#preloading

Ancillary productsAncillary productsVSC’s, GAP, prepaid maintenance are all products that SHOULD be easy to sell. Any F&I manager worth their salt should be able to seamlessly explain the benefits of those protections in the context of the car they chose and be able to pivot in the face of any objection.

But there is one product that has always been a tough sell and not really due to its actual purpose but rather HOW F&I has historically sold it in decades past.

Window etch has been the subject of lawsuits against dealers big & small due to inflated pricing and in some cases, slipping it in payments (payment packing) without proper disclosure. Worse still are the dealers who charged for it and never actually DID the etch to begin with.

Here come the ‘tips’ on how to ethically sell this valuable service and have your customers be happy to have it…

A Fair Price: This is not the product you want to hold an enormous amount of gross on. Think of this as an affordable protection for your customer and price it as such. With the right administrator’s base plan, you can still get a nice margin on most deliveries and not make the customer feel like they are overpaying.

Re-Brand It: No, you can’t leave out the word ‘etch’ because that is what your store does…it etches the windows to make it harder to chop the car after theft. But you CAN brand it in a way that highlights the biggest benefit with a word like ‘security’. Consider branding it as ‘Security Etch Coding’ or ‘Window Etch Security Protection’. Sometimes a simple change in semantics can make a big difference in how it’s perceived by the customer.

Get Sales Help: The sales team can help F&I in the sales process by explaining ancillary products like etch. When trained properly, these products can be introduced in a way that sparks a little curiosity with the customer, and by the time they come into the office, F&I staff have a more fluid way to close on them.

Here at  our TruEtch product makes it easy to hit all three of these points. You can brand it, you can make a solid gross, and we make sure you have all the training support you need to help the sales team tee these sales up for you.