If you are looking drive up your car counts, investing in the right marketing strategies and advertising programs are a good place to start. Yet, far too many shop owners fail to go back to the basics, so with this article I’d like to share some ideas for how you can increase your car counts in quick and cost-free ways.
Want happier customers? Here’s a tip! You’ve got to get your customers smiling when they think of your brand. Look at the Geico Lizard, the Aflac Duck and Flo with Progressive. These companies know that in order to sell something as negative as insurance, they have to get you into a great state of mind where you smile when you think of them.
Far too many shop owners are so determined to make a certain percentage of gross profit on each job that they lose sight of profitability, as well as customer service. I’m talking about the people who judge their success by percentages rather than dollars. These are the shop owners who are so busy trying to squeeze every last penny out of every job that they forget about the dollars being lost at the same time.
As we all know, the most powerful form of advertising always has been, and always will be, word of mouth. Although every shop owner would like to believe the majority of their customers are songbirds, the reality is, they’re not. I am not suggesting that you don’t have some customers who love to sing your song, but it’s safe to say that they’re a very small percentage of your overall customer base.
First of all, you need to know your failure rate. The top shops in America have extremely low failure rates in both parts and labor. I’ve also discovered that the overwhelming majority of those failures occur within the first 90 days of service, so regardless of whether your warranties are for 90 days or for years on end, you’re going to absorb all but a few of those failures within the first 90 days.
When your techs come to you to tell you they’re stumped, and you give them a recommendation, you’ll lose regardless of the outcome. If you solve the problem, you’ve sent a message to the tech that you’re more knowledgeable than they are, which is not going to build their confidence. But then it gets worse; you’ve also taught them to come to you when they’re up against a wall. This is a lose-lose situation, in that if your recommendation doesn’t solve the problem, the tech will come back to you looking for your next recommendation, because you’ve now assumed ownership of the problem.
Berberich was exposed to the auto service industry growing up, as his father was a master tech for Ford and his uncle owned an auto electric rebuilding business. In college, Barberich decided to blaze his own trail and became a manufacturing engineer, but soon found his way back to the auto service industry by joining his wife, Diane, as the owner of Al’s Automotive and Tire.
When it comes to dealing with objections, most service advisers shut down as soon as the customer says, “It’s too much money,” or “I’d like to think it over.” There are a number of reasons why, but the single most common reason is that the advisers don’t know how to handle the objections. Here is what I have discovered to be the best-kept secrets when it comes to dealing with sales objections.