Because buying a car is both a deeply personal and significantly financial decision, the right method for selling cars becomes a complex dance of personalized offers and financial obligations. As the business manager, you do your best to both make money for your dealership and fairly match the client with a car and dealership services they will love. It can be difficult to find the right balance of personalizing a pitch vs F&I compliance. A menu of available services can be a great way to both customize a sales pitch and ensure your remain within the rules.
What is Menu Selling?
Menu selling, particularly when applied to dealership services, is when a business manager offers the customer a set of services listed on a visual menu and suggests that they choose from the listed items. The titular menu is a visual asset on which options are listed, and can be used in a large variety of effective selling methods. There are good and bad ways to use menu selling and not all of them comply with F&I requirements, but properly used they can be an excellent tool for guiding customers to services they will want and appreciate having.
How to Personalize a Menu Sale
The complete list of options for almost any service is often too large to practically enumerate and present to any one customer. Fortunately, no single customer will need or want all the options available. Truck buyers, for instance, will have no more interest in motorcycle maintenance offers than the motorcyclist will want to look at sunroof warranties. If a business manager has gotten to know their client and feel they understand the kind of services they're looking for, it can be useful and expedient to prepare a personalized menu of products to offer them before their vehicle purchase is complete. If you are not sure what your customer does or does not want, it is a safe bet to offer them a menu prepared with all options relevant to the type of vehicle they are purchasing and let them choose from that.
Alternatives to Menu Selling
Menu selling functions primarily as a visually-aided way to offer your clients a selection of relevant services. If you choose to work without a menu, there are a few natural alternatives. You could, for instance, rattle services off by memory, read them from a list, or offer your client the dealership's entire catalog of services and let them choose without menu or guidance. While this may occasionally allow for an unexpected sale of a usually unlisted service, for the most part, people will appreciate having their most-likely options presented to them in a convenient succinct summary.
Menu selling is a powerful tool, but it must be used correctly. You are more likely to make frequent sales if the menus are relevant to your customer and include options they want to purchase. Contact us for more information on successful car sales and selling methods.
