Categories
Business Growth

Details Matter: Pick the Right Product Administrator

Glenice Wilder Vice President EFG Companies
Contributing Author:
Glenice Wilder
Vice President
EFG Companies

With powersports sales flat-to-down for the past couple of years, more dealerships are offering a variety consumer protection products to differentiate their business and generate more revenue. While this is certainly a sound strategic move, don’t rush to sign up the first product administrator you find. There are some big differences between providers.  Make sure you properly vet your provider before they drain your profit – or ruin your reputation!

It’s You…Not Them

Because your customers are buying F&I products from you, their experience with those products will reflect back on you. You can have the greatest closing numbers in the world, but if your F&I product experience doesn’t reflect the service you provide in the dealership, your customers are not likely to return for their next purchase.

Essentially, your customers may associate their claims service experience with your dealership. A good experience could cement their loyalty and cultivate return business, whereas a bad experience could send the customer elsewhere when shopping for their next vehicle.

Categories
Dealership Training

Don’t Skip the Warranty Review

Contributing Author:
Eric Fifield
Chief Revenue Officer
EFG Companies

Here’s the scenario. It’s a busy Saturday. Every F&I manager is working a deal, and there are still two customers waiting to start the finance process. What’s an F&I manager to do? You don’t want to lose customers due to a long wait, but you also want to make the most on each deal. In an effort to speed up the F&I process, it’s all too common for F&I managers to rush certain aspects, like the manufacturer’s warranty review.

However, this could lead to several pitfalls for your dealership, making the F&I process longer and leaving you open to noncompliance. Under the Magnuson Moss Warranty Act, all powersports dealers are required to provide detailed information about warranty coverage before a customer purchases a vehicle for personal, family or household use. This helps ensure that customers know what to expect in the event something goes wrong, and it enables them to compare coverage on vehicles.

So, if a motorcycle comes with a manufacturer’s warranty, or complimentary coverage of any kind, your dealership is required to inform customers of the coverage. Additionally, if an F&I manager rushes the warranty review, they miss the opportunity to identify potential consumer needs or concerns that could be filled with consumer protection products. This could lead to a much longer product presentation and negotiation process, lengthening the F&I process as a whole and potentially reducing product penetration and PRU.

The manufacturer’s warranty review is about much more than identifying what the warranty covers. Effective managers use this review to identify areas of necessary coverage and build value in consumer protection products before the product presentation.

Categories
Dealership Training

Training: Ensuring the ROI

Steve Roennau Vice President Compliance EFG Companies
Contributing Author:
Steve Roennau
Vice President
EFG Companies

There’s not a dealer in the powersports industry that doesn’t wrestle with the concept of training! Everyone agrees that training is necessary to run a successful, profitable, efficient and ethical dealership operation.  However, the spectrum of dealers’ commitment to training is wide in the retail powersports space. Even the dealer that is committed to training struggles with things like:

  • Why pay to train someone who’s just going to leave? 
  • It’s difficult taking income-producing team members off the floor, desk, or drive for an extended period of time. 
  • I can’t determine if training is actually making a difference to my bottom line.
  • I can’t get my managers to see the value. My dealership runs a certain way and they don’t want to have to re-train team members after a training course that is counter-intuitive to the way we operate.