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REFINING YOUR
DEALERSHIP’S
F&I AND
SALES TACTICS
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CASE STUDY NO. 1:
Coleman PowerSports
ENHANCING DEALERSHIP
PROFITABILITY PART OF TEAMWORK
Coleman PowerSports Group benefits from collaborative approach with RpmOne trainers
Kim Harrison has turned to RpmOne
for more than a decade to enhance her
dealership’s profitability. And Harrison,
not surprisingly, expects the partnership to
continue for decades to come.
Harrison, general manager of Coleman
PowerSports Group in Virginia, has
seen both of her stores benefit from the
partnership with RpmOne that began in
2003.
“The longevity in itself is one of the key
things that sets them apart,” said Harrison,
a Powersports Business Power 50 dealer in
2013. “When I’ve worked with all of these
other aftermarket companies, they have so
much changeover, and you don’t get any
consistency. With RpmOne, they know our
operations; they know how we work. They
can come in for a day and hop in and begin
training a new finance person or working
with an established employee. They know
the flow and operation and can easily
interject and say ‘This slipped from what you
used to do, or how about trying this.’ It’s so
nice because we have that relationship and
it’s evolved over all those years.”
And while Coleman has an established
relationship with RpmOne, she’s aware that
there are always profit leaks that can be
1.85:1
Coleman PowerSports Group’s
current ratio of F&I contracts sold per
vehicle retailed, up from a 1.5:1 ratio
prior to partnering with RpmOne.
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Locations: Falls Church, VA
and Woodbridge, VA
uncovered. That’s where RpmOne steps in
with its Business Development Assessment
(BDA) performed by the company’s dealer
development team.
“One of the things that impressed me the
most is they’re not just focused 100 percent
on back end products and sales. They really
want to help and advise and review the entire
dealership,” Coleman said. “They believe if
they make one department healthy, it’s going
to benefit the whole dealership. Where I see
them coming from, or their perspective as I
see it, is they want to come in and improve
your entire dealership and make sure the
entire thing is healthy and running on every
cylinder that it possibly can.”
Coleman herself was aware of the
dealership’s written processes, so that has
been a focal point of the partnership in
recent months.
“We want to make it easier for a new
salesperson to come on board,” she said.
“We’re constantly doing training when we
have new hires, but we don’t have anything
to hand them and say, ‘OK, we’re going to
teach you this but here is the written process
so you can follow back up on it and read it
and really understand it.”
Tasks as basic as answering the phone at
the dealership can lead to a customer coming
to the store to make a purchase, or deciding
that the phone service isn’t so great, and
opting to call a different dealership for an
enhanced phone experience.
“A lot of times we assume that it’s
common sense — how to handle a sales
call,” Coleman said. “So what we’re trying to
perfect is actually coming up with scripts and
true processes to hone in on and make the
whole team better.”
Following the BDA, the dealer
development team provides solutions
and suggested high-impact paths for
improvement. It’s an approach that Coleman
appreciates, mainly due to its team-like
approach.
“They review their observations with you,
and together you decide which ones you
want to focus on, and where you want to
make improvements,” she said. “They don’t
come in and mandate and dictate that you’re
going to do it their way. That’s probably
been the biggest change I’ve seen from when
we worked with other companies. You
would get a trainer who says ‘You have to
do it this way.’ Sometimes I’ve gotten a lot
of resistance from my staff because it doesn’t
work in our environment or floor plan or
whatever. RpmOne is really good about
saying if you don’t want to do it this way,
let’s sit down and discuss another way that
we can accomplish the same thing within
your structure. We’ve really liked the way
they go about that.”
Those suggestions and recommendations
from the RpmOne dealer development team
have led to increased sales in both units and
F&I, Coleman said.
“We’re definitely up in both,” she said.
“In F&I, they’ve done a great job with their
tracking program. It’s a very, very nicely
done spreadsheet, but we focus more on the
average contract per person as much as we
do the dollars per unit sold. We’re striving
for a ratio of two contracts and I would say
when we started it we were at 1.5. I know
that now we’re averaging 1.85, and we’re
getting close to that 2.0.”
RpmOne staffers, Coleman says, have
been well received by her dealership’s
employees, mostly because they get
reenergized, reinvigorated and simply want
to sell more following their meetings.
