Simon Bowkett is joined by Colin McAllister of John Clark Motor Group and Darren Bedford of Symco Training for a proper after sales conversation. They get into service plans and retention, the golden hour, how quickly a VHC video needs to reach the customer, and what happens to the job when authorisation lands three hours too late. Colin shares the real auto authorisation figures across the group, and there are two cracking stories in here about the value of a good technician, one involving a coffee machine and one involving a screwdriver and a very large invoice.
- Service plans, price protection and why they hold retention together when money is tight
- The golden hour, and the 15 minute standard through technician, parts and front desk
- Real auto authorisation rates across John Clark, plus how fast customers respond to the video
- Why long lead times push away the service customers you actually want
- Getting credit for diagnostic work instead of handing over a no fault found
- The coffee machine story and the FedEx invoice, and what they say about your labour rate
- Where technicians are coming from now, apprenticeships, ex forces recruits and fast track Level 3
- Simple contact habits at drop off that get you an answer while the car is still up in the air
Colin McAllister is group training and development manager at John Clark Motor Group and looks after training across the group’s dealerships, including its apprentice programmes. Darren Bedford is sales director at Symco Training and works with service departments across the country on process and workshop planning. Both have been on the show before and both know the trade from the inside.
Send this to your service advisors and your service manager, then look out for part two next week where the guys cover how to put it into practice in your own dealership.
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 visitwww.symcotraining.co.uk
Hi and welcome to another episode of Selling in the Motor Trade. In partnership with Kizana, improve your margins with real-time, data-driven, retail valuations backed by the largest rule of data set in the UK. There are an evidence-based guide valuations for main dealers, car suit markets and independence. Along with Simco training, where we took that training in the real world, what's happening in the market today, not 10 to 15 years ago. Together, we're going to share tips and ideas on how to sell more cars, improve your service and parts operation, and generally put more profit into your department, dealership or dealer group. Now I'm your host, Simon Boca, or some of you might already know me as Skippy. Firstly, I just want to say thank you for the people who've dialed in right from the beginning of this because we're past 250 episodes now and interviewed so many great leaders in the motor trade. Thank you for taking the time. For people who are new to this, please ask you to subscribe. You can't believe what it does to the algorithm and gets this podcast out to as many people in motor trade as we can. Hi and welcome to another episode of Selling in the Motor Trade.19 Today's my pleasure to welcome Colin McAllister, the group training and development manager for John Clark Motor Group and Darren Bedford, the sales director for Simco training. Now the reason why we're having three of us on this, Colin and myself, we did a podcast for the people who listened to the show, I think about six months ago, which was ideas in the sales process, tips and ideas, and it just went down really, really well. And we've had lots of people say, hey, can you do the same thing in the after sales department, the service and the parts department. So this podcast is one that you're going to want to share with your service advisors, your service managers, people in the dealer group. So firstly, it leaves me to say welcome back Colin. Hi Simon, how are you doing? All good. And welcome back again Darren. Hi Simon, hi Colin, good to see you. Yeah, good to see you guys. So Colin, I want to start off with Sir. After the pandemic, we know that people are coming back into service departments now on droves. Okay, it's, we can't get technicians. Service departments seem to be so busy at the moment. Can I ask you, in the John Clark Motor Group, what are you focusing on39 in the after sales department? A big part of the challenge in after sales just now is when the financial squeeze people delay in their servicing. So they're putting their servicing off and they're only really coming in if they need diagnostics or they've got a fall or they've got a light on. So the manufacturers that are clever and have a light on that says you need our service. And we get that business in. But we're really having to fight and put our case forward to get people in. So we have things like service plans, pushing the service plans, building that attention is really important to us because that customer's already paid for the service. So the financial squeeze is not an issue and the price protected. So if there's any prices going up, then they're getting them at the previous price agreement they're saying not for the service plan. So we're pushing a lot of service plans, working on attention. And then we're also working a lot on our VHC process. So when the vehicles in, because people have been putting off the service and there's a wee bit more needing done to that car to keep it going while they're safe and legal. So we're having to recommend that we're making sure that we communicate to the customer57 in a way that they understand they need it and they accept it. So the technicians and the service advisors are using the same language, the technicians in the video and the service advisors in