Dealership ditched the script, started talking to customers ‘like a human being' and found success

Germain Toyota of Naples had figured out how to conduct vehicle sales digitally in early 2020. But the achievement raised a new challenge for the Florida dealership: Traditional word tracks were no longer relevant.

So the dealership empowered staff to approach sales organically, discarding a rigid process in favor of having a conversation with the customer and addressing the question or shopping step on the consumer's mind at the time.

"We just roll with them," General Manager Brian Kramer said.

As a result, finance-and-insurance sales have increased, boosting per-vehicle profitability, Kramer said. After initial reluctance, sales employees now prefer the revamped approach.

Under the old scripted system, a customer asking what a trade was worth might have been required to test drive a vehicle first, Kramer said. Or an employee would be required to fill out paperwork before a customer could visit the F&I office.

But that system went haywire when a customer was buying a vehicle online. Staffers taught to adhere to a script would find themselves unsure of their next steps. Dave O'Brien, president of Quantum5, a training company that worked with the dealership to address the issue, gave the example of a customer who wanted to jump straight to buying a car without a test drive.

"COVID really kind of finalized blowing up steps and processes and scripts," O'Brien said.

Customers wanted to buy a vehicle their way, so Kramer tapped O'Brien for a new strategy, yielding the unscripted approach.

Dealership staff were taught how to think instead of what to do, Kramer said. The store's general sales manager has described it as, "They just talk to human beings like a human being."

Transactions proceed on the customer's lead. If a customer wants to know the interest rate, the dealership will oblige, Kramer said.

There's a reason buyers want to take a particular step — such as a trade appraisal or credit application — at a certain point in the transaction, he noted.

After meeting customers on their terms, O'Brien said, sales staffers now focus on five elements: developing trust; learning the customer's motivation; presenting value; addressing objections, but in more frictionless and smarter ways than in the past; and building value.

Kramer said that, in retrospect, the dealership should always have proceeded in this organic fashion rather than follow word tracks. The old technique endured out of routine, passed down to him without closer examination.

"I don't think that it was ever the best way," Kramer said.

The new technique has worked both in sales and in the F&I office.

Germain Toyota had the technology to handle F&I remotely, but employees struggled with what to say over the phone to customers. Two top sales performers who had been promoted to the F&I office wondered why it should be handled different from the organic method they were taught for sales.

That duo has "burst through that glass ceiling" and are among top performers monthly, yielding F&I profit per vehicle of $2,400 to $2,800 despite a heavy mix of cash deals and remote transactions, Kramer said.

They've done so well that others on the F&I team have a new interest in remote deals — even though remote customers historically have been seen as undesirable by F&I staff, according to Kramer.

The conversational service-focused style has spread throughout the department, and profit per vehicle has risen by $600. And the change in attitude has pleased sales staffers, whose remote deals are no longer treated as a low priority, Kramer said.

"They're all thriving with it," he said.