How To Increase R.O. Count During The Coronavirus Crisis (SDR Live)

Foreign.

Welcome, everybody, to Service Travel Revolution Live, the webinar. We're coming to you from the safe house in downtown Los Angeles. This is going to be very, very, very fun.

We are a family together. It's amazing how these sort of situations bring everybody together, make us a tighter community and, you know, make us help each other encourage that, you know, that sort of behavior, which is really, really special. The webcast today's gonna be amazing just for the fact that the team that I have, I'm always blown away by the talent that we. We have here. And we were talking the other day. We've been having morning calls every morning just to kind of stay on track. And we were talking about what some of our clients are doing and just the difference in attitudes, where you get on a coaching call with one client and they're like, here's what I'm doing. And then you get on with another client, and they're like, the sky is falling and they're a victim, and traffic is down. And I was like, man, we need to do a webcast where we kind of share the best practices with everybody of what's working out there and how managers are actually driving traffic even though traffic is down. It's interesting for us, being in hundreds of stores all over the US And Canada, that we actually have clients that are up, and then we have clients that are down. And the commonality between the ones that are up is attitude. They're going after it, they're attacking it. And as leaders, this is a time when you're really tested. You're tested to see which leader are you going to be. Are you going to be the leader that's going to sit and wait for traffic to die and wait for things to kind of fade away? Or are you going to play offense? Are you going to go after it? And even if you go after it in these times and you still are low in traffic, but you get clients you wouldn't have normally got, you're going to learn things that when this crisis is over, you're going to have tools in your toolbox that you didn't have before. I was sharing yesterday. Somebody asked me, like, how I'm doing, and I'm like, personally, I love this sort of stuff. I love a crisis. And I know it's weird, but I just push into pain. I think that it always makes me better. It's fascinating to witness human behavior. It's fascinating to, you know, study performance and how some leaders get ahead and other ones don't. And if you're Just standing back watching outcomes of behaviors, it becomes very, very obvious what the recipe to success is. And my, you know, my team will tell you too, is it's not that we're smarter than everybody else. It's that we get to be in so many stores and we get to watch what's working and what isn't and we pay attention and then that's the information that we share. But we're fans of performance. We're chasing the performance. So we, we try as much as we can to ignore non performance and really dial into performance. And as a company, my motto forever has been that we give away better content like we give away for free. Better content than our competition charges for. And it's been true. And that's what's going to happen today is the content that the coaches are going to share with you and Jeremy's going to share with you is, you know, you're going to want to take notes. Trust me, like get a pad of paper and a pencil and, and make sure that you're taking notes. Because if you just do two of the things that are going to be shared today, you'll be better than you were when you came on here. And that's always our goal is when you come to a coaching meeting, when you come to any of our trainings or online training, we want to leave you better than we got you. We want you to walk away with tools that you can go implement immediately and get results. That's always the goal. That's what we talk about. And, and so you're going to get a little insight into that today. If you are struggling right now and you're not in our family and you're outside and you have, you know, you're going through this, we're here for you. We will help you no matter what the situation. Just email infohriscollins Inc. And we'll figure out some sort of way to help you and bring you in to the family, whether it just be online trading or, or coaching, whatever it is. But we're here. And you don't want to be alone in these situations. You want to surround yourself with other people that are performing and have a good attitude because the news is bleak right now. It's death. It's sad. There's no way to ignore how serious this crisis is. And it's tough. It's really tough. And so you need friends that understand and that have a way to see through the light and be a positive influence because you can get depressed, you can get really sad if you're listening to the wrong stuff and you're not surrounded with a voice of reason and light. So if you find yourself alone, this is a great time to be training. It's a great time to be adding tools to your toolbox. We did a webcast on Saturday, which was amazing. The content was incredible. And Danny shared some great stuff that just, like, kind of fed to what Dr. Lau was saying. But it, you know, it completed the circle of how to protect your advisors and your teams during this. And we're going to put that up today on YouTube if you missed it. So that'll be up. Watch our YouTube channel for that. And.

