Today we are going to go beyond having the right F&I process and the twelve great ways to implement continuous training in your dealership so you can make up an additional Thirty percent in F&I.
SETTING PERFORMANCE EXPECTATION:
We all know that we have the Key Performance Index (KPI), metrics all the time. We have metrics for sales department; How many ups did we have, what’s our closing percentage; And a lot of times, what we find that dealerships, have a Fly-By-Night approach when it comes to F&I. “We get what we can, and it is what it is, we’re going to get chargebacks and at the end of the month, we’re going to be happy with whatever we can get”.
Well, what we find is, when you don’t set those proper expectations for the performance and profitability of the dealership as well as your F&I department, we find dealerships falling short. So one of the things you can do immediately to increase your performance by thirty percent or more is start setting those expectations and holding people accountable to them.
COMMUNICATING THE PERFORMANCE EXPECTATIONS WITH YOUR TEAM:
The second thing is actually tied to the first one, and that communicating the performance expectations with your team, and that I mean throughout the month. I don’t necessarily mean like “Yeah, we’ve talked about it last quarter but we haven’t really talked about it since”. What you don’t track, you can’t achieve and we talk about it all the time but more importantly to communicate those expectations or performance with the team on a daily basis, on a weekly basis, or on a monthly basis. So set those expectations in the beginning and track them through in the continuing of the month.
TRAIN AND EMPOWER YOUR F&I MANAGERS:
The third thing would be, to train and empower your F&I managers to train your sales people on the F&I process that you have at your store. Now why I say that it’s important is because, that integrates and gets buy-in from the sales people and other managers at the store in regards to the F&I office, also bringing them in to the value you’re providing to the customers as well as bringing them in the whole perspective of the operation of the dealership as a whole.
GIVE ONE ON ONE TIME TO YOUR F&I MANAGERS:
Fourth, to give one on one time to your people, this I mean your F&I managers. It’s important that you give them that one on one time and that they’re actually looking forward to seeing you and being able to work those details out that they might be struggling that you might not necessarily know about; I know you’re busy, so is everybody but to give five or ten minutes of your time to somebody that is generating you a lot of profit or has the potential in generating you a lot of profit for your dealership, it is important.
TRACKING YOUR F&I PERFORMANCE:
Fifth, tracking your F&I performance. This one, I can’t believe I have to put this here, but I do. We see day and day out, dealerships that have no idea where there F&I performance was, is and is going to be in the past, present and future. It’s insane that the reality that you need to track what you’re doing and what you’ve done is extremely important, and if you’re not doing that, that’s something that you need to change immediately.
TRAIN EVEN YOUR HIGHEST PERFORMERS:
Sixth, to train even your highest performers, these are one of the biggest mistakes we see that dealerships make. When they see somebody that’s performing; Maybe they’re doing $1,300, $1,400 or $1,500 dollars a car, you would think they’re doing a good job. They might not necessarily need training as somebody that is new or has a less performance. A lot of times we neglect that person, that’s the reason why the NADA shows that the F&I office or the business manager position is actually the third largest turnover position in your dealership, and one of the reasons why is because it gets stale, people get bored easily, especially high performers don’t necessarily get the opportunity to contribute, feel important in the organization, but most importantly be able to expand their careers and be able to contribute more to the dealership and the team as a whole.
ENCOURAGE YOUR F&I MANAGERS TO PARTICIPATE IN BUSINESS MEETINGS:
The seventh, to encourage the participation of the business managers in the office and your meetings, bring them in the meetings, help them share different success stories, struggles, different problems that they may be going through with paperwork and the dealership as it’s coming in. It’s not a complain session, it’s more of an awareness where, we’re working together as a team and a lot of times business managers have the fame of being primadonnas, it doesn’t have to be like that.
You have people that want to do their job, want to do it well, want to do it ethically and want to definitely be integrated into the organization more, and if you have people that don’t, then you have to make some changes, cause in this day and age, if you don’t have a team player in your team then it doesn’t work. There’s too many moving parts, customers are too educated and the whole front and back need to work together in order to make not only the deal profitable but also the transaction smooth and efficient.
PROMOTE CONTINUOUS LEARNING:
Number eight, to promote continuous learning in your dealership. It ties a little bit to what we’ve talked about already, so I won’t spend too much time on it but really we need to promote that continuous learning environment at our dealerships day in and day out. It’s not enough to just go through trainings that were provided by the ownership or whether by some manufacturer, whatever the case maybe. We need to be seeking out additional training, additional knowledge so that we can become better at what we’re doing every single day.
INVEST IN YOUR TOP EMPLOYEE:
Number nine, to invest in your top employee as well, in all of your employee really. Set a percentage of money of what they have as an income. Whether you want to set that up as three, five or ten percent is up to you, but you can use that percentage of money to send them into training and gain additional skills that you may need in your dealership, you may not necessarily know how it’s going to play out in the position that they’re currently in, but again these are assets that you’re adding to the dealership in the whole organization.
CONSISTENTLY ANALYZE OUR STAFF:
Number ten is that we consistently analyze our staff. Actually a great friend of mine talks about four different areas that we judge our employees, but I’ll give you two because it’s getting a little extended. We want to track them on their performance and how they fit in our culture for the dealership. So performance and fit are something that’s important to talk about day in and day out.
MAKE A STRATEGIC PLAN:
Number eleven is that we want to make a strategic plan involving our entire department, this includes sales, service and F&I.
SCHEDULE A PHONE CALL WITH US:
Number twelve, the best way that you can impact your dealership’s bottom line in F&I is by scheduling a phone call with us at F&I DIrect, we have as you a know a goal of a thousand dealerships generate at least thirty percent more profits in F&I and we won’t stop or rest until we accomplish that.
