The Financial Services Manager:
- Is much like the dealership "banker" and maintains a similar bearing and presence within the dealership and among the lenders he or she works with on a daily basis.
- Is well-versed in financial services and accounting as well as in sales.
- Must be capable of working independently, effectively managing his or her time and work flow.
- Must be genuinely customer focused and must have strong interpersonal skills, easily establishing rapport with customers.
- Must be accessible to the rest of the team.
- Has as its central characteristic customer contact at an important moment in the process of a sale.
- Entails finalizing contracts down to the point of signatures, while at the same time working to set up extended service contracts and insurance arrangements.
- Requires spending considerable time on the phone with lenders.
- Requires working closely with sales team members and in harmony with the respective styles of Sales Consultants.
- Involves overseeing sales document presentation training by Financial Services Department members to dealership sales team members.
- Requires effective interdepartmental communication and feedback with regard to sales.
- Necessitates strong leadership skills.
- Requires analytical skills, which are part of the planning process and part of the process of constantly monitoring the profits of the dealership, in pinpointing where improvement can be made in teams and procedures and in making action plans to provide correction based on the analyses.
