We return to our ‘5 Key Touch Points’ in service with Darren Bedford.
In this episode we focus on the VHC Call. When it comes to this, planning is everything and structuring your call will increase your chances of success, whilst ensuring you give all relevant information to the customer.
We discuss various techniques to aid with tyre sales and being mindful of the language used to describe red and amber work. Darren also explains how to present amber work in way that gives the customer the choice of convenience.
In closing we leave you with some top tips for service managers.
Here are the highlights:
{03:20} Structure the call
{05:45} Credit Card
{18:55} Percentage worn
{26:38} Language
{32:46} Presenting amber work
{41:21} Top tips for Service Managers
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.
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Time, welcome to the Selling and the Motor Trade podcast in Association of Car Without. The online car-changing destination. Together we share tips and ideas on how to sell more cars, improve your service department, and generally put more profit into your department, dealership or dealer group. I'm your host, Simon Bowkett, or some of you might already know me as Skippy. First thing, I just want to say thank you for taking the time to listen to this podcast. Hi, welcome to another episode of Selling and the Motor Trade. Now this is a continuation on everything after sales, and we've been talking about the five touch points that a service advisor needs to consider when they're dealing with a customer with Red and Amber work and upsell.
And I'm joined again with Darren Bedford. Welcome back, Darren. Hi, Simon. Good to be here. We're rocketing through these, aren't we? We are. Now listen, for some of the people who may have missed the first two episodes, we're talking about the five key, I suppose touch points. Can you just quickly refresh those five steps that a service advisor needs to consider dealing with a customer in the service department? Yeah, sure. I mean, we really use these five key touch points as the influencers for the amount of revenue that you're going to get on the day, and also the customer satisfaction and service. So it all begins with the booking, and we link the booking in with the prequel.
We then have the morning drop off where the customer brings the vehicle into us. We're then going to contact the customer with a vehicle health check, which is what we're going to do today. The final part of that is going to be handing back the vehicle, and then we'll have some sort of follow-up action there to make sure everything went well on the day for the customer. So then they're really the five key interactions or touch points that influence everything you're doing the department on a daily basis, each customer. I suppose the important thing is, I know I'm a salesperson, and there's going to be lots of service managers here going straight to this episode.
So the guys can't sell red and amber work. Let's just go to the call. How do they do the call? But I suppose it's fair to reiterate that the call preparation is key, isn't it? You need to get those first two steps right. And I'd really urge people to go back and look at step one and step two before you go straight into how to make the call. Absolutely, Simon. And I don't want to just stress that we're just scratching the surface on some of these areas as well, even in those ones. But it's so important to get the balance right of the preparation beforehand. One of the ones that we discussed last night, for instance, was if you've not got a number or a contact method that you can get hold of that customer on the day, because potentially it might be a different day for them, you know, it doesn't matter how good your techniques are, you're not going to connect with a customer.
So it's really, really important. The planning is everything, and then there's the delivery off to that that we're going to look at today. Well, let's dive straight into it, okay? Because I know some people here are saying like, come on, give us the juice. Tell us how to make this call there. So can we start straight away and say, how do we structure this call? What should be in the call? What should we cover to convert more red work? Well, I think there's a few things not to take for granted, but we just need to be mindful of. When we speak to a customer in the morning, we need to be in a similar vein when we talk to them on the phone, when we pick up the call to them later on.
So we don't want a situation in the morning where we're struggling to have a conversation, and then we pick up the phone and we're like, Hi, how are you? Really good to speak to and all of those sorts of things. So we've got consistency. We've got enthusiasm, all those bits that are going to help you there. But I would also say, it's planning your delivery as well. Too many times a capture situation is going on where if we've not fully explained something, it's very difficult for the customer to make an informed decision and then potentially what happens is they take a big neural risk. So we want to structure what that call looks like really, in terms of what have I got to talk to that customer about?
I would strongly recommend that you do it line by line. And you seek approval on each item before moving to the next one, because when you have a larger vehicle health check to go through, other than that, you'll end up going through five or six items, come up with a huge amount. And then it almost just leaves the situation where the customer doesn't really know what to approve, what not to approve and kind of leaves everything as a result of it. So I would much rather work through line by line of those and make sure we got clarity on each of those. But ostensibly, really what we want to do is go back over the conversation that we left the customer with when they walked out.
