Customer downtime is a big issue when customers want the buying experience to be fast. I have heard F&I experts talk about keeping customers busy by printing out the declination or accept/decline documents for the loan term the customer accepted and an extended loan term while the F&I manager is getting the product menu ready. … Read more
Process change is often a scary idea in the automotive F&I industry. When dealers make the vast majority of their front-end revenue in the F&I department, changing any part of the F&I process is often interpreted as risky. Potentially disrupting current revenue and profit margins with a process change causes many managers to have instant … Read more
How would you feel if you always had a green light in front of you as you drive? Could you make it to work ten minutes earlier? 20 minutes earlier? How much time would you stop wasting every day? Every week? Every month? What if you applied the green light scenario to reviewing lender decisions … Read more
Are you on the CDK DMS platform? We all know how important it is to keep our data clean. Your CDK DMS needs to be the #1 source of clean data. When looking at digital retailing platforms as a CDK dealer, it’s vital to make sure any vendor has full writeback and extract capabilities. What … Read more
First, let’s break down E-contracting into the core elements. Bank docs Proof of identity Income proof Credit history Proof of residence Ancillary product docs Rebate qualification docs DMV docs New vehicle information Trade-in information Proof of insurance Tax docs Down payment Sales tax (state, city, county by street address) All these docs have to be … Read more
Technology and internet access has turned consumers into multi-faceted employees. We are all professional researchers. We are all product analysts and reviewers. We are all bankers. (online) We are all travel agents, scheduling our travel and vacations. We are even waiters and waitresses at this point due to Covid-19 rules for self-ordering on your smartphone. … Read more
When you drop the baton in a relay race, you lose. You often get the same result when the handoff between your Digital Retailing platform and your showroom is dropped. One of the most significant issues that create this dropped baton is when the Digital Retailing platform doesn’t integrate with your showroom platforms. Without integrations, … Read more
Do you allow customers to pre-order the hot new releases? Are customers willing to pay more for this privilege? What would happen if you allow all your customers and website visitors to “pre-order” the vehicle they desire directly from the VDP’s of your website? Suppose you think about digital retailing the same way you think … Read more
Have you ever sold a vehicle over the phone to a customer who just wants to pick up the vehicle? (or have delivered) Most dealerships have executed the “remote phone sale” process and have been able to know the exact gross of the deal. That’s what dealers want when it comes to digital retailing. They … Read more
Automotive online retailing comes with some scary issues. (Halloween post) Scary question #1 – Who approves the deal to make sure it’s profitable? Every deal needs decisioning to be cleared for the final sale. Doing an online deal with “automated” decisioning sounds super scary because the customer gets an “approved” deal that has not been … Read more