Tag: F&I

Must-Dos to Score an A+ on Your Dealership’s Month-End Processes

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This article originally appeared on Digital Dealer here.

By Susan Moll and Matt Hurst

Can you hear the pencils sharpening, expo markers squeaking, and fresh new backpacks zipping? While it’s back-to-school season across the nation, at the dealership, September is also a great time to start anew by giving your strategy a refresh, beginning with your approach to month-end processes.

Whether you sell 10 or 100 cars per month, you should always take a step back to grade your month-end approach to ensure you’re setting yourself up for success. Are you maximizing efficiency, or do you feel like every month is a scramble to close out? Is your DMS provider helping to ease the process and streamline the workflow for you, or are they making it more difficult? What’s working well and what’s holding you back? Are you accounting for all of your sales and expenses?

It’s a lot to consider, which is why we recently connected with Karli DeVall, CFO of Tim Dahle & Red Rock Auto Groups and former automotive accounting consultant, to help put together some of the must-dos to make sure you ace your next “month-end report card.”

Create a Checklist

For Karli, who has worked with dealerships of all different shapes and sizes, the number one must-do heading into month-end closing is to create a checklist. Your checklist should outline the tasks that need to get accomplished on each of the four key days associated with month-end closing (usually the first four days of the following month). If you already have a checklist ready to go, make sure it’s up-to-date and covers all bases. Staying organized throughout the month-end process is essential to maintaining accuracy and efficiency, not to mention ensuring you have all the necessary information to effectively calculate KPIs.

So, how should you break out your checklist and what are the must-dos for each day?

Day 1 Must-Do: Count Your Physical Assets.

From new and used vehicles to service and parts, every department should use Day 1 of the month-end process to take inventory of their physical assets. Over the following three to five days, your accounting team will take this information and reconcile it against the books, so the sooner you get this data into the system the better.

Day 2 Must-Do: Count the Sales.

Day 2 is for reconciling and counting all the sales for the month. To do this successfully, it’s important to first ensure all sales are completed and verify that none of your assets are missing or out of place.

Day 3 Must-Do: Do an Expense Trend Analysis.

On Day 3, make sure all expenses are in and then conduct a trend analysis to see if you are missing anything. For example, did rent post on the first and 31st of the month or is there a particular utility that has been trending high over the last few months? Doing an expense trend analysis will help you get to the bottom of these questions. Ultimately, you want to make sure your dealership survives and thrives every single month, and getting those expenses submitted is a crucial piece of this.

Day 4 Must-Do: Add Statistical/Memo Postings to the Financial Statement.

Use Day 4 to confirm all your managers’ commissions are properly accounted for. Once payroll has been completed, take the time to ensure your statistical/memo postings are added to your financial statement. This step is vital bbut often skipped by controllers. While Karli notes that the majority of a financial statement is often pulled right from the books, the rest is usually a compilation of little statistical/memo postings that give you a more detailed look into your business and how you’re stacking up against your KPIs. Without these postings, you don’t have the insight needed to measure KPIs. Period.

The role of a dealership controller is critical. You’re responsible for the financial condition of the dealership and you know all the ins and outs of the business. But when it comes to month-end, chaos can quickly break out across departments. While modern, open technology has made the process easier, it still takes all hands-on deck and a structured plan of attack to close out the books properly and on time.

Look to your new checklist and DMS provider to help guide you through the smoke. You want to end each month seamlessly, so take advantage of your DMS provider’s various resources, from training sessions and webinars to peer-to-peer learning exchanges. With the right provider and approach on your side, you’ll take a lot of that weight from the month-end process off your shoulders.

Stay tuned for more as this is part II in a monthly series of must-dos to keep your dealership running efficiently all year long.

About the Authors

Susan Moll is Senior Director of DMS Field Services for Cox Automotive and Matt Hurst is Senior Director of Tech Client Support for Dealertrack DMS.

 

What Dealerships Need to Know About Electronic Signatures

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In the year 2000, Tiger Woods became the youngest golfer to win a career Grand Slam, the original Mini ceased production, and the U.S. passed the E-Sign Act (Electronic Signatures in Global and National Commerce) ensuring that electronic signatures can be valid and legally binding.

Even though more than 20 years have passed since then, confusion about the legality of eSignatures remains. In this post, we’re going to work on clearing up some of the common misconceptions around electronic signatures.

