New Orleans is ramping up for the 100th anniversary of NADA, and the convention promises to be outstanding. You’ll be entertained at the NADA100 Carnival Mardi Gras-style, featuring performances by Foreigner and Cowboy Mouth. But after the carnival, it’s down to business…mostly. Plan to attend keynote addresses by some well-known industry greats. And bring a stack of business cards, because the Expo is sure to hold value.

Which booths should grab the focus of your attention? That’s going to vary depending on your dealership role. If you’re fixed operations – parts, service, or autobody – these are some stops you won’t want to miss.

Hunter Engineering Company

Your shop almost definitely has Hunter equipment already but don’t pass this booth by. NADA is a perfect opportunity for Hunter to show you the latest and greatest innovations they’ve been working on, and you’ll want to be the first with their toys!

Hunter has vehicle lifts, wheel alignment technologies, brake lathes, and tire equipment just to touch on a few. Their equipment is bound to serve as an investment, saving your department time and money over the many years it will be of service.

AutoAlert Inc.

This service provider should be a destination for every department, including fixed ops staffers. You might think it’s a sales tool or marketing item, but AutoAlert is much more than that. They deliver marketing strategies for every department, keeping your dealerships name fresh on your customers’ lips. After all, you want to turn one-time customers into long-term clients.

Be on the scene for their live demonstrations, introducing One-to-One Intelligent Marketing. The innovation is a marketing platform that offers multiple streams and touchpoints, delivered in the most effective ways.

Service Operations Specialists, Inc.

Feel like your service department needs to be tweaked but don’t know where to start? These are your guys. Service Operations Specialists is a consulting firm that specializes in optimizing your opportunities. Today’s service department must meet the ever-changing customer demands and it’s tough to move in the right direction.

Sit down with Service Operations Specialists to see what they can offer your department – there’s going to be something! Their services include “strategic planning, business analysis, new business models, implementation, training, consulting, express service, brakes & tire service, high tech repair, facility design & planning, and network design”.

Piston Data

Looking for real-live leads to bring in new service customers? Take advantage of the growing number of recalls. Piston Data has the largest database of customers with open recalls by VIN in America. They’ll take you through from acquisition to marketing, bringing lost and inactive customers back to your dealership for another visit.

Tuscany Motor Company

They make big toys for big boys and girls. Tuscany Motor Company makes Ford vehicles even better as part of Ford’s Quality Vehicle Modifier program. Check out the Tonka truck, the Black Ops Edition F250, or the off-road focused FTX trucks. The stop might not be of much use to your dealership, but it can’t be all work and no play at NADA 100, right?

Service Lane EAdvisor

Increase your service advisors’ productivity with Service Lane EAdvisor. It’s a simple device that plugs into the customer’s vehicle dataport, capturing the VIN number, odometer reading, trouble codes, tire pressure readings, and oil life monitor percentage. It shaves minutes off check-in time and is reportedly 100 percent accurate.

For GM dealers especially, this is a stop you can’t miss! Service Lane EAdvisor integrates with GM Workbench and is eligible for co-op dollars in the GM iMR program.

Your Manufacturer’s Booth!

Most auto manufacturers in North America are represented at the NADA 100 Convention and EXPO. It’s a great opportunity to explore current and future models and the features they have in store. Let’s face it – in the service department, you rarely have the chance to experience the new products and innovations. Now’s your opportunity to get on the same level as your sales team members.

You’re taking time away from your busy service or parts department, all on the company dime, to attend NADA 100 in New Orleans. You’d better have some good information to debrief your management when you return! Just a handful of receipts for reimbursement won’t be enough.

Starting January 26th, NADA 100 kicks off and no time is wasted getting right to the good stuff. That’s mostly because there’s nothing but the good stuff at NADA conventions. Which sessions should you attend as a fixed ops employee or manager? Where will you mine the most information? Here are a few different tracks you can follow at NADA 100, all under the fixed ops umbrella

Service Department Personnel

“Achieve 100% Fixed Coverage Before the Next Meltdown”

Brett Coker of Coker Automotive Consultants speaks to fixed operations employees, mainly in the service department. His years of expertise in the auto industry will begin to fire your neurons, coaching you on opportunities for improvement in your department.

