We are joined by Darren Bedford and Colin McAllister again following on from our discussion last time and look at how we can implement good processes in the service department.
How can your technicians get all the work done, how can your service advisors get time to upsell and how do you keep your customers happy?
These are just some of the questions we look at and pass on our we have learned. From setting the agenda to separating the customer appointment from the vehicle appointment and more.
Here are the highlights:
{02:35} Don’t hear form me that’s good news
{04:00} Lasting Image
{09:37} Build in comparison
{17:00} Educated decision, rather than an ignorant risk
{17:35} Is there a danger we over upsell?
{24:00} Tyres are the only thing holding you on the road
About Symco Training:
Symco Training was founded in 2000 by Simon Bowkett and it was his belief that the business had to offer its clients something different. That difference was clear to Simon from his days in the dealership when he experienced many sales trainers who had all the answers, but were unable, unwilling or both to actually show the delegate how they could be implemented. It remains the ethos of the business today. You see, Symco only employ trainers that are committed to delivering not only in spiring and insightful training, but are equally as happy to demonstrate these skills and techniques with real customers in your own showroom. We believe in order for sales training to be effective and in Simon’s words ‘real world’, it needs to be tried and tested in the only place it matters the showroom floor. There is no room for theory when your goals are for your team to sell more cars, hours or parts and retain more profit. In dealerships around the world the focus applied by many of the sales executives is to try and sell a deal. Symco specialise in getting your teams to focus on selling themselves, the product and then supporting this with the deal.
To find out more visit
www.symcotraining.co.uk
Welcome to the Selling in the Motor Trade Podcast, an association with Symco Training. This is the weekly podcast where we share best practice tips and ideas on how to sell more cards, improve your service department and generally put more profit into your dealership or dealer group. I'm your host, Simon Bowkett. As some of you probably worry, no me as skipping. I will start with saying thank you for taking the time to listen to this podcast. Okay, so we were talking about how the golden hour is so important. In the real world, how do we make sure that golden hour happens? Okay, so again, let me ask a thick question then. All the cars are coming in first thing in the morning, okay? Your workshops, you work in lots of different dealerships around the world. You've got lots of great run dealerships up there. All the people want to drop their car off first thing in the morning. How is the tech going to do? They see it in our video on all the cars there, get to contact with the customer early on. Did they bring the car in? Just do the check of the car, do the video and bring it back in later. How do you do that, the logistics of that column? How does that work in the real world? You've got to separate the customer appointment from the car appointment. You've got to explain to the customer, yeah, you're coming in at your club because you start to work then. I've got eight ramps. So your car will be scheduled down over the course of the morning and then we'll update you when it comes on the ramp. That's why we do the text and then you'll get a video through from the technician. The same post statement we use is we confirm the payment methods. I don't have a script for it. We have a list of check points. What's the payment method? Is it the service plan? Is it going to be card? Are you going to be looking at taking advantage of our drive now, paleo, or scheme? We then talk through the VHC process. Well, they have equals with this. We're going to carry out complimentary vehicle health check. What we're looking for here is things that make your car stop it from being safe and go to the legal if we identify any of those things. They'll be marked in red and we'll be in touch with you about them. So what's the best number? That's where we get to the number, then the technician email address on there. Now, when you receive that through, you can actually auto-authorize it from the email. You don't need to speak to me. You can just auto-authorize it. If you have any questions, then you can get me on this as the best number. Now, if you don't hear from me, and this is a really important thing, guys, this revolutionizes yourself as the department. I see Dan's getting his pen ready. Everyone listening to this should have a pen ready, right? If you don't hear from me, that's good news. And I'll see you at 4 o'clock as we've just arranged. That will stop all of your phone calls at one time going. I'm just waiting for an update. My Casping Instance here, a clock this morning, and nobody's phoned me. Oh, is that no good news, sir? Oh, the guy said that. Phone done. So, if you look at the number of calls that come in here, sir, but I'm still at the customer's phone in. In today's marketplace, a customer's phone in looking for an update, we have failed that customer. Absolutely failed them. Because we should have texted them. We should have gone in touch with them. So if we set