the call. So the customer's getting that same consistent message. Yeah, something there that I just want to run past down. I noticed that there's more and more people are just doing diagnosis work and damage to the vehicles and all of that there. Maybe not the service work. In fact, I was in the dealership last week and the lead time's two weeks. Okay, that's good use, isn't it? Or, no, not really. I mean, remember the good old days when we had three hours on a service, then probably it was good days where we had seven week lead times and things. You just need to be really careful. The way I look at it now is that the modern dealership is always going to get the problem cast. You know, if you've got a customer with an issue, it's going to come back to you. If the dealership down the road sold one of your vehicles and they've got a problem, it's going to come back to you. If, you know, car supermarkets sold one of your cars is going to come back to you because this is where the expertise lies.77 Now, the issue with that is that work is always going to take your most experienced guy. It's also going to take him a long time potentially to find the issue. Sometimes that's covered by warranty, which probably means he's going to get a lot less in terms of a labor rate. So you have this weird sort of scenario where your most experienced guy is actually likely to be bringing you in smaller amounts of hours and the lowest income. Now, we can offer that by balancing it up, by doing the service work, where we can be quick and we can have the efficiencies, you know, as Colin was alluding to there with a vehicle health check. But if you don't have that, if you just dealt only with the issues that came in, your labor rate would have to be sky high to cope with the cost of, you know, the infrastructure that we have. So the real danger here when your lead time starts to go up is the people that will disappear are the people who need a service. Because if you can't do the service for me within my window or my timescale, there's somebody out there that will. That's really the issue about it. You're going to keep getting that diagnostic work because that's driven by customer issue.95 So again, Colin, you're saying that people are putting off the servicing. Is it like call centers calling chasing people and getting them in? Are you focusing your teams on getting those service work? Yeah, so a bit of contact center and don't get you baby. We have 21 people there who are doing the service and able to your attention, work so they're phoning. But they're coming up against lead times as Dan's describing. You know, one of the challenges on diagnostic work, if I can just add to what Dan was saying, is frequently we don't communicate what we've done very well when it comes to diagnostic work. So we give that customer a no-fall fund. Absolute hit, hey, I mean, what we don't tell the customer is, listen, we've eliminated these possibilities from the process. We've checked this, we've updated this software, we've reviewed this piece, we've started this, we've had a contribution from the manufacturer, we've done this, the fault seems to be of itself. It's a bit like we put the computer up. But would you do me a favor and keep an eye on that for the next couple of weeks? If you communicate that way, then the customer's not big grudging, you know?115 Oh, they've done nothing. They couldn't find the fault. I'm totally useless. It's strange, I've got a funny story for you. I was a Volkswagen business in Aberdeen, and customers at the coffee machine. And as I frequently do, I've got a coffee machine in them. They're on my car, and I always say to the customers, listen, the coffee machine's in. They want a coffee while I'm here. And the guy said, if you can get a coffee machine, it walks on. I'll have a coffee. I'll get into what don't you worry. So I looked at this, it says waste container filled, right? So it takes a pot and tray off, and it pulls it, the container, and it empties the coffee, and puts everything back together. And says, that's the machine working. Would you like a coffee? And he says, oh, I'll have a lattice. He says, oh, you know how it affects the machine? I says, he's done to it. No, no, how it affects this machine. Do you know how much it is for a service plan?140 For two years, there's one for this coffee machine. It's 625 quid. If I had to call the guy out from Falkirk to Aberdeen to get here, it's 185 quid, call out feet just for me to come and look at my machine. And the guy went, right? He went, oh, I think I'll go with that. Get all over there on the apology. I says, why is that? He says, well, they've just charged me a 99 pound diagnostic fee, and I'm waiting a bit crazy about it. So now this dealership, we've got, it's a glass partition between the workshop and the customer waiting area. So I'll look through it. And I said, is that your car there, on the second round? And he says, yes, he says, oh, I says, let me tell you, the guy who's working on that is a guy called Gary Arthur. And he holds the Volkswagen gold pin. There's only five of them in Europe. This guy's the most talented Volkswagen technician there is. That's the guy who's looking after your vehicle. You're done tuning the guy that did the coffee machine hasn't he had any way up any other amount of training164 than the guy he said. Isn't it so true? We don't give the credibility to our technicians, do we? I absolutely love it. And Colin was either down or Colin. One of you guys, I heard the story, I stole the story from him. The FedEx story. Who was that? The FedEx story. I don't think he stole it from down, because I stole it from you. Yeah, I love it. So anyway, I love this story