You’ll learn common mistakes that are made, how to increase your shop throughput, and how to compete against the independents that are taking your business. This session is valuable for parts employees as well.

“Fixed Ops Marketing in a Mobile First World’

Jeff Clark, Chief Sales Officer at DealerOn Inc, is going to take fixed operations managers into the next era of marketing. By learning new strategies to send your message out to your customer base, you can effectively increase your appointments, repair order count, and your dollars per RO.

Mobile marketing is big business industry-wide, and implementing Facebook and Google marketing in fixed ops is imperative to move ahead.

“Rethink Service: How to Capture Every Opportunity”

Robert Leary brings service employees a message on capturing missed opportunities, especially as it relates to upsells and declined services. Do you track your sales off upsells? Do you follow up on declined services to maximize sales potential? Whether you do or don’t, you’ll discover valuable techniques from Robert to increase your department’s profit.

“100 Years of Automotive Service: What’s Changed?’

Robert Atwood of NADA approaches the history of automotive service. After reviewing the industry’s past, you’ll be walked through a comparison that explores the changes in the past 100 years. By looking at trends in service hours, labor rates, technician productivity, and staffing, you’ll be better equipped to handle the changes and take a step forward into the service industry’s future.

Parts Department Personnel

“Accessories: Mine Your Hidden Gem”

Nancy Vanderbilt and Dana Grover of Automotive Aftermarket Services bring you together to discuss the hidden potential in accessories sales. Vehicle owners are spending their cash on accessorizing their vehicles, yet not at your dealership. They will open your eyes to new strategies to sell accessories, both to your customers and in-house.

Collision Repair Personnel

“Collision Department Myths vs. Collision Department Facts”

Larry Edwards of Edwards and Associates Consulting Inc. brings a message for collision repair departments at your dealership. Accident repairs are big business, yet they don’t seem to be profitable. But can they be? Larry busts myths about your collision repair shop, telling you how you can make a profit and service your customer well, even at the low rate paid by insurance companies.

“The Secrets to Body Shop Profits: The Dealer Handbook”

Scott Rome of Rome Technologies Inc. is your presenter for this session. He’s going to bring you through the foundational principles of your body shop including personnel requirements, motivational pay plans, factory-based production techniques, accurate parts management, and more. With his years of experience, you’ll no doubt glean ways to make your body shop more profitable than ever.

In just a few short weeks, the National Automobile Dealers Association will host their convention from New Orleans. This year is the 100th anniversary of NADA so you can be sure it’s going to be an outstanding event. If you’re a leader in your dealership or dealer group, you don’t want to miss this gathering of the automotive industry’s heaviest hitters.

Don’t underestimate its importance for you if you’re a service manager, parts manager or fixed ops director. It’s not all about the sales department. There’s plenty at NADA 2017 for you, for both your department and your professional development.

Mark Fields

Whether you’re a Ford aficionado or not, you’ll want to pay close attention to Ford Motor Company CEO, Mark Fields. Undoubtedly, the hot topics will come up, namely Trump’s promise of cross-border tariffs for importing vehicles. Along with the latest news, trends and developments from North America’s largest carmaker, you’ll learn heaps about the direction your department needs to go for the future.

As fixed ops personnel, you’ll be able to determine how you should navigate the next few years or so for the greatest success. Depending on the technology coming down the pipe, you can equip your store with the tools and technology to address the latest innovations. You can plan to train your technicians or onboard the right staff to meet the particular demands addressed in his talk.

Jim Gaffigan

Notorious funny man, Jim Gaffigan will lighten things up a touch on Friday. He’s a Grammy award-winning comedian who also has written a New York Times bestseller. You’re going to hear about his real-life struggles as a father of five, no doubt mixed with laughter deep from your belly.

Racing to Be the Best

You’ll get to experience an in-depth conversation between Automotive News editor-in-chief, Keith Crain, Penske Corporation chairman, Roger Penske, and famous racecar driver, Helio Castroneves. It won’t be all about the racetrack, though, as Penske is even more successful off the track than on – and that says a lot!