I.

So we're gonna go through six different kind of themes here on how you can drive traffic right now. And the first one is what I was talking about, about leadership and really having a mindset that you're going to be a leader in this and not a victim. And Teddy Roosevelt has a quote that I love. He says, do what you can with what you have, where you are. Do what you can with what you have where you are. Where we are right now, we can't control. We can't control what's going on out there, but we can control how we approach it. Understand that as a leader, you're not this crisis. Leaders are the ones that navigate and figure out ways to perform and protect and get ahead and play offense instead of defense. That's our role. We're not the crisis. So don't see yourself as the victim. Don't see yourself as a crisis. You want to see yourself as a tool and implement to navigate the crisis. It's an obstacle course is what it is at the end of the day. And so you really want to separate your mindset in this that you're not. That you can't control, that it is what it is. You can only control what you can control. And so you can control how you go after your customers, the training that you do with your people. Getting really good at the fundamentals right now. A couple of things that kind of blew me away outside of our industry, but I think they can inspire us and touch on a couple things is there's this doctor here in Beverly Hills, Dr. Nancy, and she was referred to me by Matt Damon. She's a nutritionist. And I was having some issues and I was swollen. And he said, I recommend, you know, go to Dr. Nancy and see. And so I went to her. She's unbelievable. She figured out that I'm allergic to mushrooms and eggs. And because I'm a type O Negative. My blood type, the blood of God. I have the blood type where I can give blood to everybody else, but only my blood type can give blood to me. But that blood type has some weird quirks and one of them is that I'm allergic to mushrooms. And so when I stopped eating mushrooms, it kind of stopped. And then eggs, I can only eat eggs, you know, very, very infrequent or very infrequently. But she sent out an email yesterday that I just thought was amazing. And I think that everybody could adopt a tone like this in an email. So I'm not going to read it all, but. Dear Chris, like all of us, I've watched with concern as the pandemic unfolds, changes life around us. Our mission at Dr. Nancy is to help you look and feel your best. And seeing illness spread throughout the country is heartbreaking. As a doctor, business owner and wife, the pandemic has impacted every aspect of the world that I hold close and I've heard the same from many of you. It's also become clear that this impact will continue in months ahead. And I'd like to share our next steps as we forge into the new normal. Our office is open here and we're here to help you through this, especially if you need some help building a new retail routine. We've transitioned follow up appointments to telemedicine, video conferencing using Zoom, Skype or FaceTime with great feedback. And then she goes through that. She said at the end of this, she said, we also will come to you. So if you need any sort of. Because she does these drips like B12 and biotin that they will, they will actually come and do it in your home so you don't have to leave, which I thought like a doctor doing that is pretty incredible that she is sending her staff out to do it. And then the other one that I heard is somebody yesterday was saying they bought a peloton and I'm like, oh, you're buying something during this. And they're like, oh, it's zero interest and no payments for a while. So maybe Christian, that's an idea for you is, yeah, I don't think you have to pay until late summer or something. And zero interest because people are cooped up, they want to exercise, you can't go to the gym, so no payment. So I don't know that. And maybe we could help locate some financing companies that do that for service departments that would have zero interest, that sort of thing.

Yeah, there's definitely some options out there. For sure.

Maybe Jeremy, you know, a couple too that you could throw out there that do that. And I don't know if the financing companies right now are biting on that and they're doing zero interest, but it would be a cool thing to offer right now. And so that's my. I thought that Dr. Nancy letter was pretty motivating. So that's, number one is being a leader and number two is Dr. Chris here with his beautiful hair, has the number two. So we're just going to count down through the six of them and so I'll give you the floor. Chris, what's number two?

