[theperfectday]

There has been a lot of good points back and forth but one thing that no one has touched on so far is the positioning of preventive maintenance to your customers. 

Look cars today are built better than ever before. I know you all know this. But cars have also gotten more expensive to purchase and more expensive to repair. Our customers know this and that makes them nervous about breakdowns.  

As shop owners and service managers, it is easy to take the risk of not performing preventive maintenance because we can get things done so cheap. Plus we know what will happen if this part goes bad and how long its going to take to fix and all the rest.

We need to think from our customers perspective. They don’t know cars like we do. As I just said the thought of breakdowns, and expensive repairs, and all the trouble that comes with car issues is almost terrifying for them.

Is preventive maintenance a guarantee against all vehicle failures? Of course not but no one in their right mind would argue that a properly maintained vehicle at 200k miles is not more dependable than the same vehicle that only got an oil change ever 3k miles. 

So the best way to position the preventive maintenance is a small investment for a lot of piece of mind. This works best with the wealthier crowd. I recommend you target your marketing efforts at attracting those clients. 

Its no more difficult to market to wealthy clients and get them to come into your shop than it is to market to every broke Joe, however the wealthy are much easier to please and they buy much more work especially preventive maintenance The heart and head ache of breakdowns or potential breakdowns is more scary than dropping a grand or two in preventive maintenance.

Dave 

[theperfectday]

This is a great way to start a relationship with a new customer. 

It’s a proven fact that only 17-19% of the population are purely price shoppers. The other 81-83% are value shoppers. The problem is sometimes a value shopper will appear to be a price shopper because they will call and ask for the price of a service. The reason they are asking for a price is because that number is the only concrete thing they have to compare you to other shops. 

In cases like this I would always try to get the customer to come by my shop and experience our level of service. I was not looking to make money on this visit I just wanted this prospective customer to experience everything we had to offer so that we were not judged based on our price (because we were usually most expensive). The best way to do this is by offering a free check. 

Now here is how to protect yourself and weed out the time wasters, because it makes no sense giving something away for free if you wont ever get something back. 

I always say that “we perform a courtesy inspection on all our clients vehicles at no charge. I would be happy to have my technician perform this inspection for you free of charge. If we find the problem during this inspection… Great, if not and we have to remove parts or perform special tests there could be a charge up to x. Do I have your permission to move forward if we don’t find the issue during the courtesy check up?”

9 times out of 10 if the person is a value shopper they will agree to you moving forward if you don’t find the issue durring the “free” inspection. In their mind it makes sense that if you actually have to perform work like removing parts or going through specific tests, you would charge them. But most people think that you bring the car in the back pop the hood hook up the computer and then you know whats wrong. 

Offering the free inspection like I just presented takes away the thought that they are being charged for nothing.

Awesome tip. 

[theperfectday]

What an awesome question. There is so much you can do on the internet now, I mean you can literally use Facebook to target people based on the specific car they drive and how long they have owned it. There is no doubt that the internet is going to continue to garner a larger part of our marketing.

A question I have though is, what are you guys doing to determine that x % of marketing is internet vs. x% traditional?

Is it just dollars spent?

Is it the number of marketing campaigns?

Is it the number of customers you get?

Is it the income you get from those customers?

The reason I ask is because with my clients shops if you looked at the dollars spent it probably skews toward the internet side. However if you look at the return on investment, the number swings way back to the traditional marketing.

Just to be clear I’m talking about total marketing, follow up, newsletter, birthday cards etc. Not just new customer marketing.

Interested to hear some thoughts.

Dave

[theperfectday]

Hi Scott,

I always used gross sales because it was the simplest way to calculate the managers/ service writers pay. 

Also since I set the gross profit margins, (ie parts margin and labor rate) I was the one in control of the gross profit. 

Now obviously there are many things that the service manager should be held accountable for such as aro, appointments set, gross profit, shop productivity, etc. However I found that just keeping a report card that kept track of those items on a regular basis was all I needed to keep those numbers where they need to be. 

If they didn’t maintain those numbers it was training time or bye bye time, but it was easiest to pay on a straight commission of gross sales. 

Running 21 shops I valued simplicity and ease of implimentation.

[theperfectday]

I agree with Tom. I have tried forms for the customer and the customer seems to get irritated plus I found they usually are not really that thorough because they are in a hurry. 

What I found to work the best is I would always ask my service advisor to repeat back to the customer like this “ok what I thought I heard you say was…” and after the customer agreed just get the customer to sign the technicians copy with the notes. 

If the customer reads over the notes on the sheet and realizes “o yea and…” just write it down or print out another copy before they sign it. 

I know having a rule like this means that now you have to enforce it but again what I would do is just collect all the tech sheets and see if all the drivability ones got signatures. You could make a little reward for everyone that has a signature or penalty for everyone that doesn’t.

Hope this helps

[theperfectday]

I agree with Tom a straight percentage of gross sales is usually the best (excluding things like tires). 

Could you break down the number of people you have in the various positions to help make specific recommendations?

[theperfectday]

Zed Makes a great point, and It’s one I am continually trying to stress to my clients. Car Count is NOT enough. 

You need to make sure you are delivering the right message to the right customers. 

But speaking of customer retention. One thing I don’t want to see overlooked here is the importance of follow up. Just because you give great service, and your staff was friendly and your shop is clean, does not mean that customer is coming back. 

With service intervals getting extended and the massive competition these days, you need to be doing everything you can to build a strong relationship with your existing customers, and give them reasons to continue to do business with your shop. 

A great mentor of mine told me long ago that marketing is not an event, it’s a process. If your shop is not getting a high percentage of repeat business you need to take a good look at your follow up process. An email when they are due for an oil change is not real follow up. 

In-fact I would argue that instead of trying to figure out ways to get new customers it would be much more profitable to ask the question – “How can I get my existing customers to come back more often, and spend more money”?

What are some thoughts?