The F&I Prophet-George Angus-has something to say……. When the Boss Returns From a 20 Group Meeting It’s 20 Group season and many dealers are going off for a few days to meet with dealers having similar demographics to share ideas to help improve dealer operations and profitability. And they may even come back with some good ideas. However, they may also come back and start telling you about those other F&I managers who are doing better than you. Right? And it’s easy to get defensive when you are criticized or compared to other F&I managers. So, when this happens, the natural reaction is to defend yourself with some excuses and explain why you suffer handicaps those other F&I managers might not have to contend with. I have gathered some of the better excuses I have heard used in that situation. Of course, I’ll make some suggestions that might help with those issues. "You don’t understand, our customers are different here". One of the things you hear quite often, not just from F&I managers, but even from General Managers and Dealer Principals is " Our customers are different here!" And to a certain extent, they may be right. As you can imagine, every geographical area has a somewhat unique demographic. And every model line and type of vehicle tends to have a different demographic makeup, as well. Suggestion: Quite often, F&I professionals are simply expressing their frustration with an F&I process that still relies on trying to "up-sell" F&I products to an increasingly impatient, skeptical, and sales resistant customer. I wrote an article about this as far back as 2009. You can read it at https://www.autofinancenews.net/ sometimes-its-just-in-your-head . The article speaks for itself. You don’t control your demographic makeup. All you can do is keep a positive attitude, hone your skills, and apply your process to every customer, every day. "We are not selling enough cars". This is certainly a frustrating problem for the F&I department because F&I can’t do much about it. We don’t control the number of units sold, the sales department does. So, let’s talk about what we do control. 12
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