Roger Penske’s successes include truck leasing, retail automotive stores, professional racing teams, and much more. With staffing of more than 50,000 worldwide and revenues in excess of $26 billion annually, there’s bound to be something to learn from this heart-to-heart-to-heart session.

Amy Purdy

If you’ve felt like giving up, or just settling to for mediocrity, that will vaporize after you hear Amy Purdy speak. After winning a battle with bacterial meningitis at the age of 19 that took both her legs, Amy never quit. Instead, she overcame the impossible and is now the top-ranked adaptive snowboarder in the United States. She’s also made the New York Times’ bestseller list with her book, On My Own Two Feet.

Amy’s experiences will leave you speechless and on the edge of your seat. Her never-quit attitude will seep deep into your bones, invigorating you for the challenges you’ll face when you get back home and to work.

Workshops For Everyone

Between keynote addresses, you’ll have the pleasure of attending workshops intended to stretch your skills. Fixed Ops workshops touch on every aspect of your department, and there’s something for every position.

Parts managers and parts advisors will be poked, prodded, and stimulated on topics like inventory control, accessory sales techniques, and communication between the parts and service departments.

Service department personnel from service managers and service advisors to technicians – even collision repair center staff -  can benefit from training modules designed specifically for their position. Hot topics include technician retention, RO analysis, performance analysis and absorption.

Are you attending NADA 2017? Which keynote address are you looking forward to most? Is there one specific topic you want to address, or a problem you hope to solve by attending NADA? Or is it an opportunity to see what the future of the industry holds?

You’ve spent the past year coaching your team and tweaking your process to reach your year-end goals. Countless one-on-one sessions and opportunities for improvement have been discussed and implemented, some with success and some doomed to failure from the start. With the new year beginning, there’s just one thing left to do: forget it all.

The new year, 2017, is a blank slate. Whatever you accomplished in the past twelve months means nothing once you turn the page on your calendar. The successes you’ve experienced and the shortcomings you’ve made it through are just a distant memory, and you’ll have to start all over again.

Shift Your Focus

Your goal throughout the past year stays right there – in the past. Hopefully, you embraced the opportunity to celebrate your victories, because it’s time to get right back into the thick of things. Your focus needs to be on a year from now, working towards the targets you’ve set for 2017. And if you’ve done things well, your forecast for the next year predicts an increase.

No question, it’s tough to shift from the short game view (the year-end push) into the long game again. Like any situation where you’re starting from scratch, it’s about doing the little things right each and every time. Here are some of the basics you can emphasize for a bunch of your service staff.

Service Advisors

Your service advisors are professionals, but they need a refresher in the basics once in a while. It’s about doing what works with consistency; no cutting corners.

Stress the Importance of Customer Greeting

You’ve heard that nearly 2/3rds of your customers feel it takes too long to be greeted in the service drive. Make this year’s goal to drop that number way down. Have your service advisors monitor the service drive to greet customers within the first minute of arrival.

Emphasize Proper Selling Techniques

RO sales improve when sales techniques are properly used. It’s more than just reciting the maintenance schedule – it’s educating the customer on the benefits of the service. And “no” doesn’t mean not to try again.

Follow-up is Crucial

If your customers aren’t kept informed about their vehicle status, they aren’t satisfied. If they aren’t happy when they leave, you probably won’t see them back in your store. Regular customer contact and follow-up is more important than ever.

Support Staff

The unsung heroes of your service department, the cashiers and other support staff, have a critical function in your success.

Make Every Customer Feel Important

The job gets mundane because you see dozens of people every day. But you are the only person in your role the customer sees, so make them feel special. Look the customer in the eye, smile, and ask if there’s anything more you can do for them.

Last Point of Contact

When the customer is on their way out after their visit, you’re typically the last person they see. The last impression can be as important as the first one, so go out of your way to do your role fully. Book the next service appointment, ask how their visit was, and tell them how important the CSI survey is for your dealership’s success.

Technicians

Be Thorough Every Time

A customer won’t bring their car in for no reason – it’s an inconvenience that they don’t want in their life. Do your best to track down their complaint every time, and ask questions if the advisor doesn’t get enough information the first time around.