So if you remember back to last session, the last thing we left them with was, hey, let's discuss what we do in a complementary vehicle health check. Most of the items are going to be green, they're going to be good to go. If there's any handbrights, we'll let you know they might not make it to the next service, but if there's any red items, obviously straighten the phone because we need to sort those out. So we leave that, we then pick up the call from a vehicle health check, and it makes it dead easy to go. Morning Simon, just got to give vehicle health check back, great uses, as we thought most of those items, they're green, they're good to go.
Hey, listen, there's a couple of amber items, they're tires, I'll talk to you about that when you come down later, but there's a red item that we must sort out. It's a tire, you've worn it all the way down to 2.8 millimeters, doesn't mean a lot to most of my customers, but the legal limits 1.6, so that gives you less than the thickness of a credit card before that vehicle's tire becomes illegal. Now the great news is Andy's got one of those tires, and we can get that fitted to be here today. Would you like me to go ahead and get Andy to do it while it's on the wraps? So we can deliver a nice succinct explanation of what needs to be done and also the business at the end of it.
Right, okay, so can you just take it through tires right from start to finish? So let's say that you've got, I don't know, 2.8 millimeters on the tire, we'll take that figure there, okay. How is the service visor structuring that call? Because you mentioned the thickness of a credit card, not percentages. Can you tell me it's from start to finish on how you would recommend someone tries to get this out? The reason why I say that is tires for me is one of the first defection points when a customer goes to the independence, the threads in the shed. So often we believe it's when the warranty runs out, and of course it can be, but I think tires is one of the things, if we deal with it in the wrong way, that's where customer goes to the quick fits of the world and we lose that, lose that customer actually.
Yeah, you're right. I mean, the minute one of the things about most of these businesses, they're marketing machines, a colossal. So the minute you've got in and put a tire on your car, they'll know when that vehicle's due of service and an MOT and you'll be bombarded with information about various offers that look, you know, sometimes too good to be true. So you're absolutely right, it opens up that floodgate there. And tire wise, you're dead right is also a defection point, and what we look at there is the need from a customer's perspective to compare. That's often the case. I, when I bought my vehicle in, there's a good chance that I don't know how much entire should be for that car in the current marketplace or anything.
So if somebody's delivering the price of a tire, it could be the cheapest in the world, and I wouldn't even know that that was the case. So my instant thing is, well, that's their price, well, maybe you only need to compare elsewhere. One of the little tips and tricks that we do there is actually to incorporate prices of low competitors into the explanation, because that can also put the customer in a position where it gives them the easy choice to make a decision. So I'll give you an example, perhaps on that one. What I might do is that one is go through the same thing, I Simon, just coming back to you as I promised, I would most of those items, they green, they get to go, that's fantastic.
There's a couple of amber items, it's a couple of tires, I'll talk to you about that when you're down, but I need to talk to you about your front driver side tire. You've worn it all the way down to 2.8 millimeters, the legal limits 1.6. It doesn't mean a lot to most of my customers, so it tends to just let them know it's less than the thickness of a credit card before that tire is illegal. Now the great news is that tire is in stock at £200, and I can get Andy to fit that while it's on the ramps today. Just so that you know, I've also taken the liberty of checking a low-pint tire supplier, a quick vet or whoever it is.
Yeah, or whoever. And their tire is actually £210, but what I do know is often they'll charge you for disposal of the casing or balancing when you get down there. So would you like me to go ahead and get Andy to get that tire fitted while it's on the ramps today? Yeah, we're going to talk about objection handling techniques in a second as well, but there's something else I've noticed with some dealerships. And I want to get your view on it. Yes, we've got the tire that's on the car at the moment, or the same tire that Volvo recommend, the Continental, the Dunlop. I've noticed some service advisors want to go into the lower cost alternative to start with.
And I kind of get it. I've heard some service advisors say, oh, so you don't understand, in this area, no one will put a premium tire on, okay, because the quick fit down the road there, they'll be putting on hand cooks or something like that. I want to get your view on this. I always think if you start with the tires that's on the car, if a customer gives you the objection, you've got somewhere you can come down to. If you start with that mid-range tire, actually the tire you come down to is some sort of Chung-Lung ditch finder. I can never keep up with the name of some of these tires that come through, which I really wouldn't want to put that on any of our customer's cars, because the safety of that tire is the stopping distance is not going to be the best.
What's your view? Do you go in at the premium tire first, even though you're not going to get that? Yeah, and I don't think to say you're not going to get it. It is a broad statement to say that you will get it, but you won't get it. What we learned very quickly when we do this sort of job is that some people will swear by a particular brand of tire and never deviate from that. And what I always come back to is, actually as a retailer, we're at the premium end of that marketplace. So if we're not offering the premium tires that should be going on there, then there's something a little bit wrong.
