ELEAD1ONE Partner Bill Wittenmyer explains the concept of coaching up and managing up in this week's episode of Freebie Friday.

ELEAD1ONE Partner Bill Wittenmyer shares some advice for dealership employees with which they can improve themselves in this week's edition of Witt's Wise Words.

ELEAD1ONE partner Bill Wittenmyer shares the importance of being "checked-in" at work and not "checked-out," in this video blog.

ELEAD1ONE Partner Bill Wittenmyer advises dealerships to give consumers the option to start the car buying process online and the importance of digital retailing in this week's edition of Witt's Wise Words.

ELEAD1ONE Partner Bill Wittenmyer shares the 3 P's of success in this week's edition of Freebie Friday.

Successful people don't strive for average - they strive for exceptional! ELEAD1ONE Partner Bill Wittenmyer shares his take on performance & why great producers need management attention.

Should you focus more on your top producers, or help build up your lower producers? ELEAD1ONE Partner Bill Wittenmyer answers this question with some advice about managing your sales team in this week's edition of Witt's Wise Words.

The benefits of having a mobile check-in and MPI process in the service department have been widely confirmed. You’ve probably heard all about the three “T’s;” specifically transparency, timing and trust.  

However, one of the biggest unsung benefits is the considerable increase in the usage of the “declined service” op codes. Customers declining service is nothing new. But, a mobile service process makes it easy for you to reach out to recent customers so you can recover that lost revenue. Dealerships that are effective at this process see anywhere from 10 percent of declined services brought back within seven days and up to 25 percent of declined services brought back within a month.

What would that mean to your bottom line? In a larger-than-average dealership, you could discover that you have $400,000 in declined service work every month, and be able to bring back $100,000 of that revenue.

Four best practices to incorporate into your declined service follow-up process include:

1) Eliminate manual logging  

Do you know the top five declined service op codes in your store? Many service managers either don’t know the answer or would be guessing if they did answer. If you don’t know what to go after, you can’t create a strategy to go after it. This is the first and most critical step to recovering lost revenue.

With a mobile check-in and MPI process, when the service advisor makes recommendations, and the customer declines, the advisor must check either yes or no.

This simple automated prompt results in a massive increase in the logging of declined services. A store with manual logging sees an average of seven to eight percent of ROs logged with declined services. Stores with a mobile process see an average of 30 percent of ROs logged with declined services.

In addition to knowing where the lost revenue is, automated logging of op codes reveals which repairs your advisors are having trouble selling. This provides training opportunities so you can quickly improve performance and reduce the number of overall declined services.

2) Provide visual proof

Most mobile service department applications provide technicians and advisors with the ability to take photos or videos of worn parts. Make it a habit to text or email your photos and/or videos to your customers for their review. Seeing is believing, and people are far more likely to approve a recommended service when provided with visual proof. If they don’t approve the repair right away, send visual proof again a week later.

To accompany the videos and photos, provide additional information on why it’s so important to get the repair performed sooner rather than later—whether it’s a safety issue or another reason.

3) Address declined service and recalls at check-in

More and more tablet check-in tools integrated with a CRM list previously declined service recommendations at the beginning of the process. It’s a great time to revisit what the recommendation was and explain why it is needed.

As for recall information, lane applications with strong real-time recall data integration provide the opportunity to alert customers of safety issues, even before the lane and multi-point inspection occur. An estimated 25 percent of vehicles on the road today have an open recall. Dealers utilizing their recall data are seeing a 50 percent increase in customer pay overall.

4) Multi-channel follow up

Don’t place the burden of follow-up entirely on your service advisors’ shoulders. Today much of the declined service follow-up process can be automated. Service advisors can record a friendly service reminder that can be automatically dropped into the customer’s voice mail at pre-determined time intervals after the customer’s visit.

Meanwhile, have BDC agents reach out to connect in-person. One highly effective approach is to create a report with the top five safety op codes and prioritize those first. Incorporate a sense of urgency into your follow-up scripts.

In addition to phone calls, follow-up with personalized emails and texts. Send visual proof again. Send a coupon as an incentive. Eventually that customer will get the repair done, the only question is, will they bring their vehicle to your shop or take it somewhere else? Be persistent to keep your dealership top of mind when it’s time for service.