about FedEx, okay? The man called, one of you guys will tell me his name, I think it was John, whoever started FedEx. It'll come to us in a second. And also, I wonder how these stories have been embellished in time and changed. But the legend has it, the guy that started Federal Express, he was in the Korean of Vietnam War, something like that, is in logistics. And he decided that hub and spoke distribution was so much more efficient than straight line distribution. So the legend has it, he goes and builds in Memphis, there's all singing, all dancing, distribution,190 hub where the packages come in, it's overnight deliveries, it goes brilliantly. But the way I heard it, definitely from one of you guys, he didn't buy a service plan, because he just started, okay? It all goes wrong, three o'clock in the middle of the night, okay? He's in there, Fred Smith, that's the man's name. And he's kicking off, he's got his local engineers saying, what's wrong, what's here, all that. Three o'clock in the morning, the legend has it, he calls the engineer that installed it, okay? The engineer asks a few qualifying questions, pulls out a flat bladed screwdriver, walks over to a control panel, tightens up a screws, recalls the turn tighter, and the whole lot works. And Fred Smith says, brilliant, you saved a bomb, that's sensational. Give me your invoice, I'll get your page straight away. So of course the legend is, he said, yeah, there you go, there's an invoice for $10,000. Now again, Fred Smith, these are smart caggos, he doesn't kick off, he said, oh, can you itemise that for me? I love that.214 So yeah, sure, I can do that. Scribble's on the invoice and hands it back to him. Fred Smith says, yeah, you know what, you're right. Of course, what do you write on the invoice? To turning one screw, $1, for nine which screw to turn, $9,999, and I just love that story. I'm almost certain I stole that from Colin, but it's our technicians. Our technicians are, you're not selling them for an hour. I hear a service advisor all the time out, do you know what our labour rate is? It's extortionate. It's like, no, do you know, well, you want to technician that Volkswagen dealership, Colin? Five technicians at his level? How many years have it taken to get there? To be that master tech, and plus? He's over 20 years working on vehicles. I'm taking on 36th of July to get those apprentices from the 35th of July to qualify level three, wide vehicle technicians. So just a service tech spot again. That's exactly right, Colin. All that investment in the individuals, but that doesn't take into consideration the investment in the specialist tools,237 the equipment, all that stuff that we do. One of the things I often use is your mobile phone. How many times you wake up in the morning and you've got software updates to take during the course of a year if you added that lot up? That's effectively the package that your customer gets when they come in and we run those software updates, we check it's running the most up-to-date software. And even that point on its own is probably one of the most important, because nobody else can offer that same level of service for your vehicle other than your manufacturer approved site. Okay, this is for both of you then. The service manager, sitting there listening to say, yeah, it's all right for you guys. Sitting there, lovely studio there, but I can't get technicians. Technicians seem so hard to get. I'm hearing people that are going to Spain to try and get technicians there. What advice do you have for them? Where do we find text? Can we actually get the service working? Can we look at the upsell work if we can't get the text to do it? So I don't know who's going to take that one, but where are we getting text from, guys?258 We may ask someone to get text without any doubt whatsoever. We've done sign-on bonuses, so we're going to an Afghan sign-on bonus. We've always given all of our colleagues a thousand pounds for finding a technician. So there's about a 500 pounds at the end of the first month, 500 pounds at the end of the probationary period. And we find that those are the ones that stick, because you're not, you know, your technician isn't going to put Mad Markey Fraser, who could have put a knot in a monkey's mouth, and it has workshop and time work with him. He's going to want a really good, solid tech that he can trust, and he knows the quality of his work, and we're going to have money as workforce. But the future's got to be investing in apprentices, and keeping that in apprenticeships going. I've got 113 currently, 22 just about to graduate, and then, obviously, we'll get 36 coming in. And I don't think that's enough. I think we should have been near 55, because we need these technicians of the future and working on different systems, working with YEDAR and RADAR,280 and we're going to be working with oils and things. That's what they're going to be working with. The average technician population through the industry is 52 years of age. Wow, 52. 