So number two is controlling the narrative and, you know, segueing from what you were talking about with leadership. One of the things that we've definitely noted, you know, with people who are coming into contact that are doing really well with this situation is they're controlling the narrative. So leaders that are, you know, stepping towards this crisis instead of stepping away from it, as you were alluding to, one of the things they're doing at a high level is controlling the narrative. So kind of the age old problem with customer service is the customer's perception, right? And a lot of times we say the customer's always right and there's truth to that. But what makes that true is not necessarily that the customer is right, that it's the customer's perception. And so, you know, perceptions, the definition of it basically is understanding through mental impressions. It's someone's understanding of something through mental impressions. That's their perception. Right. So whether they're right or wrong becomes irrelevant. Well, if you're forming a perception through mental impressions, those mental impressions are something that are called frames. And so our ability to tell a story about what's going on right now in the business that we're offering, if we can frame people the right way, we can create a good perception. So part of controlling the narrative right now is realizing that through this whole thing, your department, your business is going to be viewed one of three ways. And what I want for you to take from this and controlling the narrative is that there is a world that exists right now if you respond to this crisis in the right way, that you can be the hero in this story. And I think that's important because the other options are really to either be the victim in the story or even worse. If you're not controlling the narrative, if you're not going after certain things right now, you can even become the villain in the story for no fault of your own.

Yeah, there's trolls Right now. Right, Chris? We even got them for doing this webinar. People saying on there that you're trying to benefit from the coronavirus. And we're like, what are you talking about? We're losing tons of money during this. Like, it's a crisis. We're not benefiting. We're trying to build a community. But a lot of dealers are getting that feedback online because we're necessary and essential that service departments, dealerships are getting flack online because we're even open and they're saying it's dangerous. We have to change the narrative to know we're essential. We're here to help. Right, right.

And those mental impressions of our customers right now, we can, you know, we can frame that and tell a different story and have a different narrative. That's exactly it. So we want to control the narrative. And why this is important to you is you could be the hero in this story and not the victim. And even more, make sure you're not the villain. And so, you know, I want to go through a couple of things that can kind of help you with that and some tools you can use and things I want to make sure you're doing. Again, that we've seen is getting a very good response right now. So I thought it was really interesting. I was texting with one of my service managers this morning and he had texted me this definition of crisis. And in its origin in the Greek, crisis means to sift. And I thought that was really interesting that it means to sift. And as it kind of made its way into more of its modern day English meaning, we get it from a German term which alludes to midlife crisis. And what that kind of means is, you know, people, the Germans had a term like we do for midlife crisis, and it was not being on the wrong side of a closing gate. So there's a gate that's closing right now, and they don't want to be stuck on the wrong side of it.

I thought it was Steve buying the new Corvette and moving to Palm Springs.

Exactly. So he's trying to make those decisions as to which ones, you know which one's best.

But it couldn't be more true. And I'm not discounting the seriousness of the virus and taking precautions.

I'm actually speaking to not only observing all those, but letting your customers know that you're observing them. And we'll kind of go into that. But I thought it was really interesting. The definition of crisis is to be on the right side of a closing gate. And that's controlling the narrative.

Right.

That's, you know, stuff's being sifted right now and we're going to come out of this and there's people that are going to come out of it better than what they went into it, and there's people that not and are gonna be licking their wounds and trying to move on and lots of different.

Outcomes for this. But again, we want to realize we control more than we don't. And if we can control the narrative, there is a world that exists where we can come out on top of this. So again, we have been labeled an essential service and, and we want to.

Control the narrative as to why we're open. We want to be viewed by the public as a public servant during this time. So one story I heard recently that I thought was really good was a service manager reaching out to his customer base on Facebook and they were actively going to hospitals and first responder sites and delivering meals and letting them know that, hey, we too have been labeled as an essential service and we're staying open. So anything, you know, we want you to know we're here for you. During this time, they're doing a public service by taking meals out to the hospitals and the first responders and then letting them know that they're open, you know, to service their car and be of service any way they can as well. And by telling that story, you're controlling the narrative. You're showing them that you're open, but you're, you know, we're in it for the right reasons. And truly it's the best thing for our customers, for us to be there for them. And we can do it in a way where we're still observing all of the correct social distancing steps and disinfecting and all of those things. But all of that, you can tell that story on social media. So one of the things that's crazy right now is on social media, likes are up by 76%. Social media usage is up by 25%. So if you're not communicating with your customers on social media right now, you're missing out. So part of controlling the narrative right now for sure is taking all of these things that you're doing.