“They’re good about coming in and
taking guys off the floor, getting them in a
room and really keeping it engaging and
entertaining and giving them stories that they
“They want to come in
and improve your entire
dealership and make
sure the entire thing is
healthy and running on
every cylinder that it
possibly can.”
General manager
Kim Harrison
can relate to,” Coleman said.
And for those times when a scheduled
meeting with RpmOne needs to be canceled
due to increasing store traffic or any number
of other issues that arise, Coleman simply
makes a call to request training on a different
date. Coleman estimates that RpmOne trainers
come to the store at least every other month.
“They’re very easy to work with, very
accommodating. They’ve delivered above
and beyond. I think if we needed them more,
they would be glad to come. They’re just
very sensitive to not wanting to come in and
disrupt things when we’re busy,” she said.
“One time when they came in for training we
were so busy in both stores that they only
got to spend quality time with about three of
our sales staff. So they said they would come
back in a couple of months when the season
slows down to do the training all over again
and make sure that they get everybody.”
Training of sales and F&I staff reaches
into various approaches, but Coleman says
RpmOne’s videotaping of role-playing by
F&I team members has helped with their
presentations to customers.
“They do spend a lot of time on that,
because they want to make sure that the F&I
people really get down an F&I presentation
that works for them,” Coleman said. “And
once again, they don’t mandate that you say it
this way. They want you to say it in your own
words and it’s not scripted. They want you to
believe in it and be sincere with the customer,
but they also want you to practice it over and
over again so that it is second nature.”
A proprietary F&I log from RpmOne
gives its dealer partners another tool in
developing a stronger sales team, and store
profitability. For Coleman specifically, a
contract ratio feature in the log has proven to
be ideal for her stores.
“We had our own Excel log, but theirs
just takes it to the next level. It’s great
because it summarizes everything, so for an
entire year, I’ll be able to go on it and see
how many contracts I did with each finance
company, what my average reserve was per
finance company. By salesperson, we can use
the log to join the two departments together
and make sure the salesperson is incentivized
and maybe has a spiff because we can look
at who was the best salesperson for back end
products for that month. It’s a really nice
tool, and one that I fought for over the years
because I said ‘We have our own log, how
BRANDS: Can-Am, Ducati, EBR, ETON,
GEM, Honda, Kawasaki, KYMCO, Polaris,
Sea-Doo, Star Motorcycles, Suzuki,
Victory, Yamaha, Zero Motorcycles
ALSO: Honda Power Equipment, Honda
Generators
Powersports Business Power 50 dealer:
2013 (No. 2)
could yours be different than ours?’ Finally
one day I said OK we’ll try it, and I regret
that we weren’t on it sooner. We’ve been on
since April or May and I just love it.
Similarly, the RpmOne IQ System
provides an array of business tools across the
dealership.
“We use it for every deal, because it also
helps do legal disclosure. We have all of our
finance people go through the process and
print out a menu. We do the menu selling
from the IQ system, and the menu does
a really good job of having a waiver and
making sure that every customer is presented
every product. I used it not too long ago. I
had a customer who thought he had bought
GAP. He had bought GAP on a previous
purchase, but he came back in and said he
was positive that he bought it on the more
recent purchase. I was able to pull out that
menu and show that no, he did not choose
GAP, he chose prepaid maintenance instead
and that he had waived the GAP. Fortunately
my finance person followed through.”
RpmOne’s contract ZIP report also gets
used extensively by Coleman, particularly
to sell back end products to customers who
aren’t financing or don’t have enough room
in their approval.
“They can put a monthly down payment
down and finance it over 18 months, and we
use the IQ system to manage that,” she said.
Coleman, in fact, is so high on the
contributions by RpmOne to her dealership
that she’d like the Virginia Motorcycle
Dealers Association form a partnership with
the company as well.
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CASE STUDY NO. 2:
Mike Bruno’s Harley-Davidson
HELPING A HIGH-PERFORMING
DEALER REACH HIGHER
Mike Bruno says RpmOne increased his dealerships’ F&I profits
“The results of our stores since we’ve
partnered with RpmOne speak for
themselves. The reality of it is that nobody
likes anybody to come in the house and
tell them that there’s dust under the bed.
Anybody that thinks that’s going to be a
pleasant conversation is fooling themselves.