that benchmark off, if you don't hear from me, it's good news, and I'll see you at 4 o'clock, because that means your car's not had anything that's made it unsafe and unload by the illegal to drive. So it must be OK. Now, you'll still get some Christmas one in, but you will reduce the dramatically the number of phone calls that phone in. Generally when they're on lunch, your service advisors are on lunch, and your phone posts on lunch too, and those need the answer on the phone. And then you've got a very unhappy customer, because no one's kept me informed. Keep me informed. Exactly. Isn't that always the way? At least I'm interesting to hear you're setting the agenda. Everyone sits the agenda slightly different. Ron, I know how you talk about the colours, and I love to hear this, because other people listen to podcasts say, oh, we do it this way, do it that way. I love that, Colin. What do you got there, Darren? I don't think it's that dissimilar. I don't spare the other detail that you need to be, but the last thing image I would always leave when the customer's leaving is I want them to go away knowing what we use as the method to communicate that to the customer. So mine's pretty straightforward and simple, which is, you know, while your vehicle's in with us today, we'll be conducting a complimentary vehicle health check. Hey, listen, most of the items should be green. They'll be good to go. If there's any handber items, what we're trying to do is just give you a little bit of an advanced warning that they may need looking at before the next service. But listen, if there's any red, I'll be straight on the phone because we need to get those sorted out today. Is that okay, Mr Bogart? Yeah. Yeah, okay. So it's very much the same sort of thing, but I can't stress how important it is to do it in the morning. For a few reasons, okay, the first reason is the colours drop into the back of our mind, okay? I'm not saying the customer gets back to their place of work and going, I know how their system works, but we can, of course, when we make the vehicle a health check, which will be the next one, we just turn that on its head and we say, great news. Most of the items were green. There's an amber item, it's a tyre. I'll talk to you about it when you come down later. It's not urgent, but there is a red tyre on the front. Now, Andy, our technicians can get that done for you. It won't affect the four o'clock time that that comes back to you, and it's going to be 140 pounds, euros, whatever you deal with. Can I go ahead and get Andy to do that for you? Well, it's on a ramp now. And it's a straightforward kind of, there's how it works, and then there's the explanation off the back of it and the need to do it. It's so frequent that the drop-off becomes, we do a complementary vehicle health check or we do a health check or possibly even sometimes we don't even mention it at all. And the danger there, of course, is the next phone call is, hi, it's Darren. Andy, our technicians, how are you looking at your car? He's discovered all this work that he's doing. So it looks very underhanded. And if we're honest, some of the stuff can be not because we are, but it can be underhanded. Years ago, if I had an oil leak, I knew I had an oil leak, so I had a nice puddle on my drive. Okay? With the drip trays these days, I could be driving for quite a while without even knowing that I've got an oil leak. So the first I hear is from the guy on the phone or the lady on the phone telling me. The other point that I would make as far as that's concerned is, well, when you're reporting that stuff, bear in mind what the customer bought it in for. They might have bought it in for a service and a rattle, and you're back in touch with them with a vehicle health check, which you're not going to be able to tell them the service is complete or the rattle's been sorted if your system's running robustly. But just let them know. Hey, listen, Andy, our technicians already on with the service. He's also going to get to the bottom of the rattle. I'm confident of that. But while he was there, what he discovered, and then we would lead into the... Yeah, I love the work. ...and he was discovered not found there. Sorry, Coline. I cut you off there. No, no, I was there. You mean, we're done. It's such an important thing. One of the things I encourage with our technicians is, if it's in for diagnostic, we don't do a VHC on the vehicle until we've actually figured out what the customer's paid, the diagnostic report, and he's went through the diagnostic process. The wasler, you know, if you're grudging, you know, and some of our sites are 180 quid for the diagnostic fee, the Jaguar Land Rover sites. So you pay 180 quid, then all of a sudden you get health check and go in your tires at this, and you break forwards this, and you go, well, that's no work to do for. And so it's very much about bearing in mind, what does the customer put it in for? Let's satisfy that, and then we'll help check it once we've proven that we're actually talented and good at our job on there. So a lot of people get that confused, and it totally throws the customer, and they get the go mental. And particularly as Dan was talking a bit more, opening up about the customer's who'd maybe bought the vehicle from a, you know, a used supermarket, and that's the first experience of a manufacturer's site. And