Monthly Archives: January 2018

Get the Most Out of Your Dealership Advertising

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You spend time creating ads, you spend money advertising and yet the sales don’t reflect those efforts.  Does this sound familiar? Let’s figure out why we don’t get the results we want before we spend any more time and money on advertising.

The following is a recent Service experience.  (Skip to the “Bottom Line” if you don’t need another story about a bad service experience)  I needed to replace a trim piece on a 10-year-old vehicle – easy enough, no diagnosis – just “do you have the part in stock?” before I spend an hour in drive time.  First, I called the Service Department and was able to get the voicemail of the concierge.  The voicemail, while pleasant, encouraged me to make an appointment online at my convenience; I guess that was so I wouldn’t have to bother her with annoying details or questions.  You can tell it is a highline dealership because they call their appointment setter/reservationist a concierge.  I left a message explaining the two items I wanted to have installed and waited 24 hours before calling the new Service Manager.  I knew he was new because he sent an email letting me know he was the new manager and he wanted my business with a “too good to be true” offer for service on older vehicles.

Me being me, I felt I should help him out (at no charge) and let him know how he could bring back old Customers…Answer the phone or return calls ASAP!  You don’t have to give everything away if you take care of the Customers!

 On day three, I decided I had to be smarter than their system and contacted the Parts Department directly to check on the availability of the part and after hearing “Parts, could you hold please?”  I knew I had hit gold; I didn’t have to leave a message and wait for it to not be returned.  I was prepared, I had the VIN and pictures of the trim part ready to email, unfortunately, the Parts Counter Person had been there two weeks and wasn’t familiar with the models of the vehicles or how to look up trim parts.  However, he was friendly and tried hard before he had to ask someone how to look up the part.  Good news, that part breaks so often that even though the vehicle is 10 years old; it is stocked in dove or ivory.  He promised to have a Service Advisor call me, which happened 2 hours later.

Thirty-six hours after contacting the Dealership, I had an appointment!  Yahoo!  Several hours after that, the Assistant to the new Service Manager called to see if there was anything he could to do to help me.  My first thought was, “Can you connect me to the Used Car Manager and see if he wants to buy a 10-year-old car with less than 70,000 miles?”  Maybe he had an in with the Service Department.  Side note:  The vehicles they sell new are on my short list for a new puppy transportation vehicle, but the Salesperson would have to put a gun to my head to buy a vehicle from them.  If I can’t get decent service, what will the sales experience be like?

A long story to get to the point – train your people on how to take care of your Customers, how to do their job and to take pride in doing the job well.  If you whittled out a percentage of your marketing budget and invested it in improving your process and people, you might receive benefits you are expecting.

Bottom Line: Train All of Your Employees:

  • If you’ve hired the right people, training will improve your employees’ skills,
  • Training will help employees feel appreciated and you are investing in their future,
  • Training reduces employee turnover, which is very costly.

The second and third points are a bi-product of what should be the most important reason – trained employees can take care of your Customers the way you want your customers to be treated.

Before you begin any training, answer the following questions:

  • Exactly what do I want to improve with training?
  • How will I measure the results of the training?
  • How will I measure the return on my training time and investment dollar?

If there is no way to measure the results, do you need to spend money on training?

Tips to make your training program a success:

  1. Get the buy-in from all who will be impacted: Management and Employees – what do they want to learn and need to learn?
  2. Get staff excited about the training by reinforcing the benefits. Think of it as learning…not training.
  3. Have a training agenda designed for your specific needs and one that focuses on the changes you want to make, leave out the “fluff and nougat.”

With a little training, your Advertising dollars will pay off!

Ten Ways to Say Thank You to Your Customers

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People like to be thanked, especially if they have spent money with you.  Customers have hundreds of choices, and they selected you to spend their money with today.  If you’ve done a good job, they will spend money with you in the future; if you’ve done a really good job, they might recommend us to a friend.  We have a lot riding on today’s Customers; so let’s never forget to sincerely thank them.

Besides the customary verbal thank you, consider some of the following ways to say thank you to your Customers.

1) Write a Thank You card.  How much the Customer spent should make no difference.  Imagine the “Wow! factor” when your Customer receives a handwritten note of thanks.  Make it personal and sincere, and reinforce your appreciation for the Customer giving you the chance to sell him or her a vehicle, or take care of his or her vehicle.

2) Give one Customer an over-the-top experience.  What could you do that would leave the Customer telling all of his or her friends about the experience?

