BOOST YOUR SALES AT THE FRONT COUNTER

When it comes to selling vehicle maintenance, most shops sell them after the inspection. To many, it seems logical because it incorporates all of the upsells into one step. The truth is this is one of the worse times to sell maintenance, let me explain why.

1. Customers were not prepared for what would be found. Often shops refuse to venture any guesses of what could be found because they don’t know. This leaves the customers in suspense, adding to their stress.
2. Customers are often away from the shop. Their attention is now divided between you and their kids screaming in the background, or co-workers needing their attention. Selling always works best when the customer is 100% focused on you.
3. You’re now selling over email, text, or phone call. You lose that face-to-face conversation that is more relational.
   Selling at the front counter fixes these issues and much more. The problem is that most shops have no clue what that vehicle needs until it’s in the bay. How can they possibly sell before the inspection if they have no clue?

Track and age all recurring maintenance by the miles per day driven.

Here’s how the above issues are resolved by maintenance tracking.

1. Explain what is not due yet, removing the stress of not knowing.
2. Explain what was done in the past and due again, get pre-approval for the work.
3. Explain what’s unknown, prepare them for what the inspection will find, reducing the shock and surprise of the inspection.
4. Consult in the above way with the customer face to face and watch your sales grow.
   There are a lot more benefits to maintenance tracking including higher profits, improved efficiency, and a great ROI of your marketing.

Improve your customer’s experience

The auto repair industry is highly competitive. There is no shortage of shops to take your vehicle to. If you want your shop to thrive, you need to find ways to stand out from the competition. But how?

The problem is 95% of the industry provides the same service experience.

Does this include your shop?

You offer courtesy vehicles or a shuttle service, free coffee, wifi, and maybe even free hugs. How can the service experience in your shop be the same as the rest of the industry? Let me explain.

A customer brings their vehicle into your shop. They need something like an oil change, tire rotation, or troubleshooting a problem.

You take their car in and proceed to do a “safety inspection”. You then come back with $500, $900, or even a few thousand dollars worth of work that needs doing.

“What the hell do you mean I need to spend that much!?”

How many times have you had that kind of reaction?

That’s the exact experience customers hate. They dread the words “safety -inspection”.

In their heads, they’re thinking “yeah, you’re going on a fishing expedition to see what you can sell me”.

So how do we avoid this bad experience that our customers hate?

• Use inspection tablets?
• Take better pictures?
• Use texting capabilities?

Nope. Those might help with communication, but they still happen after the damage is already done.

You need to prepare your customer for what the inspection will find.

By tracking and aging all maintenance items by the miles driven per day you can accomplish a few things.

1. Explain what services were done before and when in the future they will be due.
2. Explain what services were done before and how past due they are.
3. Explain what services you have no history of and you will know the status of them after the inspection.

Every training I do with a shop I always ask them the following. When your tech does their inspection, of all the items they list that need to be done, what percent are maintenance items vs. repairs?

I usually get something like 50/50, 60/40, and even 70/30 maintenance/repairs.

Knowing service history before the inspection you can explain what you’re going to find. You effectively reduce their shock after the inspection by 50-70%.

How much happier do you think that makes them?

There are a lot more benefits to tracking and aging all recurring maintenance. This includes boosting sales and making your techs more efficient.

Increase your shop efficiency

Efficiency is key to higher profits in your auto repair shop. Yes, I’m Captain Obvious.

You also know that you need to be able to get cars in and out as quickly as possible with little delay. Now I’m preaching to the choir.

The problem is you have a lot going against you when it comes to improving efficiency. In working with shops for the last 20 years we’ve discovered the most common problems.

• Technicians take time doing detailed inspections.
• Service advisers are busy, time is wasted between the inspection and calling back the customers.
• Waiting to hear back from customers to get approval on work.
• Waiting for parts to come in can take hours or days, causing your techs to shuffle vehicles in and out of the bays.

You’d think by now we would have found ways to avoid these time vampires that suck away your profits. Well, we did.

There is one simple thing needed to reduce, if not eliminate those four profit-killing problems. It’s simple, track and age all recurring maintenance services by the miles your customer dives per day.

