is worth 11,000 euros to me. And Kevin then says, that's going to realize that all of my customers need to protect the whole car. Not just a small amount, the insurance company wants to offer you. So feel felt found is just using someone else's story. Here's the last one I'm going to leave you with. Okay. It's promised me. If someone says, nah, I'll leave it. Okay. Mr. or Mrs. customer, but listen, would you do me a favor? Even if you don't take out asset protection, would you promise me you protect yourself with some sort of asset protection? Because the time I've been in the motor trade, I see these poor people. Their vehicles are total loss. They've been negotiating with the insurance company and they're giving them a stupid low amount. And I'm stuck here trying to find them a used car or car of less quality. And don't just leave it there. Otherwise people say, yeah, sure, I'll go find someone else. But then turn around and say, but listen, please be careful on something the other place you should find online. Because experiences taught us that they might not be covering the same level of cover that we're covering. I often say you get what you pay for. Okay. Or, but listen, having said that, for the sake of 1386 a month, doesn't make sense to protect the whole car. Promise me, I think it just takes it right out of a sales pitch into something that's personal. Anyway, try some of these techniques and again, check the legislation on what you can do in your state, your country that you're working. I'll see you next time. That just leaves me to say that all details of this episode and other episodes on the selling in the motor trade can be found on our website simcotraining.co.uk. Go there to get a copy of our book, Words That Sell Cars. Go there to sign up to a free trial of our sales fitness online sales training program. Easiest way to get hold of me is Simon Bowkett, food linked in. Thank you.