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Finding and hiring the right people for the job is a challenging task As the businesses return to normal and the Fed is pumping money to revive the economy, the retail auto sector is experiencing a sharp rise in demand. For example, Ford Motors Company sales increased by 65% during April 2021.  On the other hand, the chip shortage has disrupted the global supply and chain, which led to skyrocketing prices of the new and used inventory. Regardless, car shoppers are not expecting to delay their purchases. This means the dealerships need well-trained staff to efficiently assist potential customers. A person who could effectively match customers’ needs, and budget to the appropriate vehicle while enhancing their experience. However, hiring the right people for the job is a long-standing challenge for dealerships. Especially, when the labor market is tighter than normal. Additionally, amidst inventory shortage, the dealers are focusing on ways to unlock new profit centers such as the F&I department and service drives. Then again, identifying and recruiting the people skilled in doing this type of work requires ample resources and time. As per a COX Automotive Study, published on June 21, 2021: 72% of auto dealers say that finding and hiring the right employee is the top staffing challenge. It is considerably grueling in the tight labor market to find a person that fits best in your dealership’s role and culture. Notably, some candidates feel they lack the right skill for the open position. The Cox study found that 32% of job seekers are not interested in dealership jobs as they do not think they have the right skills. Whereas others prefer to stay home due to health risks or are unwilling to change their current position, some are not looking due to childcare responsibilities. Still, others prefer collecting unemployment insurance coverage over earning wages. Consequently, your job as a people’s manager is getting tougher and the task to hire right people is demanding. Data driven recruiting process is the key to identifying the right talent Fortunately, a data-driven recruiting process can help you recognize and hire right people.  The right person contribute to achieving your financial goals while keeping customers satisfied and willing to return to your dealership. The personality and cognitive analysis provide reliable data about the traits and attitude of the candidate. So, you can recruit the person with complete confidence. For example, taking help of the personality and cognitive evaluations will enable you to determine the candidate’s qualities and potential upfront. It helps to understand how the person behaves in a particular situation and what are their blind spots. As a result, you will get direction on coaching to the strengths and guarding against the weaknesses. Undeniably, recruiting the right person is critical for the success of your department and overall profitability. Therefore, utilizing a data-driven recruitment process to find the right fit for the role and team is imperative. Additionally, personality and cognitive assessments help you go beyond the resume. It would enable you to get deep insights to prepare for, and conduct high-quality, meaningful interviews. Furthermore, the assessments help you reach candidates based on the highest predictors of job success. Moreover, the assessment data provides direction to communicate effectively with your hires. The role of creating a supportive work environment in retaining the right people High employee turnover in the retail auto industry leads to constant hiring. Therefore, retention through a supportive work environment is a crucial factor to consider. The Cox Study found that the top driver of employee engagement, which leads to retention, is a supportive work environment, including the following essential elements. The benefit of personality and cognitive assessment to find the right fit Career development and communication are the top elements that influence employee retention. The personality and cognitive assessments help you understand the focus area of training for your employees. In addition, it provides insights on how to better communicate with your employees. In short, an examination such as P.I. Test would help you to not only find the right employees but also contributes towards creating a suitable communication and work environment. This leads to help retain your staff longer and save your valuable time and resources. The importance of professional interpretation of assessment data  The assessments help you not only in hiring the right person but also in helping your people be their best. Remember, a professional interpretation of results is essential in identifying the best fit. In addition, it will lead to an effective hiring and development process and help you become aware of the efficient ways to interact with your hires. What are the person’s strengths, management style, and influencing skills? For example, is the candidate good at analyzing facts before making decisions? Does your new hire have an eye for detail? Are they deliberate, precise, and fit for the immense paperwork involved in the F&I department? The results may give you a brief idea about their personality and potential. But a professional can help you understand how the traits fit with the role and responsibilities and how to make the best use of your employees’ traits.  We can help you implement that in your dealership. With our decades of auto industry experience, we understand how to analyze people’s traits and identify the potential fit for the role. Reach out to us today to help you hire right people in your team.