then they get the VHC, and what, you know, it's so, so critical that you go through the explanation of the VHC and how it works, because some people will receive the VHC email and they go, Jesus, it's 1,200 quid for all this work. But there's, you know, at the 1,200 pound of it's amber what that we can put a timer on. It's only X amount that's the red what that needs attention today. But if we've not explained that, they either all up and go, I'll put it in the manufacturer place, bloody hell, they want to eat this. And we just look, you know, ridiculous. So it's about tailing it to what's that customer put it in for. And also thinking, you know, tires is a great example where we go with this, you know, this place up there, they put L.E.P.C. rules because that's what the manufacturer recommends. But the guy's sitting with, you know, land sale on there. So we're probably going to look at like for like quotes as well. So you listen to the manufacturer recommends, apparently, this is where they are. And notice that you get one sale on there. Was that your choice or was that the people that were re-fobbing your car to sell it? Yeah, I guess I'd try this as a, for me, it's just a big one column. It's a, for me, it's the first point of defection I get where people leave a franchise dealership and they go to the independence. And the way it's dealt with is so often just so poorly. And I always, I love to build in some sort of comparison. You know, when a service advisor says your tire needs to be done, it's 180 quid, 180 euros wherever they are in the world, customers say, I'll get back to you. Of course, they want to go straight to quick fit and find out what's it going to be there. Of course, quick fits got some sort of chun-lung ditch finder, some unknown brand as the cheapest brand, we're at 180 and they're selling it for 90. And of course they think, ah, the main stealers again, main dealers, they're ripping us off. I just love to build in comparison and little things like Mr. Customer, our technician David. I love to use the customers, oh, sorry, our technician name, David, the technician, David, the expert, when he's inspecting the car, he inspected the front two tires. Now, a tire's got eight millimeters once brand new. You want it all the way down that you've only got 1.4 millimeters until that's illegal. Now, put that in perspective, that's equivalent to the thickness of the credit card. I'll tell you that because you're doubling your braking distance on the wet road. Actually on a dry road at 120 kilometers an hour or 70 miles an hour, you actually got five double decker buses extra stopping distance. But then of course, I've taken the liberty to get a quote from you from quick fit. For the same tire, the Audi recommend the Continental Sport, the Frelley fitted balance, disposing of your old tire, they're a 180-year-old tire. Now, we're five pounds of tire dearer, but the good news is David could do that. It's part of the service today. It's not going to affect your pickup time of fourth this afternoon. I love to nip in the bud they need to shop around. Now, of course, when customers say, wow, I'll get back to you, hey, Colin, did you need to get back to me about the price that tire? Or did you need to get back to me about when we could fit that for you? It's always price. Then of course, your service advice got somewhere to go. Well, bear in mind, that's on the Prelley, the same tire that Audi recommended. By this occasion, why don't look at a lower cost alternative? Actually, we've got the hand cook or whatever it is for 120. Hey, Colin, did you want to do the Prelley at 180? Or does it make more sense for you to put the hand cook on at 120? I mean, just get some sort of, I mean, tires, Colin, again, with tires. You're talking about percentages there. I harp on that because I do feel it's dealt with still in this day and age. We just get it wrong so often, so often. How are you training your advisors to deal with tires? So, yeah, percentage one is always the way we communicate on there. So it's 80% one, it's 86% one. So the customer realizes, because you say, well, the legal limit's 1.6, and it's a three-bell, that's a lot. I think I've got plenty of effort. Actually, you've got 1.4 issues to fix. So, I could either go, we have a special tire card. Yeah, show us that first. Again, people listen to this. We know most people listen to this on the podcast, but Colin's holding up a video there, a tire card. Hold that up if you can there. Yeah, so it's like you're currently having a tire card. It's double-sided, so you've got your percentage of worms on the back there, followed in the red amber green color code as well, so you can see when does it need to replace the day. And then miraculously, the card itself is 1.6 mils thick. So that's the legal limit. That's what you're relying on to keep you on the road. That's a lot like looking like that, is it? Yeah, it does. It does impact people going, oh, right. So it's really important. And then we've also got, you know, you can check your tire depth yourself, take the card the way with you on there. And we have a link to tire safe, so it's not just the John Colin motor group telling you this. It's the tire experts, tire safe. They'll give you all the information to back it up. So it's that. Is there a danger that we're crossing my and scam-ungering a customer? I mean, you