Chris Collins argues repair shops are missing money on older cars. He suggests membership pricing, systematic follow-ups to lapsed customers, and a concierge model that cuts overhead while keeping people coming back.
So alternative financing, I think is, is really, really smart. I just think that there's probably more opportunity than we even know of that's on those cars at the end of the day. But just thinking about expanding the business. What is it, what does it look like in the, in the service department? If the average age is 14 years, like what would, how much stuff would you do differently?
I probably would focus on value. Like, I, I do think that, you know, for the longest time we were trying to convince dealerships that their prices were too low. Now I do believe that there's a market out there for somebody not quite as aggressive. So I would really pay attention to my, to my pricing and to the volume and to. There's just a balance to be achieved between having the availability, the doing the maintenance and retaining customers and what you're charging.
And that goes back to marketing. Right. So pricing is a big part of how to market and a pricing strategy. Yeah. Which I, I don't think is existent in most stores. No.
And there, you know, there's a lot of ways to get at that, like free oil changes or you know, different things that make customers feel like they're part of a club. But that sort of stuff works, right?
Yeah.
Then the other one is having some sort of follow up process that pays attention to your database and who you're losing and calling them and asking them why and trying to get them back, but not just leaving it to chance, like really following up.
Yeah. I think that the phone call in itself might be enough to get somebody to try you again because I think the perception is that the dealership doesn't care. Yeah. That's really smart to make those calls.
And what, what is the, the biggest upside to having this thing figured out?
They'll buy more cars when it is time.
Yeah. Like they really are more likely to buy another vehicle from you. And at some point it just, there's no, there's no other way to do it. It just will break down too much. It'll just be too much for them and they're gonna have to, they're gonna have to do something.
Yeah. I call that the do not resuscitate moment. Right. Where it's like, she's dead pedals. Stop.
I think one of the biggest downfalls of our, of our industry, and it's funny because I was talking to somebody about this yesterday where they were like, if you would design a dealership from scratch, like completely throw out the model we have now.
I would design it for the customer.
Oh yeah.
So I wouldn't design different departments. I would design an experience for the customer and they would never.
Really think about the idea that there's different departments. They would have one relationship.
Yeah. And they would come into one spot and then there would be some sort of a concierge. I think I see what you're talking about there. That's great.
That might be a good episode. I don't know for us to break down how we would do it, it would be completely different than what everybody's doing now in the sense that we're used to what we're doing now. But it is probably the least efficient way of doing things, especially with the overhead that it creates. Having more departments creates more overhead.
I agree with that. It's interesting.
Thanks so much for watching this clip of Service Driver Revolution uploading new stuff every day, so make sure you subscribe and click the bell icon so you don't miss out. If you have a question you'd like us to answer on the show, call 8333 Ask SDR and we'll answer your question on the show. That's 8333 Ask SDR. For special deals on our books and training, head over to offers.chriscollinsinc.com now it's offers.com Chris Collinsinc.com I'm Chris Collins, and I'll see you in the next video.