3) Bring lunch to one of your Wholesale or Fleet Customers.  If not lunch; how about donuts and fruit first thing in the morning?  As the Department Manager, go out of your way to meet some of the Customers who make you successful.

4)  Reward your social media community with special announcements or exclusive specials.  If things are slow in your Department, what can you post that might attract a visit to your Dealership this week? 

5)   Help your Customers learn something new.  Think about your website, Facebook page or inclusions in email blasts – can you provide the Customer with useful information about maintaining their vehicle or an interesting fact about the history of your brand? 

6)  Host an afternoon of business Workshops for your small fleet Customers.  Use your showroom floor to promote a variety of services and your training room to conduct 30-minute workshops on topics important to small businesses.  For more information email us at brooke@profits4dealers.com.

7)  Start a club for your Customers with high-mileage vehicles or vehicles over 8 years old.  Special pricing and recognition can go a long way to keeping your Customers loyal.  Find a way to reward and recognize the owner of the active highest mileage vehicle in your Service database.  Celebrate milestones when vehicles’ mileage goes over 100,000, 200,000, etc.

8)  Throw a party.  Have a special event to celebrate (40 years in business) or group of Customers to thank?  Host a bar-b-q or luncheon at your Dealership.  Remember the new model launch events from the fifties through the eighties?  Chrysler gave away Fostoria crystal glasses in the early 80s and at our Dealership, we had Customers lining up. (I still have some of the glasses.)

9)  Have an “Ask a Tech” event for Front Parts Counter Customers during lunch hours one Friday a month.  Offer a training class on new products to Parts Wholesale clients.

10)  Give quality swag to Customers.  Delight your Customers with a hat, key fob, or T-shirt.  You’ll surprise your Parts Wholesale Customers when they open a box with koozies or coffee cups for their Employees.  Custom printing offers you a variety of options at affordable prices.

I’m sure you can think of more ways to say Thank You to your Customers throughout the year – not just at the time of their initial purchase.

Thank you for reading !

 

 

 

Service Advisors – Should They Also Be Cashiers?

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With the demand to trim expenses, more and more Dealerships are looking to the Service Advisors to Cashier their own Repair Orders.  Assuming the Cashier isn’t doing many other duties, such as filing, warranty processing, etc., then here are four reasons to consider changing the way you’ve done it in the past:

  1. Free up Personnel Expense for another commissioned Service Advisor.
  2. Increase Customer Retention and Improve CSI.
  3. As a bi-product of #2 you’ll increase your sales and profitability.
  4. If the Advisors have to speak to the Customers to finish the transactions this will force Service Advisors to perform some variation of an “Active Delivery” (A term we use to loosely describe how the serviced vehicle is returned back to the Customer—similar to the Vehicle Sales Department delivering a New or Used Vehicle).  The Sales Department DOES NOT RELY on the Title Clerk to review the paperwork with the Customer, so the Service Department should not rely on the Cashier to review the Repair Order, Multipoint Inspection, and Manufacturer’s Survey with the Customer, either.

If you think your Service Advisors are doing a good job on the telephone reviewing the work done to the vehicle, and that alone is a sufficient Active Delivery, stand by the Cashier from 4 P.M. to 6 P.M. and listen to the Customers’ questions.

If the Cashier is paging your Service Advisors to explain what was done to the vehicles; or worse, attempting to explain the repairs him or herself, then you first need to train the Service Advisors on how to do an Active Delivery.  Please call us at 877.316.7418 if you want a written process.

Your Service Advisors need to perfect the Active Delivery Process before you make a change.  If you have a good CSI score, this will make it better!  It will also make a bad CSI score worse.  Please don’t punish the Customer because you want to cut some Personnel Expense.  This is your opportunity to put your Service Advisors in charge of their Customers from start to finish.

To begin, each Service Advisor will need his or her own credit card machine.  There aren’t many cash transactions in the Service Department, so there can be a centralized cash drawer, perhaps at the parts counter or somewhere secure.

Managers need to check the Exception Report (CDK: REX, R&R: 3619), if available on their DMS, every day, looking for changes to invoices.  As a final safeguard, any changes made to an invoice after it is finalized should ONLY be done by the Manager.  The Customer needs to be there when the change is done!

When done properly, eliminating the Cashier position and training your Service Advisors will improve your Net Profit, your CSI and improve the Advisors’ Client retention.  It’s a win-win-win for you, your Advisors and the Customers!