By doing this, you’ll know the following.

• Services performed before and are due again
• Services performed before and not due yet
• Services not performed before, but should have been done by now
• Services not performed before, but need to be inspected

By knowing that information before the vehicle comes in, you’ll be able to do the following.

• Know what parts need to be ordered ahead of time, get them in before the vehicle arrives. This alone greatly improves efficiency.
• Pre-approve services at vehicle drop-off. No need to wait for the inspection or for the customer to call back to approve.
• Remove the blinders from your tech, they know which services they don’t need to look at, and which need attention. Now inspections are faster!

There are just some of the benefits of tracking and aging all recurring services. The problem most people have is that doing all this work can take time. Creating spreadsheets, entering in more data, combing through invoices, and doing the math take a lot of time!

Trustowrthy service reminders draw customers in more often

It’s no secret that auto repair shops need customers to keep their doors open. The problem is that many shops rely on marketing tricks to bring people in, and those tricks wear out. Your customers get used to them.

Avoid this by using on-time individual service reminders. This includes services like oil changes, tire rotations, inspections, batteries, and more. This is a great way to give your customers value while bringing them back in on a regular basis. So why are individual service reminders so effective?

The logic is pretty simple. Remind customers of the services they know they need, and they will be thankful you did so. They will book an appt as a result.

Sending a reminder for a 50K service, or services with names they don’t recognize creates confusion.

Think about it, people don’t like sounding stupid. Many are too embarrassed to ask “What’s that?”. It also requires too much brainpower to learn what something is to make a decision. You’re also competing with everything else trying to get their attention. That’s why we stick with the basics.

The majority of your customers know they need an oil change, their tires need rotating, and a dead battery will leave them stranded.

They have no clue what a transfer case service is, or what a timing belt is.

This is why it’s so important to track and age all maintenance service by the miles per day driven. You can then consult with your customers in real-time about their service needs as they come due.

Fill the bays with your best customers today

It doesn’t take a genius to know that having empty bays costs you money.

Not only do you lose out on potential revenue, but you also have to pay for the space and all the equipment that’s sitting unused.

Simply put, empty bays hurt your bank account!

If you’re looking at your calendar this week and you have spots to fill, you need to act now!

Let me explain how to build the best campaign that has worked for shops over and over when they needed to fill the bays.

1. Find your best customers. We do this by filtering out customers that have not been in the shop between 3-12 months. These customers are in the sweet spot of not just being in, but not gone long enough they’re considered a lost customer. Then find only repeat customers, 2+ visits. Finally, you want only the best spenders, filter out customers who have a specific ARO amount. You should be left with your best customers. I like to find about 100 of them, so tweak your filters until you get that amount.
2. Now that you have your best customers who you know spend good money, you need to give them a compelling offer. We’ve found great success with buy one oil change get one free. You get the full price now and only need to cash in the free one later. In essence, that free oil change is over two invoices, making it not that much of a hit.
3. Now you need them to act with urgency. That’s why I never use the “expires in 30 days” a lot of shops use. Instead, I put “Offer for the next 20 customers only”. This creates a sense of high urgency. They have no idea how much longer it’s good for. If they want the deal, they need to respond now!
4. Send the offer by text message! Text messages get the fastest response over all other marketing methods right now.

Now you know how to fill your bays today. Trust me, it works. I’ve seen shops get bookings within minutes of sending the campaign over and over. The key is having a CRM program that allows for those kinds of filters.

Engage with your customers faster with text messages

Auto repair shops have been using text message marketing to increase the results of their marketing for a while now. It’s been a huge success, but it won’t last forever. Like email marketing, the results will start to drop off over time. So how do you keep your text message marketing from wearing out?

Here are a few tips:

• Keep your messages short and to the point. People don’t have time to read long messages on their phones.
• Make sure your offers are appealing and urgent. Nobody wants to get bombarded with spammy messages that offer nothing of value.
• Send out messages frequently, but not too often. You want to stay top of mind, but you also don’t want to annoy people. Find the right balance for your shop.