We should be saying this is the Michelin so-and-so, but matches your car, because if you look at all of the tire information that's out there, just about every manufacturer out there recommends that you match those tires as where possible, certainly pairs and things like that as well. You mean pairs per axle, don't you? Yeah, pairs per axle. Yeah, so it also makes common sense that if you've got one brand of tire on there, there's less chance of putting something on there that's going to contradict with it or not work as well. And these tires now are really complex pieces of engineering. Long are the days that they're, let's put a remold on it, something that allows less.
We're driving these vehicles as well at majority of time at much higher speeds. We're driving them in conditions that vary from one day. You can end up in a situation where it's a few degrees above and then next, it's sort of five degrees below. So the range that those tires can operate in the way that they were, it's all quite an important choice for some people. And again, it's an old attitude in our industry, but it's the only four parts of the car that are in contact with a road, Mr. Customer, was always a favorite explanation when we were talking about tires. Many years ago, in a previous life, I went on one of these courses where they scared you with the different tires, stopping distances and winter tires and how they work and so forth.
And someone's definitely put the chip in me, put the best tire you can on the car, because stopping distances handling road noise. I mean, service visors, listen to this, you'll hear so many times that someone's put a mismatch tire on and you get that resonance noise. And I think something's wrong with the car. It's just down to the tires and what they fit. And I've got a funny story. My 18 year old son, he saved up money for his little Citran C1. I mean, this car is a 2013. Okay, I mean, the price of the car is not worth a lot. But hey, he saved his money up. That's his little car. He's putting some tires on the other day.
And I said, Mate, don't play around tires. Okay, don't be putting those on. So it's a quick fit retailer. Sorry, my clients listened to you, but my son did go to a quick fit retailer. I said, Mate, just put the Prellies on there. Now, here's the funny side of it. He's in there. He's putting four Prellies on this little Citran, which had probably went more than the car, right? But the young lad coming out to fit the tires. And he actually overheard him saying to me, boss, are these Prellies going to the Citran? Are you serious? Okay, it's almost my son now has felt to feel almost silly for putting those tires on it. But you know what, the only thing that's going to stop him in an urgent situation.
I do take it for granted. You know, we talk about the distances and we move, come on to that. You know, it's very easy to get bla's eye about how much tread is left. And this is why we use the credit card, because visually, everybody knows what the credit card is. You know, you've got an idea in your head straight away that thickness of that, because we think pictorially. Whereas, when you're talking about 1.6 millimeters or 3 millimeters, it's not common in the language. I mean, we did decimalization many, many years ago. We're too far to remember now, but people still talk about feet and inches and bits and pieces. You know, we don't sort of shimmy a cupboard in and go, oh, yeah, just one foot in my three and a half millimeters there.
You know, it's always a different grading system that we've been used to. We've had generations that have been taught at school millimeters, but then have to learn to communicate with their parents and then the feet and inches as well. So I just think for the avoidance of and clarification, giving them say something like that credit card just instantly, you know, people, if they don't know, 6 millimeters looks like they now know what the credit card looks like. So people think about a credit card. The actual card itself is 1 millimeter. The bumps on the credit card is 0.4 millimeter. So for people listen to this, if someone's got 3 millimeters of tread, left on the tire, the legal limit in UK island is 1.6.
Around the world, if it's something different, I know in Germany, it's a 3 millimeters is what they will is the legal limit. Okay, so it's 1.6 in the UK and Ireland. Okay, so that actually means at 3 millimeters, you've only got the full thickness of a credit card till that tires illegal. Actually, if the tires been worn down to 2 millimeters, it's only the thickness of the bumps on the credit card until that tires illegal. I just really like your mind picture there where Darren people can actually get that and say, oh my goodness, that's not a lot. So Darren, I do like this idea of these mind pictures because it really does cement it for the customer.
But can you talk me through about like the double deck of buses extra stopping distances? Because I think that really resonates with someone for a customer. Yeah, it absolutely doesn't. You know, buses, again, people couldn't picture immediately the sort of distance and size of those. So it's very visual, isn't it, in terms of an explanation. What they looked at at 70 miles an hour, 120 kilometers. I think this is roughly, yeah. It's about the only one that's right, back on. Yeah, so if you're driving at that sort of speed and you and then went into an emergency stop and started to brake hard and go into a skid, the distance that you would travel with 2 millimeters of tires is anything close to 10 double deck of buses.