Walk the Straight and Narrow

The temptation is to sell the farm on every customer to pad your own wallet. That train only rides the track for a short time until your customers go elsewhere. Abide by the maintenance schedule and only sell the items that are needed immediately. Your customers will keep coming back if you’re consistently honest about it.

Service Manager/Fixed Operations Director

Be Consistent

Throughout your department, you need to enforce the same rules and procedures. What’s good for the goose must be good for the gander, so enforce the rules evenly. The temptation is to take it easy on someone who is pulling in the big dollars, even if their attitude or actions don’t abide by your code of conduct. It sets a bad example for everyone else, and you don’t need that negativity in your store.

They are People, Not Numbers

People have bad days, and people make mistakes. As a manager, your role often involves minimizing the mistakes so the good days outweigh the bad. But when mistakes happen, keep in mind that you’ve been guilty of making poor choices too. Acknowledge the mistake on a personal level, without making it about the money it may have cost your store.

As 2017 starts, there’s a long road ahead. Make the most of it by getting back to the basics and building off your successes from last year.

‘It isn't work if you love what you’re doing’. You’ve heard that phrase before, I’m sure. Whether you’ve been at your current job for a year, a decade, or for what feels like a lifetime, you know it’s not always the case. Sometimes, no matter how much you love what you do, there are days that feel like they are more work than you can handle.

The sentiment of the statement rings true. Time seems to go faster when you enjoy your career. Family situations seem more manageable. You tend to find joy in things that previously went unnoticed in your life. In general, you’re happier and increasingly satisfied with your life.

How can you make every day fun and enjoyable? Have you been working in your role so long that it’s always mundane, day in and day out? What about ‘the grind’ when nothing seems to go right and you feel trapped in a barren wasteland of a career? How can you honestly say you love your job once again?

Remember Why You Chose This Career

Fixed operations roles come down to customer service. Every day is packed with interactions between you and your customers, and you and your co-workers. Parts department, service department, and body shop roles are commonly filled with Alpha-type personalities like yourself or at least people who enjoy being around other people. It’s a steady job with fairly reliable income. And in most cases, the pay isn’t bad either.

What was your reason for choosing Fixed Ops? It might be the people you work with who push you to be better at your career. A good group of coworkers and employees – depending on your role – can be the support network to keep your spirits up when you’re having a down day. They can be the sum of the reason you get ready for work in the morning – to spend time with your friends.

It might be the challenging environment. Some people like myself tend to excel under pressure. In the service department and parts department, there’s plenty of pressure on a daily basis to help you thrive. Like they say, diamonds are formed under extreme pressure. If that’s what you love – the thrill of the chase or the opportunity to perform the impossible – you’ve found a forum for it.

Hey, it’s alright if you’re in it for the money. Paychecks can be lucrative at times, especially considering no formal education is required for most dealership employees. If you’re down in the dumps because your income is suffering, you have only one person to blame and who will help you succeed – yourself. Just be sure that if you’re in your current position because of the money, the ‘work’ aspects of your role, especially customer service, don’t fall to the wayside.

Get Your Head Back In It

If you can remember why you once loved your job, you can get back to that place. The work comes in keeping your attitude and motives in check. Once you get back into your groove, doing the things you truly love about your job, the enjoyment factor will fall into place.

• Find the turning point. Can you remember when you stopped enjoying your job? What circumstances unfolded? If you can identify the turning point, you can cut that poison apple out of your diet and get back into a healthy work environment.
• Create a routine. In plenty of cases (some I’ve gone through personally), you start to hate going to work in the morning because you’ve lost your ‘mojo’. You’re out of step. Structure and stability in a routine will help you regain your rhythm.
• Do something great every day. It doesn’t have to be work related either. Doing something great, whether it stretches your comfort zone, improves your life or the lives of others, or takes steps toward achieving a target or dream, will have a great impact on your career. It cultivates a ‘can-do’ attitude and jacks up your positivity. That most definitely will transfer into your work life.

It’s okay to have times of doubt, and it’s totally normal to question your sanity when you live the dealership life. You will have depressing days where you just want to quit. That’s in every job, I hear. The goal is to achieve an overall healthy work-life/home-life balance, and one where the good days outweigh the bad.

