Spotlight On: John Neely and Mike Hustead, Freedom Kia of Clarksburg

Thinking about what makes John Neely and Mike Hustead such a great team at Freedom Kia of Clarksburg, I realize that it is multiple factors. Foremost among them is that John and Mike are a lot like Felix Unger and Oscar Madison from The Odd Couple—they are direct opposites and it works! John is a try-everything kind of guy who often doesn’t sit still and has several balls in the air all at once. Mike is the one who works the details, always looks for new ways to improve and immerses himself in F&I knowledge. The best part is that they are both competitive and work to top each other but they also work with each other’s strengths and weaknesses to make a complete F&I department that has great sales as well as very few loose ends to tie up at the end of the month. They challenge me and their Jeram Marketing representative with questions on how to handle customers, how to get more efficient, and even how to rearrange their office to make it easier to get to everything. This store has had several good F&I managers, but pairing up Mike and John has boosted the department to new highs and fewer charge backs. Mike and John are assisted by a dealer, Mike Wood, who takes an active role in every aspect of the dealership, and participates in weekly F&I conference calls with Jeram Marketing, the sales managers, and dealer personnel from Mike’s other two stores. The managers at Freedom Kia work as a team with the F&I department and that is also a part of their success. But at the end of the day, Mike and John are individually and jointly responsible for the income they generate for their department and they take their role very seriously. They work every deal like each day is the last day of the month; and they prepare for and overcome customer objections. And when they are stumped, they reach out to Jeram Marketing, each other, and even other F&I Managers from all over the country. Congratulations to John Neely and Mike Hustead, Jeram Marketing’s F&I Manager Spotlight.