Wow, I love that. 10 double deck of buses. You just pitch a 10 double deck of buses. That's huge. That's just stopping distance. Yeah, it's quite scary, isn't it? But then if you look at the improvement of that, if you take that back to a 3 millimeter tire, then that brings that right down to five double deck of buses as a stopping distance. So, and this is what they effectively said and the curve literally drops off for those listening on a podcast. It's very difficult to explain the curve, but it drops away dramatically from three down to the legal limit in its performance, because it just doesn't have the ability to work in the same way.
And that's compounded it is wet because it doesn't then have the ability to disperse the water out of it as well. So, you know, again, unfortunately, we're filming this. That's pretty much our summer, winter and every other season is, you know, a combination of sunny roads, nice dry roads, one minute and then soaking wet the next. Yeah. It's just not worth compromising. And as you alluded to previously in Germany, they've already raised the limit off. It's been that way for a long long period of time. It's got to be about 3 millimeters. You know, it's in our mind that we've got extra time. It's in our mind as a service advisor, I think, sometimes when it always just gone into red, although they've got a bit of time to sort that out.
Then in fact, I heard a call, I think I might be even talked about it previously, but we're a service advisory phone, somebody said your tires been worn down to two and a half millimeters and the customer was the legal limit. Oh, 1.6 millimeters. Oh, I've got a bit of time there, haven't I? Because again, that principle of, you know, we don't pictorily think that's less than a millimeter of tread, you know, one good stop and that's that's been rubbed off. So, well, listen, you're talking about the thickness of a credit card. And we really do like that because there's that mind picture like the buses. Are you suggesting that you don't use percentages worn anymore?
Because again, some people would have heard of the percentages worn if you can take us through that and just get your views on it. Do you do you teach both percentages worn? Yeah, I think in my experience, why I tended to go to the credit card side of things now as a focal point is this, it works very, very well percentages. When you get down to two millimeters where don't, you know, don't quite think it says it's something like 94% war. So it's kind of gives you a good strength at that point. But in reality, I don't think that's where most service advisors struggle. I think most service advisors, if they're going to struggle a little bit on tires, it tends to be on the bigger or slightly higher trends than 2.3s, the 2.4s, 2.5s and upwards, where then I think it just dunged.
I think at 2.9 millimeters, really it's something like 76% war. Well, 76% doesn't actually sound. I don't think as urgent as we need to do something about this. We don't use 75% of our liquid hands. So pick it up a duck that's finished. Let's get a new one out. What we tend to do is we put some water in it, source it around, but we've got more so. It's one of those kind of things that I think we think we've got to get everything out of it to get value. Interestingly enough, on the course, we do look at the cost saving of sticking with a tire. So we look at a tire at 2.9 millimeters and how much extra use you can get out of that tire by running it right way down to 1.6 millimeters.
And in average, sort of tire, you're going to be looking at saving yourself something like 10, 15 pounds, even if you ran it in sort of controlled environment right the way down. But you know, and I know the risk of somebody getting caught by going past that 1.6 millimeters is phenomenal. I mean, it's different everywhere, but in the UK, you may find up to 2,500 pounds and three points on your license per tire. Yeah. So technically you could lose your license on four tires. You're right. We talk about the credit card and mine pictures, the percentages, it's a while since you've taught those as well because I was just doing maths in my head, I'll try and remember what it was.
So listen, that 2%, it's 94% worn out. You're right that. But it's a 3 millimeters. It was 78% worn out if I remember correct. But again, that's the one I always struggled with when it's 78% worn out. I just love your credit card approach. Okay. You've only got the thickness of credit card till that tire is illegal. And again, the fines there. Actually, having said that, let's talk about some objection handling there because telling people about the fines, are we just scaremongering? How do you deal with the customer says, you know what, I'll get back to you. I'll leave those tires. They'll be fine. How would you deal with that? Well, again, this is where it depends on how you've delivered because one that I do like is cost or time.
You know, hey, listen, when you say you want to come back to me, is that based on the cost or the time of that repair? Okay. Because I do want to specify if we've said we can go ahead and get that fitted today, are they worried about whether they're going to get the vehicle back, et cetera, et cetera, or is it a monetary related? Now, a lot of people listening to this will go, well, it's funny. It may well be, but it gives you the ability then to hone in on what that issue is. And then perhaps use some of that comparison information there to say, it doesn't, you know, it sounds like it's a little bit more than you were thinking that time was going to be.
