RVBusiness March/April 2026
By John Spader & The NCM Associates Team
Everywhere I go, I hear the same thing about why grosses are low. Different markets, different brands, different price points, same stories:
- “Take the deal and have a run at the back.”
- “They’ve been shopping online — we either match the price or lose the deal.”
- “I have to get rid of some inventory no matter what the price.”
- “We need the market share.”
I understand where those statements come from. Floor plan costs are real. Curtailments are real. Aged inventory is real. Internet pricing is real. Market share is real. But we need to say the quiet part out loud: replacing the skill of creating front-end margin with an attitude of “take anything and make it up in F&I” is not a long-term strategy.
F&I Is Not a Magic Eraser
A strong back end can be the difference between “okay” and “excellent.” But it can also become the excuse for weak retailing. A store that discounts first teaches customers and salespeople a dangerous lesson: our value is our discount. And once you teach that lesson, customers shop harder — on the unit, on the aftermarket and on the protection products. And your salespeople learn another lesson: no matter how well I do (or don’t do) building value, the dealership is likely to accept the deal.
Here’s the best news: gross margin isn’t something you either have or don’t have. It’s built. And the skills to build it can be learned. We all know them and most of us used to practice them. But somehow as an industry we got away from these habits that worked — because the market has changed, the internet got loud, and F&I became the crutch to support low margins.
The Biggest Lie We Tell Ourselves about Online Shoppers
Another assumption is quietly crushing margins in RV sales:
“Because they’ve been shopping online, all they care about is price.”
Some buyers are pure price buyers, a small percentage. You can’t build a healthy business selling only to them.
Most RV customers aren’t buying a commodity. They’re buying a dream, a lifestyle and in many cases the second largest purchase of their life. And if they inquire online or call you while browsing online, they’re doing something important: they’re giving you a chance. Just like you, me and nearly everyone else, they generally start their shopping process on the internet, figuring out the landscape of manufacturers and dealers … thinking about who they want to do business with.
They want engagement. They want confidence. They want to know who they can trust with that kind of money. Dealers who mistake online shopping for “price only” are missing sales — and missing margin.
A store that discounts first teaches customers and salespeople a dangerous lesson: our value is our discount.
Skipping the opportunity to build trust and relationship almost guarantees a focus on price and a low-margin deal. Engagement begins on your website. How effective is your website at conveying trust and encouraging engagement? How good is your organization at responding to digital leads in real time?
What Higher-Margin Dealers Do Differently
We work with many dealers who are holding margins meaningfully higher than the averages, not because they found a secret website trick. Not because their customers miraculously don’t shop online. They do it because they made gross margin a deliberate outcome of their culture and their process. In our experience, higher-margin dealers have:
- Discipline in how they price — a clear strategy, consistently executed, without panic discounting.
- Effective training — not once a year, but a real program that builds confidence and habits.
- A culture of keeping gross — a belief that their prices are justified because their value is real.
- A road-to-the-sale process map — known, coached and in fact, followed.
- A focus on words that actually work — Train salespeople to close without dated language that all of us have heard before. Get “if I could … would you?” out of everyone’s vocabulary.
The Decision Every Dealership Has to Make
All of us will discount sometimes. That’s reality. But a dealership that always discounts first — and sells value second — will live in low margins forever.
Gross margin isn’t gone. We just have to rebuild the skill of earning it and the attitude of expecting it. And that starts with making the decision to hold ourselves and our people accountable to the disciplines and the processes that work, each and every time. RVB