What a subprime customer is actually afraid of
It is not the rate. It is being told no in front of someone, again. Everything about how you open the conversation should account for that.
A customer with damaged credit walking into a finance office is not primarily worried about the interest rate. They are worried about the moment where somebody looks at a screen, pauses, and their face changes.
Most of them have had that moment before. Sometimes in front of their spouse. Sometimes in front of their kids. It is not an abstract fear, it is a memory, and it is the single largest force acting on that conversation.
Why they ask about rate first
They usually do not care about the answer. Asking about rate is a way of finding out whether you are going to be straight with them without having to ask the actual question, which is am I going to be embarrassed here.
Which is why answering the rate question with a number is almost always the wrong move, and not for the reason most managers think. It is not just that you cannot quote before you know the file. It is that a number does not answer what they asked.
They are not shopping a rate. They are auditioning you for whether you will treat them like a person.
What works instead
Name the thing out loud, gently
A customer who has been carrying the fear that you are going to reject them will visibly relax when somebody says something like: a lot of people I work with have had a rough couple of years, that is normal here, it is not going to be a conversation you have to be embarrassed about.
That single sentence does more for the close rate than any objection script, because it removes the thing they were actually managing.
Do not promise, ever
The temptation to say you will be fine or we will get you approved is enormous, especially once you like the customer. Do not. A promise you cannot keep is worse for this specific customer than for any other, because it recreates exactly the moment they were afraid of, with you as the one who caused it.
The honest version is better and it works better. I do not want to guess and steer you wrong. Let me get the file in front of the right people and I will tell you exactly where we are.
Be specific about what happens next
Uncertainty is the fuel for the fear. A customer who knows what the next three steps are, and roughly when each one happens, will wait patiently through things that would otherwise make them ghost you.
The operational version of all this
Everything above is a training point, which means it survives exactly as long as the person who was trained. The stores that hold it consistently are the ones that build it into how the first contact happens, so a customer gets the same handling on a Sunday night from an overflowing queue as they do from your best manager on a quiet Tuesday.