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Here are a few tips that may help if you are a director or GM struggling with getting your team to embrace change.

Credit union buyers are not a lost cause for the two most popular F&I products you sell. You may have to sell it for less but it can still be a win for your team. You know you are losing on the finance gross but selling a handful of plans will help the bottom line.

Here’s a suggestion to help drive more post-sale VSC’s by leveraging PPM’s…incentivize the Service Advisors.

Can you have an F&I manager with a great personality but light on sales skills? Or should sales ability be the first thing you look for regardless of how they present themselves to customers?

Ask the right set of consultative questions. You establish rapport. You get real with the buyers and get inside their head to help set you up for an easier close.

To sell GAP, it’s important to drill down with the buyers in F&I to get them to see the benefit of this coverage. Car buyers are already told they don’t need it or that their insurance company already offers it but if you are armed with the right qualifying questions, your GAP penetration can increase easily.

How can your department change that perception and leverage reporting to make everything better within F&I? Here are a few ways robust reporting can help rather than hurt.

Synthetic ID fraud has a criminal constructing a completely new identity cobbling together personal identifiers from several different people. The fake buyer is literally assembled using a patchwork of personal info and because this new identity is usually cultivated over a period of a few years, it may not be obvious to those trying to root out the crime.

Often buyers feel they don’t need it or that the trip to the local lube shop around the corner is all they need for the first few years of ownership. Your job is to convince them otherwise and you could be ignoring one secret weapon to selling more.

What are some of the benefits of working with a follow-up program for the customers that ‘got away’? Is there value in the effort? In a word…yes.

We all shrink away when we hear something that even remotely sounds like a sales pitch and in F&I, it’s easy to feel like that’s what you must do on every deal.

Dealers report that buyers who work from home, particularly ones that live in apartment buildings with garage parking or large lots, are increasingly worried about their cars ‘sitting’ most of the time.

F&I has an enormous responsibility to make every deal airtight and in step with all state and Federal compliance. They must be empowered to take it seriously and push back when they see something is wrong and not be scared to speak up. A robust compliance review training and update every few months will help make sure these issues don’t become the norm.

There are steps a dealership can take the more positive approach not only with their customers but with their staff…specifically the F&I managers as they navigate today’s tricky waters.

Preloading products to Line 1 on the buyer's order is a simple, time-saving solution that more dealers are beginning to embrace.

Now more than ever, car shoppers should have access to a longer amount of protection from high mechanical repairs.

Bundles can be created for any buying scenario (leases, off-road, etc) but a bundles for a first time buyer would be unique in that it could be a product mix to not only help them not shoulder unexpected costs down the road but it could be attractive to the lender as well.

If your dealership has ever considered building out a white labeled CPO program, now may be the right time to consider it.

Cash deal. Just hearing that phrase almost always deflates even the most successful F&I manager with years in the business. Is there an effective dealer solution strategy to convert those buyers to dealership financing? Are there ways to still hold a profit on these deals? Yes...but it’s tricky.

Does your staff know all of the right questions to ask to make sure the buyer would benefit from this coverage? It’s a high margin product but all the more reason to make sure it’s sold properly and not something that could be a ‘chargeback casualty’ after the sale.