But because they have the credibility of
coming from where we come from, they
understand our retail process. They have
a leg up with credibility. If you can get the
person who owns the house to look under
the bed and see that yes, there are dust
bunnies under the bed, then it’s hard to
refute. Now we get together and figure out
what we need to do to clean it up. They do
a good job of maintaining credibility to the
point where we’re all looking at ways to
improve, not at ways to get defensive and
trying to prove them wrong.”
That’s how dealer principal Mike Bruno,
owner of two Harley-Davidson dealerships
in Louisiana, describes his relationship with
RpmOne.
Bruno has been working with RpmOne
since 2009, nine years after he launched
Bayou Country Harley-Davidson in Houma,
and three years after he bought Northshore
Harley-Davidson in Slidell. Though he had
already implemented solid processes at
both stores, he wasn’t afraid to look into
additional opportunities to increase the
stores’ profits.
“We had started selling our own in-house
prepaid maintenance and frankly did a pisspoor job of it,” Bruno said. “We didn’t know
what the hell we were doing. At the same
time, I’ve been a big believer in 20 groups,
and we had a very aggressive 20 group, and
a dealer in the group had gone to RpmOne,
and they had good things to say about
them. Not that I follow anybody’s lead, but
they do their homework. They mentioned
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that they had switched from their in-house
policy to RpmOne and had some reasons for
that, so I contacted [RpmOne]. They came
down, and I liked what they had to say. We
got together, and we now sell their prepaid
maintenance and some of their extended
service.”
Though a fellow dealer initially referred
Bruno to RpmOne, he has stuck to the
program for five years because the company
is so familiar with dealerships like his own.
“Every time the person from RpmOne has
come in, they have been very well received
in terms of their credibility. They knew
what they were talking about; they spoke
the same language as we do in terms of our
sales process. That was one of the things that
really tipped the scale for us to go with them.
We use a certain sales process that they are
very familiar with, so when they come in,
we’re all talking about the same stuff,” Bruno
explained. “I can say there’s never been a
time where they come in and we haven’t had
an opportunity to get better as a result of it.”
With RpmOne’s training, the Northshore
dealership has seen its prepaid maintenance
penetration increase from a low 20s percent
to the mid-to-high 40s percent. Northshore’s
F&I department is now sitting at $1,692
per vehicle retailed, while Bayou Country
sells $1,769 in F&I products per vehicle.
Though the Bayou Country store hasn’t
needed as much guidance from RpmOne, it
has increased penetration about 5 percent
since undergoing RpmOne’s Business
Development Assessment.
“It’s fine-tuning and tweaking stuff,
and bringing stuff to our attention that we
might have stopped doing. We operate at
a pretty high level, I think, so if somebody
Locations: Bayou Country, Houma,
LA; Northshore, Slidell, LA
BRANDS: Harley-Davidson
can come in and identify some piece of our
process that has slipped or that we’re not
quite as focused on as we should be, to me
that’s gold because that will help us get
better,” Bruno said.
RpmOne’s training has also helped Bruno,
a 30-plus-year veteran of automotive sales
and F&I, rethink some of his processes. After
RpmOne suggested a two-day session on the
greet and probe, Bruno balked at the time
spent on that and pushed for more focus
on sit-downs and write-ups. However, after
attending the greet and probe session, he was
convinced of its validity.
“It reinforced for me that the real money
was in the greet and probe, and the better
job we do within those phases, and the better
we get to know the customer and them to
know us, the better chance we have of sitting
them down, writing them up and enjoying
“They’re not there
just pumping their
products. They’re there
pumping a process and
a system that will allow
us to maximize the
opportunity with all the
products we sell.”
Owner Mike Bruno
40%
Current percentage of prepaid
maintenance penetration at Mike Bruno’s
Northshore Harley-Davidson, up from the
a low-20s percent prior to partnering with
RpmOne.
the sale,” he said. “Kudos to my RpmOne
rep for hanging in there because prior to the
meeting I nudged him a little and said let’s
get through this greet and probe stuff quickly
because I want more sit downs and I want
more riders. But they stuck to their guns,
and I respect that.”
Bruno has also appreciated the cross
training of other departments’ employees,
encouraging everyone in the store to
promote F&I products. Bruno’s F&I
manager has continued the training in-house
with service, parts and general merchandise
staff, and reinforces it by offering $50 spiffs
to employees who refer F&I customers.
