Nissan Motors Leasing- Attention Nissan FInance Managers I need your help!

[Anonymous]

Hey guys, I have a question for my fellow car guys out there.

I'm a salesman for a different brand but have a current Nissan lease. I got approved last time with a low 600's score and had my credit take a hit after I left someone else close a few accounts that were paid up and never late, then I had 3 missed payments over 30 days with Nissan when I was disabled. I am on time now and love my Nissan, I want another Maxima again.

I know Nissan has a loyalty program and will extend an offer if you've been in good standing with them. My question is: With the 3 late payments, will they extend that to me? I know banks don't care about circumstances (was disabled and had my fiance committ suicide so hit some hard times) but now I'm in a good place and have started to rebuild my credit, getting it up to 598 a month ago. It  then fell by almost 50 points in one day by getting approved for a credit card for $1000 that I was only at $400 before.

If I wouldn't get approved that way, would a co-signor with 740 and above credit qualify me? If htey're like KIA, they won't have anyone with a low score on there.

Any help or ideas would be great. My lease is up in Feb and I am over miles but budgeted for it and plan to put down $4k. I put down $5k last time with $3k inequity rolled in at $435/mo.

As a sales guy, I see this stuff everyday, but you probably see that they hide this info from sales guys for fear that we'll explain it to customers! At least at my dealerships, which I've been doing for almost 5 years now. Thank you veyr much for any help!

[Creditaddict]

You still have lots of time to continue working on building your credit... I wouldn't worry about it.

[Anonymous]

So you think in7 months id be able to get it up 70 or80 points? I am making all my payments hace 2 credit cards and I'm on another.

I've read all these articles and I still don't know how else I can repair it...

Thanks for the reassurance tho

[Appleman]

If you are at a dealership you need to start hanging out with the finance guys. They can give you the insider track on what needs top be done with getting you approved.

3 30 days late will not look good to any lender but some days they need to make a sale.

Sorry to hear about your hard times, glad to hear life is looking up. Don't miss any more payments.

Honestly check out a budgeting program so you stop the paycheck to paycheck living. As always I recommend YNAB but at this point any budget program will be better than no plan.

Good luck

[Anonymous]

If you go to a Nissan Dealership and have them pull a payoff from Dealertrack it will show if there is a preapproval and a max payment amount you qualify for on the payoff request sheet.  I'm not sure who told you that Kia or Nissan doesn't want anyone with not perfect credit on the app.  Kia and Nissan are two of the easier captive lenders to add someone with sub-prime credit to the application only behind Chrysler Capital.  If you have a strong Co-Ap and have been current for the last 6 months to a year you will have no problem getting approved by NMAC...and most finance managers don't hide this information from salespeople because you might tell the customer but because it's not the salespersons job to discuss financial terms with them.  It's the salespersons job to sell the car and the value of the car...if they have financing questions you should have the F&I manager explain it to them.  Everyone has their respective jobs in a dealership and Rates, Terms, Application, and structure of the deal is not the in the job description of most salespeople.  You will be fine getting a new vehicle with NMAC with a Co-Ap and possibly on your own!

[Anonymous]

Thanks for the info. 

In my experience, KIA is very tough to get leased and wouldn't lease a customer with a 650 score recently. I know there's different factors involved but it's one reason why even though I sell KIA's for 5 years I didn't want to go with one. (plus I have a love for the Maxima's recent designs, this will be my 4th since I was 17.)

Can I pull it off my dealertrack even though I'm not a Nissan dealership?

And I get that FI managers don't tell us because we're not supposed to talk terms with customers, but I try to learn as much as I can because I'd like to get into that part of the business and don't want to sell cars my entire career, if I stick with this field. 

Thank you for the info though. I really hope this goes smoothly. I am over on miles by 8k, but I have that factored in and of course I'm more realistic than others knowing how things work. My scores are actually 620 EP and TU, and a 662 on EQ Auto 8 Bureaus. 

Will they pull EQ in New Jersey? If so, that will help my tier. I'm not sure which tier I got last time as I just had my dealership give me an offer and then the guys down the road beat it by over $2k on trade and payments came out to be $50 less a month.

Have a good end of Summer selling.

[Anonymous]

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@Anonymous wrote:

If you go to a Nissan Dealership and have them pull a payoff from Dealertrack it will show if there is a preapproval and a max payment amount you qualify for on the payoff request sheet.  I'm not sure who told you that Kia or Nissan doesn't want anyone with not perfect credit on the app.  Kia and Nissan are two of the easier captive lenders to add someone with sub-prime credit to the application only behind Chrysler Capital.  If you have a strong Co-Ap and have been current for the last 6 months to a year you will have no problem getting approved by NMAC...and most finance managers don't hide this information from salespeople because you might tell the customer but because it's not the salespersons job to discuss financial terms with them.  It's the salespersons job to sell the car and the value of the car...if they have financing questions you should have the F&I manager explain it to them.  Everyone has their respective jobs in a dealership and Rates, Terms, Application, and structure of the deal is not the in the job description of most salespeople.  You will be fine getting a new vehicle with NMAC with a Co-Ap and possibly on your own!