Can I just tell you, I take the limited of checking with QuickFits locally and their tire is X. And, you know, we can then go into a handling of that situation. What you have to remember is once you've handled it, you have to then go back and close. Okay. I have to ask for that business again, because we hear often people come up with very good reasons and rightly so of why it makes sense to do it. But if you just fail to ask for the business, you're probably just going to end up in a situation where you've given them a good reason, but they leave it anyway and go pass. The problem with that is nobody phones you back up and says, hey, listen, I've done my shopping around, actually, you're 10 pounds more expensive, but it makes sense to get done with you.
Go ahead. They'll end up taking the car away from you, driving out of your dealership. And as I always say, when we sit these lovely dealerships, does anybody want to actually come down, spend the day getting their car service with you, drive out from your site to another place to get tires fitted where they're going to wait for minimum of an hour. They're going to get a couple of clicks coffee, maybe an aggressive oily setting that they can sit and watch while their vehicles pranked up onto axlesands or trolley jacks or something and the tires are replaced before then completing what they need to do it. And the answer is got to be no. They want to get it all done.
We're a one-stop-shop. They won't get it all done with you, but they just have to see that the value is right and they're not playing through the most for it. And that's again where I was often saying that in the projection handling to include prices, even if they're slightly more achieved somewhere else. I'd still talk about that price because people want to pay a lot for convenience. They'll understand the 10 or 15 pounds it might be more expensive. If you look at the variations in fuel from a motorway service station to maybe a local supermarket, people are paying 15, 20, 30 pounds more per fill up to get their fuel from a motorway service station for convenience.
So they'll sure pay it on a tire. Their concern is more that they're going to buy it off you for 250 pounds and they're going to find it somewhere else for maybe 150. Now that isn't going to happen. Well what I love for service advisors, in the UK now, I'm sorry for people around the world listening to this at different places. You'll have similar places you know this. I love having QuickFit on the service advisor's computer. Haven't minimized there. They'll spit out a price very quickly and for a few reasons. Number one is QuickFit. So often when you put the registration number in the car, it comes up with the cheaper tires to start with before it goes into the branded tire, the tire that's probably on the vehicle.
But also it helps for a service advisor to realize actually we're not that far away because so often when service advisors think we're expensive is because we've quoted the Continental, the Bridgestone, the Pirelli and the customers said, oh I can get it from black circles for half price. But again it is not the same tire. It is the arrow. It is this something else. You're not comparing apples with apples and I really do believe for service managers list list. I love service advisors to have that on their screen just to convince themselves because you know it down. If a service advisor thinks come to servicing the air conditioning, we have so much of a hit rate and dealership when we're explaining to the service size exactly why an air conditioning should be serviced.
When we understand that the gas carries the oil around to lubricate the compressor. If the gas leaks out there's nothing to lubricate the compressor and the compressor is the most expensive part of the system. When a service advisor understands it, I think that belief comes across to the customer. Yeah absolutely right and I'd say the opposite as well as the case. If they don't it's very very easy for a customer to pick that up through the words of the terminology and things that they use. It creeps into their language if the confidence isn't there. I'm actually not sure I'm going to be looked after here in terms of the price. It sounds like somewhere else is always cheaper.
Well then I'll go off and find some where they are cheaper. Listen there's so many objection handling techniques we train on today's service advisor and we use different things for different parts of it but I suppose for tyres and Mr customer that does surprise me. I only have in the thickness of the credit card until that tyres are legal. Not only are you doubling your braking distance on that wet road okay. Not only is it 10 or 5 double dicker buses extra stopping distance but the governments change the maximum fine to two and a half thousand pounds per tyre. Hey can I just ask you is it the cost of that tyre or the time frame that you're not sure about because time frame of course they're thinking I'll get another three weeks out of it.
I'll get another month out. Yeah okay and then I love to well please bear in mind Mr customer that's the same tyre that Jaguar recommends. That's the same tyre that Hyundai recommends and then by all means in this case they say at least on this occasion why don't I look at a lower cost alternative or on this occasion why don't see if we can match that quick fit price. If I can get my service manager to match that quick fit price should I get Andy the technician get that sorted for you. I suppose if they start with the premium tyre if they start with the quick for tyre they can always come down. Of course somewhere.
