Five Training Habits of High-Performing F&I Managers

High-performing F&I managers train when nobody is watching. In this Training Camp episode, Adam Marburger borrows a lesson from his Brazilian jiu-jitsu coach: sharpen your blade in private, and it shows in public. He shares five habits he used in the F&I office and now teaches finance managers across the country.

1. Commit to training every day

Adam draws a line between being interested and being committed. Interested people do well. Committed people, the ones who train when nobody is looking, do great. The first habit is deciding to train daily and aiming to be a little better today than yesterday.

2. Pick a battle buddy

Find a like-minded person inside your dealership who wants to grow, and spend about 20 minutes a day training together. That could be product knowledge, role-playing, or sitting at the desk together helping structure deals.

Your battle buddy is also your accountability partner. Share your goals at the start of the month and review them together throughout it. Adam admits accountability scared him early in his F&I career. Embracing it is what changed his trajectory.

3. Follow and study successful people

Look for people already doing what you want to do, first inside your own store and then beyond it. Many of the best lessons are already written down in books and other publications. Studying them helps you find techniques and best practices to grow yourself and your income.

4. Stay consistent

Many people start a new habit, keep it for a few weeks, and fall off, in the gym, in their diet, and in their training. Consistency is what lets you elevate. Your accountability partner helps, but the decision to stay consistent is yours. Average effort yields average results.

5. Stay humble

There is always a better way. Adam recalls a conversation with someone who said they didn’t need training after decades in the car business. The day you think you have it all figured out is the day you start going backwards. Stay open to new ideas.

Then act on what you learn

Ideas from podcasts, conferences and peer groups only help if you put them into practice right away. Otherwise they “die on the vine.” Adam’s challenge to dealer principals is to hold general managers and the whole team accountable to consistent training and development.

Training is not something a store did once. It is something it must keep doing. Explore Ascent’s F&I training, the Ascent Academy online community, and why continuous F&I training matters for dealership profitability.

Adapted from Training Camp with Adam Marburger, first aired November 5, 2024. Watch this episode on CBT News or browse every Training Camp episode. Have a question about your F&I department? Talk to the Ascent team.