Across the country, car dealerships are increasingly facing a new problem: finding and keeping the right people on staff. As veteran employees retire and customer expectations shift, dealers are rethinking how they develop staff and structure the F&I office.
On this episode of Training Camp, host Adam Marburger talks with Corporate Finance Director Joe St. John about his proven strategy to develop talent from within rather than recruiting established talent from outside.
A track record for turnarounds
Joe St. John built his reputation as an early adopter and investor in digital retailing, most notably at Autofi, before returning to the showroom as corporate finance director at Oakes Auto Group in Kansas City. Founded by former energy trader Dan Oakes and veteran GM Stephen Hill, the group has a track record of turning underperforming stores into high-volume operations.
Oakes Auto Group’s Kia Olathe location recorded 165 new car sales in December up from 34 the same month a year prior. The group’s GMC store, which once sat at the bottom of national performance rankings, now moves 150 units per month with five salespeople. St. John credits a homegrown talent development pipeline and a disciplined, transparent F&I process for the turnaround.
The talent factory model
St. John says it’s not money holding most dealer groups back, it’s people. To solve that, St. John built a structured internal talent pipeline for Oakes. New hires learn a core process, sell a specific way, and work toward eligibility for the group’s Management in Training program.
"The thing that keeps dealers from growing. It typically isn't capital, it's human capital, and it's having people that can go run these stores and move into these roles."
The program isn’t for everyone. Candidates must maintain a 21-car-per-month sales average while completing daily F&I training and attending sessions every Friday at 7:00 a.m. The last two F&I manager promotions at Oakes came from within the program. The group reinforces training daily using RockEd, an AI-powered role-play platform.
Transparency and value for F&I success
St. John’s F&I process starts on the showroom floor, where salespeople close customers on a base payment before handing off to F&I. The key to success in F&I, he says, comes down to transparency.
“I am not doing the games that a lot of people do. We’re not penciling on the showroom with fully loaded payments. We are closing on a base payment, going into an F&I office,” he said. “We use a one-column menu. We don’t lay out a left-to-right menu. It is the platinum package. It includes everything. And then we start taking stuff off.”
Every turn is recorded using iProfit. St. John targets $2,200 per copy for strong profitability and treats any F&I manager candidate claiming $4,000 per copy as a red flag.
Remote control
Remote F&I was producing weak results at Oakes until St. John overhauled the approach entirely. What he did differently was get the customer on camera.
“We don’t do it over the phone. We send them a Google Meet link, and we’re doing full-on like remote F&I turns,” St. John said.
St. John says he frames the video requirement to customers as fraud prevention and identity verification. F&I managers present using iPads, handwriting the deal on screen while the customer watches and asks questions in real time. Documents are signed via a DocuSign link sent to the customer’s phone.
The remote F&I approach also enables cross-store scale, allowing one F&I manager to handle customer turns across multiple locations.
Whether remote or in person, St. John says the formula is the same: peak F&I happens when everyone, from the porter to the dealer principal, understands they are all there to serve the customer.
