Emergency marketing strategies for car count lulls

March 23, 2017
It is inevitable though, despite your best efforts, planning and management, your shop will hit those brief periods where the schedule looks light and the fear of techs wandering around the shop with no cars in the bays looms ever larger.

If your shop’s car count could be better, you might want to listen to Pennsylvania shop owner and ATI coach Mike Bennett explain how he keeps shops as close to capacity as possible. Most smart shop owners have a comprehensive marketing calendar that includes a balance of new customer acquisition efforts in concert with tried and true customer retention efforts. Marketing by definition is the total of activities involved in the transfer of goods (or services) from seller to consumer. More clearly defined for our industry: marketing is ANYTHING we do to get cars to our shop. I would bet for the most part your marketing calendar and strategy does a fair job of keeping your bays full and your techs busy. It is inevitable though, despite your best efforts, planning and management, your shop will hit those brief periods where the schedule looks light and the fear of techs wandering around the shop with no cars in the bays looms ever larger.

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As a shop owner I know this very real fear. Honestly, it is more like a panic. It’s that thing that keeps us up late at night or causes us to take that test drive by the competition to see how your fellow shops are doing. The phones aren’t ringing and everyone is looking at you for the magic bullet and all too often we just feel helpless with what to do. As a coach, I have gotten the panicked call more times than I care to remember: “We are slow, and I need cars fast!!” Despite the best marketing plan, your shop will inevitably hit those brief periods where the normal reminder postcards or emails just don’t seem to be working like they normally do.

Let’s face it; we can’t control the weather, the economy, holidays, tax season, the government, plagues, wars or elections. I’m sorry to say, but in these moments there is no single magic pill. Getting those couple of extra cars to your bays in these tough times is all about tenacity, ingenuity and yes, THE BASICS. Over the years, we have developed what I like to call Emergency Car Count Strategies. As a procedure, we have a process in place that recognizes low car count situations and triggers a series of actions we take each time to combat the slow phones and get those couple of extra cars in the bays. Below are a few of the most successful immediate and near-term emergency car count actions as well as some often overlooked longer term actions that I know can work for you:

Phone mining
Print out the last three months of recommended services or previously declined work. I am sure that most of you have a routine CRM program that touches your customers with either a post card or email.

Reach out directly to these customers and offer a 5 percent discount if they schedule in the next week. This is not discounting at the counter presentation to get the sale. I am vehemently opposed to that sales tactic, and we have other more successful strategies to deal with a customer’s pricing considerations. This is providing a special discount as a follow-up to drive cars to your bays in a period of time you choose when you are looking to fill your bays. It’s a “special circumstance” incentive for them and of course for you. I mean 95 percent of something is better than 100 percent of nothing, right? The script for this phone call sounds something like this: “Hi, Mr. Smith, I was looking over our notes on the Honda today. I see that when we had it in on (insert visit date) we discussed and recommended (brief review of recommendation and value). I know at the time you weren’t quite ready to have that done. The reason for the call today is that I have a few openings in my schedule I would like to fill. As this is an important (service or repair) for the Honda, I thought I might be able to make a mutually beneficial offer. If you would be interested in getting the work done in the next five days, I would like to offer you an additional (discount offer) off the job as a special incentive for scheduling with me today.”

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If you are unable to speak directly to your customer and you have to leave a message, the script is a little different. The key to being most effective with the offer above is to get your customer on the phone and engaged in a conversation. I have found it most successful and likely to get a return call if the voicemail is something like: “Hi, Mr. Smith. This is (your name) with (your shop). I needed to speak with you regarding the Honda you had in with us on (date and mileage). Could you please give me a call at your earliest convenience at (phone number)?

Make four-month maintenance reminder phone calls. Look back in your management system history for vehicles that were in for an oil change/maintenance service four to six months ago that have not been back since. Call them up and present the following short-term offer: “In reviewing your service history, it looks like the ’08 Honda should be just about due for its next service at XX miles. The reason for the call today is we have our XX service special (seasonal special) which includes: XX, XX and XX, and it will be expiring in about a week. I wanted to make sure you had the opportunity to take advantage of the special, if you are due, before it expires. We would hate for you to come in in a couple of weeks having not known about the offer and lose out on the savings.”

If you have fleet customers, now is a good time to call them and see if they need anything done. If you haven't visited or touched base with your fleets, local businesses, hotels, etc., in the last four weeks then trust me, some have forgotten about you. Just a few weeks ago, my shop had an instant positive experience in revisiting local hotels’ front desks and the community college information desks. We have traditionally had great relationships with them and have historically gotten a lot of referrals. First, we were surprised that in more than a couple of cases there were new personnel that had no idea who we were. Second, we were amazed how quickly we got referrals after visiting them and reintroducing ourselves. Clearly even those who knew us had “forgotten” who we were. One great idea we have used as a reminder of who we are and what we do is a candy jar placed on a counter or front desk. It has chocolate candy inside and the company name on the outside.

