Dealership Corridor
Recently, I had a typical conversation with a dealership general manager about his team’s performance. He struggled to understand why today’s environment makes it more imperative that his sales and F&I staff receive specialized training. With consumers feeling the financial pinch and arming themselves with as much online and comparative research, driving increased F&I revenue is a greater challenge. However, this GM felt like he could handle what he needed to in-house.
The retail automotive industry let out a collective cheer after reading the latest report from J.D. Power and GlobalData indicating that U.S. new vehicle retail sales are expected to rise 8.1% to 1.01 million units in February on an adjusted basis. Whoop! Finally, some good news!
The good news didn’t stop there. A strong retail sales pace, coupled with resiliently high average transaction prices, means that consumers will spend more money buying new vehicles in the month than any other February on record. Cue the celebration!
Q4 is here and that means it’s time to reflect on where your business is today and plan for what lies ahead in 2016. Many dealers not only forecast their future business, but also develop plans to create a cohesive team and workflow between all functional areas of the dealership.
Everyone knows the F&I department is an important driver of profitability – they get deals bought, sell profitable protection products, and ensure the delivery of the vehicle. Successful dealers don’t just think of F&I as a department, rather they adopt a culture of F&I throughout the dealership.
A culture is a way of life of a group of people – the behaviors, beliefs and values that they accept and pass along. As a dealer, do you understand the benefit of having your sales and service teams adopt an F&I culture? Where the employees believe in and accept the value of the F&I process and products as a way of doing business and impart it on everyone in both the showroom and service drive?
It’s obvious for dealers to see the value of training your sales team on F&I products.
Your sales people know many of their customers today work on a tight household budget. With a culture of F&I, they also know how a VSC helps them stay within that budget when their car unexpectedly breaks down. Or, that GAP protection will ensure customers can pay off their vehicle in the event of a total loss.