And communicating them to your customers on social media. You could not over communicate right now.

Yeah.

Are you sure that social media use isn't up because of my stupid jokes?

That has to be part of it, but I'm going to say it's only, only a portion of it.

But.

Traffic, if the narrative out there isn't Positive because people are afraid. They're afraid to do business. They're afraid to leave their house or apartment right now. And so we need to frame ourselves as an industry, as a department, as we're essential. We are here to help. And so, you know, doing things like saying we have discounts for health care workers, police, fire, and, you know, talking about all the things that we're doing to keep everybody safe on social media really is. Is the key, is we got to make the narrative that we're here to serve. You know, I saw somebody was delivering food to elderly, and so doing things like that, like if your team doesn't have a lot to do or you have a few people, like, find out how you can deliver food and put that on video. You know, the narrative out there about your. About your business needs to be that in times of crisis, we're the go to. We're here. And it transcends being more than car. This is more than fixing cars or trucks. This is us being human and taking care of the less fortunate, being good shepherds during this. That's the narrative that you want. If that isn't the narrative, and the narrative is we're trying to profit off of this and it's about us, then it's going to be really hard to drive traffic. And so understand that that's the secret there, is that you got to start with a narrative that is, we're essential, we're here to help, and so we don't. We're not the ones that are just trying to profit, if that. If that makes sense. Any. Anything else there, Chris, or is that.

Yeah, I think that kind of. Kind of sums it up. But if you're not controlling. If you are controlling the narrative, you have the opportunity to be the hero in the story. And if not, you know, at best, you're going to be the victim. At worst, you could become the villain in the school. So it's really, really important. Yeah. Control that narrative. And it's not intuitive right now to, you know.

Step outside your comfort zone during a time like this. It's way more intuitive and comfortable to kind of sit back and let it all pass. I've heard a lot of that right now that. Well, we're just. We're just kind of hanging tight and seeing where this goes. If that's what you're doing, you're. You're leaving it up to someone else to control the narrative.

Yeah. And. Okay, cool. Thanks, Chris. So, Mr. Steve, you're. You're next. The one thing we should talk about too, that feeds into yours is any makes and any models. Right. Opening up yourself and even like the narrative of going to local hospitals and saying, hey, anything you need, oil changes, whatever, because they're still driving back and forth, but they're working 12 hour days. Right. Your wife, Steve, is in this right now. How many hours a day is she working? She's a nurse.

Right.

12 hour days. Yeah.

So not having to worry about, we'll service your car while you're at the hospital working and doing any, you know, any makes and models. And maybe when it's Jeremy's turn, he can help dealerships with ideas of where they can get parts for that too, Jeremy, if you'd make a note of that. But yeah, helping the doctors and nurses and that sort of thing. Go ahead, Steve.

Yeah, so, and talking about that same thing we were talking about, you could contact the local hospital and try to see if you can get a hold of hr, whoever has that information for the employees to let them know that we're here for them and we can pick their cars up, we'll disinfect it before we take it back. One of the stories I was thinking about because you were saying, like you said, my wife is in the industry and she's a nurse here at the local hospital that we live at. And one of the things she was telling me is there's a lot of tension when they go to work. The people are worried about who's coming in and has Corona. Who's gonna get Corona. I don't want to take it home to my family. The rules are changing for the people that work there and what they have to do and how they have to deal with the.

Masks and disinfecting, all that stuff. And it made me think that we could be the people that are trying to help these people while they're trying to help us. Right. Like they're trying to do their part and they're doing a great job and we should thank them for that. What could we do to try to make sure we can be the people in the car business, that they don't have to worry about it for themselves.