Federal Laws Regarding eSignatures

The E-Sign Act states that a contract or signature, “may not be denied legal effect, validity, or enforceability solely because it is in electronic form”. Basically, the E-Sign Act gives eContracts and eSignatures the same legal standing as paper records. It also says that electronic records count as information “provided in writing,” as long as a consumer agrees to conduct their transaction using electronic means.

The E-Sign Act also requires lenders to keep accurate and complete electronic records that can be accessed and reproduced as needed by people who are authorized to access them.

You can click here to read the E-Sign Act if you want to know exactly how it’s stated.

In 2010, provisions of the Uniform Electronic Transactions Act (UETA) helped ensure that each state aligned on recognizing the legality of electronic contracts for business and commercial transactions. As of August 2021, New York State has not adopted UETA, but they have other laws recognizing electronic signatures for lenders.

But What About California?

When California adopted UETA, it made an exception for auto signing. However, California later adopted E-Sign, which supersedes UETA. Currently, every major provider and lender includes California in their eContracting platform.

Please consult your lawyer if you have doubts or questions about the legality of eSigning in your state.

What Are the Advantages of eSigning?

Giving electronic contracts and signatures the same legal status as their paper counterparts offers significant benefits for dealers, customers and lenders:

  • Accuracy – eContracting helps ensure that contracts are complete and more accurate before the customer signs and the dealer submits them to the lender. It also helps eliminate missing signatures, which is one of the top reasons that funding packages are returned as incomplete and subject to re-contracting.
  • Compliance – With the system flagging any potential issues, a dealership can be more confident that each contract is compliant with state and federal consumer protection regulations. Customers are protected by a documented process that ensures they know what they’re signing before they sign and that they’ve provided affirmative consent to complete their transaction electronically.
  • Customer Satisfaction – The ability to review and sign documents electronically greatly enhances the customer experience. Rather than flipping through dozens of pages one-at-a-time, eSigning offers customers the ability to seamlessly and efficiently move through the car buying process. 2021 Cox Automotive Car Buyer Journey research shows that heavy digital buyers who completed more than half of their purchase activities online, saved nearly 30 minutes by handling negotiations, contract review and signing digitally. These buyers had more overall satisifaction with the shopping experience, which can help to preserve the dealership’s CSI score and improve customer loyalty.
  • Faster Funding – The lender receives data that has already been checked for accuracy directly into their loan origination system (LOS), which not only maximizes data security but allows for loans to be processed and funded more quickly.

How Widespread is eSigning?

Industry-wide, lenders have purchased, securitized and funded billions of dollars in eSigned retail and lease contracts to date in all 50 states.

Are All eSignatures the Same?

Dealertrack eSignatures are accepted by all major lenders participating in eContracting on our platform in every state. In addition, there are aspects of our technology and signing process that help ensure eSignature authenticity and provide the authoritative copy of each contract in ways that some other providers do not. We can also offer a better customer experience with “tap and sign” functionality that allows buyers to sign one time per signing session and have all subsequent signatures pre-fill with just a tap.

If you’d like to learn more about the advantages of Dealertrack Digital Contracting, please click to request a demo.

Stay Nimble and Accurate When Funding Loans

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Auto lending is a valuable service for dealerships, with 85% of new cars purchased in 2018 financed rather than purchased outright. Dealers require fast funding to stay cash flow positive, so it’s important for lenders to strive for the quickest possible turnaround.

Every day, lenders must perfect the juggling act of staying competitive through speedy funding while still focusing on accuracy and compliance. But if you think of day-in-and-day-out contract processing as juggling sandbags, peak loan volume months are more like juggling torches.

That’s when the combination of digital and paper contract processing can strain the resources of even the most efficient lending operation and its staff. When you’re facing a significant increase in volume, it become harder than ever to maintain compliance with state and federal regulations while trying to speed up data entry without introducing errors.

Finding the balance between accuracy and speed

Before you can maximize funding speed, it’s important to figure out how and where your processes might be slowing things down. When it comes to processing paper contracts, most lenders find that manual data entry, validation and storage of documents are where things get off-kilter.

Working with a reliable technology partner to handle these tasks is a cost-effective way to increase your speed to fund without sacrificing accuracy or compliance.

Want to learn how? Download our eGuide.

Dealertrack and the Evolution of Digital Retailing

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Earlier this month, Cheryl Miller, Senior Vice President and General Manager of Dealertrack F&I and Titling Solutions, participated in a keynote panel at the Consumer Banking Association’s CBA Live 2019 conference. The topic was Digital Retailing Evolution: What’s NOW & What’s Next, and Cheryl shared her expertise on digital retailing in the automotive industry and how the technology is bringing lenders and dealers together.

