Car Buying Tips

Guides and advice for purchasing new and used vehicles

Car Buying Tips

E-Contracting Rollout at Your Franchise Store: What Top Dealers Get Right

It's 2 PM on a Tuesday, and your finance manager just got pinged for the third time this week about a customer waiting in the showroom while they scramble throu...

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Car Buying Tips

How Top-Performing Dealers Benchmark and Manage Chargeback Trends

What if your F&I chargebacks are running 8% of gross when the top quartile dealers are sitting at 2–3%? That gap isn't random variation—it's money you're leavin...

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Car Buying Tips

How Top-Performing Dealers Handle the Deal Jacket Audit Checklist

You're sitting in your office on a Tuesday afternoon when your F&I manager walks in with a stack of deal jackets from last week. Three of them are missing signe...

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Car Buying Tips

How Top-Performing Dealers Handle Subprime Deal Structure Without Losing the Store

Most dealerships treat subprime deals like a necessary evil. They mark them down, rush them through, and hope the customer doesn't walk. That's backwards. The d...

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Car Buying Tips

GAP Insurance Penetration: How Top Dealers Benchmark and Close More Sales

Most Dealers Leave Money on the Table With GAP Insurance Here's a hot take: if your GAP penetration rate is below 50%, you're not selling it, your finance team...

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Car Buying Tips

How Top-Performing Dealers Benchmark Their Warranty vs. Service Contract Mix

Back in the 1980s, when dealers still had to physically shuffle paperwork between the F&I office and the service department, warranty and service contract track...

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Car Buying Tips

How Top-Performing Dealers Hit Back-End Gross Targets: A Benchmarking Guide

Sixty-three percent of dealerships miss their back-end gross targets in the first half of the year, then scramble to make them up in Q3 and Q4. That's not a gue...

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Car Buying Tips

How Top-Performing Dealers Handle Red Flag Rules Without Killing Sales

How many times this month has a finance manager or an F&I director mentioned "red flag rules" in a morning meeting and watched half the room's eyes glaze over? ...

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Car Buying Tips

How Top-Performing Dealers Handle Compliance Disclosures in the Finance Office

The Compliance Disclosure Mistake That's Costing You Gross You're sitting in your F&I office at 5 p.m. on a Friday, and a customer calls back. They're confused...

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Car Buying Tips

How Top-Performing Dealers Benchmark Lender Relationships for Maximum Back-End Gross

Back in the 1980s, when dealer finance was mostly a handshake deal with a local bank manager who knew you by name, the relationship was simple: you sold the car...

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Car Buying Tips

How Top-Performing Dealers Handle F&I Product Menu Presentation: A Benchmarking Guide

The F&I Menu Mistake Most Dealers Make (And How to Fix It) Most dealerships treat their F&I product menu like a takeout restaurant treats its kids menu. It's t...

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Car Buying Tips

Why Loaner and Demo Rotation Into Retail Is Quietly Costing You Deals

Most dealers have no idea how much money they're leaving on the table when a loaner or demo vehicle finally rotates into retail inventory. You probably think th...

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