You just got the approval for routine maintenance service including cabin and air filters and, also for an oxygen sensor that will take care of the Check Engine Light. Simple, straightforward.
But you also sold the customer four additional items by presenting their benefits and value. The customer hangs up. You made the sale and everyone is pleased with the result. Naturally, you think everybody’s happy, but not so fast. You still may have another human element to deal with: your customer’s mental state. You’ve probably heard the term, buyer’s remorse, where a customer reconsiders their decision and wonders why they made it. Or their spouse wonders why they made it. Meanwhile, you’re off to the next thing, proud of yourself for getting all the approvals. If the customer develops buyer's remorse, this will have some consequences. If they decide the value and all your benefits coerced them into giving all those approvals, they probably won’t tell you about it. That is a tough phone call for a customer to make. They may feel manipulated and will probably consider trying another repair shop.
So what happened? It’s possible you didn’t understand your customer and their car situation. But my guess is you “sold” your customer on the additional work instead of guiding them to make that decision. You talked them into it to improve your approval percentage, the shop’s ARO, and increase your commission, instead of putting the customer first. These are the guidelines of the traditional, old-school coaching methods. This means that you pile on the benefits and value in the hopes the answer is yes. And if that doesn't work, you go onto the secondary coaching: dealing with objections, which is just more piling on.
Most service advisors feel the pressure of “making your numbers.” Your customers feel the persuasion, which is exactly what you’re doing, persuading. However, if you’ve built up a great relationship and the customer trusts you, all you have to do is tell them what their car needs and why. That’s an easy yes because they don’t have to fend off your “selling.”
You can do both: Take care of the customer and make money for the shop. But you’ve got your “food pyramid” upside down, with the shop on top (when it should be the customer's needs). In fact, if you didn’t get some approvals this time, you’ll get them at the next service within three to six months. And it's likely that some of the work coming in tomorrow is probably from recommendations made months ago.
The coaches say: If you can’t measure it, you can’t fix it. OK, but what comes with measuring those numbers is that the tech and service advisor will aim to increase those numbers, which can come with unintended consequences. The tech is motivated to “find” more things to put on the DVI and the advisor is motivated to “sell” more of that work, which makes for those higher numbers, and more money for the tech and advisor. And how do they find more work? It either needs it or it doesn’t. Does the rubber trans mount with the cracks suddenly go from yellow to red on the DVI? The advisor could easily justify selling it by thinking the next advisor will sell the mount, so why not them? I recall a coach offering a way to increase the amount of the repair order. He offered techs a spiff for selling more alignments. The number went from something like 25 to 75. Did the cars actually need the alignments? If not, ouch! If so, why weren’t they selling them before? So, now it seems to me he is spiffing them to do their job.
All this seems to go against taking care of the customers. If you take care of them, you’ll get more and easier approvals (which are a team decision, advisor and customer) which lessens buyer’s remorse. This also makes your shop easier to refer new customers to, which can mean less money spent on marketing. That sounds like a win, win, win to me.