Following are some of the subjects Cheryl addressed during the panel.

How has digital retailing evolved over the past year and where do you see it going over the next 2-3 years?

The trend is toward an end-to-end digital experience that gives car buyers the flexibility to do as much or as little of the deal online as they prefer. This opens up new worlds for dealers when it comes to buyer targeting throughout the customer lifecycle, including advertising, purchasing, servicing and financing.

For dealers and lenders alike, it’s driven by customer demand. The way consumers purchase things has changed, and customers want the car buying process to incorporate conveniences such as shopping online. Our research shows 83 percent of customers prefer to do at least one purchase step online outside of the dealership. Using a digital retailing solution can help deliver a better customer experience that’s in line with what buyers want.

This is not the only way dealers benefit from digital retailing. The traditional retail sales process takes 3 or more hours for the average dealership to complete. Completing steps of a deal online saves an average of 30 minutes. A more efficient process gets deals completed more quickly, which gives a dealership more time to serve more customers. Digital retailing solutions better connect the online to in-store shopping experience due to streamlined processes, less data re-entry and increased accuracy.

The market is growing, in large part due to demographics. By 2020, Millennials (consumers in their early twenties to late thirties) are forecast to represent 40% of car buyers. There are more than 75 million members of this tech-savvy generation, and they’re at the forefront of demand for digital retailing experiences. Eventually we expect to see the 100% digital deal where every facet is handled online. Most of today’s customers still prefer to finalize their purchase at the dealership, but each successive generation will be more comfortable with ordering a car online the way they order merchandise from Amazon.

How are dealers and lenders working together to succeed with digital retailing solutions?

Dealers see digital retailing as an opportunity to connect the online experience to the in-store experience, and ultimately as a way to increase revenue. Our 2018 Cox Automotive Lender Study revealed that 51% of dealers say it is important for lenders to offer digital contracting to complement their digital retailing workflow. Dealers select their lender pool based on rate competitiveness, turnaround time for credit application decisions, and the strength of their relationship with their finance partners. Being able to work with lenders via the same platform they use for other digital retailing functions strongly meets two of those criteria.

Dealers today suffer from margin compression, so they are constantly looking for ways to profitably structure their deals with their lender partners. Lenders should strive to bridge the gap so that dealers understand you are there as a partner and what you can bring to the table to assist on margin compression and the deal structure – at the right rate for profitability. We see that most dealers are looking for qualified customers who meet their lender requirements. Dealers are a critical part of the retail experience, often finding the best financing available with valuable incentives for their customers. We offer solutions to both dealers and lenders that are well positioned to offer consumers choices that lead to a frictionless car-buying experience.

Dealertrack and all our Cox Automotive solutions are fully committed to our vision to digitize the process to procure a vehicle “from contact to contract.” We understand dealers and lenders both play key roles in every vehicle sale that involves financing. A well-planned digital retailing solution gives both of them tools that work together seamlessly.

With 85% of all new cars sold needing to be financed, dealers and lenders do play well together. The dealer works with the lender and for them – as well as for the consumer. The dealer provides the lender an opportunity in the form of a sourced lead, the lender is retained, and they work together to sell cars, to the benefit of both organizations. Partnership here is instrumental between dealers and lenders.

Do lenders need to upgrade to digital retailing tools now or can they wait for the industry to mature?

The answer is “now.” The time for waiting is over because dealers are already engaged in some form of digital retailing – many dealers already use their website for leads, digital media/social strategies, and more. Digital retailing enables dealers to capture more opportunities. Thus, now is the time for lenders to act if you are trying to increase your partnerships with dealers and gain market share and grow originations.

The technology is in demand by dealers. Customers are demanding better service orientation and a solution more akin to other shopping experiences, like the way they buy coffee and shop for groceries and other household goods. It makes sense for lenders to put digital retailing tools in place now, even if there are certain functionalities and features that won’t be fully utilized until the industry matures further. Be ready for what is here now, and it will simply continue to grow. Be ready so you can win in the marketplace.

3 Questions You Should Ask About Your F&I Compliance Technology

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Advanced automotive retail technology offers streamlined dealer workflows designed to improve the customer experience and ultimately enhance your profits.​ 

These workflows can provide other crucial benefits, including regulatory compliance safeguards and protections against consumer fraud, integrated across the sales and F&I workflow.