If you’ve never liked your job, why are you there? If you hang around for a paycheck but are miserable day in and day out, it’s time to move on. Find a career where, at the end of the day, you can say, “I love my job!”

At this point of the year, you have a pretty good idea how the numbers are going to pan out. This year has had its challenges for the automotive industry, but your fixed operations departments have weathered the storm well.

If you’re a typical dealership, you’ve had a 40 percent churn in your service advisors this year, and you’ve had to focus on retaining your technicians. Domestic and import dealers alike have had Takata airbag recalls to deal with, not to mention the supply issues associated with that. You’ve fared well despite the increasing trend towards dealership service department abandonment.

Your doc tells the story of 2016. You can identify your huge wins and your major battles by looking through each line. And while every store is a little different, one common theme will resound as you shift your focus to next year: you will be expected to do more.

Celebrate Victories While You Can

Take a moment to reflect on your 2016. Your team has made it through some seemingly impossible times; days that you thought would never end. You’ve had times when you were on top of the mountain too, and those are the moments you want to remember.

Along with your team, make time to celebrate your victories. Head out for a team dinner or host a small party where work isn’t your only topic. It’s important to remember the winning moments, because come January 1st, the slate gets wiped clean.

Set Your Targets

If your 2016 included an increase over the previous year’s numbers, great job! But be aware of one thing: you’ll be expected to do more in 2017. Your parts department may have experienced the largest year-over-year increase in the store’s history, achieving well above your forecast. That now sets your bar even higher, and you’ll have to outdo yourself next year. Your service team might have blown the 2015 GP out of the water, raking in tens of thousands more that hits the bottom line. Fantastic, now set your sights a little higher.

You’ll be expected to set your 2017 forecast higher, and that might seem impossible, especially if you had a blockbuster year. But you can do it, and you know it. You can squeeze a modest increase because, as you look at the doc, you can see areas that need improvement.

Where is Money Hiding?

No two stores are alike. An import store may struggle with one thing while a domestic dealership dominates in the category. Your location or your staff can affect how your dealership operates. That means the increases you’re expecting in 2017 will probably come from different places. Here are a few places to analyze, because you might be leaving money on the table.

Discounting

There’s a number of reasons that discounting can happen, but a bunch of reasons it shouldn’t. When your staff discounts parts or labor – even removing shop supplies from an invoice – it takes directly from your net. Keep a close eye on any discounting that happens in your department. It might be totally legit, or it could be being abused. Keep your staff accountable for discounting and you could see your profit margin increase.

Sales per RO

You can only raise your labor rate so high, but there are ways to increase your RO sales, even just a bit. Shop your dealership’s services among the other dealers nearby. You may find you’re selling yourself short on certain things. A dollar here and there, and you’ve managed to bump your net up without needing to sell more.

On the other hand, you might need to increase average sales per work order. Review ROs daily to determine if sales opportunities have been missed. Use it as a teaching experience for your staff.

Warranty Rate Increase

Your warranty rate will never match your CP hourly rate, and you’ve come to accept that. But is it where it should be or are you due for an increase? Applying for your warranty rate increase is a time-consuming, frustrating practice in most cases, but it can be rewarding. Especially with highly-technical vehicles that take hours longer to repair, you want to get the most from your warranty time.

Set aside time to audit your warranty labor rate. That might take several hours or days in itself because it’s never easy getting more money from your manufacturer. It may be well worth it.

Whatever your department’s weakness might be, set achievable and realistic goals for improvement. It will never be perfect, but we can strive for as close to perfection as possible, right?

Your dealership is one big happy family and everyone gets along famously. Unless you’re a dysfunctional family with screaming, hair-pulling, and slamming doors whenever you have to deal with each other. Yeah, that’s more like dealership life.

I’ve spent 15 years working in several different dealerships, mostly in the service department. I can say without a shadow of a doubt that each one has the exact same interdepartmental relationship – rocky and tense. I have yet to experience a service department that doesn’t hold grudges against the sales team. The parts guys think everyone else in the dealership is stupid. The rest of the building questions why the parts department can’t stock common parts. It’s the same everywhere.