52 years. So we need to get that down, and the only way to do it is to invest. We've tried, and then I don't know if any other of the podcast listeners have tried this. We've tried to go through, you know, and find X, and other two people, we've had, you know, we're the phone guys that are actually new, for example, they've been really good. But it's finding a volume of them and then, we're not finding enough of those servers, leave us to fill the gap. And, you know, there's a training plan that we need to put to pull this, and it's about 12 to 50 months to get them to level three. But I've got a lot of the core basic skills, and that's been terrific. We have another fast-track program we've been doing for people who are car enthusiasts, and put them through level three, working with Bosch.306 But again, it's a snowball. It's an 18-month-to-two-year program. So they look like an adult up in a ship, and there's no funding in Scotland for that. But it gets a technician there that wants to be, somebody in their life that says, you know what, I've always wanted to walk with cars. So they've got the mindset, but I actually didn't want to walk with it. And we can treat them with skills, and we can get the qualifications, and we can give them a career, which they enjoy. And I've got, I've got five guys just now on those programs. This brings me on to then something. And I was in a service, service advisor I was speaking to, maybe a month ago, said, but Simon, you know, you're talking about red and amber work, you're talking about the vehicle health checks, and all the things we need to do. But the downside is we can't do it. The workshops ran, because there's not like the missions out there, we just can't do it.332 Don, I want to get your view on that. Is, are we not just too busy for any of this red and amber work, any of the upsell work there? It's a good question, because we can be. If we're not booking to the skill level that we have, the availability of those technicians that we have, the time periods that the vehicles are coming into us, there's still a lot of dealerships that will take a vehicle in the morning, and give it back in the afternoon. There's a lot of dealerships now that have progressed to more of an appointment-based system, which the discipline about an appointment-based system is, you have to account for the total hours that are required on that job. You have to be a lot more precise about how long that job's going to be with you. So it puts in some pretty good disciplines in pace. But all of the DMS systems now have the facility to load in that way, but it's still moving that needle and getting people to move in that needle of, it's not just booking work, it's booking the level of work356 that you need to sustain that dealership, and that's again where we're going. That made what makes down, that's the key thing. It's the mix between diagnosis, between retail and that that's getting that mix to the scale level that means that the very person walking on the main vehicle, that's when we have the time to get in the additional recommended work that we're going to talk to the customer about. If people do that, we're not holding it at the scale level, that would be ours just as he feels. Sorry, the other thing I was going to say there, cutting across you a little bit there, Colin, but when somebody rebooks that work, they don't necessarily take into consideration the impact that's there. Colin alluded to it earlier with a golden hour. The importance of a golden hour of getting that vehicle on the ramps and getting the work identified is the efficiencies go through the roof of your team members. If you lose that efficiency,381 you're wasting that time of that technician reworking that car. So he's doing his service, he doesn't get any of the upsell work, but he notifies. But the authority for that notification comes through two or three hours later, well that car's boxed on the back outside. So the only options open are, does he bring it back in again today, might be an option, or do we rebook it? If we rebook it, it's a much smaller job down the track, where it's not going to have any more work to do on it when it comes back in. So again, we're handling so many cars in a day. The function becomes handling those cars rather than actually controlling the process by a smooth plan. I don't know how Colin might have an angle on this, but I believe preconditioning of the job card. So somebody sitting there with an experienced eye who looks over those job cards before they come in and looks for the opportunities, the potential things like air conditioning,407 brake fluid changes, all those items that could do two things really, make you more efficient, but also keep the vehicle on the ramps that bit longer as well, which helps with the golden hour angle. So again, that's a key area where I would look with most of these things, it comes down to planning your day rather than the day taking control of you. Yeah, that golden hour Colin, I just got to get you views on this, because too often you see any sort of VHC is dealt with far too late. They can't get through to the customer for an hour today. How often have both of you heard that at three o'clock in the afternoon? The customer says, yeah, great, I'll get the tyres done and get the brake fluid done, get the air conditioning sorted, I'll be there in an hour or half an hour. How do you deal with that Colin? So the golden hour, the way we walk it, is everyone's got 15 minutes, so the vehicle comes in to the workshop, you've got 15 minutes for the technician433 to produce the VHC. That thing goes to parts, they've got 15 minutes to price it and evaluate and get it through to the team on the front. So the front, they're going to get that VHC video out to the customer with the pricing, we've got auto authorization on our VHC process as well, so the customer can auto authorize. We tell them at a point in a booking, we tell them that they're putting a drop off, so we really want to push that auto authorization. The technicians, we're trying our best to get the technicians to mention that in the video as well, that's been a relatively new thing, so we've just finished training on that, so they're trying to get that, you can actually auto authorize from this video. So we went that out within 15 minutes, so that within 45 minutes, the customer's got a price, hopefully for the