Selling Service When Setting Appointments

Foreign.

To service, Drive Revolution and your Friday drive by. I'm Chris Collins and this is Papi Chulo or Hola, mi gente. His Christian name is Christian.

Yeah, a lot of creativity went into that.

Parents were real creative.

What's great about this is this is when we answer your questions now we know a lot of you feel like, hey, if I could just get an answer to that one question, I could set the world on fire. There's only one thing holding me back, and that's this question that I'm going to call 8333-ASK-SDR and I'm going to leave it on the, on the message. And then myself and Papi Chulo are going to answer it and it's going to set you free. And now all of your barriers, all of the things that are keeping you from being the best version of yourself are going to be eliminated by the answer.

You know what's funny there is that actually I thought you were saying all of your berries, and I'm like, man, what's Chris got against fruit?

But it's barriers, not berries. Yeah, if we weren't on zoom, the guys would be laughing at that.

But, yeah, the zoom is hard.

Shall we go to a question?

That's your, that's your favorite part is when you get a laugh from the crew. Like when caution, Kevin, laugh. You glow. You look like a pregnant lady, you know that? Like pregnant glow.

Oh, yeah, I've had it before.

Yeah, you get that. You so happy.

It is great to hear them.

Makes your day. Okay, what's the question this week?

Hey, I got a question for the shops out there that are booking the next appointment. When it comes to calling or setting that appointment up, have you had any experience on sending out the customer by text or by email saying their next appointment's coming up? Here's the services and some of the deferred work. Or is it better off just to wait till they get to the front counter and then.

Review their incoming repairs plus their deferred work at that time?

Whenever we are trying to sell customers or talk about declines or whatever, when they're calling or they're trying to schedule an appointment.

Gets lost in the translation. And so I've always just found that the. The straightest line is get them in. Let me give you another example of an abstract parallel experience I had was when I was running a sales department. You would think that salespeople would be really good at making appointments and getting customers to come in to test drive or buy a. Buy a car, right? Or A truck.

But when you put a bdc, a business development center in place, that their only job is to make appointments. They're paid on making appointments. They're bonused on making appointments. They're judged on making appointments. They keep their job by making appointments. Everything is just about getting them in.

Our, our closing ratios went crazy. And I think in hindsight, it's the same thing as if they want to come in, get them in and then let the advisor do all that when they're here. It's way easier to talk about that stuff face to face or in person than it is over text or having.

A BDC person or a receptionist trying to do that or software. Because, you know, even just the way we, we put things in the computer of what they're due for. Well, customer declined brakes. Was it front or rear? Customer had a leak. And it's this, well, you know, it's not just. And then what if the customer says, well, how much was that? And then, you know, so my experience is just get them in. And then, then it's the advisor's job to do it. And also the other thing I've seen, I have, we have somebody who used to be in our elite group who was really good at pre selling stuff, like really good at pre selling details and things like that. I would contend that you aren't always selling the customer what they need. They're spending $300 on a detail and they need, you know, I don't know, they need a tire or something. And it's, it's. It's always better to give the customer the, the most information that applies to their needs than trying to sell something before we understand their, you know, their needs. Same thing with diagnosis, right. Is like if a customer has a runability issue and all that, I don't know that I'd be selling them an alignment in an induction service up front. I would mention it and I would plant the seeds, but I don't think I would sell it until I know what they're, you know, what they're actually what they need. The other thing too, that drives me crazy is if you sell it, the technician will do those two things and come back and say it needs an engine.

And it's like we just did an induction service when we.

Yeah, that's a tragedy.

Customer up to the sales department for a new car. Right.

So there's a. I agree with all that stuff. The other thing that I really liked that the Rick was saying was that they're setting the next appointment. So when the Customer is in for their oil change. We're setting another one six months down the road. I've always been a really huge fan of that. And then, you know, it all depends on what your capability is. I've got stores that they'll do a text reminder at 30 days or an email at 30 days, a phone call a week before. Much to Chris's point, it was never selling anything. Was always about like let's make sure they know they're coming in. I think that the, the industry to model on that to me is always the dentist office. The dentist office does a really good job. When you go in for your cleaning, you set your next appointment six months down the road. And I think that that's something that we can learn from. And then, you know, again, the thing that kind of comes to my mind when we're trying to sell over the phone is, is I think the theory is we're trying to make it go faster and skip steps. But typically when it, when the customer comes in, the advisor either has to do a resell or make sure that everything was right. And the, one of the, the possible outcomes is that we tell somebody something on the phone, they come in thinking that's going to be the thing and then the advisor has to correct it, make it true. And then the advisor's the bad guy because maybe we told them it was 250 bucks for a brake job but the history says they need front and rear brakes with rotors. And so I agree it's just about getting to come in. We can do the rest when they're in front of us. But, but I love that. I love the tactic of setting the next appointment before they go.

We.

We open ourselves up for a chance to disappoint them. When people are trying to sell stuff that they don't know.

That's right.

It's always better to keep it, keep it simple. Awesome. Thanks for the question.

Remember numbers 8333.

Ask SDR. Papi Chulo is here at your service. Relationship advice.

Health advice, fitness.

Believe it.

Do a meal plan for you. I still need to call for a meal plan.

I can meal plan like the best of them.

So we're here. Thank you for that question and we'll see you 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 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 that's offers.chriscollinsInc.com I'm Chris Collins, and I'll see you in the next video.