Rentals Prove a Winner

Rentals Prove a Winner
for
OLATHE
FORD RV
The Kansas-based
dealership launches
a successful program
in 2014 thanks in part
to receiving some
special training.
M
ost dealerships have improved
their parts and service departments during the past few years,
yet there’s one area where some still let
money walk off the lot – RV rentals.
Until last spring, Olathe Ford RV
Center in northeastern Kansas was in that
group, but thanks to a formal education,
a little trial and error, plus a serious commitment, the Kansas dealership has added
another profit center to its books.
According to Office Manager Ashley
Butler, it’s a tale that began when a customer asked about renting an RV at the
store, located in the southwestern Kansas
City, Kan., suburb of Gardner.
“We’ve been talking about it for awhile,”
she says. “I would always get calls and we
were turning people away.”
Eventually, when request after request
continued to pour in each year, Butler
told her boss, Olathe Ford RV General
Manager Daryn Anderson, they should
do something about it. After all, sending
people elsewhere was a goodwill gesture
that usually did nothing for the dealership’s
bottom line.
“So, after us talking in-depth, we
decided to go to the MBA Rental School,”
Anderson says. “We ordered some
motorhomes and a few trailers, and that’s
how it all got started.”
The three-day school, conducted by RV
rental insurance leader MBA Insurance for
more than a decade, is held each year in Las
Vegas and offers a crash course on the ins
PHOTOS BY KEVIN MILLER/ KB PHOTOGRAPHY
By Mike Harbour
Olathe Ford RV is located on 34
acres along a busy freeway in the
southwestern Kansas City, Kan., suburb
of Gardner. The dealership is seeing
strong growth, with 460 units sold in
2013, up from 190 in 2009.
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PHOTOS BY KEVIN MILLER/ KB PHOTOGRAPHY
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and outs of the business. Initially, Butler
and Anderson didn’t imagine it would be
a challenging task.
“We thought, ‘Aww, this is going to
be a breeze,’” she says – until they hit
the first snag. “We had to find the software to use because we didn’t have anything like that. We literally went from
the ground up.”
There was marketing to consider, too,
as well as fleet makeup. Plus, Butler, who
also became the rental manager during the
process, had never worked in the finance
and insurance department. Not surprisingly, she had to learn about customer
paperwork, too.
Fortunately, when Butler had questions,
the school – created by MBA Insurance
President Bert Alanko – had answers.
After all, its instructors – rental veteran
and founding instructor Scott Krenek of
Krenek RV Center in Michigan and Martin
Onken of Expedition Motorhomes in Calirv-pro.com RVPNov 68-111.indd 73
fornia – have almost 50 years of experience
between them.
It helps that Butler isn’t the only face in the
rental department; there’s another employee,
Lia Geenhalgh, to assist her in the office and
a third, Ron White, who does most of the
customer walkthroughs. From spring to fall,
when rentals are in demand, it’s just enough
staff to handle the fleet of 10 new Coachmen
Leprechauns and a pair of trailers.
Off to a Strong Start
As for success, Butler says that from April
to mid-September, 130 rentals have been
booked, surpassing the goal of 100 for the
season. She’s also planning to double the
fleet for 2015, and the dealership may drop
towables completely from the lineup and
offer just Class A’s and C’s. That’s the opposite direction of Olathe Ford RV’s sales mix,
according to Anderson, who says towables
make up 70 percent of the dealership’s sales.
Renting motorhomes when a store’s
Olathe Ford RV Center launched its
rentals program this summer after
completing the MBA Rental School
earlier this year. Pictured are Office
Manager Ashley Butler, who heads the
rentals program, and General Manager
Daryn Anderson. The dealership’s fleet
is comprised of 10 new Coachmen
Leprechauns and a pair of trailers.
bread and butter consists of trailer and
fifth wheel sales goes against what’s taught
at the MBA Rental School. The experts
there advocate a “rent what you sell” philosophy. That doesn’t bother Anderson,
though, because the rental department
actually serves a two-fold purpose for him
in that it dovetails nicely into his efforts to
sell more motorhomes.
“The dollar percentage is probably 3 to
4 percent to the bottom line,” he says. “It
won’t be huge, but what it will do is give
me used Class C’s to sell. So, in the big
picture, it’ll be quite a bit more than that.”
Butler says her units will be put up for
sale at the end of the season, “and whatever
doesn’t sell, we’ll put back in the fleet next
year. So in 2015, we’re going to try to have
a 2016 fleet.”
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Parts representatives Ginger Olsen and
Mike Vielhour man the four-person parts
department at Olathe Ford RV Center.
The dealership’s 2,500-square-foot
parts store will grow by another 1,000
square feet once an expansion project is
completed.
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It’s a strategy that only allows rental
customers to see and enjoy all the latest
options available on new models – and it
stands in stark contrast to other operations.
“That’s one of my selling points,” Butler
says. “I think we’re the only ones in the
area that have the current model year units.
Everybody else has older units.”
There’s even an approach for gently
steering renters toward units for sale, she says.
“We also offer a deal where, if they purchase within six months of renting, we take
a certain amount of the rental toward the
purchase,” she says. “When my customers
come back from a rental, I’ll usually introduce them to a salesperson so they can get
acquainted.”