Yeah. Also another part of that is giving them mats and steering wheel covers too. Right. Because nurses, they just want to get in their car, go home and shower, right?

Yeah. It's funny you say that because my wife, like, undresses before she hits the door in the garage because she's trying to take a shower before she sees any of us and she's disinfecting her car as she gets out with Lysol or whatever she has in her car to try to make sure that. That, you know, none of us catch anything or get something.

Yeah. So one thing you could do is help them with that, like giving them seat covers, steering wheel covers, bags to put their clothes in, things like that. Which, you know, once again, goes back to Chris, is on you. You're creating a narrative now that will drive traffic, right?

Yeah, that's a great point for sure. I love sea cover thing.

So then yours was about fleets, right? Going after fleets.

Yeah.

So we have a. We have a ton of guys that are making it happen, going after fleets, and they're doing that same thing you talked about earlier, where the message is, we'll do any make and model. We're here for you. We'll try to. We'll pick up. Just let us know what you need. We have people that are contacting, like, local business that are still essential. So delivery services, any kind of, you know, plumbers, anything like that, and say, hey, look, I know it's a hard time. I know you guys are having a hard time, but we're here to help you. If you need service on your cars, just let us know and we'll come. Come help you pick them up or do. Do whatever we need to try to help with that. I've had other ones that they're really going after, the municipalities, so police department, cities, fire departments, and they're really getting out of the box. Like, they're calling the mayor's office, they're emailing the mayor and they're saying, hey, look, we want to help the community. If you have stuff that you want us to do or you need help, please remember we're here for you. And if there's anybody else you think we should contact, please let us know. We'll be happy to do it for you.

Yeah. So I would put it on social media. I would say, hey, we're contacting the mayor's office, but anybody out there that needs us, police, fire, whatever it is, we're here, we'll come pick it up, whatever we can do, and then contact them and chase them. But put it out on social media, too, because they might. They might see it also. Like, we had a client that's getting work from Amazon. Right. Going after their fleets.

Yeah, yeah, that's. That's the kind of stuff we're talking about because they're all still essential and they're going to need that work. They're probably working more now, right?

Yeah.

That work and do deliveries and that Kind of thing. Yeah, I think we definitely have opportunity with that for sure.

The other thing to understand here is how we can help, if you really pay attention, is in some cities now, like, I think where. Where Victor is definitely in New York, the. The police and fire department are down 25% because they're sick, so their resources are dropping. So, you know, being able to pick, pick up, drop off, coordinate store vehicles for them, disinfecting, like, hey, if we're. If we're just charging to disinfect cars for them, like in trucks, like, that's. We're doing something right. Our technicians, we might need to learn a new. A new skill or whatever, but if it's necessary and it serves the community and the bigger cause, then we need to be flexible in what. In what we do. And then there's lists of fleet companies that you can get on, that administer fleets. Those would be companies to call also, right?

Yeah, yeah, I would definitely get on those. Where you get on. They can give you the information and they'll send you the cars and you do the estimates online, that whole thing. But, yeah, that's definitely, definitely somebody we should be contacting for sure.

How many Corona patients are at the hospital your wife's at?

I think right now there's 16.

So it's still in California. It's still pretty low.

Yeah, those are confirmed, but, you know, it takes a while for the test to come back, so they have a ton of tests out there that they're waiting for results for, but.

Hey, Chris, can I just. I have a finishing thought on this, if you don't mind. As far as all makes and models for the dealerships.

Yeah.

So it's interesting because, you know, we get branded and, you know, Chris, this goes to your part as well, as far as controlling the narrative when you look at your business identity. And what I've seen is a couple of things. I had a local Volkswagen dealer that I bought a personal car from, and then I had a customer who blew an engine and she needed to buy another car. And I had the model picked out, the stock number, everything. And last week I called and they said, no, we can't sell you a car. We're closed. And even though I know we have to be safe and we have to keep distance and stuff, why can't they sell a car right now? I mean, there's got to be a way to do that. And if you have a sales office's closed, sign on your doors at a dealership, you're taking all those leads and you're just basically slamming the door shut. So Chris is a great lead in to control the nerve.

