The mission has been the same since the beginning: customer satisfaction. In fact, that is how Mission Auto Sales in Miami got its name and what it says on their website and business cards: “Mission Auto Sales—where our mission is your satisfaction.”

Ferdinand “Freddy” Fertil and Amory Charles started the dealership in 2000 with just ten cars in a warehouse. The co-founders grew up in the same village in Haiti and were on the same page when they went into business together, opening a buy here-pay here car dealership that would also be a welcoming place for the undeserved Haitian community in South Florida. Greeting customers in Creole with a “bonjou” or “bonswa,” and offering snacks like Haitian patties and watermelon soda continue to be the little ways Mission Auto Sales let customers know they are part of the family.

Amory and Ferdinand’s sons became owners in the dealership in 2020 to keep the legacy going and growing. Lecoeur Charles, Amory’s son, and Marcus Fertil, Freddy’s son, had grown up at Mission Auto Sales and as teenagers started detailing cars and doing mechanical grunt work. As they grew older and their responsibilities increased, they both knew they wanted to be a part of the dealership in a permanent way.

“My father and his business partner, who I call my uncle, always prided themselves in keeping the dealership as a family-oriented environment,” Lecoeur said. “I just enjoyed watching the customer interaction, watching the sales-tactics that my father does. I would literally watch my dad go out, sell the car to the customer, bring the customer in, have the secretary do the paperwork and tell his business partner, ‘hey this is being delivered,’ and then in the back-end making sure they reinspect the car, check the car, and as a child I just watched that transpire to the customer walking out saying, ‘oh, you guys are ready for me?’ They would say, ‘yeah, here’s the key.’ I always loved it, I just loved it.”

Lecoeur and Marcus attended Florida Atlantic University where Lecoeur double-majored in Finance and Entrepreneurship and Marcus earned a degree in Marketing and Entrepreneurship. Lecoeur jokes they also have a PHD, which stands for “papa had a dealership.” Joking aside, since the younger generation has taken the leadership reins Mission Auto Sales has grown quite a lot. Today they sell between 30-40 cars a month and have around 450 accounts on their books. They recently purchased a property about five blocks away from their current lot on NW 7th Avenue which will more than double the size of their office space and lot size as well as offer a full-service repair facility with more lifts. The growth is part of their 10-year plan to increase their market in the tri-county area starting with Broward County, West Palm Beach and eventually up to Orlando. 

What sets Mission Auto Sales apart from other buy here-pay here dealerships in the area is their dedication to building relationships with their customers and offering a high-quality vehicle. They offer a higher ACV than many dealers in their space and extend a six-month, 6,000-mile warranty on every vehicle. Lecoeur believes that providing a more reliable vehicle and standing behind their product is a big part of their success.

“Our personal relationship with our customers is number one. We believe that has allowed us to have the success that we have today because being personable is the humane thing to do, especially when you’re dealing with a market that’s not bankable or doesn’t know the means of how to be bankable,” Lecoeur said. “We do a lot of goodwill work and just try to be very approachable with our clientele. That’s what kind of makes us stand out, we try to relate to you during the whole sales process. We’re getting to know you, we know your friends. It’s just more of that family-oriented dynamic so when you come into the dealership that’s the atmosphere that we hope we have created.”

Educating customers is also something Lecoeur says is important to him. As Mission Auto Sales predominately serves the Haitian community he finds many buyers have language obstacles or other systemic issues that have hindered them from attaining a higher credit standing. The flexibility a buy here-pay here model offers a dealer on who to finance allows Mission Auto Sales to help these customers and educate them on building good credit. Lecoeur also got his Florida 2-20 insurance license and opened an insurance agency to help customers that did not understand how to shop for and buy insurance for their vehicle.

“I would do a deal for a customer and ask them the name of their insurance company and so many of them would tell me “Estrella,” which is a large insurance agency in South Florida. I would get on the phone with them and try to explain what my customer buying the car needed and they didn’t know,” Lecoeur said. 

“So, they’re frustrated, my customer is frustrated, I’m frustrated because I’m trying to deliver a vehicle and finally I was like, you know what? I’m going to start an insurance agency. So that’s what I did.” The agency Lecoeur started, Se’Lavie Insurance, is now run by his brother and is housed in a building across the street from the dealership.

When Mission Auto Sales opened its doors in 2000, Amory and Freddy became FIADA members knowing it was an important resource for the business. As Lecoeur became more involved at the dealership, he started to see the value of FIADA as well and take advantage of his membership in ways that had a direct effect on the growth of the business. 

“We always would get the magazine in the mail and I would read through it, but after I graduated college I would really read through the articles and then I saw information about the convention and I thought, this sounds like a very business-like thing to do, right?” Lecoeur said. He asked his dad if he could go, but Amory told him no it cost too much money. The next year he had a different approach. He was determined to go, even if he had to pay his own way.