Tips, Tools, and Strategies to Earn Customers’ Trust and Gain Positive Reviews The role of transparency, ethics and compliance in improving F&I and cars sales: Turning to used car inventory is the need of the hour during the inventory shortage. However, selling used cars could be a tricky proposition for dealers. Transparency, ethics, and compliance help grow your F&I and car sales, and take your profits to the next level.  During their time on the road, cars face several potential hazards ranging from damage to neglect, including accidents, overloading, and often a constant lack of maintenance. Therefore, it is critical to recognize those problems and stay adept at addressing them quickly and affordably. A practical approach is providing dealer certified warranty to confirm mechanical fitness and provide higher satisfaction as well as peace of mind to the customers. In addition, being transparent and honest with your customers and holding the highest standards of ethics and integrity would help you make the most money! To emphasize, failure to do so would reduce customers’ trust in your store, decrease loyalty, and significantly impact your bottom line. A negative reputation leads to negative sales: 90% of consumers read online reviews before visiting a business. 88% of consumers trust online reviews as much as personal recommendations. 86% of consumers hesitate to purchase from a business that has negative online reviews. The above listed stats show that online and Google reviews are a social proof for your reputation and significantly influences customers’ perception and decision-making. Consequently, with the following negative reviews would chase away customers from your dealership to your competitors. Furthermore, A short term gain is never worth as much as a long-term relationship with a customer that on average buys a car every three to four years. So, being honest with your customers would win a good reputation and reviews for your dealership. You will gain greater trust, more customers, and higher profits. The three critical factors could help you cultivate ethical work culture: Over time the unacceptable can become the norm, and the energy for change dissipates. A single person with clarity of conscience and willingness to speak up can make a difference. When even a mid-level or lower-level leader skillfully induces a voice and a vision, others will follow. Surprisingly, it can initiate change for the better—even culture change on a large scale. Practical approaches to ensure customers’ peace of mind: Proactively inspecting the vehicle inventory and informing the customers about the mechanical fitness or reconditioning of the vehicle would help maintain higher customer satisfaction and brand reputation. To emphasize, ethics and compliance in car sales and F&I products positively impacts your image and customer experience. Some of the approaches you can take: Factory Certified Warranty: To bring the vehicle back to the factory standards. The customers would gain higher trust and confidence in buying a factory certified vehicle. Dealer Certified Warranty: Providing dealer certified warranty would provide the similar level of trust and satisfaction to the customers. Additionally, it would build trust and loyalty towards your store. Managing your online reputation to improve car sales: On a different note, customers are more likely to share their feedback when they are satisfied. Request online reviews from your happy customers. The most favorable touchpoint in a dealership to ask for an online feedback is just after a car purchase or service. Sometimes, even requesting to leave a feedback can result in eliciting positive reviews. Text message is a powerful tool as the messages are generally opened within three minutes. Send a text message requesting for feedback. Review request link makes it convenient for buyers to leave an online review. Make use of dealer reviews and reputation monitoring services such as Reputation Rhino and FeedCheck help you listen to your customers and address their issues while building a positive online reputation. Lastly, you can make more profits over the long run by promoting ethics, compliance, and being customer oriented. For instance, assessing customers’ needs, offering valuable products or custom packages and giving control of their buying experience would build trust with car buyers. The key mantra: To win with today’s consumers, you must earn their trust.

Your weekly checklist to become an exceptional F&I manager or director and reap the rewards.  F&I managers weekly checklist to stay on track and profitable: Curiosity, focus, persistence, and self-reflection are the foundations of success—a principle famously understood by Albert Einstein. Despite early struggles with speaking and reading, his curiosity and determination fueled his achievements. Like Einstein, we often learn the most from our challenges, gaining the wisdom to handle future obstacles more effectively. In the busy world of F&I, it’s easy to get lost in the details and lose sight of priorities. With responsibilities spanning customer inquiries, paperwork, team management, and financial goals, the demands are constant. A weekly checklist can help F&I managers stay focused, organized, and profitable amidst these challenges. Therefore, creating a weekly checklist for F&I managers could help staying on track and profitable. All things considered, we have handpicked ten essential strategies you could implement every week to help you succeed in your role and exceed your financial goals. Here is F&I managers weekly checklist: 1. Attend and conduct weekly F&I and sales training: Weekly sales and F&I meetings will help you and your team stay updated and efficient. Moreover, conducting weekly training would present you with an opportunity to address issues with current practices through methods such as role-plays. Additionally, taking support of result-driven F&I trainers would build your staff’s confidence and techniques, thus, improving your bottom line. Therefore, conducting training should be a priority on your weekly to-do list. 2. Conduct save-a-deal meetings: Each week, take time to review dead deals with other managers to identify solutions and see if there is a way to go. Review the three C’s of credit. Namely: Character—defined by credit and loan repayment history. Capacity- measures income and ability to service a loan or line of credit. Collateral- asset(s) in this case, the car you have them on. Therefore, a fresh set of eyes and ideas with your colleagues could help you find constructive outcomes and raise your dealership’s profitability. 