F&I Connection

At Marine Connection in West Palm Beach, Fla., the company places a big focus on its F&I business, and it shows throughout the company.

For starters, whereas most dealers don’t realize the link between their F&I offering and their CSI scores, Marine Connection showed on one of its annual CSI reports that it beats its colleagues’ national average for offering competitive
financing by 29 percentage points.

It’s no surprise, really, because owner Mark Lasilla considers F&I to be an integral part of not only the sales department, but the overall profitability of the business. Having a full-service in-house F&I department with two full-time business managers, Lasilla believes, reflects the company philosophy of providing a one-stop shopping experience.

His business office supports the sales team by protecting profit goals, assisting in the closing of deals; keeping the sales force abreast of the status of on-going deals; and educating the consumer on all the company’s F&I offerings, which include extended warranties, credit life insurance, disability coverage and GAP insurance.

“Reaching the levels of success we have in F&I,” Lasilla explains, “is only possible when the entire group concurs that F&I maintains an importance level on par with, and is not an afterthought to, the sales process.”

The end result in this focus is that Marine Connection increased its F&I sales by more than 11 percent in 2006; increased its overall revenue by nearly 21 percent, and saw its F&I department contribute more than 39 percent to the company’s bottom-line profit.