Assurant, a global business services company that supports, protects and connects major consumer purchases like automobiles, as well as commercial equipment, launched a new finance and insurance (F&I) sales training, the Commercial Truck F&I Professionals Class, as part of its Automotive Training Academy. Building on more than 35 years of automotive F&I sales training from Assurant, this new course addresses the specific skills needed to optimize every type of transaction in commercial truck sales.

The one-week program debuted in December at Assurant’s training center in The Woodlands, TX. Topics covered in the class include training on vehicle service contracts, physical damage insurance, non-trucking liability and guaranteed asset protection (GAP) for Class 3 to Class 8 trucks and trailers.

The course is designed to teach commercial truck sales professionals how to:

• Establish needs awareness and build value in protective products
• Effectively explain factory warranties and disclose customer option plans
• Optimize F&I as a profit center
• Increase sales and F&I product attachment rates
• Effectively address customer objections with modern techniques
• Market the F&I department as a customer resource
• Follow an ethical and compliant pattern of practice

Participants who complete the course will be able to display their Automotive Compliance Education (ACE) certification.

The American Trucking Associations (ATA) recently released new projections showing overall truck tonnage will grow from an estimated 11.3 billion tons in 2023 to 14.2 billion tons by the year 2034, noting that the country will “rely on trucking to move the vast majority of freight.”

“While commercial trucks are literally built for the long haul, keeping them on the road will only grow in importance as they remain the dominant mover of goods for the foreseeable future,” Dennis Alexander, vice president of commercial equipment at Assurant, said. “F&I products designed expressly for those vehicles and sold by knowledgeable sales professionals will go a long way towards keeping these critical vehicles on the highways as they carry our nation’s freight. Importantly, that also protects the interests of fleet owners and owner-operators.”