3. Promote a positive team culture: As the manager, ensure that you have a solid team to help you attain your departmental and financial goals. Building and nurturing a positive work culture could involve simple steps such as setting clear goals, promoting inclusion, and allowing a place for humor. As Dale Carnegie said, “People rarely succeed unless they are having fun in what they are doing.” 4. Maintain and employ a winning mindset: Reading and getting inspired by books and articles would put you on the road to developing a growth mindset. However, it would help if you practiced it every day to accelerate results. For example, when you meet a customer ready to pay in cash, do you feel this person would not be interested in buying F&I products or could not afford to purchase the products? Adopting a genuinely optimistic mindset and renouncing a fixed mindset every day at work would help you grow in your profession while attaining your financial objectives. 5. Reassess market changes and profit centers: Being updated with the market shift and trends and aligning your F&I portfolio to match the customers’ needs require regular consideration. Carefully monitoring your portfolio will keep you adequately equipped to serve your customers and stay relevant in the market. For instance, if lending tightens or interest rates rise, how does that affect dealer reserve? How would the sales & financing process change? 6. Embrace customer-centric approach: The right words at the right time and the right products matching your customers’ needs make all the difference. Significantly, strong customer-centricity with customer-oriented products, would positively influence customer service and ultimately improve customer satisfaction. Hence, every week practice your positive words and values. To emphasize, repetitions aid reinforcement of your values. So, fix a time every week to cultivate and strengthen a customer-centric attitude for guaranteed success. 7. Invest in yourself and your team: Interacting with like-minded industry leaders and investing in rich content- such as podcasts, books, articles would help you stay focused on the game and ahead of the curve. Additionally, meeting regularly with your subordinates to set goals and discuss challenges would make them feel valued and reduce turnover. Moreover, it will help you identify their shortcoming and find solutions to overcome them. You should consider doing this every week for your continued growth. 8. Update tech tools knowledge and review reports: With more young shoppers, using digital tools is critical to your success. Adapting the technology to save your customers time and enhance their experience would add a lot of value to your dealership. In addition, making use of data and reports would help you make better decisions. However, proficiency in new tools and dashboards requires a willingness to learn and continuous practice. Refresher courses and training improve skills and could make you a pro. Notably, setting time aside to pep up your skills would help you move ahead faster. 9. Refresh your relations with lending institutions, VSC provider, and insurance vendors: Many buyers look for financing options when buying a car. While the consumers can get auto financing from a bank or credit union, it could be cumbersome and perhaps on less favorable terms. Having a positive relationship with your lenders will enable you to get special financing approved for your customers. In addition, it could significantly help improve your customer’s experience and satisfaction.  It is essential to consider that building and nurturing positive relationships with lenders, VSC providers, and insurance vendors do not happen overnight. In other words, staying connected with them and maintaining your network would require frequent communication. Therefore, setting up time every week to strengthen your network is a beneficial idea. 10. Give back- Mentor or Coach: With years of knowledge and experience in the auto industry, you could give back by helping junior talent raise their performance and succeed in their job. To enumerate, a good mentor allows a mentee to make decisions that help them reach their target. In contrast, a great mentor develops a mentees

Balancing Success, Well-Being, and Happiness in the Dealership World As they say, with great power comes great responsibilities. The job of dealership personnel is the one that demands the ability to work long hours and sometimes seven days a week. It requires a high level of patience, skills to sell more products to meet financial objectives, and negotiate and create leverage with as many lenders as possible. Additionally, the Sales and F&I teams are also responsible for safeguarding the auto dealership from compliance issues and liabilities. With this in mind, balancing professional and personal wellbeing at dealership needs thoughtful consideration—not just for success, but for long-term happiness and fulfillment in the role. Meeting financial goals is just the beginning of your responsibilities toward your employer and yourself. May, recognized as Mental Health Awareness Month, serves as an ideal opportunity to reflect on and enhance your mental, physical, and professional well-being. The relentless pressure to excel in sales, enhance customer experiences, and manage paperwork efficiently can greatly affect both your personal and professional health. Let’s delve deeper into some practical strategies to improve