These are some basic knowledgable tips. But if you want to ensure your customers love getting your texts, you need to make sure they’re relevant to their needs. You also need to make sure they’re timely.

Here are a few more tips:

• Provide service-specific reminders as your customers come due for them. This is easily done with maintenance service tracking.
• Make sure your system only sends automated texts during business hours. Customers expect fast communication, they don’t want to wait all weekend to hear back from you.
• Filter your texts so the right customers get the right messages with the right offers.

Follow these tips and you’ll be able to keep your text message marketing from wearing out!

High convertion mobile responsive website

If you’re an auto repair shop owner, you know how important it is to have a great website. It plays a huge role in your new customer acquisition.

Unfortunately, most auto repair shops make the same mistakes with their websites. The result is less than favorable conversions. Here are five of the most common website mistakes auto repair shops make.

Mistake #01: Your Website Isn’t Mobile-Friendly

This is one of the biggest mistakes made. Our analytics show that over 50% of visitors use their smartphones to access a shop’s website. If your website isn’t properly optimized for mobile, you’re missing out on sales. Google now uses mobile-friendliness as a ranking factor in its search results. If your website isn’t up to par, you’ll be buried in the search engine results pages (SERPs).

Mistake #02: Your Website Is Cluttered and Hard to Navigate

The biggest turn-off for website visitors is a cluttered and hard-to-navigate website. All your great content is wasted as the customer is overwhelmed with what to do. Too much information and poor navigation are confusing. This causes people to leave your site without taking any action. This is especially true for auto repair shops. Visitors are usually trying to make a quick decision. Make sure your website is easy to navigate and the content is properly structured to help with the sale.

Mistake #03: You don’t have a clear Call-to-Action

If you don’t have a clear call-to-action (CTAs) on your website, you’re not going to generate customers. Your CTAs should be clear and concise, and they should direct visitors to take the next step. For auto repair shops, this could mean booking an appointment or requesting a quote. Whatever it is, make sure your CTAs are effective in driving conversions.

Mistake #04: You’re Not Tracking Your Data

One of the most common mistakes auto repair shops make with their website is not tracking their data. If you’re not tracking you won’t be able to improve your website or generate more sales. At least make sure you’re tracking your visitors, bounce rate, and conversion rate. Use Google Analytics or other platforms so you can improve your website performance.

Mistake #05: You’re Not Identifying Your Customer

This is a huge issue that kills your website conversions. Use images that look like your customers. When they see themselves on your website, they envision doing business with you. Matching their age, sex, race, lifestyle, vehicles they drive, etc is key. Time after time I see a shop with pictures of vehicles, not people. Many times those vehicles don’t even match the types they work on. If you want high conversions, make sure the images on your site match your ideal customer base.

These are just five of the most common website mistakes that auto repair shops make. By avoiding these mistakes, you’ll be able to generate more sales from your website.

Get found by the customers looking for your services

As an auto repair shop, you know that customers often search for your services online. If you’re not doing SEO, you’re likely losing out on business to your competitors. Many shops only do pay-per-click advertising. This can be expensive and may not always bring in the right type of customer. Let’s discuss the importance of SEO for your auto repair shop.

One of the main benefits of SEO is that it’s a relatively low-cost way to generate traffic to your website. Compared to pay-per-click advertising, SEO is affordable and still produces great results. SEO can help you attract customers who are actively searching for your services. This means that they’re already interested in what you have to offer. This increases the likelihood that they’ll use your services.

SEO is also a long-term strategy. You can continue to reap the benefits of your efforts for years to come. With pay-per-click ads, you have to keep paying for ads in order to maintain your visibility. This can become very expensive depending on the phrases you’re targeting.

SEO is an important part of any marketing strategy for an auto repair shop. It’s a low-cost way to generate leads and attract customers who are interested in what you have to offer. If you’re not doing SEO, you’re missing out on a valuable opportunity to grow your business.

If you need help getting started with SEO for your auto repair shop, we can help. We specialize in helping small businesses like yours succeed online.

Increase new customer calls with Google pay per click

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