Please describe the setup of the special finance department Academy Cars …
There’s not really a special finance department … there’s basically myself and two other salesmen/finance managers … everyone handles their own deals … It’s kind of cradle to grave—meet and greet all the way to delivering the vehicle. I really enjoy that. I hadn’t done that over the years; I was kind of stuck in the finance office. My main strength is I’m a people person, so I really enjoy doing that here and getting back to a small dealership atmosphere where everyone does everything.
Have you implemented any new processes/procedures since you joined Academy?
Basically, everyone has what they think is the most important thing when it comes to subprime financing. Of course, you have to have the lenders and that’s where it started. We signed up … literally a dozen lenders. You only need to use four to six lenders on a regular basis, but I firmly believe that you can have twice that many. There’s going to be a deal a month that fits somebody’s niche that your regular lenders aren’t doing. And it helped greatly when [the market] hit the fan three or four months … We haven’t seen a drop in numbers or profit just because we lost lenders. And we’re still doing basically the same credit profile. It’s had to go up a little, but I’m still getting 400 scores done.
What do you do to maintain good relationships with the finance company representative you work with?
|
“The lender relationships [Tom] builds and the customer relationships he cultivates [makes him a true SF superstar]. He can just smell a deal, and he can make a deal show itself. ” – Lonnie Blackburn, owner, Academy Cars
Tom Langas
Finance Director
21 Years of Dealership Experience
19 Years of SF experience
Dealership stats:
Academy Cars
Lawrence, KS
Average SF Deals per Month: 20
Average days to fund: 4
SF Sales to SF Bureaus Pulled: 33%
SF Sales to Total Sales: 66%
|
I think the main thing with the reps is, of course, they’re into numbers. They want you to send them at least a deal or two per month. They’ll tell you they don’t have look-to-book, but be conscious of that. Never shotgun. Know your programs. Know who’s going to buy this before you send it. They appreciate that because they know if they work hard enough to approve it, they’ll get the deal. Now, I say that, but I’ll usually get two or three approvals because I want to see which one’s going to do the best job … But, it’s still not like getting on DealerTrack and sending it to everybody … I’m not going to call and rehash unless I’ve got an argument to get them to buy it, so a buyer knows when I call, I’m not calling to harass them … That’s how you build long-term relationships … The people you do business with respect you and your knowledge of the business. You don’t have to BS them. You don’t have schmooze them. You don’t have to strong-arm them.
Other than training, what do you do stay on your toes in the SF industry?
I read everything I can get my hands on … I literally search the Internet every month. I’ll just go to Google and I’ll put in “special finance info” … The Internet is such an indispensable tool, and it’s an underused tool … There’s probably five or six really good special finance publications that come out … and [Lonnie, the owner of Academy Cars,] will do it every month, he will literally tear out articles and make copies and will staple them and he draws a line on the front of it with our initials and we have to check off that each one of us has read it. He’s absolutely conscientious about that … If he sees something that applies to us, then he’ll tear it out, we’ll pass it around and it’ll be dog-eared in a week because everybody’s read it.
With current market conditions causing many dealers’ numbers to drop, how has Academy Cars managed to maintain consistent averages?
You have to dig deeper with the lenders you still have … It’s not so much that you have to work harder. You just have to work smarter … You have to be a little bit more of a detective when it comes to investigating the application and the credit bureau … I think in times like these, one thing I’ve noticed we’re doing a better job of is getting an absolutely complete and comprehensive application. That tells so much of the story …It’s also attitude …If you’re not going to settle for less, you’re going to make it happen.
Totally random question – What’s your favorite book?
A biography of Teddy Roosevelt. I think, hands down, he was the most influential and powerful president we’ve ever had. He had that attitude, whether it was the ruff riders, fighting a war or building the Panama Canal, everyone told him “Well, we can’t do that.” He just had this attitude like, “Well, no, we’re going to do it.”
Vol. 2, Issue 4