your professional and personal wellbeing at dealership. Nurturing Your Mental Health: Essential Practices for Your Personal and Professional Wellbeing at Dealership Staying positive is essential for a healthy and happy life. However, amidst your daily responsibilities and stress, you might easily overlook your mental health. Consequently, it impacts your growth, productivity, physical fitness, emotions, and even relationships. Giving due consideration to improve or maintain your mental health would let you thrive in your personal as well as professional realm. Following are some of the valuable tips to try: – 1. Bring out your artistic side: Experiment with trying new things such as painting, writing a poem, or trying new cuisine. Besides helping you find your calm, it would help you broaden your horizons, gain a new perspective, and increase your imagination or creativity. Think of a situation when you meet a difficult customer. Would it not be valuable to connect and engage with your customer with a fresh outlook and common ground? You never know what could resonate with your prospective consumer. It could just be something as simple as a new recipe you tried from their home country. 2. Take a break: A change of scene or a change of pace is essential for your mental health. It could be a five-minute pause from your routine paperwork or a break before you start your next meeting. It will give you time to revive and collect yourself to begin afresh and perform your best. 3. Meditation or relaxing techniques: In the digital age, not everything is nerve-wracking. Some useful podcasts and apps such as Headspace and Calm could bring a library of meditations at your fingertips and help you manage stress triggers. The quick dose of 15 minutes might make a huge difference throughout your day by keeping you composed and productive. Enhancing Physical Strength and Persistence 1. Being physically active: Exercise improves your mood, reduces stress, and helps you stay energetic whether you are with the customers or conducting a meeting with your team. Not to mention, improved memory, prolonged cognitive stamina, and high creativity are some of the benefits that will show direct advantages in your department. Those benefits would let you better assess customers’ needs, create needs awareness, and manage sales objections. 2. Fitness regime to make smart decisions: Your demanding job often needs quick and regular decision-making related to your customers, teammates, or suppliers. Hence, adding a regular exercise regime would let you keep your thought-process, learning, judgment, and decision-making skills sharp. It is a critical step to maintain your personal and professional wellbeing at dealership. Strategic Approaches for Professional Advancement 1. Invest in yourself and your team:  Investing in your and your team’s professional development through comprehensive training could make a tremendous difference in performance. The Sales, Service, and Finance and Insurance (F&I) Managers work directly with consumers, so their role is vitally important when it comes to understanding consumers’ needs, encouraging them to buy valuable products, and at the same time maximizing the dealership’s profit. Therefore, professional training is of utmost importance for the success of your store. Mistakes in one of those departments could cost you more than a sale. It could potentially impact customer satisfaction, loyalty, increase acquisition costs, and severely affect your reputation. 2. Connect with industry leaders and experts: Staying in regular touch with experienced and optimistic people or companies can influence your perspective positively and help you get valuable recommendations for personal and professional development. Additionally, connecting with consultancy such as ours could help you stay ahead of the curve, stay informed of the latest and beneficial F&I products and custom packages, and considerably drive productivity and growth. 3. Use technology to your benefit: Find your customers where they spend most of their time. The answer is not a hard guess, the internet. With more young shoppers, your digital presence is critical to your success. Adapting the technology for your benefit is a smart move. We have been working with an advanced tool that can offer dealers real-time insights into who has started shopping, stopped shopping, or continued shopping in the past 24 hours. The AI-powered tech monitors 90% of internet-connected devices across more than 61 billion URLs specific to automotive, including the 3rd party classified sites, all dealership websites, every OEM website, automotive research sites, and automotive google searches. Get in touch with us to learn how we can help you implement this tool at your dealership. 4. Stay updated about the regulations and industry trends: While the dealership’s finance and insurance procedures may not vary a lot, administrative changes often impact the regulations, enforcements and shape the future of the auto industry. For example, under the new administration, more restrictive regulations, including automotive financing and greater scrutiny, are likely on the horizon for the auto industry, which could have a considerable impact on the dealers. So, to navigate the challenges, you would need to be

