dealership spotlight / special finance Kim Long
Brown Daub Kia Augments SF Business with the Addition of Aunt Bessie's
done. Ring is president and operating partner at Tom Ring's Brown Daub Kia in Eas- ton, Pa. A former independent dealer, he ran the Kia store for the Brown Daub organization for about two years before buying an interest in the store in January 2008.
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Ring's special finance expertise was a good fit for a Kia dealership. In the South Korean automaker's early years, while it was trying to gain traction in the U.S., he recalled, "The only chance you had to try to sell a car was finding a way that
om Ring says special finance is pretty much all that he has ever
other dealers weren't working, and that was the special finance angle."
Today, special finance deals account for roughly 55 to 60 percent of the store's 150 to 160 monthly deals. "We never treat a special finance cus- tomer any different than any other customer," said Ring. He added it's standard practice at the store to pull credit for "every single customer, every single time," whether they are walk-ins or there by appoint- ment. He said most people don't take issue with the practice. "We've made it very clear in our market that we're a solutions dealer," he said.
"Less than one percent of people that come in the door have a problem with it, and if people have an issue with it, then we simply go on to the next part of the process, which would be … selecting a car." He noted, "In this day and age, we very rarely see somebody with a credit bureau that doesn't at least have some sort of nick or ding."
Ring said the atmosphere at the Kia dealership is designed to be fun, comfortable and make customers feel at home; the showroom has music playing and the receptionist offers shoppers freshly- baked cookies and other
refreshments. "People are just at ease when they come through the door," he said. That is the first step to building the kind of relationship they want with the customer. "When the salesperson sits down with them … he's there to counsel with them and help them in the process and also form an authentic relationship."
While Brown Daub Kia has done very well with special finance, Ring decided he wanted to be able to capture an even larger share of the special finance market. When the Kia store moved to a new location (purchased from a Chevrolet dealer who went out
28 Tom Ring's Brown Daub Kia in Easton, Pa., works as much as 60 percent of its monthly 160 sales through special finance. Today, Ring said, it is difficult to find
buyers who don't have some sort of nick or ding in their credit history.