To stay sharp in F&I, training must be a daily habit – like brushing your teeth. 

One of my favorite F&I managers puts it best: “If you’re not growing, you’re dying.” I took this to heart and explored something most people overlook: wiring harnesses. Exciting, right? Well, it should be! Because when you harness your knowledge, you become more valuable to your customers and your dealership.

At Reahard & Associates Inc., we’ve created a visual aid—the parts cutaway—highlighting 44 different components with their average retail prices, excluding labor. On the back of the laminated masterpiece, you’ll find some staggering statistics:

• 40% of a vehicle’s cost is attributed to electronics.

• Vehicles contain 50 onboard computers operating on 20 closed-area networks, processing 10,000 network signals and running 750 million lines of code.

• A single error—one misplaced digit or punctuation mark—can cause critical system failures.

Understanding Harnesses

While attending the Ethical F&I Managers Conference in March, I shared a surprising statistic with my mentor, Ron Reahard. On average, today’s vehicles contain 40 separate wiring harnesses, 700 connectors, and over 3,000 copper wires. If laid end to end, they’d stretch over 2 ½ miles. Every pothole and railroad track rattles those delicate connections.

Given all that fragile, interconnected technology, is it any wonder a service contract is critical? The more you understand today’s vehicles, the more service contracts you’ll sell. Customers don’t want to be sold to—they want to be helped. That’s where your expertise comes in. For instance, multiplex wiring – it reduces the amount of wiring in a vehicle by allowing three wires to carry multiple signals simultaneously. Efficient—until one wire fails, knocking out multiple systems at once. That’s the kind of insight that makes customers stop and think, “Maybe I do need that coverage.”

Another mentor, Rick McCormick, taught me the value of continuous learning. When he conducts in-dealership training, he asks every F&I manager, "What did you learn in the last 30 days that you didn’t know before?" Like all great trainers, he introduces fresh insights—things no one else is talking about. 

True pros do this: 

• Read

• Study

• Stay alert

• Meet needs of the marketplace

• Listen first, then speak

Hard at Work

The harder you work, the smarter you work and the more people you help. 

Effort always pays off when applied correctly. Are you helping customers, or just trying to sell them something? Be someone they trust. Be obsessed with the details. When a customer looks behind the curtain, do they see an expert or just a salesperson pushing a contract?

People will pay you thousands of dollars for your knowledge and expertise, but they won’t give you a dime for a sales pitch they don’t want to hear. So how do you educate and inform rather than simply sell?

Simple: Know something they don’t—and make them thirsty for the knowledge you have. 

• A bartender doesn’t sell you a drink … he gives you free peanuts, and suddenly you’re ordering another round.

• Want to grab a cat’s attention? Play with a ball of yarn, and suddenly, you have its full focus.

• A great F&I manager doesn’t sell protection; we make recommendations. They reveal why protection is essential, and suddenly the customer says, “Wait, tell me more about that?”

That’s how you harness the power of learning. Make them curious. Make them want to know what you know.

Connecting the Dots

Just like the miles of wiring in today’s vehicles, your customers need protection. If one of those 700 connectors fails, it can disrupt multiple critical systems at once. One loose connection, and suddenly their heated seats, navigation and backup camera are all having a meltdown at the same time.

Your job isn’t to pitch—it’s to connect the dots and help them understand what they don’t yet know. The right information at the right time makes all the difference. And when you do it right, they won’t feel sold—they’ll feel grateful.

So go out there and harness the power of learning. Make people want to do business with you. And remember—just like a vehicle’s wiring harness, one bad connection can short-circuit the whole deal. Stay sharp. Stay curious. Make ’em moo! It’s a beautiful day to learn something new! 

Justin B. Gasman is a senior training consultant with Reahard & Associates. He is AFIP Master – certified and ACE certified.