It’s Your Business
- Subject: Countering the Internet and television
- Essential Reading: Shop Owner, Center Manager
- Author: Terry Greenhut, Transmission Digest Business Editor
For many years trainers, myself included, have been teaching our industry owners and managers to do everything we can to keep the mystery in our trade, and to not freely give away our diagnostic and repair secrets to the motoring public and our competitors. Our education is something for which we paid dearly, and we should be compensated for providing it. As much as we would like to keep that information proprietary it’s getting more difficult every day, which is why our sales skills must become sharper.
For example, I just signed on to America On Line only to find that its main title screen contained a feature article about interpreting your “Check Engine” light. Although some of our potential customers who read it would believe that they still need us to completely diagnose the problem and provide the proper repair recommendations, others will perceive that they now know how their cars should be fixed. After all, reading a 10-minute article does qualify them as experts in the field, doesn’t it?
There in a nutshell is the problem. The Internet, as useful as it can be, also provides us with half-truths and useless or detrimental information. It many times makes us believe that we can do things we really can’t – at least, not without a lot more training. Witness the people who thought they could make a fortune “day trading” and lost whatever little fortune they did have. Did they all lose? No, some got out before all was lost, and some even made money, although that was rare. I call it the “Superman Syndrome,” making people think they can fly when they can’t. TV is doing it too. There are all of these home-improvement shows that make you believe you can just about tear your entire house down and rebuild it with only a hammer and a screwdriver. Luckily, there is also a show called “Take Over My Makeover” for the poor soul who has taken his house apart and can’t put it back together.
We are fortunate in the respect that there aren’t that many shade-tree mechanics anymore. Most people who look under the hood of a car today decide pretty quickly that they don’t want anything to do with fixing it. Despite that, given enough half-baked information they will try to tell us how to fix it and how much to charge for it. So now, along with the mistrust problem we’ve always faced, we also have to deal with the misinformation problem.
Although it is the customer’s job to use whatever information they can obtain to help them get a better price to have their cars fixed properly, it is our job to make certain we do it profitably. Allowing customers to control our diagnostic and selling procedures won’t allow for anything good to happen on either side of the fence.
Here we face an interesting predicament. Although we know that the information they receive from outside sources will not always be correct or relevant to their specific problem, they think it is – because, after all, anything you see in print or on a computer screen must be true or it wouldn’t be there. At least, that’s how many people feel today. You really can’t fault them for wanting to believe the computer over us. It isn’t trying to get into their pockets for any money. So we must handle this situation as delicately as we do the “brother-in-law” or the other shop that has already rendered a diagnosis and a price of some sort over the telephone.
Remembering from our previous sales training that if we try to discredit the “brother-in-law” or the other shop it will only make the customer more suspicious of us and make them want to defend the information they’ve already received, we certainly don’t want to reinforce their mistrust of us or the diagnosis they have already accepted. So rather than trying to disagree with any information the customer might give you, turn it around by agreeing with them instead.
Say something like, “I’m sure he did a fine job of diagnosing your problem, but we’ve found over the years that there are sometimes several solutions to the same problem, some of which might actually be able to save you a considerable amount of money. Why don’t you come in so my certified technicians can see how much they might be able to save you?”
Approaching it that way, you are not discrediting what anyone else has told them. You are simply holding out the hope that with your diagnosis some money might be saved. We know that’s what the customer always wants to believe, that their problem really isn’t that bad and that they don’t need a transmission or other major repair. As long as we can keep that hope alive there is a chance to bring them in. If the hope dies they then believe us to be like everyone else they’ve already spoken with so, of course, they would expect a price from us as well.
One of my favorite questions to ask of a customer who tells me that he’s already had it diagnosed and knows it needs a transmission or other major work and has a price is, “Is there any reason aside from price why you didn’t have them do the work?” When you ask it that way you take price right out of the equation, making them tell you about anything else that might have turned them off at that shop or the reason why the “brother-in-law” can’t actually do the job.
I have never met anyone other than a car enthusiast or a racer who wanted to spend money to fix a car. So a perfect rebuttal to someone whom you are trying to talk in for diagnosis is to say, “You know, you keep asking me for a price on a transmission. If I or anyone else quotes you any kind of a price on a rebuilt transmission we would be confirming that you need one, but no one knows that for sure right now. It would be based on your or someone else’s assumption only. Would you really be interested in spending a lot of money on somebody’s assumption of what’s wrong? When you keep asking for a price on a rebuilt transmission there is something that I can assure you will happen: Someone is going to sell one to you. Whether you need it is another story, but your asking for a price on one is like walking into the drug store and asking for a price on a bottle of aspirin. The assumption is that you or someone close to you has a headache. It’s already been diagnosed and you’re there to buy the aspirins and for no other reason. You ask the price as a comparison check or because you aren’t sure whether you have enough in your pocket, but you are going to buy the aspirins.”
Our business is one of many facets. It’s not cut and dried like a retail store, and we should never allow it to be that. If we get lazy we will get buried as so many retail businesses have. If we make it about price, then it’s no longer about quality or service. We would then have to compete in an arena in which we don’t fare too well. The problem is that we run legitimate businesses. Our shops are registered and pay taxes and insurance. They can’t compete price- wise with shops that aren’t. So we have to compete in different ways.
So let the Internet and television be places for customers to begin to gather information. Don’t fear them, but use them to convert callers who think they now know everything about how to shop for car repairs. It isn’t all that hard to do, but it requires a different attitude from you and anyone else who answers your telephones. They have to be caring and understanding. They need to be patient with callers and not get rattled when they are continually asked for prices. They have to understand that the caller only thinks he knows on the basis of what he’s read or heard. He doesn’t really know much more than a couple of semi-useful words and phrases that he might have picked up. He still doesn’t know how his car works, but he does know that he doesn’t want to buy any kind of a major repair that he doesn’t need even though he’s asked you for the price of one several times.
Visit www.TerryGreenhut.com.