We're open.

We're ready to help.

Let's do all that.

And then on the other side of that, what I've seen is I've seen a lot of European shops, specialty shops, and dealerships that are sending out a blast that says, hey, we will service all makes and models. And from a consumer standpoint, my mind goes to, okay, you guys are desperate now. So what I want to help you guys do is understand this. Look at the client mind when you send this thing out and you go from being a specialist and you flip it to, hey, now we're open to all makes, the models. You don't want it to come across as more of a desperation because we need car count. So one of the things that you could do and I went over to our local Dodge dealership and picked up a car the other day, yesterday, actually, and, you know, there's no conversation. That's kind of what I'm going to get into a little bit later on, is that car delivery is the moment to start to ask for these referrals and get things going. But if you're a dealership and you're gonna go after all makes and models, find your lead technician that has general automotive experience, get his ASC certificates out, and have him do a quick video that shares his experience about why he is an expert at servicing all makes and models. Because there is a craft to working on Toyotas, Hondas, BMWs, Mercedes, and all these different makes. Let's get your personality out. And like Chris said, control that narrative. And then to Steve's point, if you are going to open it up to all makes and models and not just throw a sign out there and saying, you do it.

Show.

Show them how you do it. And then if I was a service manager at a dealership, every car delivery, I would find out who brought that customer down, and I would run out and talk to that person in their car and ask them if they needed anything. Right now, I'd be super aggressive at keeping 6ft, but also getting in people's faces about getting that message out. Right? Because, you know, we've got to push play right now. We can't hit pause. And Christian, you told me that, I think, a couple weeks ago, and that has just stuck with me. When everybody else hits pause, we want to hit play and start running.

So, yeah, that's. That's good. David here also brought up a Good point, David McMillan, that local supermarkets, their people need their cars serviced. And that's a good, that's a good point too. That's awesome. And the thing too, I would say, about your tax, if they don't want to work on all makes and all makes models, I always use this analogy. I'm like, hey, if your wife's car needs something on it, what do you do? And they're like, oh, yeah, they'll do brakes on their wife's Toyota or whatever. But for some reason they get all dumb and they forget how to work on a car if it isn't a BMW or whatever. It's ridiculous.

Yeah. And most dealerships have a used car department. They've got a great used car technician, so they've already got that built in there.

Right.

It's all mental. It's just, it's excuses. Anything else, Steve?

Wrapping up, there was two quick points. Most of the guys are, they're really doing well, still are running some kind of true valet system. So they have either they have people that are support people that are going and picking up cars and delivering cars, but they're really, really focused on it. And it's weird. The one thing I do hear sometimes from other dealers is when I talk about that they're immediately going to the cut. They're like the person who doesn't want any, any contact and they don't want to be picked up. And I think the one thing is we got to keep our mindset on the majority, not the one exception. So on the majority, let's focus on the people that we can help and get them picked up instead of trying to find reasons why we can't. Because the managers that are really making it happen right now and are doing it, they're doing all these little things. And that's one of those things that I see consistently in all the dealers I've been trying to help is that they're all doing that. They're picking up cars and they're making it easy for customers.

Don't throw the baby out with the bathwater.

Yeah.

And then the other last thing was they're really focused now. It's kind of like the time to double down on training. So they're going back through the web training from us. They're going through and doing, you know, role playing and they're doing that stuff every day to get better now. So that when we finally do get to where it kind of releases again, we're already ready for it and we're, we're going to get, we're going to be ready for the pent up demand.

Yeah. This is a great time to practice. Great time to practice.

Awesome. Good job, Stevie. Thank you. Next. Christian.