A shift in the auto market The used-car market is booming, making it an opportune time to offer valuable F&I products to the consumers.  The global chip shortage has disrupted the global supply chains and impacted the delivery of new vehicles.  As the auto retail industry pivoted towards the used cars inventory to keep up with demand and used cars become the industry’s hottest commodity, there is a big opportunity for the F&I department. With the businesses reopening, stimulus checks, and tax refunds deposited in people’s bank account, the demand for used cars will increase significantly. Evidently, as every dealer focuses on selling used cars, the supply of used vehicles is starting to tighten. However, the silver lining for the dealers is that the consumers will begin to consider different models to increase their prospects of getting a good car for a reasonable price. Source: Automotive News, April 26, 2021 issue Opportunities for you to sell F&I products as the market shifts from new to used inventory As per U.S. automotive social intelligence update, the volume of posts related to chip shortage surged in March 2021. It shows consumers are aware that the chip crisis is impacting the supply of the new vehicle. So, they are open to buying used cars. According to a finding from an automotive news research and data center survey, 81% of all respondents, including dealers, feel the chip shortage will severely impact the way they do their job. In addition, 88% of respondents think that the chip crisis will affect how their companies conduct business. Most concerning for all respondents is how the problem will impact their ability to keep up with the consumer demand. Amidst the new vehicle shortage and emphasizing used cars inventory, the dealers must ensure that their F&I products offering aligns with the consumer’s needs opting for a used vehicle instead of a new one. Therefore, being proactive in your approach to understanding consumer needs and offering consumer-oriented products and safety products such as Brake Plus, Cilajet, and Forever Start, will add value to the purchase. Additionally, a tangible product that you can give to the customer as a part of their purchasing vehicle could considerably increase customer satisfaction. Insights into understanding consumers’ needs to match F&I products Your customers have varied needs that match several F&I products. For example, some products speak to drivers’ safety while others can be combined to better meet consumers’ lifestyle and vehicle protection needs. When a consumer is buying a vehicle, whether it is new or used, it is a treasured asset or valuable investment for them. Thus, they want to safeguard the vehicle along with its look and feel. That being so, a consultative approach to guide the consumers could help match products to meet the consumers’ needs. For instance, consider a scenario when you offer a bundle to the customer: Most people lose interest after a third explanation. Car buyers are no different. Bundled products allow you to provide more, with a shorter presentation. Express 5 is bundled asset protection that covers the appearance of the vehicle. It includes: Roadside Assistance Windshield Protection Tire & Wheel Protection Dent & Ding Protection Key/Remote Protection Your customer’s value Exceptional benefit at a lower cost than purchasing coverages individually. Overall appearance is covered – their car will look better longer. Potential increase in future trade-in value. Your value Presenting fewer items makes it easier for your customer to say yes. Less time spent in the F&I office may improve CSI scores. How you sell it Share the excitement with your customer by pointing out vehicle features.  Ask open-ended questions that trigger customer stories and share your own that speak to pain points.  Educate them on the cost to replace a smart key, premium wheels & tires, and their high-tech windshield. Find out if they know that the appearance of their vehicle impacts its value.  A five steps approach to sell your F&I products: Considering a classic five-step methodology for selling the products could prove beneficial in closing the deal faster. Let us look at the five essential steps of selling: Qualify: A question or statement you would ask to orient the customer to the topic you are going to discuss. Create Needs awareness: This step is a guided discovery process leading your customers to discover or realize the needs of the product or service. Show Need Satisfaction: Showing the customers the brochure and walking them through it and discussing how you would cover them in various areas. Trial Close: This step is an affirmation that you have your customer’s buy-in. It should help you determine if the customer is ready to close. Close on a Choice: Give your customers two or more choices as a call to action. The number of alternatives must be very few; otherwise, the customers may get analysis paralysis, so they choose to do nothing rather than making a choice. Furthermore, the sixth and seventh steps come into play if the customer objects or asks a question. In that scenario, take the following steps- 6. Redirect: When you encounter an objection or resistance from your customer, this step will let you resolve the concern by redirecting an objection, which means asking questions in a conversational way to understand the cause of resistance.  7.  Re-close: Finally, giving two choices to the customers, both of which end in a sale. When a customer asks about the product’s price, provide them the information, and re-close with a course of action. For example, when does your house payment comes due? Would you want your product payment to come payable with your house payment or more towards the middle of the month? Here, the buyer is induced to decide on two administrative options rather than on a significant purchase. Offering customer-centric, safety, and security products Typically, about 80% of customers choose to finance when buying a vehicle. However, in the current situation, when finding the desired vehicle while staying within one’s budget might not be as easy, it