Yeah they've got alternatives yeah. I suppose it's talking about the language we're using there aren't we okay and you always say there's a certain language you need to use to assist the customer and understand what's different between bread and amber work. Can you give some examples where language has been used correctly or maybe incorrectly what you hear day in day out in dealerships. Yeah definitely in themselves some of these words work in both environments okay. I don't think that they're necessarily bad words but when you use them in both a red category and an amber category you create confusion because we don't clearly explain what the situation is and the one that I often find is either advice or recommend.
So when it's read you know Andy I'll take the mission recommends you do something about that fairly quickly and then there's a couple of amber tyres look we've recommended that you did something about those you know you got a bit longer with those and if you keep using the same terminology in those different brackets but for one of a better description you end up in a situation where it almost takes the urgency off the bits that you do read an answer for so again you'll know from the explanation of vehicle health check who was to put the red items so they need sorting out today. If you can keep that coming through in the language that you use then it can be the identifies and what I always get across the service of is it's not you spending a customer's money the customer has to be able to make an informed decision from what you say because it's in red it's nothing to do with you it's not you forcing the customer to take that item it's you as the expert explaining that that needs to be done it's the customer chooses still not to get that done we can't do anything about it we can't make people because it's read by those items but we clearly need to show the importance of it there's another one that quite often comes out as well with things like Andy our technicians found bang bang bang and runs in and if you can imagine this is where the system does sometimes get sure cutted the customer dropped off in the morning nobody really explained the vehicle health check half an hour an hour later somebody's on the phone to them going oh Simon it's going to call here just want to talk you through your vehicle health check there's a lot of red items there this this this and then they're asking for that money straight away the customer wants to know in the back of their mind what they booked in for and not you know you've gone I found all of this work when you call but me as a customer I booked in for a service in MOT so again I will always urge you as a service advisor to say hey listen I can't let you know how we're doing the service in MOT at the moment because they're just on the way but as part of that the first thing we do is that complimentary vehicle health check I'm sure we'll get all the other work done but let me just run you through that and rather than the word found I would change that for discovered and the reason I would use it for discovered is we tend to struggle across things that we discover are things like a beauty spot or we weren't looking for them in the first place okay but when we've put our keys down in the house and we've lost them we go looking for them when we've got them we find those items so it's you know a little nuance on the words but I think it's really quite important how you get yourself into using those words and keep using those words that will help you just that little bit it's small small margins but it all helps to give the customer the chance to make an informed decision and again you're using Andy the technician are you recommending using Andy's name yeah 100% use your technician's name okay your technicians are people in this that have the credibility okay that's what your customers paying for and it has to be said most customers for the last sort of 10 years have seen our role as a service advisor as a sales role because we're always talking to them about extra items buying things a bits and pieces like that so it's more seen as a sales role than perhaps even a salesman now in many instances and what we need to do is they use the technician's credibility that he's the guy and Andy's had a look at this and in his professional opinion that's what they pay for this is what he recommends is done so yeah I always use technicians okay so what about amber work okay let's say it breaks I don't know they're 69% worn they're coming up to 70% worn or something like that how do you recommend communicating that to the customer well let's do one right from the the top again and I think that's probably the best way to explain it and we're doing the the breaks as part of that so if I just picked out the phone I signed and it's down on calling from exit homeowners just to run through the just to put your mind at rest we're on board with the service in the MOT and he's working away on those two for you as we thought when he did the complimentary vehicle health check most the items there they bring they're good to go listen there's a couple of the handbar items is your tires that I'll talk to you about when you come down the most important one is that red tire at the front there you've worn it down from 2.8 millimeters to 1.6 doesn't mean a lot to most of my customers but it's less than the thickness of a credit card great news is Andy can get that done and fitted today while the vehicle's on the ramp shall I go ahead and get Andy to do that work for you okay okay fine the other thing I've got to talk to you about Simon is the brakes at 69 percent on the front there now you've got two choices it's really entirely down to you with a vehicle on the ramps we can get those done for you today and it'll cost you 175 pounds what that means is you won't need to come into us in between services okay so you can you're good to go the other way we can do is we can put the car back together what I do need you just to pay attention to though is those are going to wear out at a period and what we definitely don't want is costly metal to metal so you'll need to keep an eye on them and get it into as quickly when they need doing so which one suits you better Simon you'd rather take it as it is now I've run it for a little while we'll come back in or you'd rather we get it done now while it's on the ramps and Andy can get them sorted so you don't have to come back and see us yeah give the customer choice so it's something that's not going to make it to the next scheduled service absolutely it's 100% the customer's choice