“RpmOne came in and trained our F&I
guys on proper word tracks and such, then
had classes with service writers and other
employees to train them on those word
tracks. Now twice a week the F&I manager
visits with other department employees and
keeps it alive,” Bruno said.
The training across all departments has
shown Bruno that RpmOne is committed
to helping his dealerships as a whole, rather
than just focusing one aspect of the business.
“They look at the whole department
offering,” he said. “It’s in their best interest
to help the whole environment. They’re not
there just pumping their products. They’re
there pumping a process and a system that
will allow us to maximize the opportunity
with all the products we sell.”
Though Bruno is quick to point out that
his dealerships had top-notch F&I processes
before working with RpmOne, he admits
that the company helped the dealerships
perfect their processes and refine the culture
at Northshore Harley-Davidson.
“You go back to the basics — we use
menus, and we offer all the products to all
the customers all the time,” he said. “Some
of that was slipping, especially on the cash,
bank and credit union business. Now we are
offering the products to all the customers.
Did they bring a few things to the table in
terms of objection handling and GAP, yeah,
they shared some ideas with our guys. But
the most important thing is we got back to
the basics and fundamentals of F&I, which
means you use a menu on every customer
irrespective of how they’re paying for the
vehicle, and you offer all the products to all
customers, and we had not been doing that
in all cases.”
For a dealership group like Bruno’s, the
plan wasn’t to grow the F&I business at
an unrealistic rate. Instead, the dealership
owner wanted to sharpen the process, so that
he and his team could squeeze a little more
profit out of every deal.
“Before RpmOne, we operated at a high
level, and since we’ve had them on board,
we continue to operate at a high level
and try to get a little higher every day,”
he said. “It’s a matter of maintaining and
growing incrementally with each store.
That’s the toughest piece of it. It’s easy to
go from nothing to something; that’s the
easy challenge. When you operate at a high
level, you need quality resources to help you
maintain that, and RpmOne is part of that
team for us.”
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CASE STUDY NO. 3:
Seminole Power Sports
CULTURAL CHANGE LEADS TO
BOTTOM-LINE PROFITABILITY
Seminole Power Sports benefits from Ticket to Ride intro, F&I early intro
Thanks to solutions provided by RpmOne’s
Business Development Assessment (BDA)
earlier this year, Seminole Power Sports in
Florida has seen drastic improvements in
several profit-generating segments of the
dealership.
Owner Kirby Mullins has been
particularly appreciative of the
recommendation of an early introduction
F&I process, as well as a new “Ticket to
Ride” offering that ensures that customers
are introduced to every department of the
dealership at the time of purchase.
Relationship building is simply one aspect
of the early introduction F&I process.
“We tell our salespeople that if someone
comes into the store looking for directions,
we want to come out and say ‘Hi!’ We
want them to remember us,” Mullins told
Powersports Business. “That extends to our
business office. After the sales consultant
has introduced the sales manager to the
customer, the business manager comes
out and introduces himself and asks
four or five questions to get to know the
customer’s riding habits and future plans a
little bit better.”
The F&I/business manager then turns to
RpmOne’s proprietary IQ System to develop
a menu that’s personalized to the customer.
As the customer begins the Ticket to Ride
tour of the dealership, the business manager
38%
Increase in new and pre-owned unit sales
this year compared to 2013, prior to
Seminole’s partnership with RpmOne.
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Location: Sanford, FL
is formulating a personalized menu option.
“It allows the business manager to have a
relationship that’s already started by the time
the customer sits down,” Mullins said. “It
shows that he was listening to the customer
while he was on the floor because he’s
providing a menu of items that are pertinent
to the customer specifically. The beauty is that
the relationship has already been started, and
you’re basically offering them stuff they kind
of told you they need. It’s worked out great.”
The solutions offered by RpmOne trainers
following the BDA have boosted growth in a
variety of F&I and sales ledgers.
“We’re up tremendously in both F&I and
sales,” Mullins said. “We have doubled our
PVR (Per Vehicle Retailed) and tripled our
F&I penetration. Our front grosses are up
over 25 percent.”