Here are three questions to keep in mind when you’re selecting this type of technology to ensure that it meets compliance standards:

1. How does the platform address safeguards and ID verification?

There should be verification checkpoints such as red flags reports built into the workflow. You also want to make sure that you can add additional ID questions as needed. This is important for dealership security and will help you meet FTC and OFAC requirements.

2. How does the software handle adverse action notices and risk-based pricing notices?

You want adverse action notices and risk-based pricing notices to be an integral part of the technology workflow. For adverse action notices, the software should help you manage the mailing of notices and show confirmation that the notices were sent.

3. Does the compliance offering include aftermarket product sales?

To reduce the risk of non-compliance, it’s important for your F&I solution to incorporate a consistent presentation, accurate pricing, and proper aftermarket disclosures.

F&I solutions are aided by technology, but they also require training, knowledge and guidance that encompasses every customer interaction from advertising, to showroom conversations, to starting, structuring, financing and transacting the deal.

Want to learn about Dealertrack’s F&I Compliance solutions? Click to schedule a demo.

Minimize Risk and Help Ensure Compliance on Every Deal

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It’s understandable that dealers do not enjoy having to think about compliance. The myriad, ever-changing laws, rules and regulations that apply to each deal can be confusing and frustrating. But non-compliance can lead to thousands of dollars in fines, class-action penalties, and damage to the dealership’s reputation – so it’s important to do everything possible to keep up.

Engaging qualified legal counsel is the most effective approach to full compliance, but here are other ways that dealers and their staff can work to protect their deals and the reputation of their dealerships.

Every pencil counts 

As you know, a pencil is the proposal that a salesperson uses with customers to outline deal scenarios as the final agreement is being reached. It’s important for your desking solution to automatically save a record of pencils in each customer’s deal jacket.

This will give you the ability to show a regulator, auditor, or plaintiff’s attorney the progression of the deal, and will help head off any claims that a consumer misunderstood the deal. This is particularly important in that the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) have emphasized the need for transparency in consumer financing of automobile purchases and leases. For example, The Dodd-Frank Act of 2010 has a category for “abusive” trade practices, designed to protect consumers from being taken advantage of due to their lack of understanding.

Consistency is key 

Prepare scripts, FAQs and presentations that fairly and honestly state what the aftermarket product is and how much it will cost. This helps ensure that there won’t be credit discrimination.

Create a paper trail – even if it’s digital 

Solid documentation creates an environment of transparency for the consumer and a “paper trail” for auditors and regulators.

Each customer’s deal jacket should not only contain a record of pencils, but copies of every document, including all four squares and even less formal correspondence that shows how the deal was formed. Keeping the pencils record, a signed menu, and a plain-language buyer’s order reveals the detailed steps and trade-offs made by both the customer and the dealer.

Make sure that all pertinent deal information is stored in an easily searchable and highly secure location. That will help you build a consistent and transparent sales process and also give you the ability to track pencils by deal, date, user or vehicle status for auditing purposes.

When you follow these steps, you will help protect your dealership and your customers.

For more compliance tips, download the Dealertrack 2024 Compliance Guide. It’s a handy resource for questions about sales and finance compliance all year long.  

How Operations Oversight Aids in F&I Compliance

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It seems that you can’t read the news without learning of yet another massive corporate data security breach. As much as we all hear about the importance of safeguarding customer information, studies show that a majority of data breaches are caused by employees.

In your showroom, that means your compliance is at risk from staff members leaving deal jackets, credit reports or credit applications lying around for anyone to see – or from weak passwords or “phishing” scams with untrustworthy links. Whether data is exposed through negligence, error or the deliberate acts of untrustworthy employees, it’s important to have a plan in place to protect your dealership.

Dealership management should be proactive and prepared with comprehensive data security training and real-time monitoring. It’s vital to oversee your operations via tracking of employee access to your electronic databases, including a compliance dashboard.

Protecting your dealership 

There are two key steps to keeping your dealership protected and compliant. Begin by educating your employees and giving them the tools they need to keep information secure. This includes training on data security best practices about things like strong passwords, avoiding clicking unknown links, and guarding against social engineering attempts by strangers attempting to get information.

The second step is to create a monitoring program that allows you to oversee data flow into your systems, user access, user activity, and patterns that indicate irregularities. When you closely and regularly monitor the sales process, you are better equipped to step in to head off problems and help ensure that your dealership remains compliant.