now the beauty of doing it that way is those people who the inconvenience is coming to you as a service department who instantly go do you know what I'd rather get them done now are going to take that path the people that want to squeeze the toothpaste up the wall may be and get the last little part out of that are going to continue to drive that vehicle but you've given them sufficient explanation of warning or what we want to avoid and again people respond to that you know this guy's not trying to push stuff on me it's given me my choice if I made a decision then that decision's got to be right yeah so that will be what my push as far as Amber was concerned it's customer driven choice really on those sorts of items yeah okay and again I'm I'm not the idea that it's Andy is recommending it Andy is the guy that's doing it yeah it's what you know what our customers have paid for is that expert advice of what's the best method to keep this going to be like when you get your boiler service to hope you know you're paying for that guy to come out have a look at it and to tell you now some of that maintenance there is going to be stuff that needs to be done and some of this is going to be what Ireland called preventative maintenance we're going to change that just because there's a potential that it might fail at a certain period like an adult air filter you know it never got to a certain degree of grey that you matched it and went oh yeah that one's finished we changed them out of a prescriptive time because we knew that they deteriorated okay so what advice do you have for someone when you look at the vehicle health check and it's a sea of red can I when I was sitting on the counter as a service advisor I know I've personally made a decision for the customer because there's a sea of red that this is going to hurt look at the age of the car they're not going to want to do this do you have any advice for someone like me or a service advisor thinking how do I deal with the sea of red so I think there's a couple of things yes a service advisor we've already said about other stuff and red works exactly the same you've got to be a hundred percent confident about it so and the reason why I say that is I tend to find sometimes people going oh we're doing a manufacturer of reef or we're seeing people that haven't been into us for seven years you know and and in the technicians marked everything in red and so and probably rightly so but you need to prioritize some of that red stuff you know if it's a piece of trim red work or something that's sticking out of his dangerous or something then that's a different degree but if it's non-urgent red I would say which is always a contradictory in terms but you I'm sure your service advisors will know exactly what I'm talking about there then you need to make sure the vehicle health check reflects the vehicle and what the conversations that you're going to have the second thing I think you need to do is look at that and decide how you're going to deliver it in what order the third thing I've talked about earlier which is go for an acceptance on each of those items so don't wait till the whole list before so present your item would you like me to get handed to do that or not well well let me just hear the next one okay well then you can go on and do the next one but in most cases if you push that person for an answer they'll give you an either a yes or a no there and then on that particular item if you've kind of prioritized it as the most urgent then you know you should be part of the way there the other piece of advice I'd give you and this comes from doing it many times in the past just check the vehicle history okay before you go and do it because I've seen service advisors sometimes a bit of a quivering wreck in that scenario where there's lots of red work on there but then when we've got to look at the previous services they've gone in for two or maybe three services and just literally had two or three services and no other expenditure so again when I'm having that conversation with you Simon if I'm then saying listen I know this seems to be a few items on there this time but if we look at that over the whole life cost of the time that you've had the car it actually isn't that much at all it's just one of those things that happened at the same time period it's a lot more palatable for a customer then to go actually you know what is right you know I've had three services not paid anything other than the service bill it's kind of you know it's kind of likely that something would come up for that period and it makes it a bit more palatable again that is why it's so important for service advisors have the previous vehicle health check just have that there when I look at them because how often have you and I seen tyres grow in a dealership and they absolutely do and what we mean by that people listen to this someone comes in and the tyres got 2.5 mils on it service advisor tries to sell the car sell the tyre sorry I should say and the customer says no I'll leave it the car comes back two weeks later a different technician does a vehicle health check and suddenly it's got 2.8 or 3 millimeters on it of course how suddenly does look but the other thing I love about the previous vehicle health check when I have the conversation and Mr Bedford last time we said that the XYZ was amber what I'll do is make sure we get and to have a look at this time the call now is you're right it is time to do that it is time to get that air condition serviced and again going back to that sort of work that's the work that's going to increase the time that that vehicle's on the ramps for you and you get back to that situation where we have you know the right number of cars coming in spending the right amount of time being worked so which makes us more efficient than the result of it so it's really really important work that the pre-planning the pre-work now is it as important as anything that happens on the day but it's always the first part that gets dropped when the site gets busy and I'm going to time to do the pre-schools I'm going to time to print the vehicle health check so I'm the preparation side is the site that goes and what then happens is you enter into a period where you just it just goes faster and faster and faster and the hope of getting to doing those robust systems looks further and further away true so any tips or advice you want to leave for a service manager listen this that they can go back and put in this week in their dealership and he just won one nugget of one idea they can go back and put in place.
