Menu MoJo
Are you one of the F&I producers who continues to resist using a menu? Is it because you’re afraid that you will have to use it 100% of the time? Or do you believe that your years of F&I experience make an additional step in the sales process unnecessary? Maybe your numbers are increasing without a menu and that’s good enough?
I recently revisited the magic of the menu during dinner with a dealer and his family. Although we were dining in a restaurant that the dealer’s family frequented, the waiter gave each of us a dinner menu to peruse as he described the evening’s specials. Our hunger grew with each carefully crafted description, piquing our senses. We could taste the grilled halibut with fresh mango chutney. A cacophony of fresh spices permeated the air, taking our imaginations to the warm, sunny, Tuscan countryside. For those of us at the table who had never actually been to Tuscany, we left the restaurant wanting to catch the next plane that would take us there. After dinner, the waiter again appeared – not with the bill, but with an additional dessert menu. Satiated appetites aside, we all enjoyed the house dessert specialty with coffee.
Now suppose the waiter had decided not to show us a dessert menu? What if he was concerned that each of us would want some different desserts, causing him to stay past the end of his shift? Or that he didn’t need to waste time showing us a menu because he knew what we would want? Suppose the waiter determined that he didn’t need to offer us a dessert menu because he was already selling more desserts than any other waiter in the restaurant and that was good enough?
How would we have felt if the waiter did not show us a dessert menu? What if we had met someone the next day who also frequents the restaurant and ask us which of the fabulous desserts we chose? What if we never had the opportunity to select a dessert from the menu that this other restaurant customer was raving about? We’d feel like we had been cheated out of a wonderful experience.
The menu for F&I products operates in much the same fashion. We do not sell from the menu; we meet and greet the customer, we build rapport, and we still sell the sizzle. We employ a menu as a method of verifying that each and every customer has the same opportunity to say “yes” to the dessert and coffee.
If you do not have a menu, I urge you to create one and make simplicity the key ingredient. If you have a menu, I urge you to use it. Consistency makes Menu MoJo.
Dealer Marketing, October 2004, p.14