Every general agent is looking for an effective, high-probability-of-success strategy for acquiring new business. Assuming your agency has built its foundation on providing more than just product, and is serious about dealer development, is there a way to leverage the value of that proven development expertise and use it for conquest?

The answer is yes. Dealers can get service contracts and other F&I products anywhere. The invaluable services your agency can provide in income development, technology consulting, wealth creation, accountability, compliance, and more is priceless. Rather than trying to crack the door through a version of, "Let me tell you why our service contract program and F&I training is so great...," consider offering to prospects a Business Development Assessment (BDA).

If you are a proponent of the axiom, "You can't ask more of a relationship than you've given," then conducting a BDA surely creates a sense of obligation on the part of your prospective client. Indeed, there is no obligation created pitching how great your agency is, how much money you make your clients, how great your rewards trips are, or how prolific is your training.

Contrast that with proposing, at your expense, to come into a store and get under the hood, analyze the operation, and then comprehensively report back to the dealer with empirical evidence, and we have the beginnings of a solid relationship. The BDA report identifies areas of opportunity and highlights how your agency can help the dealer reach his goals with an action plan.

Be sure the dealer understands what he will get out of the BDA exercise. At minimum, he will have an objective, third-party comprehensive look at his business. He will have a written and bound report that he can refer to, analyzing his historical performance against industry benchmarks and local demographics. He will have in his hands a list of recommendations to improve his bottom line, customer satisfaction, compliance, training, and more.

The BDA is not a new idea. It is practiced successfully by many agencies, often in conjunction with the larger service contract providers. Even some OEMs conduct BDAs with outsourced dealer development specialists when they identify underperforming dealerships that sell the factory VSC. Let's take a look at an outline for an "organic" BDA that your agency can create to level the playing field.

Step 1: The BDA Proposal and Setting Expectations

A holistic approach to the BDA that includes sales, service, and F&I is a must. Creating an environment where F&I can and will succeed is our goal. Inform the dealer that during the BDA, your agency will be conducting interviews with key management personnel in each department. Employees will complete short surveys and will be observed conducting their normal activities.

Your agency will need six months of financial statements and three years of annual statements from the dealer's participation program (reinsurance, retro, etc...if he has one) and a copy of the agreement with his current VSC provider with pricing. You will need the last thirty or so deals turned in for billing to conduct a compliance audit (more on this later).

Ask to be introduced to the comptroller by the dealer and in the presence of both parties reiterate the essential documents you will be gathering during the BDA. You will need to collect current pricing for all F&I products and determine if there are any dealer packs. You will need copies of all the front-end managers' and service advisors' pay plans.

The BDA itself will take about two days and your agency will be considerate not to interfere with normal operations. It is crucial to set expectations during the proposal. Once the BDA is complete, your agency will compile the data and privately report back to the dealer its findings. The meeting will take a few hours, and at its conclusion, your agency will be making recommendations.

During the proposal is not the time to sell the value of your agency. It will be clear to the dealer, once you present your findings and recommend courses of action, how serious your agency is about dealer development. Realize that if the dealer had all the answers, he would not agree to an intrusive analysis of his business in the first place.

Step 2: Conducting the BDA

The actual two-day BDA is where the dealer gets a sense of the resources of your agency and you have a chance to make a lasting impression. If you have a smaller agency, enlist the aid of your providers and ask for help - you will need boots on the ground to accomplish everything in just two days. The key here is to have enough personnel to make more than casual observations about how the dealership really operates.

"Distinguishing ourselves in the marketplace," states Blake Norberg, VP at C.D. Norberg & Associates, "is crucial for the growth of our agency. We are fortunate that we are able to call upon the resources of GSFS to work with us conducting BDAs in our territory. It's a great feeling to be able to walk into a dealership with a 'team' of dealer development experts and really make a difference for our clients. The BDA is definitely the formula that is fueling our agency's growth."

The BDA is designed to determine if there is a "knowing" problem, a "doing" problem, or both! For the sales department, ask each salesperson to list and write down the dealership's steps in the Road To The Sale, hopefully not in the conference room where they are posted on the wall. This exercise is often hilarious, as the answers are usually all over the map and the number of steps will be from six to sixteen.

Have the sales managers write down the Road To The Sale steps also. Create a short survey with a list of questions for the sales managers to describe the sales process (four square, difference, other...), how the store transitions to F&I, the perception of the finance department's role, etc...

Create a survey for the fixed ops director and service advisors to complete. A short list of questions detailing the process and relationship that exists between F&I and the service advisors (if any) as it relates to VSC contracts and customers nearing factory warranty expiration will do. Determine if there is a program in place to compensate the service advisors for a proper turn over to finance.

Of course, the bulk of your analysis will be in the finance office. What type of F&I presentation software is being used, and is it being used with every customer? Do the finance managers stay in their offices or are they out and about trying to close deals? Are the F&I offices organized? What does contracts in transit look like? Are there daily save-a-deal meetings? What is the relationship dynamic that exists between the sales force, the sales managers, and F&I? Gather the last six month-end F&I reports. Is there a system in place to track F&I activity on a daily basis?

Observe the sales force and their adherence, or lack of, to the Road To The Sale. What percentage of customers get walk-around presentations and test drives? Observe every deal desked, how it was closed, and how the transition was made to F&I. Observe how F&I introduces themselves to the customer. Personally audit every delivery in the finance office and take notes.

The "compliance audit" with the last thirty deals turned in for billing is pure drudgery, but is a wealth of information about what is really going on in the dealership. While making notes on the percentage of deals with signed credit apps, signed privacy statements, signed bailment agreements, signed buyer's orders, etc..., look for evidence of how many times the desk penciled the deal back and forth, how payments were quoted, if the customer was worked for down payment, and how much finance "bumped" the payment (if at all). Document the percentage of deals with a signed, final menu and what was the average number of menus presented per deal.

"Step 3: Presenting Your Findings and the Close"

This will be in Part II of the Business Development Assessment. Stay tuned....