Every declined service is a missed opportunity for both revenue and relationship-building. Fortunately, mobile tablet technology has made it easy to log op codes, win customer trust and be persistent with follow-up. Perfecting this process will recover thousands of dollars in lost fixed ops revenue every month. 

How many vehicles do you sell out of your service lane every month? What if you could doble that amount?

These days you need all the sales opportunities you can get. Next to digital leads and inbound calls, the service department provides the most sales opportunities. For every opportunity that comes in on the sales side, you may have three, five or even nine opportunities in the service department.

This is the low-hanging fruit. All it takes is the right in-store process, commitment and technology to create a vehicle exchange or trade-up program. With this type of program, we have seen dealers boost their overall new and used vehicle sales by 10 percent or greater within the first six months.

Here are the steps involved in creating a vehicle exchange program:

Find the Opportunities

Hire or assign someone in your store to be a vehicle exchange specialist. Every single day this person reviews all the day’s service appointments, ROs, vehicle details and the customers’ equity positions. The goal is to identify and target the best candidates to approach.

Not only should the customers be in an equity position, but they should also have vehicles that fit the profile you’re looking for. If you’re a Mercedes dealer, you don’t want to approach the owner of a 2008 Jeep with 140,000 miles. Your service advisors should also be aware of your used car stock plan and the top 10 makes/models you’re looking for.

Identify the best appointments in terms of equity position and vehicle type and do most of the preparation for the purchase offers before the customer arrives.

Dedicated Personnel

A vehicle exchange program requires dedicated sales personnel, so reward your best salespeople with permission to work in the service lane. That’s the kind of attitude you need to have about these opportunities—because they really are the best opportunities. I know of a few dealers that moved their used car buyer’s office to the service department.

When a vehicle arrives, this dedicated salesperson does an appraisal of the vehicle and completes the final details of the purchase offer. Then, they print out the purchase offer and either approach the owner of the vehicle if they’re waiting or place the purchase offer on the seat of the vehicle. This is a great, no-pressure method for starting a conversation. 

The Purchase Offer

The goal of the purchase offer is to create awareness and some pain in the customer’s mind. The best purchase offers compare the cost of ownership for their current vehicle to the cost of ownership for a new vehicle. If you can finagle it so that it clearly shows the cost is less to be in a newer car, the sale almost becomes a no-brainer.

Follow up is critical. You may get a lot of customers whose knee-jerk reaction is to say “no,” when first presented with the opportunity. But when they go home and look at their worksheet, they may start to think about it. A new car. Cheaper to own.

Follow up is critical. Create a process that includes email and phone scripts.

Goals and Expectations

A successful vehicle exchange program requires goals and expectations. As a general manager, you need to be clear and concise as to how many purchase offers and sales you expect to make off the program every day, every month and every year.

If you’re a 40 RO per day store, start with ten offers and two sales per day. If you’re a 200 RO per day store, 50 offers and five sales per day is completely achievable (I have seen it firsthand).

Make the goal realistic and attainable, but don’t sell yourself short, either. Remember that your service lane is one of your best lead generators.

Demand to see copies of every purchase offer with comparison worksheets, notes and outcomes on a daily basis. Review these deals in your daily save-a-deal or make-a-deal meetings. Keep your team accountable.

Feed the Monster

Once you have a successful vehicle exchange program up and running, you want to promote and market it. The more people that come into your service lane, the more sales opportunities you will create.

We recommend multi-channel marketing programs with a focus on the following types of service campaigns:

1. Defector prevention
2. Custom service/repairs
3. CSI surveys

Include information about your vehicle exchange program in all marketing communications, and send them to targeted lists, including all customers in an equity position. 

John Wooden once said, “Failure isn’t fatal, but failure to change might be.” I would argue that in today’s business climate, failure to change is absolutely fatal.

A vehicle exchange program requires some process change and a different mindset, but the good news is you will see results quickly and they’re easy to track. Within six months, expect an overall boost of 10 percent in new and used vehicle sales, if not significantly more.

What does 6 degrees of separation mean to you? Well, to ELEAD1ONE Partner Bill Wittenmyer, it means the lost art of referrals and how everyone knows someone. This #FreebieFriday dives into the power of the lost art of the referral and what that means for dealership profits