talk about the grandma reel, don't you? Explain your grandma reel. What do you mean by that? The grandma rules are a really good one in dealership to use, where there's a difference of opinion. You know, if there's a technician that's coming along and speaking to a service advisor and they're not quite sure whether it's a red or an amber work to fall into, just take it over to grandma. You know, if it was your grandma's car, okay, and she was about to purchase that car, would you want her to know about it, or would you keep it to yourself? And if you're talking about amber tires, you know, you'd want her to be communicated that they're amber, but you wouldn't want somebody to try and sell her amber tires. Likewise, red tires, yeah, you definitely would. It's a simplistic little rule, but it enables you just to kind of find what that should be. Should that item be red? Should that item be amber? And it kind of settles some of those sometimes conversations that go on of possibly gray areas on certain cars, because it's different. You know, somebody using their car quite frequently is going to hire mileage. You know, it might mean that they have to come back to you in six months. For somebody else, it might actually last a longer period. Okay, guys, so I'm cutting off, Darren. I've got to tell you, my pet hate, listen, we all drive cars. We get cars serviced all the time. Colin, within the group, I'm sure you're getting sorted, but my own personal car, having to drive out there, my pet hate is where people don't offer me things. They don't there. And I have to take the car back in two months time, three months time. It's different today. Can I ask you one question? Who in their world from a convenience perspective wants to bring their vehicle into a main dealer to have their car serviced, to be told it needs two tires, to then build time into their schedule, to drive away from that dealership, to go and sit in a, you know, a non-branded place, drink a cup of clique's coffee, maybe struggle with your Wi-Fi connection, you know, sit on a lovely couch that's already got grease on it for you and all those sorts of things. Not the least of which, although they are deemed quick fit kind of operations, it's not quick by any means because there's no appointment system. So if you turn up, you might get in, but it's still a reasonably lengthy job. They have a duty of care. They have to go through those same things as we do in terms of the vehicle health check. But also the other thing is it could be people in front of you. So you could be there for an hour, hour and a half. You know, really the customers that we bump into in a main dealership and a manufacturer environment want to do that. I tell you the power of convenience to me, the one that brings it home for me is when I was growing up, I was a privy, obviously wasn't driving, but I was a privy to conversations of people who drive to different petrol stations to save a penny a gallon. Now, if you're driving down the motorway, there can be up to 10 to 15p difference per litre, five liters in a gallon roughly. So there's that difference that people, you'd expect there to be nobody stopping on the motorway services. Mm-mm. There as busy as anything. Okay. You go in there, you're going to pay through the nose for your fuel. Your meal deals now jumped up from £4 to £5.50 or whatever. Your bottle of water's gone up. Everything is going to be more expensive. But we go in there because it's convenient. Yet we offer this one-stop shop of convenience and we quite frequently forget to mention what we're doing, how we're doing, how we can do it, how we can sort it out. And I know Colin touched there and given prices on the tyres of other people's offerings, which is really important because actually if you sit there and you know the price of somebody else's offering and you know it's £10 a tyre more, most of your people are going to go for £10 to do it. But it's fear that I'm going to pay through the nose. I'm going to pay ridiculously more that stops people going ahead. But then you also end up in the situation that having said no to you, I'm not going to swallow my pride necessarily and come back and go, well actually you you weren't one of the cheapest and I want the main dealer to do it. You end up going to the quick fit, convincing yourself that you know I've made the right decision here, I didn't waste an extra X amount with the dealer. Great friend of the show Andy Williams, Colin. It always says let the customer make an educated decision as opposed to an ignorant risk. And I suppose that's what it is, just let them decide. And too often I still hear service advisors making the decision for the customer. But Colin, this is to you then sir. Can we not force a customer to the independence? If we're offering, you said before, you send through the vehicle health check to a customer, it's pre-price, they can hit the button acceptor but there's 1900 to work. They're not realising that half of it or more is amber. Is there not a danger that if we over upsell, we're going to force people to the independence? So you're using one of my bands once they're, you know I don't use that one. I know that sir. You've just beaten me then so if you don't know I never use that terrible word that Simon just used there beginning with it with her you. Because for me you're pushing stuff to people