Baby, It Was Cold Outside

It’s Your Business

Subject: Marketing preventive-maintenance services
Essential Reading: Shop Owner, Center Manager
Author: Terry Greenhut, Transmission Digest Management Editor

You can’t say that people in the frozen northern regions of the United States don’t have a good sense of humor. It isn’t that they laugh an awful lot when you tell them jokes, it’s that they devise little plans that make them snicker to themselves or each other when no one else knows what they are so amused about.

One of their little tricks is a game they play called, “Hire the guest speaker and have him perform in locations all around the state about 150 miles apart in the middle of winter.” Throw in a couple of snowstorms and way-below-freezing temperatures, put him in a hotel smack in the middle of a snow-covered championship golf course just to let him know what he could have been doing if the conference had been in the summertime, and you have the makings of a story you can tell and giggle about for years. “You know what we did to that guest speaker we had here last year? We …”

The truth, I’m sure, is that they planned all of those events in a month that they thought would bring out the maximum number of attendees simply because there isn’t much else to do in February when you’re freezing your face off. By April and May, when the weather turns good, people really don’t want to be cooped up inside attending seminars. They want to be out taking advantage of the short warm season.

Anyway, it worked. I performed four seminars in the past month in some of our nation’s coldest climates and they were all well attended, so maybe the organizers knew something about the people in their own part of the world. Another factor may have been that they thought attendance would be better at a time of year when business traditionally is a little quieter, and they may have been right about that as well, except that I heard from several attendees a short time after the seminars who reported that business had picked up dramatically over the couple of weeks since they had returned. Some owners and managers weren’t sure why; others knew exactly what had changed, why and when.

For those whose business increased, it was all about an attitude adjustment and application of the techniques they had learned. One multi-shop owner reported that one of his locations that had averaged $10,000 a week in sales pretty much forever did $10,000 in the first two days after the manager got back from the seminar. He attributed the striking increase to his manager’s new attitude toward the customers and the business. It was like all of a sudden the light bulb went on and he realized that you can be nice to the customers and aggressive about marketing your products and services to them at the same time, that selling them what they need isn’t a turn-off to them, but not giving them the opportunity to buy is.

Once equipped with this knowledge the manager became much more adept at vehicle retention – the fine art of keeping the vehicle for repairs and services once it has crossed the driveway. Instead of his usual way of telling customers to stop in again when they want to have the additional repairs and services performed, he sold as many of them as he could on the spot and the rest he immediately scheduled with firm time appointments two or three weeks into the future.

This manager found the secret that has eluded so many: aggressive but not obnoxious selling, aggressive meaning to seek out all the possible services the customer might need and offering to perform them now; not at some other possible time but now, while they are fresh and have taken priority in the customer’s mind. He learned that once the customer leaves the shop the intensity and the importance of those services dwindle rapidly in the customer’s mind. Other matters sneak in and take priority, which is why we have to learn to strike while the iron is hot. It just cools off too quickly.

When a customer brings a car in for service, that’s when he or she is thinking about servicing the car. It’s in a little mental compartment. Once they leave the shop it’s as if that compartment door closes and another opens, leading them into other compartments with chores they must accomplish. Ours is quickly forgotten.

Can we be aggressive and at the same time maintain a good and friendly relationship with our customers? We certainly can if we understand that aggressive doesn’t mean hitting them over the head repeatedly. We can’t stand there and tell the little old lady how her car’s going to break down on some lonely road at 3 a.m. if she doesn’t have this service performed, but we can explain why it needs to be performed and what her benefits will be, and make it convenient to have it performed right now while she waits or is offered a ride home. So aggressive really means going after it and making the sale despite your own possible discomfort. As long as the service you are selling is a benefit to the customer you can, and should, feel good about selling it.

That’s a great lesson for the rest of us, getting to know what our customers are about, what makes them tick, what they will respond to and when. We know, for example, that women will do everything they can to avoid a breakdown but men believe they can deal with it should it occur. Consequently, it is much easier to sell maintenance services to women. So if you were going after maintenance services, where do you think you should advertise them? I don’t think the sports section will do you much good. Most women don’t read it. Although for decades we’ve always wanted to advertise where men will see the ads, we must realize that those work best for repairs, not maintenance. Find the sections of the paper that women read, the radio stations they listen to and the television channels they watch. That’s where your maintenance ads need to appear.

One of the largest profit centers in the modern-day garage is all the different flush-and-fill-type maintenance services. Performing them rarely, if ever, does damage to the vehicle, and a nice fringe benefit is that you don’t have to fix anything that’s broken, which in itself can save you a lot of grief.

Some of the most common of these services are, of course, the transmission flush, engine flush, cooling-system flush, differential drain and fill, power-steering flush and brake-system hydraulic flush. These have all become readily acceptable to customers because of the manufacturers that have started to mention these services in the vehicle owner’s manual.

Replacement of engine belts and hoses along with the timing belt at regular intervals is easily explainable and can be quite lucrative. Another service that many have adopted is fuel-injection and fuel-system testing and cleaning. Although if not done properly it can lead to problems, once mastered it can be a good and fairly easy revenue source.

Replacement of a car’s battery can be overlooked easily. Most are not replaced until they go totally dead and leave the driver stranded, in his or her own driveway if they’re fortunate. A load test should be performed if the battery is near the end of its normal life cycle. Should any abnormality be found, such as failure to take or hold a full charge or not responding well to a load test, the battery should be replaced immediately.

Air conditioning is a springtime service. Because today people don’t want to be inconvenienced by the hot and humid weather, they are happier than ever to have their air conditioners tested regularly.

Another test to perform is the effectiveness of the antifreeze in the cooling system. Although some manufacturers claim that their coolant remains effective for a lifetime, more often than not a test will indicate that it just isn’t so. Many coolant products do lose their effectiveness after a few years. In addition, the coolant picks up debris and rust from inside the system. It all needs to be cleaned out to avoid rotting out some expensive components.

A tune-up today can be minor or major. Many are called maintenance tune-ups today. A minor might not include much more than spark plugs and filters; a major can involve many hours and lots of parts to bring the engine and other systems back to factory specifications.

The overwhelming difference in our business today is that it is maintenance instead of repair oriented. “Prevention” is the new industry watchword. If you haven’t already, you need to get fully involved. It is the future.