In my experience, the problem starts when each person feels they are worth more than the next. That extends to whole departments, and it becomes a situation of in-fighting that can seriously dampen profits and production. It becomes a toxic environment, all because the family can’t play nice.

Can’t We All Just Get Along?

I love that phrase. It’s so commonly mistaken to think that we’ve all got to be buddies. That’s not the spirit of the phrase and it’s simply never going to happen. It takes a different person to sell cars than it does to work the service desk. An analytical mind is necessary for the parts department, and seldom do the personalities have much common ground.

But we can get along. At the heart of the phrase, you can sense that there’s a battle going on. There are hurt feelings and grudges held. But the idea is to look past the emotion and achieve a common goal. In the dealership, that’s serving the customer well and increasing sales.

How Do Fixed Ops Factor In?

I constantly found myself looking down on certain salespeople, and eventually I painted them all with the same brush. What happens at that point is you now have disdain for every salesperson, even if you share a common goal. The sales team is no longer Steve, Matt, Jordan, and Andrew. They’ve lost their individuality in your mind. In that way, it’s you that needs to change.

If you’re in fixed operations, your role is unwaveringly based on customer service. The best customer service happens when you work well as a team. To be absolutely clear, you don’t have to be friends with everyone in the dealership, but you do have to work with them.

Integrate Fixed Operations for Everyone’s Benefit

Seek out ways that you can work closely with your dealerships other departments. It may be as simple as teaming up with one salesperson and one parts person that you get along with already. You can achieve great things if you work together, whether it’s the parts person helping sell accessories on a new car purchase or a service advisor walking a new car buyer through the dealership for a tour.

Fixed operations provide a foundation for the dealership; a steady and solid support system. Without fixed operations your store couldn’t build and it would struggle to exist at all. Fixed operations is an absolutely critical part of the dealership puzzle, but without the other departments, it’s just another repair shop on the corner.

Ask your friends what they think of their dealership’s service department. You’ll get a range of answers, ranging from polite and positive to utter despise (hopefully your store isn’t one of the despicable ones). And if you dare to delve deeper into their experiences, you’ll find out why it isn’t pleasant – it’s often from over-selling.

Take a look at your sales department. It’s become transparent on virtually every level. A car salesperson used to be regarded as low-level scum, trying to scam everyone who came through the dealership’s doors. Now, sales staff have to be the consummate professional, performing follow-up, mastering customer service, and even getting inside their customers’ heads to decipher their needs.

You’re Messing It All Up

Now that the sales department is on track, correcting decades of bad behavior and misconceptions, your service department is holding your dealership back. That is, if you’re recommending unnecessary services.

What is an unnecessary service?

It’s something you wouldn’t sell to your district manager. Does that make sense? Let’s flesh it out a bit.

Most dealerships have developed their own maintenance schedule to make it simple for their staff to sell. The 30k package, 60k package, brake fluid change interval, power steering flush, and so on. It’s loosely based on the manufacturer’s maintenance manual, though not exactly. It may have services bumped ahead sooner or recommended services that aren’t part of the guide.

If your district manager sat down with your maintenance guide, would you be sweating bullets? For example, DOT3 brake fluid is not meant to be changed unless the hydraulic brake system requires repairs. Do you still upsell a brake fluid flush on vehicles with DOT3? Or do your CVT transmissions have lifetime fluid unless repairs are required, yet you still perform transmission fluid changes on your maintenance schedule? These are unnecessary services.

Why is it a problem?

After all, you’re the expert, right? You know best, and your customer should trust you. Even if you believe in the extras you’re selling, it doesn’t coincide with the manufacturer’s recommended maintenance. It shouldn’t be on your maintenance schedule.

The main reason is in your relationship to your customer. It can be decimated by overselling just once, and the internet fuels the fire. More often than you know, customers visit online forums to ask questions and research their vehicle. And you’re probably aware, but the term ‘stealership’ is used extensively on these forums. Guess why? Overselling (combined with high prices).