Good morning. How are you? Good. So I don't know if you know this or not, but today is possibly one of the best holidays ever. It's April Fool's day. So research shows that April Fool's jokes are going to be down 64% this holiday. Apparently during a pandemic, it's not fun to joke about dying or losing your job.

Yeah.

So with that in mind, I feel like the only thing left to do is tell an April Fool's joke. So what is Mr. T's favorite month?

I don't know.

April Fools.

I love it. Little levity. Christian's always good for a little levity.

And these are the, these are the very clean jokes.

My kids are going to be saying that for like the next six months now. Thank you.

You should see the cutting room floor of the jokes.

Yeah. Thank goodness.

So what I want to talk about really is how to mine your database in terms of generating ros. And I think that the important thing to remember is that we have so much information in our shop's database that, that if we really sit and think about it, what's the opportunity? So let's say that on today's April 1st, so let's say on September 1st we generated 50 repair orders. And of those 50 repair orders, and let's say that most manufacturers are on six month intervals, right. So if you're Mercedes or BMW, Volkswagen, it's a little bit longer. But in general a lot of the manufacturers are pushing a six month interval. So if you go back and you generated 50 ROS, would 30 of those 50 be due for another? At least, at the very least, an oil change. Right. So if we look at the information that we've got, we know that, you know, we can help our clients with the cycle. And we also know that in times like now, they're probably not thinking about servicing their car. So I think that it's very okay for us to be proactive and reach out and it's something that we're, that we're not doing a good enough job at. But I would definitely have a process of how to contact the customer. So I kind of came up with a little list of what to do in this case. So what I would say is pull exactly six months to prior's, date of business, check history and make sure that the client hasn't come in, review the service recommendations and decline lines and then call the customer And I think that this phone call has to be.

It has to be from the heart, right. So the first thing that I want to make sure is, is all of our clients. Okay? Right. So I was having a conversation with one manager where, you know, they might be in an area where, you know, getting essential things like water, toilet paper or whatever isn't necessarily readily available. I mean, what's to say that as a dealership we can't help people out with that kind of stuff like that? The remembering that clients are humans first and then their clients after that. I always believe that, you know, karma and, and good things come to us when we're acting in the best interest. Right. It's way more about humankind as opposed to business. Then the thing I would say is if people are doing ready for service on their cars, let's make it easy for them, right? So the, the team has talked about valet and loaner rental cars, drop offs, whatever night drops, you know, inform the customer of what we're doing for precautionary measures, show videos if you need to, let them know what we're doing to honor social distancing while we're servicing the vehicles and being responsible during that. The next key is definitely that we need to exceed the expectations on the service. So this is the time to blow them away, to set the bar really hard for ourselves and then jump over the bar, right. And then I think the other thing I would want to make sure that we're doing is I would want to personalize the ending, right? So one of the things that sticks out to me is that I think personalized thank you cards from technicians and advisors is a huge thing for somebody to get in their car and see that little token of appreciation.

And that we really actually care about the client and everything like that. And just make sure that we're letting the customer know that we're there. And not only are we operating at normal, we're trying to go above and beyond what we typically do, right. And then the last thing I would expect you guys to do is let's set that next appointment, right? So I think it's really, really important that we get people on a cycle, right? And I always come back to this. I feel like I've said it a hundred times, but talking about dentist's office, right? What happens when you go into a dentist office and you have your checkup is you leave, you know, in the best dentist office, you're filling out a postcard, right. Of your next appointment date, your next appointment time. Now, do we Know six months in advance what we're going to be doing at 10am on September 9th? No, but we make an appointment and then we work around it. There's no reason we shouldn't be doing the same exact thing for our clients. Make it easy for them. Don't make them think about this stuff. But I think that the information that we need, we don't have to spend a penny on marketing because everything we need is in our own database. Right. So I think it's important for us to cultivate that. And I've seen a lot of people have luck doing it that way.

Yeah, that's good. Any other jokes?