Creating your compliance process 

As you’re developing your process, make sure it includes a real-time compliance dashboard within a single screen. That will allow you to immediately identify any potential issues. You’ll also be able to observe how your employees handle and safeguard customer data they receive.

Data management is something you need to do actively, with policies in place to handle data over time as well. Beyond requiring secure passwords and authentication, consider two-factor authentication that includes a complex password and a randomly-generated number from an ID token.

Manage user permissions so that only employees with a legitimate business need can access customer information. Have a plan for purging non-public personal information once you no longer need it.

A culture of security in your dealership starts with senior management and filters through the ranks. Emphasize transparency and honesty in every customer interaction and make sure to train employees on unfair, deceptive and abusive practices to ensure that each interaction with customers complies with federal and state regulations.

If you haven’t gotten your copy of the Dealertrack 2024 Compliance Guide, download it today! 

5 Ways to Make Sure Your Compliance Program Is Effective

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Compliance can be a costly part of doing business as a dealership. A 2022 article in Auto Dealer Today estimated that the average dealership spends between $162,385 and $276,925 per year to address regulatory compliance.

Fortunately, dealers can address F&I compliance more affordably by integrating a robust program throughout the sales and F&I workflow. This starts with effective document storage and includes the ability to monitor deal activity.

Here are five questions to ask to make sure your compliance program is operating at full efficiency and effectiveness:

1. Have you created a culture of compliance and security?
It’s important to train employees on spotting unfair, deceptive, and abusive acts and practices. Training should also emphasize honesty and transparency in all customer interactions. And make sure you have a compliance dashboard that allows you to monitor activity from a single screen.

2. Is the FTC Red Flags Rule fully integrated into your workflow?
Your sales workflow should include checkpoints throughout the deal process to verify that you’re meeting FTC and OFAC requirements and mitigating fraud. Always stay audit-ready by documenting everything you do and keeping copies of all documents related to identify in the deal jacket. Finally, be sure that you follow your identity theft policies and procedures (ITPP) process with every customer.

3. Does your compliance workflow include your menu selling?
Cox Automotive research has found that customers who are aware of F&I product options before they go to the dealership are more likely to buy. As these product introductions become more prevalent online, it’s vital to make sure they are fully consistent with the in-store presentations and include the same full disclosure. Your electronic menu product should help ensure consistency and legal compliance with your state laws and regulations.

4. Do you have full visibility to all deal activity?
Your compliance program should give you the power to track, report, and audit activity as needed, and from a single screen. Today’s dealership management must be prepared and proactive, with comprehensive training and real-time monitoring. For example, electronic databases should give you the ability to track employee access, and oversight of operations should include a compliance dashboard.

5. Are you consistently managing all documentation?
Regulations demand that you store a wide range of documents, including credit applications, privacy notices, credit reports, contracts, and menus, in secure electronic deal jackets. It’s about more than just convenience. Being consistent in storage and security provides peace of mind and creates efficiencies just in case auditors do come calling.

For more compliance tips, download the Dealertrack 2024 Compliance Guide. It’s a useful resource for safeguarding your dealership. 

Disruption Today: Drive Profitability with Emerging Technology

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Based on the workshop presented at NADA 2019 by Mike Barrington, Senior VP of Retail Solutions Group Sales, Digital Retailing & Dealertrack F&I Solutions at Cox Automotive

The rate of technology change today is astounding – and the adoption rate is matching its pace. Not long ago, some of the technology we take for granted today sounded like science fiction. Today, we all carry powerful pocket computers that also happen to be phones, many of us have digital assistants that respond to spoken commands to do things like order groceries, and cars can talk and nearly drive themselves.

Consumers are already using the latest technology in every aspect of their lives. What you might think of as the “cutting edge” of technology is fast becoming the new normal.

Consumers expect their car-buying experience to be as convenient as the rest of their tech-enabled buying experiences. Unfortunately, dealers are already falling behind.

As an industry, we need to create the better, more transparent experience that consumers demand. Here are two major emerging disruptors that will impact the way dealers do business in the near future.

  1. Digital tools to enhance the consumer’s buying journey

Consumers want to be able to choose the points in which they interact with you online or in your store. Having an online presence is a given, but today you must enable the consumer to do a significant portion of their research and buying process online.

This doesn’t mean that the consumer will stop coming to your dealership.  In fact, we know that the majority of shoppers prefer to finish their transaction in the dealership.

However, we know consumers demand more digital tools than ever before. Providing those tools gives you the competitive advantage.

