The F&I department (finance and insurance) is a highly important source of profitability for dealerships. With each sale, it helps auto dealers earn money in several different ways. In the COVID-19 era, financing and add-ons have become key elements of the dealer's revenue.
With the right training, F&I experts can improve customer satisfaction, drive sales, and maximize F&I profits. By focusing on providing this type of training, HR leaders can empower these specialists and help them become an integral part of the company's success.
What Is Auto Dealer Finance Training?
Auto dealer finance training focuses on helping F&I team members hone their expertise. During the training process, your staff learns:
- How to interact with customers to increase the conversion rate.
- About various financing opportunities for the customers.
- About the nuances of sales contracts.
- How to arrange financing terms that generate maximum profit from interest for the dealership.
- Add-on product characteristics and nuances.
- How to control the sale and work in tandem with the sales department.
- How to work with the sales documentation and complete the paperwork.
Auto dealer training and F&I focus can change the way your entire dealership functions, putting it ahead of the competition.
Since the customer preferences, purchase power, and state of the economy change frequently, F&I managers and new hires must undergo regular training to stay on top of their game. They should also be part of the sales and training meetings at the dealership.
How Auto Dealer Finance Training Boosts Profitability
Besides putting your dealership ahead of the competition and keeping it afloat during economic downturns, F&I departments contribute to its financial well-being. Training these team members can boost your company's profitability in several ways.
1. Improved Onboarding
In many dealerships, the number of salespeople exceeds the number of F&I managers, thus creating bottlenecks and reducing customer satisfaction.
With the high importance of the F&I department for your business, speeding up the onboarding process is on the agenda.
If you arrange proper training, new employees can start generating profits for your dealership much faster than with a standard onboarding process.
Faster Onboarding
High-quality training can speed up the onboarding process and give your F&I department additional tools to improve profitability.
Whether you already have a large F&I department or only plan to hire these experts, you need the new talent to start working as soon as possible.
By speeding up the onboarding process with proper training, you are also giving new talent an opportunity to receive F&I certification faster.
Reduced Turnover
The majority of dealerships in the United States suffer from the employee retention problem. The turnover exceeds 70%, costing companies hundreds of thousands of dollars annually. Meanwhile, almost 70% of employees are more likely to stay with a dealership for three years if they experience high-quality onboarding.
With the right training, it's possible to keep the top talent in place while reaping the benefits of working with the new experts.
Improved onboarding process cuts costs and allows your dealership to start capitalizing on the F&I department's expertise quickly.
2. Familiarity With the Modern Selling Environment
The selling process is changing throughout all industries, including the automotive sector. The COVID-19 pandemic introduced new modern selling tactics and technologies, which F&I departments need to adapt to quickly, including:
- Contactless payments
- Online sales
- Online documentation (e.g. applying for an auto loan)
As the modern buyers' needs and purchase behavior change, failing to adapt to the new demands could put your dealership behind the competition. With the right modern training, F&I managers can adjust to the new reality and start tweaking the selling process to boost profitability
Since the purchase intent is still about 14% lower than during the pre-COVID era, dealerships need to pay serious attention to F&I team training. This can help them stay afloat and steal market share from failing competitors.
The New Normal
After the pandemic and its consequences fade, the importance of training will remain. The selling environment can change drastically due to a variety of factors, including economic downturns (and upturns), new technologies (driverless cars), buyer preferences, and much more.
By designing the right F&I training process for your dealership, you can make sure it's ready to adjust to any change quickly.
3. Proper F&I Product Knowledge
Both new and existing F&I team members can benefit from training to familiarize themselves the all the products a dealership offers, including:
- Prepaid maintenance programs
- Tire and wheel protection
- GAP (Guaranteed Asset Protection) insurance
- Key replacement
- Interior and exterior protection
- Anti-theft protection
- Lifetime engine warranty
While a dealership can offer a huge variety of products, a lack of extensive knowledge about each one of them could hinder the entire sales process. Depending on the buyers' behavior and the dealership's opportunity, the collection of add-ons can change over time.
Regular auto dealer training can help your team members stay on top of their game when driving a sale through.
Financing and Documentation
The F&I department needs to have extensive knowledge of financing options for the dealerships' clients as well as deal with a variety of paperwork.
To speed up the sales process and make sure that the deal goes through, F&I managers need to have an in-depth understanding of each sentence in the contract. Meanwhile, they have to understand which financing options are suitable for each particular customer.
Even though some of these skills come from experience, the majority can be gained through a well-arranged training process.
Streamlining Auto Dealer Finance Training to Boost Profitability
Since an F&I department is highly important to the dealership's success, HR managers are working hard to attract and retain top talent. Without proper onboarding and training, it's hard for your F&I department to work on boosting the company's profitability.
With the right tools, you can arrange high-quality training, simplify onboarding, speed up F&I certification, and contribute to the company's success.
Payroll Network's Dealer People Cloud is specifically designed to provide your team with excellent training opportunities while reducing turnover rates and increasing productivity. For more information, please contact us at any convenient time.
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