Issue link: https://read.dmtmag.com/i/360137
MOTORCYCLE Harley-Davidson of Cartersville banked $1.3 million in F&I profit alone in 2013 BY LIZ KEENER MANAGING EDITOR If a customer asks a parts consultant at Harley- Davidson of Cartersville about the extended service plan the dealership offers, it's guar- anteed that the employee will endorse that package. In fact, if that customer then asks a technician about prepaid maintenance or any other F&I product, the tech's knowledge and endorsement of the product will be apparent. These non-F&I staffers may not be versed in the intricate details of each F&I product, but the dealership has purposefully set up each employee to be an advocate for every- thing they sell. "They need to know enough to say, 'Oh yeah, that's a great plan. I have it on my bike,' if they have a bike," general manager Penny Golden told Powersports Business. Golden has set up the Cartersville, Ga., dealership so that each department works together and supports sales storewide. This is especially evident in F&I, as the F&I process requires each unit-buying customer to visit every department before completing the sale. "Our dealership is really unique in that all of our departments work together. It's one big team, and everyone works together," she said. DEALERSHIP TOUR After a Harley-Davidson of Cartersville sales- person has received a commitment to buy from a customer, the customer is introduced to an F&I employee, who performs a credit inter- view, completes the initial paperwork and sets expectations for the customer. While that's happening, the salesperson walks to each department, informing employ- ees of each that a customer will soon be on the way. The customer is then escorted out of the F&I office and over to general merchandise, where he or she will learn about how to gear up for a ride. Following that visit, the customer will be handed off to P&A, where specific parts and accessories are recommended for the unit being sold. Finally, the customer will stop by service, where an employee will explain the first maintenance appointment and discuss extended service and prepaid maintenance and what the warranty does and does not cover. "During the whole time, the finance person is in the office building the menu," Golden explained. After the service stop, the salesperson will collect the customer and return him or her to the F&I office. The customer will be carrying a form that will include any products or services the customer has added after the full-store visit. However, the Customer Path or Ticket to Ride, as the tour is called, isn't just designed to sell PG&A and service, but it's also meant to keep the customer busy while the F&I employee sets up the menu. "It just makes time go a lot faster. It keeps them more engrained in being an owner of that motorcycle," Golden said. "When you're siting there waiting and waiting and waiting, you're having second thoughts." When the customer returns to the F&I department, the F&I employee presents a menu and draws up paperwork, with hopes of getting the customer out of the office within 20-30 minutes. BIG F&I PROFIT The process that Golden has implemented in the dealership leads to big dividends for F&I. Though only two employees cover the F&I office, with everyone else backing them up, the department was able to produce $1.3 million in profit in 2013. "That's a lot of money to add to the bottom line," Golden said. She says the sales have a lot to do with getting the right people in the F&I office that are able to sell intangibles, but the entire staff at Harley- Davidson of Cartersville also plays a role. "Service talks to customers about the war- ranty and the cost of maintenance and the savings that they could achieve by buying the maintenance plan after the salesperson has already talked to them about that, so when they come into the finance office, they've already heard about it three times," she said, adding that the more a customer hears about some- thing from multiple sources, the more the product earns credibility. Though the dealership's F&I process is now smooth, the dealership didn't always succeed at F&I. When Golden joined H-D of Cartersville, the dealership was under dif- ferent ownership, and the same salespeople who sold the bikes wrote up the F&I sale. Golden, who had come from a metric dealer- ship background, knew the dealership had to make a bigger investment into F&I in order to increase profits for the store. "We started doing a little more and getting things set up, and it was pretty quickly vis- ible that it was a significant increase in profit because of that," she said. Now F&I is seen as just as important of a department as all of the others. F&I employ- ees go through Harley-Davidson Financial Services' Advanced Competency Training (ACT) and participate in role-playing with visiting HDFS reps and the in-house sales/ F&I manager. "We believe in training heavily. Harley- Davidson has awesome training called ACT and all of our finance people go through that training and then there's follow-up training," Golden said. That training, combined with the storewide efforts to increase sales, lead to a big revenue boost from F&I. Both allow the dealership to get as much profit as it can from both the front end and the back end. "Our dealership is above average when it comes to financing, but it's because we demand it," Golden said. "But we also give them plenty of training, and we set them up for success." PSB Setting up the staff for F&I success 24 • August 11, 2014 • Powersports Business www.PowersportsBusiness.com Harley-Davidson of Cartersville in Cartersville, Ga., calls on all of its employees to help increase sales in each department, including F&I.