Crash Course

Jason Gannon recalls his first deal.

Shortly after graduating college in his native Maine with a degree in graphic design, he ended up in a car accident. He was lucky enough to have a dad who was willing to replace the vehicle for him. But when they found a car at a local dealership, Gannon says he had to take over when it came to negotiating the price, since his dad has no affinity for haggling.

The dealership salesman was so impressed with the young man’s effort that he asked him if he wanted a sales job.

“‘I have a salesperson going away to college, and I could use someone,” the man told the young Gannon. “The stipulation is you have to sell your dad this car,’”

Gannon said he sealed the deal with his dad and landed his first career role to boot. He bought a shirt-and-tie combo in a box and reported for work the following Monday, met by a different salesman, who thought he was a customer.

More than 20 years later and now the president of talent-development agency F&I Guys, Gannon has amassed a trunk full of experience and know-how about auto sales, specifically about F&I products, which he switched into much earlier than the typical car salesman – just seven months into his young career.

He shared with guests of Bobit Dealer Group’s latest Industry Summit his insights into F&I sales strategy based on both his own experience as an F&I manager and his seven years heading training for F&I Guys before becoming the agency’s president in 2021.

After experiencing the business from multiple angles over the years, he gets jazzed when he’s able to train a fresh industry recruit and give them the proverbial new lease on life.

“I have the ability to take somebody who makes 50 to 60 thousand dollars a year and train them to where they can work anywhere in the country and make six figures,” he said, pointing out that one of his trainees with a criminal justice degree displays his framed F&I course certificate above his college diploma because it makes him more money.

“Pretty much all of us in the car business didn’t get here the way we thought we would. We kind of get here by accident,” he said, alluding, perhaps unconsciously, to his own entrée to the business, that literal accident he was in in the early 2000s.

Secrets of the Trade

An early lesson he learned in F&I sales from a boss he considers being one of the best F&I managers in the U.S. at the time is the importance of “being upfront with the customer.”

When he became an agent, auto dealers largely sought his expertise to fill F&I manager positions, and in meeting those needs he found some consistent patterns. Without proper training, the placements would last a year at most, and he realized that recruits should be trained “from the ground up” to avoid the churn.

Proper training, he found, shouldn’t rely on job shadowing because people need hands-on experience in order for experience to stick. Training ideally should be structured in the form of assignments with deadline-based tasks and reinforced with pay incentives, Gannon said.

The plan might look something like: 1 – build 20 deals back-to-back, 2 – interview lenders to understand how to get a deal funded and to build relationships, 3 – write a counteroffer, an argument that converts it to an approval, and a recap.

“At this point, you’ve built the foundation,” Gannon told his audience. “The biggest way to torpedo it is to send the candidate to finance school. They forget about the sales process and focus on that. Then they’ve forgotten half of what you taught them.”

At least a dealership should have confidence in the school it sends recruits to, he said, but more important than schooling is follow-up afterward.

“Over time, they revert back to what they’re comfortable with, often bad habits,” he said. “Why aren’t finance managers talking to each other in a structured environment?... Talking about how they handled an objection. The car business, you cannot teach it in a book in two days.”

Picks of the Crop

Before even bringing someone on to the F&I team, it’s important to know what to look for in the first place, Gannon said.

Ideally, F&I recruits should have one to two years of sales experience and understand the dealership culture and basically what an F&I manager does. And their personality traits should be “non-negotiable,” Gannon said: drive, meaning they’re motivated either by compensation or have a “success story nobody can match;” able to take direction; and have an acumen for sales psychology – “to know why you’re saying what you’re saying is key to implement it in the stores.”

To keep those right people, it’s even more important to build a culture that makes them want to stay over the long haul, Gannon said.

Today’s younger employees want to see clear paths to success at their employers and to have a healthy balance between work and personal life. “If they can advance in the store, it creates stronger morale and gives a longer tenure to all employees,” he said. “That gives the consumer comfort to see familiar faces.”

Employees don’t require top pay from the get-go. Gradual compensation changes help lower hiring costs and help recruits grow over time. “You see increased production.”

He once tried to recruit a salesperson from Best Buy who was a good fit based on his authoritative product knowledge, but the prospect wouldn’t consider it because his work week would stretch 10 hours longer than he was used to at Best Buy to 45 hours a week.

“You’ve got to adapt. Hire more people and have them work 35 hours.”

Gannon wondered aloud why all dealerships don’t employ this type of guidance. “Dealerships resist change more than any other industry I’ve ever seen. That’s why you need unwavering support.” The results are impressive “if you stick to these principles.”

Candid About Cameras

A question-and-answer period after Gannon’s talk ended up dominated by discussion of a practice he suggested in passing to install video cameras in F&I offices as a learning tool.

When audience member James Ganther of Mosaic Compliance Services asked Gannon about the rate of adoption he’s observed on the practice, he responded, “Lower than it should be.”

Gannon said that although most customers are comfortable with cameras, some F&I employees feel uncomfortable being recorded, some fearing being caught doing anything untoward on camera. He said if he has a strong relationship with a dealer, he’s blunt in advising camera use because recordings can be valuable in teaching best practices.

Hannah Mitchell is executive editor of F&I and Showroom. A former daily newspaper journalist, her first car was a hand-me-down Chevrolet Nova.

Originally posted on F&I and Showroom