Selling the Ford LCF - Guest Article by Jim Feusi

Guest Article by Jim Feusi of Snider Leasing, Sacramento

Selling the Ford LCF

Do you want to sell more cab-over trucks or the so-called LCF?

During the time I was in sales we carried the Isuzu, UD, and Ford franchises at our dealership. Ford did not have an LCF at the time. Since my job was to sell primarily UD and Isuzu trucks one of the easiest ways I found to sell an LCF with nearly 100% success was against the Ford or Chevy Cutaway van.

Not only did the customers switch over but, when they realized it was a superior product they never switched again and continued to come back to buy more LCF’s.

Whenever, I had a prospect call in or inquire about a Cutaway, I would make an appointment and have the prospect come out for a test drive.

Before the prospect would arrive I would find a Ford E-350 Cutaway and park it in the center of an Isuzu line up so that the Ford would stand out as being different. Then on the end of the line up I would take an Isuzu with same 14’ or 12’ body and tilt the cab.

When my appointment arrived, I would take him out to our Isuzu line up and say, “I believe this is exactly what you are looking for.”

By this time you can’t help to notice that the prospect’s curiosity is starting to get the best of him.

He would usually start off by asking what is an Isuzu or a UD or why do you only have one Cutaway. I would say, “These are cab-over trucks and this one over here with the cab tilted has the same size body as you are test driving on the E-350. “Notice how easy it would be to work on one of those engines.

On the test drive in the Cutaway, I would direct the customer onto the freeway. As we increased to freeway speed the noise from the engine compartment, the crawl-through door, and all the rattling of the van in back would get annoyingly loud, and I would apologize for all the noise the truck was making. Customer might say something like, “My older truck is noisier.” My response would be “wow”, and then inquire why he is getting another one, or is his old truck going to be a trade in.

Remember that, it is very important not to bad mouth the product as you are still selling the Cutaway.

When the test drive is over, immediately open the hood, to show off the engine compartment to your prospect. Show him how all the fluids are easily accessible even though you can’t see the engine.

It’s about at this moment I wanted to get to some specifics about the Cutaway that I would merge into the Isuzu test drive. I usually started off saying something like this. “The body on this Isuzu chassis over here is made by a different manufacturer just to show you some differences in the body. Because the body is not attached to the cab this truck is really much quieter which allows you to talk on your cell phone and because the wheelbase is 20” shorter on the same size body you get much more maneuverability and increased payload not to mention larger selection of body sizes not available to the Cutaway. “Would you have a need for a 16’ instead of a 14’ body?.”

At this point tilt the cab back and open the driver’s door and show off the roomy cab and the standard tilt and telescoping steering.

Test drive is absolute to selling this truck. Do a short one if time is running out. I might say, “You know I am primarily a Ford guy but, these cab-over trucks are really getting popular and I think you should take a test drive.” As soon as he is strapped in you need to have him do a U-turn on a residential type street, point out how quiet it is, stay really excited about how the truck is handling and when you return to the dealership ask, “What did you think?.” If he says he likes it, you have just closed another LCF deal.

All LCF’s essentially are very similar so, if you know one make such as Isuzu, or the Ford LCF you know them all. I would think that if a customer wanted a diesel E-350 Cutaway you could easily show the advantages Ford LCF.