We learned that you should have a list and calendar of fleet and business clients to visit on a four to six week rotational schedule.

Blast emails
Promote big time! Almost all of the Customer Retention Management (CRM) companies have now added email blast capabilities for their shops, so definitely get with them if you’re a customer to see how you can use this great tool. If you don’t have a CRM provider, you can sign up with a company that provides email blast capabilities at a very affordable price. I routinely see shops that use this type of tool generate an additional five plus cars a week. If you use radio, run an ad with a “limited time only” special. Whatever your method of successful advertising is in your market — hit it!

Understanding that the average vehicle is driven between 12K and 15K miles annually and the average oil service is performed at 3K to 5K miles, it would stand to reason you should see your average customer three to four times per year if you are doing all of their service work, right? When was the last time you looked at how many of your existing customers were in for service six to 18 months ago, but may not have been back in the last six? Almost all management systems allow you to run a report that will list customers by date range of their last visit. I can almost assure you that you would be shocked at the number of your customers that would fall into this group and how many have not been back to you in more than six months. In most cases if a customer has not been back to you in six months they have either missed a needed service, used another provider for maintenance OR they have moved on. This can be a very fruitful segment to attack. They know you and will recognize your name. A WOW Card campaign or other form of “Where Have You Been” can work very well. Be bold on your offer. This segment is very valuable and worth every penny to recover. I suggest a $50 gift card. There is a huge impact on ARO dependent on the size of the gift card. If you are going to make a statement, then make it big.

Exit scheduling
Make sure you’re setting the next appointment! No more waiting. Some of our clients use a mystery envelope, which is a great aid to make the exit scheduling process more like a game or contest. When the departing customer makes their next appointment, they receive an envelope with a surprise gift inside. And the gift is valid only if the envelope is opened by the service advisor at that next appointment! At the very least you should have a forward recommendation in your management/marketing system that could trigger the exit scheduling.

Reward programs
Do you have a business in your area that you could be partnering with? Do you have an ongoing referral program that is working? Do you have a rewards program that separates you from your competition? How about referral or business networking groups such as BNI? I have many clients enrolled in these groups with huge ROI.

Courtesy check audits
Make sure that the courtesy checks are being done perfectly; This is a very good time to double check a few. I can’t tell you how many courtesy checks I have audited that leave so much mileage-driven recommendations unrecommended, and therefore unestimated. Run an audit for yourself: pull 15 sequential ROs from last week with courtesy checks. How do they look? Be honest. Here’s a very good rule of thumb: National average is there should be about $100 in estimate value for every 10K of a vehicle’s mileage; i.e., a 100K vehicle should have about a $1,000 estimate, if there are no extenuating circumstances. In my experience, this is very accurate.

Social media
Are you posting to your Google+ page routinely? This may not be an instantaneous fix, but we have seen no other strategy work as well to consistently drive additional new call volume to your phone and if your counter has a consistent phone process, bring cars to your door. I have consistently seen average weekly car counts increase three to 10 cars a week depending.

How about Facebook? I know we teach that Facebook is a social branding tool that is best suited for keeping your customers involved with you between visits with fun and interesting info. But, a very occasional post with a great LIMITED TIME OFFER — TODAY ONLY TO OUR FACEBOOK FRIENDS special could net you a couple of the additional cars you need. Shop owner Dave Toole recently used a Facebook post and email blast to promote his Shocktober event, with which they netted six appointments in less than 48 hours! You can’t go to the well too often with this tool, but it can be very effective in a pinch.

The secret is to be proactive and creative. Don’t just rely on what you’ve always done to be good enough anymore. In most cases, I can assure you that what you have normally done doesn’t always work as it once did. Successful shops figure out how to creatively reach out to their customers and then have exceptional sales counters that back up a great message. Customers aren’t afraid to buy. I believe this in my heart and I’ve seen it in my own shop. What I can assure you of is that customers are becoming more discerning shoppers, deciding with whom and when they spend their money. Successful shops have great sales counter staff who provide exceptional service, communicate tremendous value by educating their customers to a buying decision and create relationships. If car count is truly dropping and/or ARO is shrinking, I would suggest that this is another great place for you to start taking a critical look.

With a review of our Car Count Stabilization Checklist, what basic/staple opportunities are you missing? Where Have You Been calls, exit scheduling, taxi certificates? It is called the MUST DO, SHOULD DO list for a reason. If you’re not doing something then you’re missing out on a huge opportunity. We know these strategies work!

If you would like your own copy of our Car Count Stabilization Checklist, simply go to www.ationlinetraining.com/2017-04 for a limited time.

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