that they don't want. With the vehicle health check, what we're doing is what we're using, our expertise to make sure that the car's roadworthy, safe and legal. That's the three checkpoints and anything I'm reporting to a customer and recommended to a customer, falls out with that. It means that the car's unsafe, illegal or unroadworthy. And I'll give you an example of unroadworthy where it's legal. So I, this was quite a few years ago, you've talked about having your own personal car. So I drove in my own personal car down, I was working with an independent training company and I'd be hired by the other ship and I booked my car in there for a service. Boy, I was there, right? Convenience. Yep. So I drive down, now I'm driving down from Glasgow to Carlisle and it's snowing, right? So I get down there and I know that my tires are probably, you know, going to need replaced. So I send for a service and then I'm expecting the service department to talk to me about, you know, tires at some point. There's no conversation. So at the clock, because I've been training all day, I went up to the service, this, listen, it's my car been done yet. I said, yeah, yeah, I said, how did the tires go? On the tires I find, yeah, it's definitely illegal. This is actually so poor. What tread depth did they have then if they're perfectly illegal? This is a, well, wait a minute. It's, it's really good. So, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, they're too old. I said, oh, wow. See that white stuff formed through the sky. I mean, that's old. This is, I don't know. I said, what's the minimum tread depth required for a tire to grip in snow? Because I've got 80 miles to drive home. This is, what, I don't know. I said, well, let's go on a tire safe website and find out, hey. Because that's a scream out. Yeah. Right. So, my car's unwoodworthy. But the problem is, it's after the clock, you can get my tires. No. No. So I've got to boot them in. So I've formed the dealership, I'm at the next day working, and they get 300 kilos worth of miles off me. Make sure you get the tires out. I, the other thing, again, people to listen to this, some I'm loving at the moment. If a tire's got two millimeters on it, okay, we know it's got 0.4 of a millimeter till it's legal, or it's 96% worn out. We know it's three millimeters, okay. It's 1.4 millimeters, or it's 78% worn, okay. Now, I've always found at two millimeters, saying something's 96% worn out or 94% worn, that's nice and simple and easy. And I could get this out. At three mils, I always found it harder. A man called Tony Sexen said, hey, but Simon, you know it's only 1.4 millimeters until that's illegal. Now 1.4 millimeters is the thickness of the credit card. Now, I know you've got the John Clark group there, but at service visors, listen to this, get the credit card out of your personal wallet. The card itself is one mill. The bumps on it is 0.4 of a mill. So when you look at it, it helps put a mind pitch into the customer's head, okay. It's like 0.4 of a millimeter till it's illegal at two mils. That's equivalent to the bumps in a credit card, or it's 1.4 millimeters. It's the thickness of a credit card. When you actually look at the difference there, it's not like, Darren, you do that with the tire gauge and you show it up against the paper. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, these are really powerful using a digital tire gauge to see the difference, but I'd urge anybody out there who's it within the role, just refresh your memory of those distances. Because what we generally do is start on an 8 mil. So we start on 8 mil, which is what most new tires have. Have a look at that. Bring it down to 3 mil. Have a look at that. We're starting to get quite small. Then bring it down to 1.6, which is the legal limit. Then take it down to 1.4. And please bear in mind, when you bring it down to 1.4, that's the maximum notice that you're going to give somebody, because that means that the tire is 3 mil. Okay, so above 3 mil, we won't be communicating it as a red tire. Below 3 mil, we will be. So it really is the absolute maximum that would be there. Now, one good stop on a motorway from an elevated speed. You could probably scrub most of that off as well. So it's a really good exercise, just to refresh your mind of those distances and then communicate them. I often talk about that in people cars. I just, you know what? I wasn't aware of that. Said, here's your problem though. You can't communicate the same way with a customer, because most of the stuff that you're going to do is going to be on the phone. So you've got to find an easy method. And that's where the credit card was born really, because we can all pictorially think straight away of the thickness of the credit card. Yeah. There's another one that this one always blows my mind a little bit, which is if you think of your dealership, and you think of all of the amber tires across a whole year that you've advised customers would need doing. So we didn't have any chance of doing it ourselves, but we've got this pool of amber stuff that's been identified that by definition should be done at some point during this year. Then you try and think to yourself, how many times did you have you taken a phone call from a customer that's booked in just to get tires done? No other repair, but phoned you up and said, oh, do you know