LAS VEGAS, Nev. – RV dealers find themselves competing more and more with faceless online companies for their customers’ loyalty and business.
During Brown & Brown’s annual F&I School, Shawn Moran, president of Brown & Brown’s RV F&I, presented a lineup of products and partners whose goal is to make sure those customers are offered special products with personal service that will keep them shopping at the brick-and-mortar stores that are the backbone of the industry.
The workshops continue through today at the Horseshoe Casino as a lead-in to the annual RVDA Convention/Expo at the Paris Las Vegas next door, which also begins registration today.
Among companies making presentations over the weekend were Alliant Credit Union, Medallion Bank, Merrick Bank, One Source, Menu Metric, Camp Assist, BMO, Line 5, Marine One, Aqua Finance, M&T Bank, Source One, US Bank, Fifth Third Bank, Bank of America and Truist Bank.
“Here at Brown & Brown we can teach you how to sell product; we can teach you compliance – and that’s all great – but ultimately if you don’t know how to package and deliver the loan to the lender and get them to buy it, then you’re never going to sell your product,” Moran told RVBusiness. “You’re probably never going to deliver a unit and ultimately the business is going to suffer. The better relationship you create with these lenders, the better understanding you have of the programs and the better understanding you have of what they want the better off they are to buy for you.”
The program for the F&I school was directly designed to help dealers make connections with the lenders and to help them find ways to get customers into the RV of their dreams.
Most presented lending products designed to secure loans for any customer and profit margins for dealers who are able to add on accessories or services when selling an RV.
Camp Assist is a program offering roadside assistance that is available 24/7.
“The attendance is great this year, but I think the interest level is even better,” Moran told RVBusiness toward the end of Saturday’s session. “We showed off some new Brown & Brown opportunities for 2026 as well as some ways to reach to customer after they have left our market. Hopefully somebody online doesn’t try to sell them a similar product. But we offered ways to talk to the customer whether they are on their cell phone or tablet or whatever it might be, but some ways to reach them digitally.”
Moran stressed that those personal contact points can be critical to getting a loan done for a customer.
He said that just because a lender initially says no doesn’t mean that is the final answer.
When a lender and the dealership have a personal relationship, it opens the possibility for communication that can lead to negotiation and the potential to change the no to a yes.
“There’s still a human factor to all these deals,” he said. “I hope we learn that here. The human factor is still important.”
During the Menu Metric presentations, dealers learned about the Menu Select program that uses Artificial Intelligence that tries to offer selling solutions based on what it thinks the dealer is expecting.
There are five levels of buy-in for the dealer: Standard, Pro, Tech, Elite (which offers a remote F&I office) and Apex AI.
Amy Perry, a sales associate with Menu Metric, described the Menu Mobile profile as an integration to give finance managers options to reach out to the customer electronically before an in-person meeting.
The system would creat an event log of everything the customer looked at during the meeting to help prepare for the in-person event.
Phil Imbery, COO of Menu Metric, discussed Menu Connect that allows a dealer to sign contracts for example using PDFs that are available to both sides of the conversation.
“It allows you to do everything virtually with the customer literally anywhere in the world,” he said. “The menu could be signed, the waiver could be signed. You could have a buyer and a co-buyer in different locations each signing.”
The final piece of the puzzle is the Menu Trainer platform that allows the system to record any interaction between an F&I officer and customer and then provide feedback within five minutes.
Then using those interactions, the system can build role playing courses to help personnel improve their F&I skills using a SIM365 platform.
Moran said Brown & Brown works hard to make the F&I School free for its participants and that the event is open to all dealers, not just customers.
Lenders help sponsor the event because it helps them get the kind of loan applications they are looking for and dealers appreciate the event as a lead-in to the RV Dealers Association’s Convention Expo.
“If you look at this room full of people, the number of people that come to this school and stay over for the RVDA supporting the industry is a wonderful thing,” Brown said. “It’s just a support in the industry. And I’ll be teaching an AI workshop during the Convention.”
