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Dealership Marketing Dealership Training

The Integrated Dealership

Contributing Author: John Stephens Executive Vice President EFG Companies
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.

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Dealership Training Industry Trends

Your Lender Relationship Checklist

Hollis Goode Regional Vice President EFG Companies
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.

Categories
Dealership Training Industry Trends

Are You Ready for the Digital Revolution?

Hollis Goode Regional Vice President EFG Companies
Contributing Author:
Hollis Goode
Regional Vice President
EFG Companies

By most accounts, the digital revolution has already occurred. We began shifting from mechanical and analog technology to digital electronics between the late 1950s and late 1970s. However, while industries across the U.S. changed their working dynamics to accommodate the digital revolution, vehicles are still fundamentally sold today the way they were 50 years ago.

Consumers still have to go to the dealership, fill out tons of paperwork, and sometimes spend hours waiting for funding paperwork to be finalized. Conversely, when was the last time you went to a bank to apply for a credit card, or even a mortgage? Now, banks have a fairly robust digital presence, where brick and mortar locations are seldom used.

In 2017, more than 30 years from the “end” of the digital revolution, the automotive industry is just now beginning to undergo its own revolution.

According to a recent study by J.D. Power on top trends to improve the retail automotive experience, 42 percent of dealership consumers made phone calls to dealers when shopping for a vehicle. Conversely, 75 percent of consumers used the internet. However, those buyers who rely on the internet had lower satisfaction scores than those who made a phone call. The reason for this can be easily explained by the current dealership model, which is geared towards bringing people into the dealership.