“Now I’m reading the articles and I’m starting to get more interested in certain things so in 2019 I tell him (dad), alright, I’m not going to be here from this day to this day and he asked where I was going. I said, ‘I’m going to convention for myself.’ I went, and the rest is history. Needless-to-say, I don’t pay for the convention for myself anymore.”

Lecoeur said he has learned so much from getting involved with FIADA, meeting other dealers, attending state and national conventions and joining a NIADA Twenty Group. Even though you might feel like you can’t afford to take the time away from your dealership to do these things, Lecoeur says you really can’t afford not to.

“I encourage any dealer to go to your state association events, and to the national because it’s life-changing. It will change your business for the better; it can’t change it for the worse. Another day at the office is only going to stress you out more and maybe make you a little bit more money, just a little bit more money. But going to these conventions. Going to FIADA, NIADA, it’s going to exponentially grow your business,” Lecoeur said.

Another piece of advice he has is to not be afraid of what you don’t know and to just get started. Lecoeur’s first trip to the NIADA Convention he had listened to Twenty Group moderator Justin Osburn’s pitch about joining a group, so he did. Not entirely sure what they were, he ended up in a retail group and didn’t realize the mistake until he started participating and realized his answers weren’t quite like the other members of the group. Justin helped him find the right fit and the rest has been history.

“I had a PhD in what I was taught: buying cars, repairing cars, selling cars. Then going to these Twenty Groups and looking at all of these composites and looking at the different strategies that are being utilized in other markets and what’s helping this dealership out and just the internal comradery of the Twenty Groups; I don’t know where we would be without it,” Lecoeur said. 

The training and education Lecoeur and Marcus have received through FIADA and NIADA membership has helped them hone in on their leadership skills. With Lecoeur as CFO and Marcus as COO at Mission Auto Sales, these skills are really setting a course for the dealership’s future. They have created a 10-year horizon that they learned to break up into smaller steps from 10 years, to five years, to three years and then quarter to quarter benchmarks that their team can use as a guide to work on today to head in the right direction. Lecoeur and Marcus feel being able to pinpoint these long-term goals and fine-tune them along the way are there responsibilities as leaders.

“My father always mentioned to me that if you’re going to be a leader you have to be on the top looking to see what’s at the horizon, because you can have great people underneath you but if you’re not doing your job as leader to lead the way; you can have very great, boots on the ground people that are going to take it to the end for you, but if you didn’t go to the top and look out to make sure you are leading them in the correct way…you don’t fail, because obviously you have great people, but it will take you a little longer to get there.”

Lecoeur says he really sees this when he compares dealers who have spent a career in the industry, and the success they have built over 20 to 30 years to dealers who have become a part of the Association or joined a Twenty Group and have accomplished nearly the same amount of success in a much shorter time span. The experience that is gained from getting involved and learning from other dealers is like adding gasoline to a fire. Joining FIADA and getting involved is the best advice Lecoeur has for dealers.

“At first, I was just blind being led into this and now I understand what’s going on and my eyes are open so the Association, that’s the first thing you would need to do. Aside from that, obviously be frugal, make sure that you hit certain KPIs on a monthly basis, guard your business and make sure you’re budgeting and forecasting, “Lecoeur said. “Don’t be afraid of slow growth; you might speak to a guy like me and whether you’re in the buy here-pay here space or not, say that I have 450 accounts and sell 40 cars a month. My father and his business partner started off in 2000 with 10 cars. The way you eat an elephant is you take it bite by bite.”

Right now, Lecoeur says the biggest problem Mission Auto Sales is trying to solve is how to keep a personal touch with customers in an online world that values digital transactions and instant convenience. With a minor amount of walk-through traffic, the majority of customers come through the doors on word-of-mouth. As Lecoeur and Marcus explore new technology and online marketing avenues to expand their market, they do not want to stray too far from that personalized attention to customer satisfaction the Mission Auto Sales brand is known for. It is proving to be a delicate balance between old school customer interaction and the modern convenience of automated reminders and online pay. 

“Back in the day as a buy here-pay here dealer every Friday you had a lot of swinging doors with people coming in to make their car payments where now people make a phone call, or they do an online payment and it kind of makes us lose the personal touch, but that’s what we attribute our success to,” Lecoeur said.

Amory and Freddy are still working at the dealership buying and selling cars and offering advice when Lecoeur and Marcus want to hear it. Lecoeur says he appreciates the freedom to try new things and learn from mistakes when they are made. He remembers during the pandemic, listening to industry forecasts and news reports and being worried about the economy. Car prices dropped drastically, and he felt they should slow-down on buying inventory to prepare for what might be coming. Amory had just the opposite opinion and looked at the situation as a “Black Friday” sale and suggested they take advantage of the situation but deferred to Lecoeur since he was now “the boss.” Eight months later prices sky-rocketed, inventory was hard to find and Lecoeur learned a lesson.

“This industry evolves a lot,” Lecoeur said. “From that one experience I realized that sometimes you just have to worry about what’s happening in your circle. Prepare yourself and your people accordingly and all else will fall into place as long as it’s done with good intent.”