Combine that with the maintenance schedule available online. You can find the recommended maintenance on the manufacturer’s website, and your customers can too. If the services you’re selling aren’t on there, you’ve destroyed your customer’s confidence in you as the expert. Now you’re just another stealership employee trying to take their money.

How Do You Deal With It?

We know that there are services needed that aren’t always listed on the manufacturer’s maintenance schedule. Take those CVT transmission services for instance. The fluid gets dark and degrades, yet it’s not scheduled for replacement at a specific interval. Do you leave it until the transmission breaks down?

That’s not the answer either, because that doesn’t provide true service for your customer. You should sell it based on condition, not on time or mileage. And that’s tricky.

Get your Techs On Board

In order to sell services based on condition, your technicians need to be thorough without going overboard, or gouging. And because most technicians are flat rate, that can be something that requires monitoring.

Condition-based selling can be done really well by presenting the condition to your customer visually, not just as an explanation. You know this – as a dealership employee, it’s what you’d want for yourself. Show your customers a comparison between a new sample and their vehicle’s condition. It’s nearly always a slam dunk.

Condition-based selling is also a great reinforcement tool to build trust with your customer. You can show them fluid conditions, brake pad levels, and more when they are still in good shape. It shows you’re not blindly selling off a sheet of paper, but showing actual customer service based on their vehicle and its needs.

Audit your maintenance schedule. Compare the items on your list versus your manufacturer’s recommended maintenance and strike off anything that doesn’t match. This doesn’t mean not to sell it. You just need to do it in a way that serves your customer’s needs without contradicting your manufacturer. Otherwise, kiss your customers’ trust goodbye. 

Every time you turn on the TV, you see a car commercial with a Rudolph nose on it. Dealers capitalize on the hunt for hot buys on Black Friday, advertising the year’s best deals. Then, once again at New Year’s, the year’s best deals are hung under the mistletoe. And it works for the sales department – why not give it a shot for the service department as well?

It’s quite possible to turn the busiest shopping season of the year into a boon for your fixed operations department. Think of all the opportunity to sell accessories, finally meeting your manufacturer’s annual target. Your parts department can strike gold simply by advertising common car care, winter gear, and typical winter repair components to your current clientele.

The service department is immensely fickler for holiday deals. Certain services are top sellers for the season, although there’s little need to drive sales for them. Winter tires and rims, wheel alignments, and cooling system flushes are hot items for your service advisors and technicians, generating increased revenue. But what if you advertised a special? Would it help?

Now, what about other neglected services or repairs? I’d venture to say that offering holiday specials on non-winter related procedures can cause permanent damage to your customer relationships. Here’s why:

You’ve Built Trust, Now You Throw It Away

 Your loyal customers – the ones who always come back faithfully – rely on your expertise, and your adherence to their actual needs. Everything in the maintenance manual, they’ll do on time and without hesitation. Then you tell them you have a special on a service that doesn’t fit into their maintenance guide, and the red flags go up.

As soon as you stepped out of line with their schedule, you lost their trust. You can’t offer a service special for maintenance or repairs without the glaringly obvious – you’re trying to take more of their money. If you wouldn’t make the recommendation at another time of the year, or if the special wasn’t in place, you WILL damage relationships with your customers.

Value Added – the Winning Holiday Term

If you’re trying to open your customers’ wallets for a final year-end drive, there’s really only one choice – you have to offer added value. If your customer doesn’t see the added benefit, if they don’t buy into your sales pitch, if they don’t trust you, it’s not worth trying.

You know it to be true that money gets tight for many during the holiday season. Very few customers are inclined to spend their funds on car service or repairs over gifts and Christmas decorations, so your work is cut out for you. Here’s what you’ll have to do:

• Make sure your service advisors can clearly explain the added benefit. They should rehearse a consistent pitch for the best success. If they can’t convey the added value, don’t unleash them on your customers. You’ll damage your customer relationships and your advisors’ confidence.
• Make sure there IS added benefit. If the upsell is a service, the result must be noticeable to your customer or you’ll lose their trust.
• Don’t give away the farm. Offer only marginal discounts if you must discount at all. The perception is this: if you can offer a service at a slashed rate during the holidays, that’s all it’s worth any other time of the year. If at all possible, provide EXTRAS to services to create your specials.

