AUGUST 28TH, 2009
Don’t discount the importance of the F&I part of the sales process
Visit the most successful motorcycle dealerships and in nearly every one you will find an F&I manager. For good reason too, given the incremental profitability an F&I manager generates. Some dealerships with F&I managers take it a step further and forbid their salespeople from making any mention of financing. After all, the possibility of mistakes and litigation today makes it dangerous for anyone other than the experts to talk about financing. Read more >>
Quick, of all the quad models out there - ATV or UTV - tell me which one sold the best in the United States from January through May? Easy you say? OK, try this one: Tell me which metric motorcycle model sold the best from January through May? 
Trust me that what I’m about to say isn’t some kind of sordid attempt at finding some industry silver lining, however irrelevant it might be. So here goes: Franchise ATV retailers are, perhaps unbeknownst to them, in the midst of some good news. 
One of the few benefits of hard times is the opportunity to make large tax-free estate planning transfers. In any tax year you can transfer $13,000 of cash or property to each of any number of individuals. If you have five children, you can make five $13,000 transfers. If your spouse joins in the gift, you can give $26,000 each year to each donee. If you have a long-term concern about passing your estate to your children, grandchildren or others and if the value of your company is depressed as a result of economic conditions this year, this could be a good time to make a gift or series of gifts, usually in the form of minority stock interests in a corporation, to your potential heirs. Each gift is valued the year you make it, and if you think the value of the company is going to go up when times improve, you can effectively transfer not only the present value but all of the future growth free from gift or estate taxes. 
What are you doing to attract new customers? What are you doing to keep existing customers intrigued? At a recent dealer 20 group meeting I attended, dealers were required to put money into a pot. Each dealer presented an “outside the box” idea to increase sales or help their businesses in some form. If they didn’t have an idea, they had to pay an even greater amount of money. After the ideas were presented, dealers voted on the best one, and the dealers with the two most popular ideas collected the pot. 