April e-blast templates are here! Reach out and retain your customers! These templates are included AT NO ADDITIONAL CHARGE to ALL Dealership for Life dealers! What are you doing to retain your customers? Give your customers reasons to return to your dealership.
Every automotive dealer believes that they run the best operation and do everything a little better than their competition. Is this true? I have the pleasure of going to all regions of the country every week and walking into automotive stores that are new to me. I can assure you, that for most these stores, the look, feel and customer experience is the same. Fortunately for the consumer, most Dealers have done upgrades on their facilities. These range from cosmetic and operational changes to complete remodeling of their facilities. The automotive buying experience has gotten much better. But, the fact remains that all Franchise stores look the same. The only difference is the employees that work there and this is where the Dealer that wants to set the standard for customer satisfaction should look.
It is your employees that are the key to improving your profitability. Most come to you with prior experience within the Industry and established skill sets that you hope will mesh with your operation and sometimes they do and sometimes they don’t. It is up to you Mr. Dealer to give them an edge over their competition in both selling and servicing vehicles. You need a volume driver that will put more customers in front of your sales and service staff. All of you have tried direct mail and that is like a quick shot of adrenaline that fades quickly. You probably have done invitational sales and special promotions that are, at best, giving you one opportunity to sell something. Notwithstanding the fact that these programs are expensive!
So, how can you be different? What is something new that will put your operation ahead of the competition and give your employees the best opportunity to sell? Putting together a well thought-out and comprehensive retention program is the driver you need and must have. You must be willing to create a new culture within your organization and drive it from the top down. Your managers must buy-into your program or else you will never get it off the ground, therefore they should be involved in building the program. Since this is something new I recommend you find a professional company, with years of experience and proven results to partner with you in this endeavor.
Where do you start? List all the things you currently do to enhance the customer experience. Things that are often taken for granted but are an operational expense non-the-less. A few that are obvious are shuttle service, pick-up and delivery, complimentary beverages/snacks, multi point inspections and alignment checks, a vehicle wash at each service visit, quick lanes, etc. Then you build on these benefits by coming up with services your customers cannot resist, such as, complimentary oil changes and tire rotations, ding/dent repair, windshield repairs, etc. These can be for specific periods of time and capped to control the expense. All of these will cause your customer to choose your store for their vehicle purchase. Include a rewards component that will continue to drive your customer back for all the service and maintenance that are required on their vehicle. Keeping them in your service lane practically guarantees they will purchase their next vehicle from you. The final piece that must be in place is a robust communications component, via email, that keeps your customer informed about their vehicle, the services required and rewards earned and any specials that you periodically offer.
All this sounds complicated but let me assure you it is not. What is needed to make all this work seamlessly is data integration and software tools that are employee friendly. This is provided by your partner. Of course, you must do your part by establishing a new culture and getting your management staff on-board from the planning stages to implementation and ongoing training.
– Roy Olive
Dealership For Life was founded to create DEALER OWNED programs that allow dealers to not only BRAND their own program, but choose whether they want to self insure, reinsure or use a product warranty on any of their benefits. Dealership For Life administration can handle it all!
What Exactly is the Dealership For Life Program?
• NEW CULTURE – Total absorption with all dealership personnel and marketing
• DEALERSHIP BRANDING – Promotes your image to your market
• CUSTOMER RETENTION – Keeps your sales customer in-house for all service needs
• SALES TOOL – Adds value to the purchase of a vehicle
• UNIQUE TO YOUR MARKET – Personalized Program that sets dealerships apart
• CREATES LOYALTY – Customers earn rewards that are only redeemable for future services
• COMMUNICATION TOOL – Text, voice mail and email communication to your customers
What has been learned over the past 10 years is that if you give your customers a reason (rewards) to return to your store for all their servicing needs, your opportunity to sell them their next vehicle increases to over 85%.
What are you doing to retain your customers? Start your rewards program today and start retaining your customers.
March e-blast templates are here! Reach out and retain your customers! These templates are included AT NO ADDITIONAL CHARGE to ALL Dealership for Life dealers! What are you doing to retain your customers? Give your customers reasons to return to your dealership. View templates HERE
February e-blast templates are here! Reach out and retain your customers! These templates are included AT NO ADDITIONAL CHARGE to ALL Dealership for Life dealers! What are you doing to retain your customers? Give your customers reasons to return to your dealership. View templates HERE
I visit about 250 dealerships a year and, from time to time, I hear different complaints about things that are not working the way we would like them to. Some are the usual — not enough sales, can’t find techs, heavy turnover in the sales department, etc. Sorry, no answer for these. However, I think I’ve found a way to address the “customer retention is too costly” problem in a unique way.
I was in an Apple store the other day buying a watch for my wife. She is Apple to the core, no pun intended. She has an iPad, iPhone, iTunes and a Mac. To say she is a loyal customer would be an understatement. The person who waited on me was fabulous. She had great product knowledge, sold me the watch, three different bands, plus a charger for my car and a new, upgraded iPhone 7. As I was leaving, I wasn’t thinking about the $1,000 I had just spent, but instead, “Wow, what a great experience!” This got me thinking about our business, how we can create the same type of experience for our customers.
Some stores have accessory departments, and some don’t. If you do, this is a good place to start; if you don’t you may want to think about starting one. Many of us don’t sell enough cars to have a full-time accessory person. Let’s take this person and use them to build the “Apple Experience.”
One of the problems I hear many dealers talk about is they have a hard time hiring employees right out of college. A dealer in North Carolina told me, “I just can’t hire anyone with a college degree. Who wants to spend $160,000 on a four-year degree and then go home and tell their parents they are selling cars?” Here is a golden opportunity to get some of those people. Take the job as an “accessory person” and turn it into the public relations director for the dealership. Hire only recent college grads and use this as your management training department.
