Like every dealer manager, across all titles, you’re tasked with growing month-over-month, and year-over-year. Looking for out-of-the-box ideas, can get hard to find that growth you need. But I have some ideas for you…
- If you’re not running a BG/Wynns/GAP additional maintenance services, you’re missing out big on both retail parts and retail labour. These programs for the average dealer should be in the $250,000 minimum mark annually. Relaunch the program & training if you’re not – right now.
- You have a Sales BDC, and Sales Marketing to grow sales. What is your growth engine in Service & Parts? (long pause – I’ll wait for you on this one 😊 ). You need a Service BDC to grow both Retail Labour Sales, along with Retail Parts Sales. It’s a 1:1 Ratio.
- When was the last time you did a competitive study in Service? I did them every 3 months. It’s not hard – build a spreadsheet, and just update the numbers.
- Get rid of old, or overlapping Op Codes. Review 100% of the Op Codes for their ELR, and their Parts Gross. This is a download you can do for any period you like – including the prior business day to see what exactly is in there. Sort ascending.
- Turn off the discounting feature from every Fixed Op employee, except the Parts Manager, and Service Manager. Even then, if I’m a Fixed Ops Manager, I want to see the exceptions report, and why the discount was given daily.
- Shop Supplies every dealer charges. Even with a max of $75 and 12.5% of labour sales, some dealers struggle to break even, or it even costs them money. For me, shop supplies is a credit account of a minimum of 5% to 9% of Service Gross. And that’s with Parts Dept supplying 100% of my detail depts and shop supplies with a full retail escalator, and not being cheap with techs.
- Whoever is answering the inbound calls, needs to be pre-selling additional services. I talk about this in prior posts – but you should be tracking about $50/average appointment in upsells if just starting out with pre-selling. But getting into the $100-$200 range isn’t hard.
But just start, and track it. An Appointment Co-ordinator is someone who helps customers, but also, it’s a Sales role. Review my prior posts on this.
- Outstanding Recalls is an area where the average dealer has thousands and thousands of customers who need work completed. It’s a way to get customers in the door, recover lost customers, and also get an opportunity to upsell on inspections.
- You have a DMS database full of customers. Connect with them all, including those who haven’t been at the dealership in 12 to 120 months. Continued and consistent outreach is key here to make it fly.
- You’re short on techs, and don’t know what to do besides post an ad? Build your own. More on this in another post. But for now, you need to bring in Seasonal Tire & Lube techs. It will allow for more work orders, take the light-weight work away from Journeyman techs, and let them focus on the real work that makes a lot.
Follow Crystal Nicholson’s posts on the how-to-execute on this particular subject – she is a master at it.
The natural go-to is usually to cut expenses. That’s usually the last place to visit. “If you have an expense problem, look at your sales first” (Bob Atwood – NADA instructor quote). Notice how I only talk about building on and up? You can’t grow by shrinking.
Now – hammer it out, and review my prior posts on how to make it all happen. 😊