For example, 83% of consumers want to learn about F&I before they visit the dealer, and they are more likely to purchase products that they’ve learned about in advance.

This is a big area where dealerships are falling behind the technology curve. If you don’t have a strategy to provide digital retailing tools, you’re already at a disadvantage.

  1. Proactively communicating with customers on their devices.

Just a few years ago, consumers thought that personalization and online targeting were “creepy.” Now it’s just an expected part of business interactions.

Think about retailers like Starbucks or Amazon that not only connect online experiences to the in-store/in-person experience, but also use their consumers’ data—backed by machine learning and AI—to continually build on their previous shopping behaviors. This helps them connect shoppers with what they want, when they want it.

Essentially, marketing is now a service that efficiently helps consumers find the things they need and want. Dealers who are ahead of the curve are leveraging this technology to deliver messages to consumers with the right context:

  • The product or service that matches their needs,
  • At the time they are looking,
  • With the right information to help them make a decision about taking the next step.

They are delivering a value add, by helping the shopper find the product they need – and they will be rewarded with more traffic and sales.

What dealers can do to stay ahead

Now that you have a better understanding of some of the disrupters in our industry, let’s take another look at the some of the ways in which consumers are interacting with technology today:

  • They use an app to order their coffee.
  • They use another app to order their weekly groceries.
  • They join monthly subscription services so they can have someone shop for their clothing, makeup, pet treats, razors and more.

The trend is that consumers are using technology to save them time and get them exactly what they want. That means dealerships need to think about how they can make the current car-buying process more digital and efficient.

Here are some things we know about what your customers expect:

The role of technology

When you’re examining the technology you use in your dealership, the goal should be to make each customer’s visit shorter, more efficient and more enjoyable. Increasing internal efficiency is one way to do this, but it should be done with a focus on enabling customer relationships at each stage of the deal.

To deliver against consumer demands, you must be willing to shift your current operations, become forward-thinking about your technology stack, and build the right foundation.

You can use this period of disruption to your advantage—and remain competitive and profitable.

 

1 Surprising Way to Improve Your F&I Sales

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We all know how the traditional F&I sales process works – and how customers react when a new round of hard selling starts, just when they thought their deal was nearly complete.

According to the Cox Automotive Customer Journey research, more than half of car buyers are dissatisfied with the length of time it takes to complete a vehicle purchase. Interactions with the F&I department are a sore point, so for car dealerships, streamlining the process and making it more customer-friendly is essential to increasing profit.

The same research also found that one out of every three customers arrives at the dealership with no awareness of F&I products – and awareness of these options is crucial for sales.

An article from WardsAuto showcases the future for F&I sales: customer self-selling. In the article, Kevin Cook, general manager of Straub Automotive Group, explained how his dealerships use menu selling to introduce customers to aftermarket products in a friendlier and more comfortable way.

Before customers leave the salesperson’s desk, they receive a tablet from the F&I manager to watch a brief video presentation touching on available aftermarket options. The dealership receives data in real-time showing them which product videos the car shopper watched the longest, which helps the F&I manager determine which vehicle protection products most appeal to each customer.

Here are six reasons why this makes the aftermarket sales process more customer-friendly:

  1. It keeps customers occupied and engaged when they might otherwise be waiting idly for the F&I manager to finalize the rest of their deal documents.
  2. Many customers who started their research online will observe a seamless transition between the dealership website and the in-store introduction to the F&I options.
  3. Each product can be showcased with multimedia presentations including video – and the customer can choose to dive deeper to get additional information.
  4. The presentations include accurate, up-to-date cost information for each product.
  5. Customers get the opportunity to consider their own needs and realize the value of each aftermarket product and how it will protect their vehicle.
  6. The F&I manager can take the information gathered and complete the sale of aftermarket products knowing which ones the customer is most interested in purchasing.

Straub Automotive Group has found that menu selling positions their F&I managers as problem-solvers for their customers, which is a far cry from the hard-sell approach. And it’s been effective, with their stores reaching 80% penetration for sales of vehicle service contracts.

In today’s online, self-service world, customers expect new ways to handle their automotive purchases. In this case, technology paves the way for positive interactions with the F&I manager that make finishing the sale faster and more satisfactory for the car buyer.

Dealertrack F&I offers a seamless connection with Darwin Automotive to provide dealerships with an enhanced F&I Menu process that eliminates data re-entry and creates a more efficient contracting workflow. Learn more and request a demo.