The Best of Intentions - Transmission Digest

The Best of Intentions

How many of you have said, “Yeah, I’ve got to get out and do some outside sales”? You generally tend to say that when business is slow. You may have every intention of actually doing it, but then life gets in the way. The shop gets busy again, the manager doesn’t come in or a technician quits. Any one of these or 62 other possible problems will keep you from doing outside sales. In fact, pretty much any excuse you can think of will keep you from getting out there, because in most cases if you were being honest, you just don’t want to.

The Best of Intentions

It’s Your Business

Author: Terry Greenhut, Management Editor

Outside Selling Requires Full-Time Commitment

It’s Your Business

  • Author: Terry Greenhut, Management Editor

Outside Selling Requires Full-Time Commitment

How many of you have said, “Yeah, I’ve got to get out and do some outside sales”? You generally tend to say that when business is slow. You may have every intention of actually doing it, but then life gets in the way. The shop gets busy again, the manager doesn’t come in or a technician quits. Any one of these or 62 other possible problems will keep you from doing outside sales. In fact, pretty much any excuse you can think of will keep you from getting out there, because in most cases if you were being honest, you just don’t want to.

Outside selling is not an activity that everyone is cut out to do. Many owners don’t have a feel for it or even the ammunition to do it right. If they do it at all it likely will be a one-time effort done half-heartedly at best. Then if it doesn’t bear instant results they will swear it doesn’t work and never do it again.

Outside sales is one of the very few factors in this business that you can count on. Strictly by percentages and nothing else, the more doors you knock on, the more work you will get. You can’t say the same for advertising, which is much more of a hit-or-miss proposition. That would be different if we sold an item that could appeal to a customer’s buying emotions – you know, something pretty or all chromed out, something they could get excited about – but we don’t. We sell a need item. The chances are that when a customer sees or hears our advertisement he doesn’t have the need at that particular moment, and if not, the impact of the advertising message is lost forever.

When you do outside sales you set up a network of highly motivated salespeople. They want to sell your service to everyone they can or use it themselves, because it does one of two things: It makes or saves them money. Why is that important? Because it’s the only force that drives the business person. That’s why when you go in to make a presentation all you should have on your mind is, “How can I show this prospect how I can make or save him some money?”

Outside-sales programs fail for two major reasons. The first is making the wrong offer because of a lack of research into what the competition is offering or what would really excite their prospects. The second is the lack of a sustained program. Of course, other factors such as the competency and training of the proper salesperson come into play, but assuming that you never put anyone out there who can’t make a good impression or hasn’t been trained to ask the right qualifying questions and know the answers to all of the possible objections, your offer and the frequency with which you make it are the major determining factors.

Whenever you think about or make an offer to a potential customer, think about him with a sign around his neck that says, “What’s in it for me?” Then make the offer accordingly. You might think of telling the customer, for example, that you have the best warranty in town.

Picture the customer asking, “Yeah, but what’s in it for me?” Then tell him how that warranty can make or save him money. That might give him a reason to remember the benefit.

“We offer free pickup and delivery.” There’s a phrase that goes in one ear and out the other. Although it is a major benefit, unless it is fully explained in monetary terms the customer can understand, it won’t get the results you want. To get the proper results you have to show him how your pickup-and-delivery service will save him money and exactly how much money.

I like to lead in by asking, “Who does your transmission work now? Do you work on a referral basis, or do you farm the work out to him? If you farm it out, does he pick up and deliver the cars?” If the answer is “no” you then ask, “Do you have any idea how much additional it’s costing you to take a vehicle to him and then pick it up again when it’s ready?”

He probably won’t know because he’s never stopped to figure it out. Say: “Well, let’s see. It takes two men about half an hour to go out to either pick up or deliver a car. That’s one hour worth of labor for each trip, so two trips would be two hours. If you multiply that by your hourly billable labor rate, that comes out to $160. By picking up and delivering your vehicles we can actually save you $160 each time you use our services. Would saving that much be of interest to you?”

If you run into a situation where they want to install transmissions themselves, ask how much profit each lift is supposed to make for them each day. Next, show them that if they tie up a lift for one or two days or more waiting for a transmission they are losing the profit not only from the transmission job but from the other work they could have completed at the same time. By farming the entire job out they get to make profit on both ends.

The general-repair-shop owner who wants to farm out work is under the impression that he can make the sale to his customer at a price that makes him a profit over and above what you charge him to do the work. That makes sense, but there is a problem. Many times that owner or manager is not used to selling anything with a price that could very well be more than $2,000. There is a good chance that he or she will lose the job and no one will benefit from it. You, on the other hand, are used to selling $2,000 and even $3,000 jobs. Your odds of closing the sale will be a lot higher. Your repair-shop customer might be better off having you handle the entire sale and paying him a commission for referring the customer.