What Works for Holiday Specials?

Some items are actually great offerings during the holidays. Here are a few examples for you.

• Wheel alignments. Everyone hits potholes, ruts, and rubs the occasional curb. A wheel alignment makes for safer driving, and is arguably the best service to upsell from. Your front end technicians will love the holidays if you apply this one right.
• Wheel and tire packages. If you’re in one of the many areas that get dumped on by the fluffy white stuff, offer winter tire packages. Show good, better, and best packages, then offer upsells like wheel alignments for those who buy into it.
• Detailing packages. Play on the need for acceptance and approval from family and friends. Who doesn’t want to show up to holiday functions with a spotless car, inside and out?

At its root, specials in the service department, whether during the holidays or otherwise, should always match up with your customers’ needs. If you wouldn’t sell it without the special, don’t try it at all. Stick with value-added services.

During your onboarding or hiring process, you tell every new employee their roles and responsibilities. From their hours on the job and customer interactions to CSI survey averages and interdepartmental relationships, you set out clear guidelines for how their fixed operations job is to be done right. And you probably rounded out the talk with, “We’ll review your performance after a year to see how you’re doing.”

From personal experience, that year timeline comes and goes without a glimmer of hope that management remembers a work anniversary. And then another year. And another.

The only time fixed ops managers seem to find time for performance reviews is when there are major problems to repair. And by that time, the damage has been done. The “shape up or ship out” ultimatum has to be issued, and the odds of a long-term solution are pretty small.

The other side of the coin is the micro-manager, constantly trying to control every aspect of the day down to the color of underwear. When performance reviews are due, there’s nothing to discuss because it’s all been said a hundred times before.

So how do you deal with performance reviews in fixed operations?

You’ve said performance reviews are at a set interval (such as annual), so stick with it. I can only tell you from experience, that guidance you provide during the review is welcome and necessary.

A while ago, I wrote an article elsewhere about service advisors going ‘rogue’. It was all about me. Without the guidelines enforced, and with performance reviews only coming about when scathing corrections were required, I lost direction. I set my own course and did my own thing, leading to punishing CSI scores and customer complaints. But I didn’t care because it didn’t appear my management cared.

Do I think that performance reviews would have fixed the problems? Maybe. Could management have made changes that better served their clientele by reviewing my performance with me? Absolutely. Would that have meant showing me the door? Possibly.

Look, I know everyone colors outside the lines sometimes – human nature and all that jazz. Performance reviews simply make sure everyone is drawing the same landscape. So if you say you’re going to perform annual checkups, do it.

What should a performance review look like?

This is very much a decision to make at the store level. That’s going to change depending on the team member’s role, but it should be consistent. Here are a couple suggestions:

• Create a checklist for each job description in your department. If you need ideas, search the Microsoft Office templates or online for a structure that works for you. Adapt the checklist for roles and duties of each position.
• Create a schedule for performance reviews. Do you want to handle your whole department’s reviews in a single week or deal with them around each team member’s work anniversary? Develop that framework and stick with it from year to year.
• Refer back to the previous year’s review and compare with the current progress. Identify items that need improvement and things that are being done exceptionally well.
• Set goals for the coming year. Isolate one to three items that the employee can improve on, or professional development goals to accomplish in the next twelve months.
• Be truthful. If there are shortcomings, identify them clearly with specific examples. It’s a great time to bring up small issues that weren’t critical enough to haul them into the office for earlier. It’s also a fantastic opportunity to reinforce the roles your employee does really well.

For me, goal-setting was probably my biggest issue. I lost sight of what I was working toward. I wasn’t really sure what the future had in store, and my roles and responsibilities became unclear. While I’m far from perfect in other aspects of professional life, I think a performance review with defined goals for the next 12 months would have benefited me.

I have a hard time believing that mine is an isolated experience. In 15 years, I don’t believe I ever had more than 3 performance reviews cumulatively, in any role, spanning three long tenures at different dealerships.

Prove me wrong. Do you have a clear and defined performance review system that works well for you? Are there fixed ops directors for dealer groups that can honestly say their stores do it well? And who will admit it’s an area they need to work on?