Category: Dealership Training

How to Qualify Customers on the Sales Floor

Post author By efgmarketing
Post date March 14, 2018

Contributing Author: Eric Fifield Chief Revenue Officer, EFG Companies

Are your sales and F&I teams at odds with each other?

Do you often hear sales team members complain of getting their front-end margin slashed when customers go to finance?

Or, do you hear finance managers’ despair over having limited back-end flexibility for F&I products?

When sales people go through our F&I training, their feedback is often that all sales people should go through this training, as it would completely change the way they approach sales. Many sales professionals have no idea what goes on in the finance office, or how their efforts at securing a sale impact F&I.

So, what does go on in the finance office?

Any F&I manager will tell you that their job consists of securing financing that will cover both the cost of the vehicle and the sale of F&I products. They take customer information, submit loan applications, review lender bids, select a lender that meets the needs of both the dealership and the customer, and present the financing options and available F&I products to the consumer. While much of their time is spent on paperwork, the majority of their effort is spent on selling F&I products to increase the dealer’s back-end profit.

What effect does the sales process have on F&I?

The answer to this question is everything. Think about it like this. A sales person lands a customer on a $35,000 vehicle. When the finance manager pulls the customer’s credit and runs the numbers, they see that they will not be able to get a loan for more than $35,000. This makes it almost impossible to sell F&I products, which significantly reduces the dealership’s overall ability to maximize profit on the sale.

Dealership Marketing Dealership Training

The Integrated Dealership

Post author By efgmarketing
Post date February 14, 2018

Contributing Author:
John Stephens
Executive Vice President
EFG Companies

One of the biggest struggles many dealerships have is breaking the different departments out of their silos to work together towards dealership initiatives. Sales teams tend to focus on just increasing front-end margin. On the other side, F&I teams tend to focus on back-end margin, financing, and product sales. The service drive considers itself completely separate from sales and finance, working towards completely different goals.

While the individual goals of each department are important, if they aren’t aligned under a general strategy for the dealership, they can often create tension and even serve as a deterrent to achieving larger dealership initiatives. While this may seem odd, just go with me here. To keep everyone aligned, go back to the basics of marketing: Product, Place, Price and Promotion.

Product and Place

Does your inventory mix meet the needs of your target consumer demographic? To determine this, take a look at your sales numbers for 2017 and look at what type of vehicles were the biggest sellers, i.e. sedans, SUVs, Trucks, etc. Talk with your service department to get a better understanding of what type of vehicles are coming through the service drive and the costs associated with certain repairs. The service department can demonstrate where attention is needed relative to new technology and cost of repair as well as the costs of certain repairs for certain models.

For example, if you sell a large amount of diesel vehicles, your service department can provide you an overview of just how much more maintenance this vehicle requires, and the associated cost of that maintenance. This knowledge can then be applied in sales and F&I to better promote the benefits of a pre-paid maintenance plan for diesel vehicles.

Dealership Training Industry Trends

Your Lender Relationship Checklist

Post author By efgmarketing
Post date August 23, 2017

Contributing Author:
Hollis Goode
Regional Vice President
EFG Companies

In the last five to six years, lenders have been competing for your business. They’ve loosened credit requirements, extended loan terms, provided software solutions for automatic approvals, and been willing to advance more money for your F&I managers to sell consumer protection products.

With them doing all the work, you’ve been able to pick and choose which lenders with which to do business. That is slowly changing in 2017. According to the latest Senior Loan Officer Opinion Survey on Bank Lending Practices from the Federal Reserve, auto loan demand at banks is softening while lenders are tightening approval standards.

This means that you now have to put more effort into maintaining your lender relationships as lenders pull back on the amount of auto loans they are willing to fund.

So what does it take to develop strong lender relationships? When pondering this question, think beyond complete and accurate applications. It takes communication and the ability to manage expectations.