As I write this, we are in the last couple of days of March. Unless it is for a specific reason, dealers generally do not want to see bank reps, F&I reps, or anyone other than customers in their F&I departments during the last days of each month. I know of at least one of my clients whose general manager, upon seeing a rep walk in, would turn him around and walking him right back out. And I completely understand that and only set foot in a store when it is requested or they need me to bring something in to them. I try to save up all of my detail work, paper work, and industry reading for these last days. It’s actually a nice break for me and for my car!
Dealers, sales managers, and sales people rely on these days to get those last sales in that will count for the month. Many months are made during this week. In fact, you probably notice that the mood in the store is either one of high energy and a frantic pace or very moody with a lot of actual pacing back and forth as everyone waits for this car buying wave of customers to come through the doors. Dealer policies are always different for the last week; days off are cancelled or changed, hours change, sales strategy even changes.
As F&I managers, you see this week in a different way. The general thought is that this is the week that you’ll be asked to do the impossible by finding a lending source for customers who do not meet any of your lenders’ criteria. You’ll be told that you have several deliveries within 15 minutes of each other with a spot thrown in. You’ll be “asked” to hurry up so many times that you’ll start to twitch when you hear those words. But the biggest change, the change that you most dread during these few days, is the decline in your product percentages and dollar per car. For those of you whose pay plans are designed with bonus levels this is the week you consider buying a service contract for yourself, your family, your dog, anyone just to stay at your bonus level.
Now I know that some of you will be quick to say that you shouldn’t be that close or that far from your bonus levels at this point. Whether or not that is true is of no consequence if you are the one watching your numbers drop as the desk gives everything away or the bank agrees to buy the customer but with no back- end, or your last-week’s comfortable cushion drops each time you can’t give your full time, attention or effort to a customer.
Does it have to be this way? There is a school of thought that says that you can change your environment and you can change yourself, but you can’t change others. Hmmm…some of the creative Finance Managers with whom I have the pleasure of working have come up with some great ideas to spur on their last week of the month sales. Most of them are contests with sales people that pay for a certain amount of product or profit for the week. Some include contacting customers from earlier in the month. Others include a special price, or a buy two, get one free type of sale that is displayed around the store. The reason these work has as much to do with the relationship between the Finance Manager and the sales people, as they do with the payout. If your sales team doesn’t know you as the person they can count on to help them get the customer on the road, don’t expect them to come to your rescue now. In every case, they truly want to help the Finance Manager achieve the goal – and the pay-out is just the icing on the cake.
The point is, it’s a tough week for most of you in finance. But it happens once a month, every month. So you have a choice: face it as an inevitable loss, letting the self-fulfilling prophecy happen, or head it off as a challenge, making it something that is rewarding and even fun for you and for your sales people. Which will you do?
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