additional work, we've got a video which clearly displays the reasons they need that additional work, or that the fact that there's a team mind458 out of manufacturer being recommended repair or a replacement on there. So that's what we get. Hello, you're going to ask me, how many people actually auto authorize? You've very asked that question, and that varies from brand, but the average across the group is 7%. Weirdly, Volvo is the highest auto authorization rate, this up at 18%. Can I ask a question there with 7%, is that 7% that respond within a suitable time to be able to be considered within that golden hour, or is that 7% in total? It's 7% in total, but we have, so the figures, and I've got them over there, so I can quote them exactly, so I'm not giving you any rubbish. So within 10 minutes of receiving the video, just under 45% are authorized. Then 10 to 30 minutes, there's under 25%. So 70% are within that period of 20 minutes from receipt. So it's within that, just within that golden hour,486 so I think they're in five, if you want to be per like a day. That really is where it's stolen the ramp, and we've not boxed it up and put it outside, so it's still a profitable job to do those great plans. We're not bringing them in and start of being ill in £3.50, and haven't they washed their car a second time? Another opportunity where that car may get damaged whilst on our site. Yep, I think I'd have to say that's testimony to get your life what you focus on, because that would far outstrip the normal statistics that are out there for work approved, work accepted in the first place, and then also accepted within the period that it could actually influence, and the efficiencies, we're talking about that golden hour. In an average dealership, that's minuscule. And that's really, it depends, if you focus on that and your system works around it, then that's great.515 But what's happened, I've found quite a lot with dealerships is where the service advisor is almost going, oh, I can see if they've watched that video. So let me send it, let me wait 10 or 15 minutes and see if they have a look at it. And if they don't have a look at it, maybe pick up the phone. Well, that 10 or 15 minutes is more time that's eating in, and you know, I look at it this way in the golden hour. If your tech jumps on that vehicle and does the initial walk around of the vehicle health check and gets that back through to you within 15 minutes, he's doing a pretty good job. If it goes to the parts department and they price that job and they get that completed within 15 minutes, that's a pretty good job as well. And then if it lands on the service advisor's desk and he gets back to them, or she gets back to them within 15 minutes, they're doing a pretty good job.543 But that's 45 minutes of your hour when we're talking about the golden hour there. And that's one car. You multiply that by the 30 or 40 that you may have in in a day. It now becomes slightly harder to manage. There was one that came out there that just reminded me of how things have changed as well in terms of just a real good top tip that sort of sprung to mind. Years ago, and I still see this go, and people used to say, we've got your email address as this, we've got your phone number as this. Simon will be in touch, you know, we'll give you a call. What they didn't, or what we sort of pushing to do now, is actually rather than confirm the details that you hold on file, is actually to say, you know, I need to get hold of you today. What's the best method to contact you? Because I might have got you on your mobile last time, but it doesn't mean to say today, I'm going to be able to get you on your mobile. It might be a text.570 It might be somebody else that authorizes the work. But it's that single vision that morning drop off of, I need to get hold of you. How do I do it? Well, even that will actually push the ability for you to get to more people within that golden period of time. Well, that's it. Absolutely, and the methodology for you. So you can offer the customer that you can, listen, I can text you, and you can text me back, if that's convenient. And we split the contact up as well, down there, I think you train us too, where it's what's the best number or method I can get hold of you. And what's the best email that the technician can send you that vehicle health check video to? So they know it's a technician that's going to send a video through on there, and it just adds value to the whole experience. You know, one of them, I need to say, the service advisor says, yeah, I'll get one of the boys to look at it. You know, what's next? I don't know if you've got any scared boys,596 look at my car for nothing, it's roughly, it's only going to be 186 quid, I know, for a guy's after a boy to look at my car. You know, but yeah, so that that's separating and what's the best email address that the technician can send you a video to? Yeah. And keeping an eye out for that. And texting the customer once the vehicle's on the ramp, that's your vehicle on the ramp, being walked on the heading, keeping on your email for his video. And so that's just a wee update to the customer and they're going, oh, it's a bit like the Amazon, you know, your gloves are technique stops away. So you're then going, oh, I'm going to track where my gloves are. It's the same kind of idea. Amazon experience and the service. Yeah, listen, thanks a lot. There's obviously so much we need to talk about. So next week, let's just talk about how someone can go back and put this into their dealership. That just leads me to say that all details of this episode622 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 Bokett through LinkedIn.
