Aftermarket parts comissions

[J. Larry Bloodworth]

We have never offered any parts person a commission, although we have offered it to other shop’s service advisors.  We are a transmission & drivetrain specialty shop.  We don’t do GR, or as Aamco calls it, TCC for Total Car Care.

We give them 5% of the ticket total, before tax.  The shops that refer work our way are not in competition with us, nor are we in competition with them.  This is all a part of our outside sales program.  We affectionately call it our Candy Jar program.

Some shops, especially franchises, frown upon taking a commission and we don’t do it.  However, we do call them after a referral and ask them what they want on their pizza/sandwich/burger and we buy the whole shop lunch for a day.

More on the Candy Jar program in another post.

[Wesley Guin]

The area we are targeting does is all mainly general repair there are shops that specialize in high end but do still take domestic work as well.  i was thinking the same referral program could be applied towards wrecker drivers.  All am trying to do at this point is determine what would be some good routes to get referrals in the door for when we open our shop.

[J. Larry Bloodworth]

I wanted to pull together some of my resource material for our Candy Jar route.  The primary function of our outsides salesperson is to keep the candy jars full.  The secondary function is to drive referral work.

Outside Sales (Candy Jar) Program

A few tips:

• Don’t put your shop’s name on the jar.
• Half the shops won’t keep the jar on the front counter for their customers.  They either keep it out in the shop or under the front counter.
• Quit delivering candy to shops after calling on them for a year with no referrals & forget about getting the candy jar back.
• Be consistent!  Don’t let the amount of business (or the lack thereof) determine your sales call frequency.  People will come to expect it.

The year we started the Candy Jar program, our business increased almost $300K.  I hope this helps others.