GE Money-Sales Finance: GE Money plans to increase dealer visits – February 12, 2007

GE Money-Sales Finance has recently doubled its sales force for the powersports industry.
The move by the finance giant is intended to allow more one-on-one training at dealerships as well as increasing the share of business GE does at each site.
“2006 wasn’t the greatest year for new (unit) sales compared to previous years in the powersports sector,” said Gregory Pierce, vice president and general manager of GE Money’s powersport division. “So for dealers it becomes that much more critical for them to be efficient with every customer in terms of overall selling strategies.
“We’re not saying we’re the end all to doing that, but we’re committed to assisting dealerships to grow their overall business even when the market might not be growing at the historical rates it has been.”
OEM Relationships
GE Money, formerly GE Consumer Finance’s Retail Sales Finance unit and a unit of General Electric Co., has relationships with more than 25 OEMs in the powersports, V-Twin and trailer industries, including Honda, Yamaha, BRP, Polaris and Ducati.
Because of those OEM relationships, 6,000 dealers across the nation use GE Money’s services, which provide private label credit card programs, installment lending, bankcards and financial services for consumers.
Many of those 6,000 dealers work with a number of GE clients, meaning F&I managers often are sifting through three, four, five or more GE-OEM finance contracts, each of which might have its own nuances.
To address that potentially confusing situation, GE Money’s powersports division has doubled its inside and outside reps to provide the necessary training to handle those various contracts, as well as other GE services.
“Face-to-face (training) is what the dealerships are asking for and GE is committed to doing that,” Pierce said.
The dealer visits would be in addition to other training activities the company currently does.
“That’s where we see the opportunity going forward in addition to our trade shows, our manufacturer shows and our customer events, like Daytona and Sturgis, that we attend,” Pierce said.
The on-site visits will be designed for the individual dealer, meaning a training session with a large dealership that is doing a large amount of business with GE “may be tailored a little bit differently for a large dealership that isn’t doing as much business with us,” Pierce said.
Key Initiatives
The visits, which will come at no cost to the dealer, will address a couple of key initiatives that dealers have asked for in GE Money surveys: training for overall finance issues, which could include assisting new F&I managers in getting up to speed with GE Money’s services, and AdvanceDesk, GE Money’s online program that allows dealers to process and manage applications, generate documents and get reports.
“We’ve had huge success in the adoption of dealerships using it,” Pierce said of the online system that has been available for about two years. “We just always want to make sure they are aware of the new enhancements and features.”
One feature that became available late last year — and will be shown at the upcoming Dealer Expo — is the AdvanceDesk system’s Swipe Capability. The magnetic stripe reader, which plugs into a USB port, is aimed at making repeat private-label credit card purchases faster for dealers. The magnetic stripe reader, which can be used at parts and accessory counters, can decrease the amount of paperwork dealers have to do.
That’s one of the programs GE Money is aiming for all of its dealers, not just the larger ones.
For its dealers that might not receive on-site training visits this year, GE Money is producing training videos. The videos, which dealers will be able to download, will cover three training areas. The videos will be available in 2007 and, like the on-site training visits, will come at no cost.
All of the training is geared toward growing the F&I department, an area that some dealers have sourced out to outside parties.
“When dealerships outsource, for the most part, they are not helping themselves overall grow,” Pierce said
“We’ve done a good job of bringing innovation and ideas to bear,” he said, “but then we really need to commit to make sure we get it to the thousands of dealers we do business with.”