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I understand what you're saying regarding the different roles in the sales department but I do have some areas that I disagree with you about.  I spent 17 years in auto sales (including NIssan) and had just about every role there was from noob sales person, F&I, F&I Manager, Sales Manager and finally as a General Sales Manager before I moved onto other adventures.  One of the single biggest complaints/fears of auto buyers is this concept that the sales person has to play stupid about interest rates/money factors, etc, etc and that has to be left to the big bad F&I person in the back room.  

During my last new vehicle purchase in 2015, I experienced this even though they knew of my experience and I briefly worked with the sales manager. They pulled some of the same b.s. and wouldn't allow the sales rep to tell me what rate I would get so I ended up using USAA.  I would have completely walked out except they had the only vehicle in the color I wanted.

Today's consumers are far smarter than days in the past and they want to be able to deal with sales people who can talk to them about payments because that is part of selling the value of the car.  That is why you see so many people, far more than ever, prearrange their own financing so that they don't have to experience that process.  Nothing will make a customer lose interest and go elsewhere quicker than being told that the sales person who they have spent time with isn't allowed to discuss that part of the auto buying process.  In my experience the dealerships that allowed salespeople to discuss all aspects of the auto buying process had higher customer satisfaction rates and repeat customers.  That is especially true of the more expensive vehicles.

Of course if you're a salesperson you have to follow the rules of whatever dealership you work in but there are lot of them and I would only work in one that allowed the sales reps some ability to discuss financing.

[Anonymous]

I totally agree with you. I was trained being able to do all of the areas that you speak about and you're totally right that it is ridiculous to not have a sales guy talk about financing. Its a huge part of handling objections and bypassing concerns and not getting derailed. My new GM is an old school guy who wants us to qualify ppl asking they're budget, money down, etc.

I despise the order takers that have the manager close and basically do their job for them. They just basically do the demo and then have a weak ass question "see what we can do?" Haha

[Anonymous]

@gambs44 If that is how you were trained then so be it...but if I were a customer and asked a question about financing I would hope that they would involve the Finance Manager because they are the ones that are up to date with lender programs. If a salesperson quotes a "Rate" to a customer based on what the customer "estimates" their score to be and what a salesperson "believes" to be the expected rate than it blows all accountability with the process. Unless the rate is an Incentivized Rate such as 0% or 0.9% than a guess is all it would be...and what if they guess wrong and the customer leaves based on a guess? Most people on this site would rather go to the dentist then offer credit information to a dealership.

In my short time in the car business (12 years / I'm 33) I've had so many people come to the dealership and tell me they are a 690 credit score...when In fact that is a Credit Karma score and they are in fact a 580 Auto Fico which lenders pull. If they had been quoted a rate based on a 690 they would blow out and leave furious at the rate that they actually qualified for.

[Anonymous]

That's a long time. I'm also 33, but fell into this only 5 years ago. I see your point. It looks like I didn't explain myself very well in my last posts. 

I didn't mean that I would give exact rates, terms, incentives etc, I'll range them and quickly bypass. In negotiations, that's a different beast. Depends on every customer. I'm not a total idiot here, I do know about F and I, in my OP I was referring to NIssan in particular as I don't work at a Nissan dealership. KIA and Toyota are both completely different in their approaches, Toyota will lease down in the 500's and KIA has trouble below 650. See it all the time.

What I am trained to do, and have learned to be the best practice is to bypass questions on price, rate, term etc and set them aside until I've had a chance to build value in the vehicle and not make it all about rate or price. This is similar to. "I understand you want all the right info to fit your budget. Don't worry. I will go over all of that when we get back. We are a full disclosure dealership, but first let's make sure this is the right car for you. Btw, did you like the leather or are you still ok with the cloth interior?" Then proceed with the demo/test drive.

I've been selling for 5 years. I'm a very good salesman and have a ton of repeats and referrals. I barely take any walk in traffic anymore. My experience is that MOST customers want to tell me about their credit and the bottom line is you HAVE to at one point or another. Customers on this site are the exception, and they are more aware than others. Buying a car doesn't have to be difficult and customers are to blame for this as much as dealerships are. It's an arms race and with all of the information out there, it actually makes it harder because people think we have no right to make any money on a car, and that for some reason they're special. It's the snowflake syndrome.

Of course 90% of ups are using Credit Karma which is complete BS and you learn how to sniff that out quick by a quick profiling, who they're finanicng their current vehicle with, if they've financed before, know about leasing, etc.

In fact, nearly all of my customers that have turned out to have less than a 680 credit score tell me up front. 

It's not a one size fit's all approach. The number one job of mine is to sell the customer on the dealership, the car, and myself. Avoid any discounts or talking price (meaning getting into deep conversation and negotiating before it's time) and get a commitment to purchase the vehicle by using a variety of closing questions, statements and actions.