Sales of priority maintenance are on
the rise, too, “which is crucial because it
guarantees that the customer will be back
in your service department and not to the
garage down the street. Everything we do
with RpmOne is about the dealership as
a whole. So when the customer is on the
Ticket to Ride, we make sure he gets that
first service appointment. Then products
like priority maintenance continue to bring
him back. Because of all of their suggestions,
we’re seeing our CSI scores from the OEMs
all trending north, which is great.”
Mullins forecasted a 20 percent increase
in new and pre-owned unit sales prior to the
BDA taking place, but that number has been
annihilated and is already showing a
38 percent rise this year. Parts and
accessories have experienced a 12 percent
BRANDS: Can-Am, Honda, Kawasaki,
Sea-Doo, Star Motorcycles, Yamaha
ALSO: Honda Power Equipment, Yamaha
Generators
increase, with front-end gross profit up near
50 percent, all compared to last year. The
F&I department’s performance is even more
drastic, with product penetration doubling
year over year and F&I PVR at 2.5 times the
amount that was brought in a year ago.
The profit-building Priority Maintenance
Program from RpmOne has provided
Mullins with plenty of return, like many of
the company’s offerings.
“They spent a week inside the store with
our team, and we’ll have weekly meetings
and webinars that last 45 minutes,” Mullins
said. “They’ll offer things like if you do 20
contracts or more, they reduce what they
charge you for the training. If you do 30,
it’s another cut, and if you do 40 contracts
a month, it doesn’t cost you anything. So
on their dime, they’re flying a guy in every
month to spend a couple of days. And it’s
not just limited to the business office or the
sales department. They get involved with
parts and service, too.”
Mullins knew his store needed an assist
with operations, and believes he couldn’t
have found a more ideal partner.
“It was perfect timing,” he said of
“I’ll be honest, compared
to this time last year,
we have increased our
storewide net dealer
profit tenfold. RpmOne
came in and did their
Business Development
Assessment in January.
That’s a good story
to tell.”
Owner Kirby Mullins
RpmOne’s assistance. “It was a perfect storm,
if you will. We were coming off three or
four bad years where we had trimmed down
from 72 people on staff and were open seven
days a week to having about 34 people
and being open five or six days a week. We
found a lot of opportunity in PVR solutions
they offered, especially when the business
office was just horrid. We felt the reason
was we were running so thin that our sales
managers were spinning paper as well. We
were doing everything we could to keep this
big ship afloat. What we found is that if my
sales manager is out closing a deal and the
customer’s says ‘Look, this is every penny
I’ve got; I’ll sign on the dotted line,’ and that
same face is then sitting across the desk from
you signing paperwork, and you pitch an
extended warranty or a priority maintenance
or GAP, they look at you at tell you, ‘I
already told you; I don’t have another nickel.’
You have put a fresh face in front of the
customer. So we hired a business manager.”
Mullins continuously refers to the
dealership-wide approach that RpmOne
takes in providing their array of solutions.
“The word tracks they provide for all
areas of the dealership have worked great,”
he said. “It doesn’t matter if you’re selling
widgets, watercraft or cars, there is a method
to the madness. You get a script; you learn
the script; you inflect your own personality,
but you don’t deviate. You pitch 100 percent
of the products 100 percent of the time,
and it’s amazing how well it works. It really
is. You can grow the business. What I love
about it is we don’t sell anything that isn’t
the right thing for the customer. If we put
GAP on a bike or suggest GAP, it’s going to
be a protection, heaven forbid, if something
happens. Priority maintenance, we’ve got
some nice bells and whistles, free pickup
and delivery, a loner program. There are a
lot of things that come with the products we
sell that makes it kind of a no-brainer. You
use the menus they provide and it works. I’ll
be honest, compared to this time last year,
we have increased our storewide net dealer
profit tenfold. RpmOne came in and did
their Business Development Assessment in
January. That’s a good story to tell.”
Mullins likens the addition of RpmOne
to his store to having the knowledge of a 20
group within reach.
“A lot of the guys who come in and do
the BDAs do have 20 group backgrounds.
They can tell you that the average metric
store that does your kind of volume is
averaging $1,400 on the front side and
$600 on the back. We were at $900 on the
front and $150 on the back. We knew we
had some opportunity, but the things that
stuck out were front end gross and the Per
Vehicle Retailed in the business office. More
importantly, it has been a cultural shift for us
dealership-wide.”
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