As a shop owner, you need dealerships and they need you. But it probably will never be better than a love/hate relationship. In dealing with them, you might want to adopt Godfather son Michael Corleone’s advice — “Keep your friends close…but your enemies closer.”
Although dealerships can help you on a lot of fronts, including supplying certain parts, critical repair data and technical advice, they are your competitors who would take your business in a heartbeat if they could. The only thing that keeps them from being more aggressive is their blind preference to selling vehicles over fixing them. This fact is underscored by designated salespeople who target waiting service customers facing major repairs. “Why not apply that $1,000 to a new vehicle that has no problems, rather than face the risk of another repair down the road,” is how the pitch goes. The thinking is that they’ll get you one way to the other — in the showroom or in the service bay.
As competitive as dealerships can be, many, if not most of the independent shops, buy OE parts though most try to keep it to a minimum. This behavior is driven by three main reasons. First, some customers insist on OE parts but rather than pay the higher labor rate at a dealership they choose to patronize independent shops. Second, sometimes it’s difficult for shops to find an equivalent aftermarket part for a particular application so rather than tie up a customer’s car searching and waiting for a part, shops will buy an OE part. And third, there are many aftermarket firms that advertise the guarantee of fit, form and function of their parts. Often that is true; however, some shops have been burned by the companies that have fallen short of that guarantee and to avoid the hassle of forcing a repair, they have conditioned themselves to buy OE parts automatically for certain repairs.
Just as important as the parts that shops buy from dealerships is the repair data that dealerships own. The dealerships are the keeper of the keys to unlock any repair mystery. It is data provided from the OEMs that is as clean and as up-to-date as humanly and technically possible. If shops want this data, they have to buy it from the OEMs; however, it is the close relationships that some shops had with dealerships that helped keep the shops in the game during the early days of the Right to Repair battle. These are the dealerships that realized that they can be friends and competitors with the shops at the same time. What is evident to these dealerships is the fact that most motorists — about 70 percent of them — will stop patronizing them when their warranters run out and if they have strong relations with shops, those shops just might buy parts from them. In other words, the dealerships make the most out of an almost inevitable loss.
Of course, this thinking wasn’t — and isn’t — universal. In fact, some dealerships would think this is “sleeping with the enemy” and vice versa. Shops with weak dealership relationships that couldn’t afford to buy access to the needed OEM data — or if they could, found the CDs and DVDs they bought weren’t helpful enough — are long gone. On the other hand, shops that were slipped the information they needed from dealerships probably have stronger relationships with them than ever before.
However, relying on dealership relationships for competitive information was and still is risky business. Although many of them are small businesses, too, and can empathize with independent shops, there is no guarantee dealerships will provide assistance of any kind. In fact, that is now more unlikely than ever because of the aftermarket’s latest Right to Repair victory. Don’t think for a second that the OEMs haven’t tried to dissuade dealers from forming tight relationships with independent shops because they know that Right to Repair was just the latest battle in the intellectual property war. We are now in a Cold War period of sorts waiting for the next battle — telematics — but we’ll save that discussion for another day.
With that in mind, shops need to fend for themselves and be totally responsible for obtaining the data they need to run a profitable business. Dealership data sharing is all sugar and spice when it happens but relying on it is a false hope stimulated by wishful thinking and crutch behavior. There really has been, and still is, only one way to keep up with the data needed to run today’s shop — by subscribing to a third party data provider. As you know, there are some excellent choices and most of you have chosen one.
When you went through he process of choosing one, you no doubt found it to be a laborious endeavor. For that reason alone, you probably don’t want to go through it again; however, as the market gets more sophisticated and competitive, you might want to keep an open mind on this subject. I recommend reviewing the services you receive periodically and do a comparison to other providers. Make a list of what you get from each one and what you don’t get.
One relatively new provider worth investigating is MotoLOGIC (motologic.com). This online tool offers the best of both worlds — OEM and aftermarket data. It takes the unedited OEM data and consolidates, transforms and presents it just as the OEMs intended. Moreover, the data is highly searchable by make and model, key words, sights, sounds and even smells.
While you’re considering MotoLOGIC (motologic.com), you might also want to check out one of the other companion online tools called MotoSHOP (motoshop.com), which is a complete shop management system. Not that this is the main reason to consider it, but MotoSHOP (motoshop.com) does offer “The 5X Guarantee” promising that customers will generate $5 in "On Program" revenue for every $1 spent on the Shop Marketing Program each month, or the next month is free. In the words of Michael Corleone, this may be an offer “you can’t refuse.”