Without a doubt, one of the biggest
concerns for dealers is the probability – not
the possibility – of units needing repair,
but Butler says Olathe Ford RV has been
lucky: Only twice out of 130 rentals have
RVs come back with serious damage. The
incidents certainly haven’t affected her
enthusiasm for the business. By the time the
inaugural season ends, she estimates there
will be close to 160 rentals in the books.
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“I think next year is going to be even
bigger because we had our RV shows this
year and people were asking questions
about rentals and we couldn’t answer
them because we didn’t know the answers,”
according to Butler.
Now the store, which sold 460 units in
2013 (up from 190 in 2009), can handle
rental requests. With upcoming Kansas
City Chiefs football games and the fall
NASCAR races at Kansas Speedway on
the schedule, Butler is hoping for more
rentals before the season, which peaked
in July, comes to a close.
Service Shop Stays Busy
Regardless of what season it is, Anderson’s shop stays busy. That’s due, in part, to
its capabilities, which handles typical RV
issues as well as paint and finish.
“We have a full body shop. The only
The dealership’s management team (left to right):
Dan Hill, business manager; Anderson; and Bob
Knoernschild, service and parts manager, set the
direction for the business. The dealership is adding
a new sales office and customer lounges, and is
looking to add a large outdoor display area set up
like an RV park.
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Olathe Ford RV Center’s service team includes a trio of service advisors and
17 technicians. Of its technicians, five are certified techs and three are master
certified techs.
thing we don’t get involved with at this
point is heavy chassis work, which we farm
out,” he says. “Other than that, everything
else we take care of pretty well. Small chassis
stuff we’ll take care of, too, but we don’t
rebuild transmissions and engines here.”
The shop boasts 20 service bays, a trio
of service advisors and 17 technicians,
Anderson says, so his store stands out
among the smaller dealers nearby.
“One of the biggest things is the amount
of service bays we have,” he says. “Also,
having a good mix of certified and master
certified techs makes it a very unique situation, at least in our area.”
Yet bay count is useless without qualified techs to staff them, and Anderson is
proud of his people.
“We have five certified techs and three
master certified techs. We’re fortunate
because a lot of dealerships don’t have
that. We’ve got some real talent,” he says.
“We’ve had employees stay here for many
years. Help is always tough to find, but
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we have a very good team right now.”
When new techs are brought aboard,
the dealership pairs them with vets for a
six-month to year-long shadow period to
better learn their way around RVs. Olathe
Ford RV operates a flat-rate shop, but there
are some exceptions on staff.
“We have three people who are hourly,
and what we did that for is some of the jobs
that we know are going to take eight or nine
hours, but we know we’re only going to get
a couple of hours for,” he says.
As for education, Anderson finds real
value in the RV Dealers Association’s certification process and the dealership’s goal
is have every tech at least certified, if not
master certified. Simply put, it’s because
today’s RVs aren’t as simple to service as
they were a few years ago.
“That’s 100 percent true,” Anderson
says. “Everything changes every day. It’s
almost like the automobile industry with
all the advancements.”
Speaking of cars and trucks, the dealer-
ship’s full name is a clue to both its past
and present, according to Anderson, as it’s
owned by a Ford-Lincoln franchise 11 miles
away, off Interstate 35 in Olathe, Kan.
“We actually bought the auto dealership
in 1973 and in about ’75 or ’76, we had
a gentleman who wanted to know if we
could find a motorhome for him,” he says,
“We found one, and by the time we told
him, somebody else showed up wanting to
buy one as well, so we thought, ‘We’ll try
a couple of them and see what happens.’
Forty years later, here we are.”
Room to Grow
Located on 34 acres along a busy
freeway, Anderson has plenty of room to
expand, something he’s doing now to his
2,500-square-foot parts store. Once a new
building is complete, that department will
grow by another 1,000 square feet.
“We do a lot of business with Arrow
Distributing and we do quite a bit with
Stag-Parkway as well,” he says. “Those are
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Troy Periman, master certified technician,
works on a travel trailer. Towables make up
70 percent of Olathe Ford RV’s sales.
probably our two biggest suppliers. We’re
trying to carry a few more trinket items
in addition to the meat-and-potatoestype items.”
Given that Olathe Ford RV mostly sells
towables, it should be no surprise Anderson
sells lots of hitches. The parts department,
which employs a staff of four, is stocking
plenty of awnings, too. Also, customers
who buy new units are given tours through
the parts aisles so they have the opportunity to purchase items before that first trip.
“They’re going to buy that stuff somewhere,” Anderson says, “so they may as
well purchase it here.”
Although the nearest Camping World is
40 miles away, Anderson keeps an eye on it.
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“We price match when we need to and
we look at their ads frequently. They’re very
good at sending mailers out, and we do
look at those when they come in to see
what they’re doing,” he says. “I think you
have to keep an eye on the competition
because they’ll swallow you up if you’re
not careful.”
The parts store expansion isn’t the only
thing Olathe Ford RV has in the works. In
addition, Anderson is adding a new sales
office and customer lounges, and is looking
to add a large outdoor display area set up
like an RV park.
“Our goal,” he says, “is to give people
that ‘camping feel’ when they come into
the dealership.”
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