Oh, gosh. I was going to tell you about this. Another pickup line that worked really, really well.

So you know how there's no I in team.

Yeah. Can't have virus without you and I. Oh, yeah. So that one, just to let you know, I'm scheduling out a little bit. I've got a New Year's date from that one in 2022.

That's awesome. Yeah. So the, the thing there, you guys, is to. Customers are still due for service. Right. But this is going to make them forget about that. So, so saying go like, who's due this month that normally would have come in that we serviced seven months ago or nine months ago or whatever the intervals are for the cars. And let's go to our database and let's touch them. And like Christian said, touch them with sincerity. How are you? Is everything okay? I know you probably aren't thinking about coming in, but your car is probably just sitting in the garage. Let us come get it, service it and bring it back.

Back.

And so going after, you know, the. All the information's there for you. You just got to mine it. That's all you have to do. Somebody was saying is, Mike, Herm Hermlin was saying, my GM wants to know, if you don't have the staff for pickup and delivery, how does it make sense to pick up and deliver maintenance? We have a strong advisor team that is running over 125 in RO advice. First of all, 125 and RO isn't strong. Second of all, go back and listen to the Brian Benstock episode of SDR where he talks about he's averaging what, 600 and something a ticket by going and picking up the cars. We gotta change in these times. Like, you're still. Mike, you're still trying to run things like they were three months ago. We're in a crisis. So you can't. You can't Use the same structure and system. System to get ahead. Right now, you got to be nimble. And so maybe people that you had fixing cars on the quick lube or whatever, they need to go pick up cars. Maybe you need to use Uber. There's a lot of different things that, that you can do, but you. You have to change your business model. You're saying, well, that doesn't work inside my business model. What do I do? Change the model. Change our thinking and change the model. That's the secret. If you go and pick up cars, your average one will be higher than 125. I guarantee it. If you pick up in the next month, if you pick up 100 cars and you run the average on it, I'll bet you money It's. It's over $200 easy, because the car is sitting there. They don't want to bring it back. They don't want to drive in. And you know, the other thing to keep in mind, you guys, is the people aren't buying new cars right now. Cars are getting older, so that if the average car was 11.8 years on the road, it'll be over 12 when this crisis is over. Those car. You know, Jeremy was saying that he was trying to send deals to dealerships and nobody will sell a car. Well, guess what? They're going to have to fix the car they have then. Right. And so they're going to spend a bunch of money on a car that isn't worth it. But now they're going to be vested in that car. And so, you know, you got to change the system more than more than anything else. Steve Lacy here says we are teaming up with other dealerships to get our makes and sell to get the VIN numbers for recalls. Yeah, that's something we're going to talk about in a minute.

Everybody's worried about you, Steve, that you're having a midlife crisis. That was just a joke. That was it. Steve is the. The joke in that, is that Steve's probably the last person that would have a midlife crisis. Christian would. Vicky would. Jeremy definitely would. Hokey wood. But Steve's kind of our rock.

He's just bought a Tesla.

Didn't me.

I'm still in the middle of mine.

Yeah, I don't know that a Tesla is a midlife crisis.

It's an environmentally conscious crisis. Yeah.

Okay, cool. Vickster, you're next. And somebody teed you up, right. With recalls.

Yeah. Thank you so much. So I just wanted to talk about a couple things that we know we should be doing and maybe we think we even more so don't have time to do but just a reminder out there. First thing I want to do is talk about recalls so it's perceived as a negative to have the recalls coming in. And one thing I always find interesting was when I'm reviewing a missed opportunities report with a service manager I can tell just by looking at the report which repair order was a recall because there's nothing recommended whatsoever on that. So just remember when we have these people coming in the door maybe they haven't come in for a while and we want to treat them as a welcome guest. We want to pet the dog as much as possible even if it's if it's a virtual pet the dog we want to make sure that we wow them for our service because what we do now they're going to remember if they need to come back and we want them to come back they're going to remember this. We also want to make sure that.