So, how do you pay them and what do they do? To start with, accessories can be part of it, but a very small part. They should talk to every customer who purchases anything at the dealership. If you have a branding program or a retention program, they should review it with every customer. Explain the benefits and how everything works. If you have a customer Website, show them how to set it up, and do the same with an app. Explain your rewards card, your lifetime program or whatever else you are using to separate yourself from the competition. This person becomes a liaison between the customers and all the other departments. He or she can train everyone on the customer retention program you have developed, plus track the results and review them monthly with the rest of the management team and make sure we are achieving best-in-class retention numbers.
But, like everything else in our business, we need to figure out a way to pay for it. This, however, becomes the easy part. Not only will new public relations directors pay for themselves, but it could become a new profit center for the dealership. Think about it — only 18 percent of our customers buy a prepaid maintenance program when they purchase a car. The PR director could spend time on the service drive reviewing our maintenance program with every customer who comes in for service.
But why stop there? Develop a menu for the service drive. Everyone knows that the service writers are too busy to sell product on the drive. With a well-developed menu that includes pictures and features benefits, why not offer key fob, wheel and tire, ding and dent and any other protection or products they may not have purchased when they bought their car? The options are endless. I know a dealer in Tampa whose No. 1 salesperson just works the service drive and Internet leads. When they refer the customer back to sales, they can get part of the commission.
Extended service contracts are another source of income for our PR director. Again, many people in our service department might be interested in an extended service contract if someone just took the time to explain it to them. Have printed material that explains to every customer their options for an extended service contract and have the PR director explain each in detail. Going further, you could develop an online program to sell accessories and F&I products and have this department manage it.
Every dealership needs bright young talent to grow their business. This program will not only put focus on developing this talent, but it will put better focus on creating the “Apple Experience” in our business for every customer. Loyalty and retention — the future is now.
– Jack Garrity
I have had a few calls from people about last month’s article. The main question was how you would go about setting up this type of program in a store. I will try to outline the steps I would take to develop the Apple Experience in the service drive. What we suggested was a way to get more millennial and newly graduated college students into our business. How would you create a wow buying experience for the customer after they purchased their car? How would you set up a brand new profit center by developing a public relations manager? How would you get better penetration on F&I products? And finally how would you pay for it all. Let’ drill down on some of these things in a little more depth.
First step is to advertise for recent college graduates. Let them know this is a manager training program. You may want to hire more than one as the program grows. I would start their salary at 600.00 per week plus commission. In order to offset this cost I would have the company I buy my F&I products from contribute part of this expense. I’m sure they will have no problem with this because this person will be selling their products full time and the penetration should go through the roof. If you have an agent or customer Retention Company or really any other company that is doing business in your store they can contribute as well. All of these people will benefit in the long run and what’s wrong with someone paying the dealer to do business in their store. Think about it, if that cost is split three ways you are hiring a college grad in a management position for 200.00 per week. If it is split with more vendors it will be even less. As this person gains more experience they can be worked into other departments and now your management program is up and running.
The second step is setting up the program. Everything we want sold should be laid out on an I-pad. When the customer comes in for service we pull them up and we have a list of what they purchased in F&I and when they bought their car. We will know when they go out of warranty, or when their service contract expires. Did they purchase a prepaid maintenance package or other products like key fob coverage, wheel and tire coverage or ding and dent. The public relations manager can then review the benefits of each product with the customer even showing a short video on the value add for any of these products. If the customer doesn’t have time for a review we can email a feature benefit presentation to them so they can look at it at their convenience. Think of a business development center for your F&I products. The public relations manager will make a commission off of each product he sells. We could also wrap it with an equity mining tool and he could be commissioned on car sales as well.
The third step would be the sale of accessories. Everyone wants to sell more aftermarket products. Tires, batteries, and wiper blades could be advertised in a target marketing campaign. Sell bed liners to truck customers, wheels, rain guards and window tint to customers on the anniversary of their purchase. The PR manager could get all the op code declines and develop a coupon campaign that could go out nightly. With all the information from the DMS at his fingertips he can easily spot when a customer is ready for an upgrade. All of this marketing could be done on-line with just a little help from a graphics department.
Even the question of who manages and trains the public relation/ manager trainee can be answered using one of your vendors. Any vendor who is currently in your DMS could easily work with your F&I provider to develop this program. They could hire, train and supervise and then when you decide to promote them to another department, they could do it again. It really is a low risk, high rewards proposition for any dealership.
The last step is truly the public relations part of the program. This person will be the liaison between the service department and all of the other departments in the store. If you have a rewards program, a customer website, a customer app, weekly coupons, a lifetime engine or powertrain component all of this can be reviewed and sorted out either in person or through email communication. This person’s success will be based on their ability to develop a good relationship with the entire data-base and develop your store into the customer’s dealership for life.
– Jack Garrity
January e-blast templates are here! Reach out and retain your customers! These templates are included AT NO ADDITIONAL CHARGE to ALL Dealership for Life dealers! What are you doing to retain your customers? Give your customers reasons to return to your dealership. View templates here
New Year e-blast templates are here! Reach out and retain your customers! These templates are included AT NO ADDITIONAL CHARGE to ALL Dealership for Life dealers! What are you doing to retain your customers? Give your customers reasons to return to your dealership. View templates here
December e-blast templates are here! Reach out and retain your customers! These templates are included AT NO ADDITIONAL CHARGE to ALL Dealership for Life dealers! What are you doing to retain your customers? Give your customers reasons to return to your dealership. View templates here