A few stipulations are necessary in having a shop refer customers rather than farming out the jobs to you. First is that the shop owner must believe he will make about the same amount in commission as he would have in markup. Second is that he must believe he will actually get his commission. Some transmission shops, unfortunately, say they will pay commissions and then don’t. It makes repair-shop owners very skeptical. You must have a way to prove to them that you will pay the commissions. You can do this by having a list of the other businesses to which you pay commissions that they can call to verify. You also must give a detailed explanation of the procedure to use when referring a customer so there is no question as to where the referral came from and who should be paid.

Third is that referral fees should be paid immediately upon the customer’s check clearing or the credit-card money hitting your account. Go out to the shop and hand the money to the owner along with a copy of the customer’s invoice, thanking him for the business. If this is not done promptly, you can miss other referrals while the owner is waiting to see whether he gets paid. You should notify the referrer when the customer first arrives whether there is no transmission problem and nothing is sold, or you sell the job and for how much. Communication is the key to a successful referral program.

The biggest mistake you can make is to believe that an outside-sales effort is something you do once or twice or when the spirit moves you. Outside sales is a process, one that requires time and commitment. It may take five or six calls before a customer is ready to give you his business. If you stop in only once or twice and then give up, you’ve accomplished nothing. A good outside-sales effort includes continual follow-up to make sure customers stay happy. As hard as it is to land a new account, it can be just that easy to lose it again without follow-up to make sure they stay happy.

If you plan to do outside sales, make it a full-time endeavor. Hire someone who is willing to knock on doors making cold calls, someone who isn’t afraid to handle rejection and can bounce right back from it, someone who is outgoing without being pushy or obnoxious, someone the customers will enjoy seeing on follow-up visits and, most of all, someone who can be trained to sell properly.

Be realistic. If you are like 98% of the transmission-shop owners or managers out there, you will not make outside-sales calls on any kind of regular basis. The sooner you admit to that and make the decision to hire someone to do it for you, the sooner the new customers and the profits will come.

Visit www.TerryGreenhut.com.

You May Also Like

2023 Reman Suppliers and Product Matrix listing

Each year, Transmission Digest provides a listing of suppliers of remanufactured transmissions, as well as a product matrix. Both of these can be found in the images below – click on each image for a closer look.

Each year, Transmission Digest provides a listing of suppliers of remanufactured transmissions, as well as a product matrix. Both of these can be found in the images below - click on each image for a closer look.

Shop organization: Tools in a tube

Every shop has a special location. Sometimes it’s a shelf, sometimes it’s a drawer. It’s where we keep all the “tools” that come in a tube. They’re usually community property, except for the occasional extra expensive items that reside in a manager’s office. Related Articles – Shop profile: DL Transmissions has leveraged a new location

Tools-in-a-tube-feature-6.23
Shop profile: DL Transmissions has leveraged a new location into significant success

Location, location, location. It’s commonly cited as a real estate motto, but really, it’s essential for any type of business. Whether it means being in close proximity to as many customers as possible or simply being in a visible or noticeable location, it can be a key to success for a transmission repair shop. After

Shop profile: Colorado Engine has built a name for itself focusing on the whole powertrain

Colorado Engine may have “engine” in the name, but transmissions are also a key component of the business for a shop that deals with the entire powertrain. Started in 1983 as a wholesale warehouse distributor for factory remanufactured engines and transmissions, in 2000 they opened an install center, according to owner George Anderson. Related Articles

A long journey to success at New Jersey’s Wholesale Transmissions

“We’ve been family-owned since 1985,” Mike Nader says of his shop, New Jersey’s Wholesale Transmissions. Related Articles – Going the extra mile: Proving your transmission repair suspicions – Diagnosing Ford 10R60, 10R80 and 10R140 series speed sensor issues – Jatco JF613E transmission quick reference material Mike’s father started off as a multi-shop Cottman Transmission franchisee in the

profile-feature-image-1400

Other Posts

Kitting keeps us profitable: Aftermarket kit suppliers listing 2023

The kitting of transmission parts has made profitable shop operation possible. When a kit with 100 parts is necessary, a distributor has already assembled all the important components into the kit and it is typically sitting on the shelf ready to be delivered. Kitting saves time and effort for both the shop and the supplying

California’s Rohnert Park Transmissions is a multi-generational success story

Fernando Gomez’s dad got into the business after being in the Army. “It was what he always wanted to do,” Fernando says. But that wasn’t the case for Fernando at first. Related Articles – Complete the 2024 transmission shop survey for a chance to win a gift card – Hidden problems: Three tales of electrical

Doing the little things right at Habby’s Transmissions

Habby’s Transmissions started as a radiator shop. When Warren Frie bought it in 1975 (keeping the name Habby’s from the previous owner), it took until the mid-1980s until he saw an opportunity in the transmission repair market, and transformed the business. Related Articles – Transtar talks expanding distribution for 2024 – Outgrowing the walls: The

family
12 transmission jack safety tips

A transmission jack is a must to remove, install or move transmissions, transfer cases and transaxles in a shop. These jacks save backs and time, but they are powerful multitask lifting systems so they must be operated correctly, with safety being the first priority. Related Articles – Going the extra mile: Price’s Garage builds on

techtip-1400