what? Three months ago I was in here, you told me my two front tires that they were doing. And they were doing once and never. Most places it'll fit on one hand. We had two emails. Just a bit. It was extremely unbelievable, because there was a new bus coming on this today. And so I've been keeping an eye on it after seeing emails coming in. And there was two yesterday. So one for many and one for the Jaguar Land Rover site. And I was like, wow, that's somebody who's communicated it really well. Yeah. Oh, absolutely. To the customer. And do you... Colin, can we just put that into context across how many sites? How many thousands of vehicles? It can be same. Yeah. And one of those sites is good for the retail ramps in it. So it's a big thing. But yeah, so yeah, it's in context. It's going to be the only two that have seen. But that service advisor has done a great job. That has been communicated very, very well, hasn't it? Yeah. And why are we jumping about tires and going on a bit? Because for me, the road safety triangle, the most important component on your vehicle, that only thing holding you on the road. And the thing I use is you've got four bits of A5 bits of paper holding you on the road, because that's your contact point, the tire. I'd love everyone, absolutely everyone to go on one of these continental days or parelli or one of these where they put you on the skid pen. And they see the stopping distance. In fact, get every service advisor to go and watch the continental videos where the stopping distances and the difference it makes with proper tires or the cheaper tires and the grandma rule. If your grandmother was buying that car, would you want to buy a car with that cheaper tire on it? That's a brilliant one. You're one of the golf and then you have the continental tire and then you have the continental copy. And you see the difference in those black boxes flying everywhere. Whenever you show a service advisor on that video, that grandma rule keeps on to go, wow, yeah, definitely. The other use for the grandma rule, well, well, I've got the mic, is quite frequently a technician says to themselves, we're tired of placing it. Now, would you replace it as a technician, understanding of your way you understand what your skills, your tools and your ability? I like Colin, go and cut you off there. That's like a builder. Does a builder ever finish his house? There's a place to ever decorate his house. You asked to take this in with a builder. So does he finish his granny's house? Of course he does, right? Does he finish his grandma's bathroom? Of course he does. So the grandma rule is that great rule for technicians to say, forget whether you would replace it. Would you replace it if your grandmother was car? Okay, so I'll go take this horse girl. I'll go tell you this. There's a great group that we work with. Round the Manchester region, they've got a lot of Toyota, Lexus dealers, people probably know who we're talking about. I was in there one day, Dalne was doing service advisor training. And one of the service advisors had left his car in the car parking area, a customer's parking area, in this Mazda Lexus dealership. That's where they're doing the training. I said, give me a keys and I'll go and move the car just so we don't disturb the course. So I just ran into the technician. There's a service advisor, there's a great guy. You know who I'm talking about. So I got the service advisor. I said, took his car in and put it on the ramp. So I said to the technicians, can you do me a vehicle health check on this? So we can use this later. Colin, I promise you, you've never seen so much red and amber in all your life. Okay, we've got tires there that are two of them below the legal limit. You've got brake lights out, bulbs are out on it. You've got the airbag warning light, you know the SRS light, glowing orange, almost glowing a hole in the dash there. But guys, let me tell you, I know there's two child seats in the back of the car, young child seats. We then had a look at the league table. This group, they actually measure everything, what your measure tends to improve. I promise you, this particular service advisor was right down, probably one of the lowest on any sort of, I'm going to use this word again, Colin Uppsell. Okay, but he's probably a little low in the group there. Colin, I'm going to mail off. But I think about that. If he wouldn't do that to his own car, when he's children sitting in the car, how can he sit there and convince the customer that I really believe you need to get these tires done? They've got to believe it, don't they? Listen, we're going on here. So let's talk about this next week and we're going to ask the listeners there. What do you want to talk about in the service department, in the after sales department? Is there anything specific? You'd like to know how to have ideas on how to do that. So get in contact with Colin McAllister at John Clark Motor Group, Darren Bedford at Simcoe Training. And we'll see you next time. That just leaves me to say that all details of this episode and other episodes on the selling in the motor trade can be found on our website simcotraining.co.uk. Go there to get a copy of our book, Words That Sell Cars. Go there to sign up to a free trial of our sales fitness online sales training program. Easiest way to get hold of me is Simon Bowkett, food LinkedIn.
