The car is not worth it.

So your customer is looking at the value of the car and the cost of the repair. They’re adding it up and saying it’s not worth it putting that much money into the car.

You deal with this objection by saying that 99% of the time it’s financially smarter to fix the car than to buy a new one.

Remember that most of us buy for emotional reasons and our finances are very emotional. If you can show it’s a better decision to repair the car for financial reasons, you tap into those emotions.

You want your customer to make the final decision. Don’t push them or force them into this. Give them the options of what it looks like repairing their car versus buying a new one. You do that by showing the cost breakdown over the next three years for owning an old car, and for buying a new car.

Before you get into the breakdown, you want to lead with the question,

“Mrs. Smith, do you like your car? Do you still enjoy the car you have now?”

You’ll get a yes or a no. If you get a yes, lead straight into the breakdown. If they say no say the following:

“Nevermind, I was going into how it makes more financial sense repairing this car instead of buying a new one. But if you really just want a new car, that’s exciting news.”

Encourage them to do this if that’s the choice they want to make.

We get them interested in repairing the vehicle because it makes financial sense. By getting into the emotional territory of money, we’re trying to get them to backtrack and ask about what you were going to say.

I’m going to give you a template you can use. Use it to compare buying a new car to repairing an old one. See whether it makes sense to repair instead of buying new. Obviously, you’re going to be honest about this. If you’re looking at that car and the repair bill is $5,000, and it still won’t bring it up to snuff, don’t sell the work! If it will last three more years and it’s reliable, then move ahead with this technique.

In that template, you’ll have the current cost breakdown.

• Current Repair bill, Is it $3,000, $4,000, $5,000? Put it in the template.
• Estimate the next two years after and what work it will need. This is the vehicle’s oil changes, tire rotations and other predictable maintenance. Let’s say it’s $2,000.
• Then factor in the depreciation. It’s a bit of an older car so it’s not as fast, so let’s say the depreciation is on average $1000 over the next three years.
• Add the car payment. In this case, it’s zero since they’re not buying a new car.
• So you add that up. Let’s say it’s $7,000. You divide that by 36 months, which is three years. This gives you the monthly cost of owning this vehicle for the next three years. That’s a little less than $200/month.

In the next chart, you want to find out what it’ll cost to buy a new or slightly used vehicle, like their own.

• The estimated current repair bill will be $0.
• Repairs and maintenance over the next three years will probably be a bit less since new cars won’t need as much maintenance. You could mark it down to $500 per year.
• Put in depreciation by looking at the price difference between the new car and the old car.
• Then you have the car payment, which we’re going to say is $7,000 a year.
• Add all this up, divide it by 36, and you could have a total of $500 to $700 a month to own a new vehicle.

You could prepare by doing this math before they come in and put the info on two charts. You’ll be able to show to them on paper on what the difference in cost will be in repairing compared to buying a new one of the same model and size. Hopefully, they’ll look at it and say “yeah, it makes more sense, let’s repair the car.”

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Current Car

• Current repair bill: $______
• Estimated repairs and maintenance for the following two years: $______
• Depreciation: $______
• Car payment: $______
• Down Payment: $______
• Total added up: $_______
• Divide by 36 months: $______

New Car

• Current repair bill: $______
• Estimated repairs and maintenance for the following two years: $______
• Depreciation: $______
• Car payment: $______
• Down Payment: $______
• Total added up: $_______
• Divide by 36 months: $______