To the uninitiated (read: everyone not in the business of selling recreational vehicles for a living—almost everyone), the amount of money an RV or boat dealership makes is tied directly to how many units are moving off of the lot that month. This is definitely true, but it’s not the full story. Successful dealerships are also leveraging good financing and insurance practices as a major profit center.
Wide-Ranging F&I Services
Even if a particular RV or boat dealership is selling less units, their F&I practices could be putting them in a better position than the competition. However, good F&I and moving high volume aren’t mutually exclusive propositions. The dealers at the top of the industry are using F&I as a way to increase sales while also boosting their margins.
One of the most important factors here is employing an F&I solution that is not limited to simply sending off a prospective customer’s loan application to a lender and then hoping for the best. Instead, your F&I team should be stewarding that loan application to completion so that the chances of a completed sale are higher.
With an outsourced F&I provider like Finance Solution, dealerships are able to leverage a team of financing, insurance, and warranty professionals with long-standing relationships with lenders to get loans across the finish line. Plus, all of this can occur while increasing your profit margin per sale and increasing the number of loan applications that get approved. The end result is a happier customer base, a better reputation for the dealership, and greater prospects for long term success.
But, how is it done? Finance Solution works with dealerships to follow several best practices that have become standard in the industry.
Showcase Every Product
When a customer walks into the showroom, they make it clear fairly quickly if they are interested in the brand new, high-end model with all the bells and whistles. The opposite is also true. It’d be foolish to showcase a vehicle that is $50,000 under a prospective customer’s budget.
However, the same is not necessarily true with F&I products. Different financing options, insurance, and warranties are all abstract concepts in the mind of a customer until each is explained and presented. It’s likely that the right F&I products can turn transactions further into the dealership’s favor, all while presenting greater value to the buyer.
Moreover, many of these products would be appropriate to place on your website. Anything you can do to increase the visibility of every product will help keep a customer informed when they arrive and will only increase the chances that a better sale can be made.
With this in mind, ensuring that your sales staff is trained on what F&I products are will help to weave these concepts into the sales process. Everything should end up as a single, seamless buying experience.
Never Fall Out of Compliance
Adhering to a complex and seemingly ever-changing set of legal standards can be difficult. It is necessary, however, because failure to comply with laws, especially when it comes to financing and consumer protection, can damage your returns or, worse, shut the dealership down.
Herein lies the benefit of an experienced outsourced F&I provider like Finance Solution. F&I is all we do, and we’re experts in the industry, meaning our partners can have total peace of mind.
Keep Connections Alive
Don’t give up just because a purchase isn’t made on the day a customer arrives. Particularly in 2020 and a post-COVID world, sales will have changed and become more remote, more distributed. This means that following up and maintaining engagement with potential customers is all the more important. A sale not made is not a sale lost. Rather, it simply hasn’t been made yet.
Maybe the F&I products showcased initially weren’t adequate for the customer to feel justified in the purchase. This aligns with the first best practice of showcasing all products.
Tie In Service Contracts
At first glance, products like 0% APR may seem like a tool to simply meet sales quotas at the end of the month rather than tools to actually make money on a sale. However, if you can tie in other products like service contracts that are profitable, products like this can be incredibly valuable.
Streamlined RV Financing
RV dealer financing really shouldn’t be considered as a separate part of the buying and selling process. Rather, F&I should be integrated as part of the sale from the beginning.
The best way to do this is with an outsourced provider like Finance Solution who can work with your team as if we were a part of your dealership, except without the many disadvantages of hiring an internal staff. Simply fill out the form below and we’ll get in touch. There is so much more to talk about—so much room for your dealership to grow.
