I remember sitting in my office at Robberson Ford in beautiful Bend Oregon a couple years ago. It was a day not unlike today, clear but cold. I was having a terrible conversation with a
gentleman who had submitted an inquiry on a pre-owned vehicle. He’d been a mortgage broker for the previous 25years, and, like so many of the real estate affiliated customers I’d been talking to then, he’d fallen on hard times. His story was pretty sad. Big fat
house in Bend,second home in Tahoe, delinquent mortgages on both. Audi A8, Porsche Cayenne, both 90+ days late. Under water in the homes, upside down in
both vehicles. No income for months, so definitely no cash down. He just desperately wanted there to be a good answer. I certainly didn’t have one for him. I’ve thought about that guy many many times over the past two years, wondering what ultimately happened and how he facilitated his vehicular needs. I mean, a guy with an 800+ beacon history that tanks everything inside a year has got to have a comeback story right?

I've been contemplating a similar comeback story - the comeback of Special Finance - for the past several months. I’m right in the thick of some entrepreneurial ventures that will be facilitating solutions for the automotive sector when it comes to prospecting and fulfillment in the Spi Fi realm, and I’ve had a LOT of conversations about wherewe’re heading.

I just read a blog post by a fellow I don’t know, but hope to. Autofinancenews.net is where I found him and his name is JJHornblass. JJ just got back from the Auto Finance Summit I wish I’d been attending this last week in Vegas. (Yep, I would have forgone DD9 to be there,
call me crazy). You see, the financing component is “the thing” that keeps hanging up my conversations with my dealer principal pals. There isn’t anyone I’ve found
who wouldn’t like to be selling more cars. The hesitance to push the Spi Fi “button” to get there comes from the inability to facilitate loans for the secondary finance customers who walk in the door right now as a result of traditional marketing. Time and time again, I’ve heard the story that the “lenders still aren’t buying”. So I was glad to find JJ’s blog post, which was encouraging, and echoed the sentiments represented in a lot of the articles I’ve been reading and re-posting on ADM and Facebook, etc. – that “auto finance is back and is
only getting better.”

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not naïve about this wildly exciting and downright grindingly dirty side of our business. I pulled time in a single point pre-owned store that occupied three dingy city blocks and rolled 300 cars a month, 75%+ of which were sub-sub-prime. We had relationships with upwards of 20 lenders (we were not BHPH), more than half of which have evaporated from the face of the planet. That business model did not survive the economic collapse, and the echoes of our jingle “working with you and working for you” are all that is left of what was once a thriving representation of some serious capitalism.

I get it. It is to be a long road. I guess my point is that, after the GM acquisition of Americredit, the resecuritization of CPS and Prestige, numerous lenders publicly “loosening” their guidelines to facilitate an increased supply of loans for the current and future demand, and all of the other favorable press on this topic, are YOU getting ready to push “the button”?

There’s a lot that goes into a successful Spi-Fi venture. You’ve got to have the right marketing. You’ve got to have the right fulfillment toprocess your prospects. You’ve got to
have the right mentality, the right people working for you, the right lender
relationships, and the right inventory. I personally know dealers who absolutely will not EVER, and I mean NEVER engage in the sub-prime arena, and I totally get that. On the flip side, there are dealers who have thought about it and who are thinking about it right this very minute.

So what if I told you, if you’re in the latter category, that there’s a beacon of hope on the horizon to facilitate whichever components of your Spi-Fi “set up” you don’t currently have in place or that you’ve been struggling with? To put it differently, what if I told you “there’s an app for that”? Yes, this paragraph is a shameless plug for the services we will be
providing through a company that is soon to be revealed. The point of my saying this, however, is not to promote what we do as the end all be all turn-key solution to a dealer’s
Spi-Fi dreams, but to stir up some conversation about what challenges you currently face that are keeping you from pushing the button, or from being successful if you pushed the button a while back.

In my travels in the past 90 days, I’ve spoken with high volume lead generators, direct mail experts, call center gurus, SEO powerhouses, guys who’ve built sub-prime lending arms for some of the biggest banks in our business,and literally every single one of them is gearing up to facilitate supply solutions for sub-prime market demand. They’re either ready right now, or they’re literally days away from being ready to facilitate whatever program you want to put together. So here’s my challenge to you: let’s stop talking about the “possibility” of
a special finance comeback and let’s start talking about how to become truly successful
in the Special Finance realm in today’s market.