Your guide to increasing customer satisfaction index (CSI) and revenue of your car dealership. Consistent customer experience and CSI score in the car dealership Your customer satisfaction index (CSI) scores directly influence your car dealership profitability. When it comes to customer satisfaction in a car dealership, often two departments, sales, and service, are considered accountable to elevate the satisfaction score. But it is essential to realize that providing consistent positive experience across all the departments, including the Finance and Insurance (F&I) department, makes the customers happy. In addition, your F&I department is where the customers spend a considerable amount of time in the dealership. Therefore, a partnership between the sales, service, and F&I department is key to improving the car dealership CSI score. J.D. Power Report Mar 2020 Evidently, the pandemic is interrupting the global supply chains, so parts shortage could become a source of frustration for customers and inevitably affect their overall experience.  As a result, the ability to meet customer expectations for prompt service and repairs will be undermined. Additionally, the global microchip shortage has impacted the availability and delivery of vehicles and parts. The delay in obtaining what they want is causing a lower satisfaction level in customers. So, this gives you more reasons to focus on how all your departments can work collectively to improve the CSI score for shared profitability. Before we dive into the impact of all departments on the CSI score, including the F&I department, let us investigate the importance and benefits of the CSI score.  Why Customer experience is the key to dealers’ profitability: Quality of experience directly influences CSI: Customer experience forms the basis of customer satisfaction and, ultimately, the CSI score. Thus, it is needless to say that the quality of experience and convenience they get at your dealership can make or break the deal. Customer satisfaction score not only influences your bottom line but also significantly impacts team morale. While your dealership may survive with a dissatisfied, single-purchase customer, only the dealers with profound attention to customer satisfaction will thrive. Customer satisfaction is the differentiator between surviving and thriving. Better experience drives higher sales: As per Harvard Business Review, customers who get great experience spent 140% more than others who had a poor experience. That means customer’s receptivity to product offerings could be an excellent opportunity for the F&I department, provided your customer had a delightful experience on the sales floor or service drive. Benefits of creating a culture of partnership between departments: With that in mind, the F&I department should strive to enhance customer satisfaction further so that your peer’s CSI is not impacted along with the dealership’s profit. It is essential to remember that a properly managed F&I department means an enjoyable buying experience for the customer. In contrast, disregarding a customer-centric approach is a perfect way to lose sales and reduce the prospects of making a second sale. For this reason, dealerships must create a culture of partnerships between the sales, service, and F&I departments to ensure delivering excellent customer experience.  How F&I influences the CSI score Building value for your buyer, focusing on positive lender relationships, and playing by the rules may help keep financing at the dealership and increase customer satisfaction. Take genuine interest and educate customers about the financing options: Most people find the financing and insurance complicated and need help understanding the clauses, terms, out-of-pocket costs, and available options. So, taking a genuine interest in understanding customer’s unique situations facilitates providing better solutions. For instance, F&I Manager can help a customer decide between independent financing or dealership and offering APR matching to simplify their purchasing process and raise satisfaction. Moreover, a competent F&I Manager helps preserve the rapport sales personnel built with customers and enhances customer’s overall experience.    Build positive relationships with your current lenders: Many buyers look for financing options when buying a car. While the consumers can get auto financing from a bank or credit union, it could be cumbersome and perhaps on less favorable terms. Having a positive relationship with your lenders will enable you to get special financing approved for your customers. In addition, it could significantly help improve your customer’s experience and satisfaction. Consequently, your sales peers could score a higher CSI. Ways to improve customer satisfaction 1. Time is of utmost importance: The buying experience should be fast and enjoyable for the customers. Typically, a dissatisfied customer complains about feeling pressured to buy products and long waits, and unnecessary processing and presentation time. You can streamline your processes using multiple digital tools and technology to significantly shorten a customer’s time from entering the dealership to leaving with the newly purchased vehicle. It would drastically enrich their buying experience, thus, improving the CSI score. Furthermore, adopting strategic sales techniques such as choice close can help you close the deals faster.  2. Frequently train employees: Mistakes in the F&I department can cost you more than a sale. It could potentially impact CSI score, reduce loyalty, raise acquisition cost, and severely affect the dealership’s reputation. However, recurrent training has shown proven results in raising employees’ efficiency, increasing CSI score and sales profits. 3. Recognition and appreciation: You can nurture your employees’ talent to provide a better customer experience. For example, acknowledging positive employee behaviors and gestures could motivate your employees to deliver a ‘wow’ customer experience. Handwritten cards and creating a wall of fame to display employees’ thoughtful efforts are some of the constructive ways to appreciate and empower your teams. Foster collaboration in sales and F&I departments: The F&I department can have a greater impact on a customer’s perception of the sales experience along with the credibility of a dealership. Moreover, F&I managers can strengthen relationships with sales and service departments, encouraging ways to work together to assist customers better and at the same time improve CSI. Discussing additional benefits of doing so may be a good idea, especially in commission-based service departments. Overall, sales, service, and F&I departments are all very different environments. But it