For definite I would say from a service manager's perspective make sure your vehicle health check explanations are happening at the morning drop off we're making a clear explanation to all the customers of how this process is going to work because if you're second facing that information as well you'll find it so much easier if the customer clearly knows how that's been categorized as well. The second thing I do is just inspect what you expect really and that's listen to not intimidating not standing over somebody while they're making it but just observe and listen to the calls that are going on when people talk about red work because I've met some really gifted service advisors that can explain that situation can go through all the sorts of stuff that we're talking about but sometimes get to the end and just go yep and of course that's not going to get you an answer sometimes the dreaded or word creeps in as well so would you like to get Andy to fit that for you or and it's the way it's or okay I'll leave it so would you like me just to go ahead and just put that on while it's on the ramps and then you're quiet and the ocean is the customer.
I love the one I love the one I use what's the other thing why Andy recommends getting that fixed great listen I'll get Andy to do that and he'll be around later on this afternoon for a more detail explanation if you need I just love that some people rush down listen you teach so many different ways to ask for the business on today's service advisor absolutely yeah the tip I'm going to leave and we'll talk about what we're going to do on the next one and if someone listen this is the phrase promise me if someone leaves air condition servicing if someone leaves tires anything just terms that hey mr. customer would you do me a favor even if we don't do that tire that breaks the whatever would you promise me you get that tire change between now and the end of the week you're just doubling your break into some on work road I think promise me takes it right out of a sales pitch into something that's so personal now of course don't just leave it there okay otherwise they say yeah okay I will come to it but actually this occasion why don't we see if we can match that quick fit price on this occasion why don't I speak to my service measure and see if we can do it for x amount because it's on the ramps okay promise me I just that's my tip I'd love people to go back and try yeah I think we're definitely what the human part of it you know people love that part of you know there's a course to go through we've explained all those sorts of things but if it was important and it was urgent somebody did something about that tire which it is when you put the human element in there of listen if you don't get it done here promise me it just builds those immense levels of trust that actually this you know this work doesn't need doing this guys interested in me as an individual of my health and safety and all those sorts of things let me have a recheck and you've got a very monthly look very busy top bit busy lives also people just about everything that they go and purchase these days has an on sale and so we become a little bit kind of maybe we prevent listening to the full explanation because we're expecting that person to settle something else had a recent event with a very quick one son but with a windscreen damaged wind screen had to go back to a center because it couldn't come out because of the ADAS systems it had to be recalibrated and all of the rest of it but while it's in there you're booking it into go to one of these centers they want to sell you wipe up lights okay because obviously the glass has broken there's a chance that there's glass in there that's going to then scratch the next set and also while it's there we do a treatment that we can put over the window which will be the rain make the rain come off the windscreen and these are all optional things that you can purchase when you're getting your windscreen done now on the basis most of this have your own insurance and you pay a little bit of money just for you know seventy pounds or whatever it is to get your windscreen replaced these other options are now bolted onto it and when you think about these things so many people ask it it's actually cutting through that you have to keep that in mind if there's so many people are trying to sell bits on top that you know let's say they need to be done or they could be considered to be done the stuff we're talking about is red work it needs to be done for the for the good of their vehicle you've got to cut through that fact that that customers used to people asking them for stuff you've got to clearly explain why this actually is different to that it needs to be done it's a grandmother rule if your grandmother was buying this car would you just this work was done to the car before she bought it if it's a yes you've got a right toft of it and you really do that listen we've talked about the the booking okay or the pre-call okay because some people have that big centers have a booking department that does it so we have to make sure we do the pre-call we then talked about when they drop the car off to make sure that we set the agenda on the vehicle of check today we've talked about we've touched on upselling and making that call okay next age has to be when they pick a macar up absolutely with my hand in the car back we're building value in that whole process and you know I just re-is right what you said we scratched the surface in this little session that we're going to hear on how to present stuff at what you can talk about so yeah again if people want more of this our today's service advisor our online training programs through the sales fitness program people have access to that which is nice and cheap and easy it's two nine nine per service advisor or get on one of our today's service advisor training programs but listen thank you very much and we're going to talk about next time dropping the car off there and making sure that the selling doesn't finish one son must say yes so we'll see you then right thanks Simon 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 symco training dot co dot 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 too
