Driving Traffic in a Post-Pandemic World

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Welcome to our Friday drive by on Service Drive Revolution where we answer your questions. Please say hello to Christian.

Hello, everyone. Happy Friday.

Now, the way this works is you call in and we will answer your questions. It does end up that most of the questions are pertaining to service departments and the functionality of them, but we do get parts questions. We have yet to have relationship advice questions, but we do welcome your questions. Now, the number, get something to write with or put this in the notes on your phone. The number is 833-3-ASK SDR. So that's 833-3-ASK sdr. And if we do play your question on the show, we're going to send you a swag bag as a thank you for calling in. And remember your questions help everybody that is listening. I, I had a couple people after the Top Dog event who came up after and they were like, oh, I really wanted to ask Matt a question. I really wanted to ask Chase a question, but I was too embarrassed. You kind of got to understand that when you do ask a question, there's a ton of people out there that are going to be helped by that that maybe are too embarrassed to ask. Right.

You just got to be the one brave one that does it and it's worth it in the end.

So today we have a question. Let's play it.

Hey, guys. I listen to your show very faithfully. My name is Lisa. I'm from Angelson, Texas, which is a small town about, say, 45 minutes south of Houston. I work at a small independently owned auto group. My question is, what would be something that you would recommend that we do to drive traffic in this time? All of our rooftops are seeing anywhere from a 15 to 30% lag of customers coming off of the pandemic. Year 2020 actually was a really good year for our auto group up until around October, November of last year. So is there any good suggestions? We've tried ads, We've tried car shows. We've done several things. All of our stores have great CSI. We've tried doing 995 oil changes as a leader.

Other than putting on a gorilla suit and running out on the street and like flagging down traffic off the highway. Is there anything else that you have that you could share your wisdom in getting some traffic through these dealerships? I appreciate your time. You guys have a great day.

So the first thing, what do you think she means by listening safely?

Yeah. So I don't know. I'm going to assume that before she tunes in, she wraps her entire body in bubble wrap.

Well, it's safe because a lot of people get injured listening to our drive by.

We've had. We've had a couple of claims.

You think that she thinks that drive by means I could drive by shooting?

Yeah. So you know what's funny is that reminds me about shooting. So there was a shooting contest once.

Yeah. You didn't think I had a joke for this, did you? But yeah, of course. So there was a shooting contest once, and I remember going to and attending. And first prize was a trophy, and second prize was a Quesad Dos Artes tequila. And it got down to the end. There were two finalists and they had a shootout at the end. Very safe shootout, might I remind you. But they go and the first guy.

Goes up and they actually both shoot at the same time. So they get done with their shooting and then the first guy goes. The second guy is like, I'm sorry, I missed the target every time. I don't know what to tell you. And the second guy's like, well, I'm sorry too, because I just shot at your target and hit every time.

Sometimes second place is better than first place.

The first thing I would do to drive traffic into your service drive is I would get a gorilla suit.

Yeah, I think that she was headed that way.

Yeah, it's very effective.

I can't think of too many situations that can't be enhanced with the gorilla suit.

So when we, when we talk about traffic, there's a. There's a couple things. First thing is when everybody, whenever anybody's asking about traffic, usually what they need to do is improve their sales per customer, which ends up increasing your retention because you improve the customer experience. So let me, let me just put that out there. I've yet to ever go into a service department where, well, I gotta qualify new points. Yeah. So somebody's been awarded a new point's a little bit different. But on existing service departments, we get addicted to traffic and we think, oh, traffic's down, but you can increase your sales per customer easier than you can get new traffic. Then just on a global scale, we're not going to be able to go into detail on these. But this stuff is in our, in our on demand training is the first thing I would do is have some sort of retention VIP club to retain customers and then really understand that you're. You're not selling a commodity. And if your marketing is about the commodity, then you're probably very ineffective. And when you say, like, I've tried a 999 oil change as a loss Leader and it didn't work. Yeah, 999 doesn't work. 2995 works. 1795 works sometimes. But.

I only strategically would send those coupons to customers that hadn't been in and I would probably call customers that hadn't been in since their maintenance interval, which is, you know, different per, per car line. But I would have some sort of why haven't you been in for service special to get them back? But I wouldn't mass mail my, my database. But the, the bigger lesson here is you get, you get in a pickle if your marketing just comes down to the commodity of selling a coupon in a loss leader because most people aren't due for an oil change and if they are, they've probably gone somewhere else. So it's usually very ineffective. What we should do is have some sort of, you know, VIP program that retains customers and makes them feel like they would never go anywhere else. Because I identify with this business. And, you know, Apple's a good example of that. Like if Apple was running ads that were like hard drive space and ram, they would be competing with, you know, just other computer makers. Apple's selling lifestyle, they're selling identity. And so I think that that's the thing you're gonna need to go deep into understanding marketing because just doing coupons and mailers is usually very ineffective and it chase to the bottom.

Yeah, I was going to say I've got two steps to this. The first is if you're trying to get your traffic in, what can you do to make it as easy as humanly possible for them to come in? And I think the second thing is always thinking about what do they need today? Yeah.

And then maybe the last thing I would mention is a lot of departments are very successful at picking up, hence the.

Are you making it easy? Easy as possible. It's the same kind of thing.

Some, some sort of pickup. So thanks so much for the question. We will send you some swag. Would love just on the side to understand what you meant by you listen to the show safely.

My mind's wandering.

Yeah, there's so many, there's so many possibilities. But thanks and we'll see everybody next time on Service Drive Revolution. Thanks for watching this week's Drive By. I hope we gave you something to think about over the weekend. We're uploading new stuff every day, so make sure you subscribe and click the bel 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 that's offers.chriscollinsInc.com I'm Chris Collins and I'll see you in the next video.

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