The 5 Unexpected Ways For You To Drive ROI In The Service Department (Service Drive Revolution)
Chris Collins and Jeremy O'Neal explain how service departments can boost profit by tracking profit per hour instead of gross revenue, investing in long-term programs like alignment checks and porter services, and hosting customer events like the Car Doctor Service Clinic to build trust and drive higher-ticket sales.
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Hey, guys. I hope you're having a great day and welcome to the big show. Jeremy o' Neal and I have put.
Together a great episode for you.
It's called the five unexpected ways for you to drive ROI in your service department. And a couple of them are going to be a surprise.
But before we get to that, I.
Want to read the comp winners from last month, and I want to talk a little bit about the 40% net to gross club. There's a little controversy in the comp, and if you don't know what the advisor manager comp is, it's something that we do for our coaching clients. We have the software that benchmarks all the service advisors against each other in different categories, like CP sales, total sales, customer satisfaction, something we called wild cars. Depending on the group, there's. There's five to six different categories, and each category is weighted exactly the same or equal. And then the managers win on their average advisor's performance in the competition. And then it's broken up into different groups depending on the brand. And so I want to read the winners from last month. I'm super excited.
We have.
We have a little bit of controversy with some of these nicknames, but we'll. We'll get right to it. So in the American comp, first place was the silent one from Chevy. Second place was the grand master. And for the advisors, first place in the American comp was uncle Rich. Good job, uncle Rich. And second place was Carlos bows. To me. Third place was C. John.
Fourth place was the closer.
And fifth place was the old guy.
Great job, you guys.
And in the Japanese comp, first place was chief Grady. And second place was Al Capone and the advisors, first place was Lucky Luciano. Second place was Thorny. Third place was Foster. Fourth place was that one guy. And fifth place was Babyface Nelson. In the highline comp, baby was. First place was the monster. And for the advisors, first place was beast mode. A little tribute to old seahawk Marshawn Lynch. Even though that advisor is in Chicago, he must be a Seahawks fan. Second place, Magic Mike. In third place is Rover dog. In the euro highline comp, first place is Monster. First place advisor is Amish gangster. Good job, Mitch. Second place is big mike. And third place is boss lady.
826.
And in the Canadian comp, first place is elite member Maverick. And first place advisor is Wolfman. And second place is Roadrunner. And in the Asian zing comp is.
Amanda is. Her nickname is captain. But you can't have top captain because there's an elite member that's been in the group for since he was og. He's one of the first managers in back when we had the Secret Service Society and his name's Captain. So Christian and I talked about it and we're gonna, we're gonna call you captain of the east Coast, Amanda. But great job with the performance of what you did. And then first place advisor is P. And second place is Ren Paulie. Great job to all the winners. And then I talked about a couple times about how at our top dog event we had all the managers come up and stand in front buy their net to gross. And 30% net to gross was a crowded field.
It was packed.
But there was only one manager at 50 and I think one at 40. And now we're starting to see managers creep up. And you know, my theory was the reason why is because we say you should be at 30% net to gross, so then you're at 30% net to gross. So I want to give an honorable mention to some managers that popped up into the 40% net to grow. So Maverick elite member Maverick. And he's, he's actually not new to the 40%. Al Capone, Northwest wizard and Ginger all are in the 40% net to gross club. And so congratulations you guys on a great month and a great job. Super proud of you. And now to the big show, the favorite show of nascar, the wide wide world of Sports, the Westminster Dog show and NASA.
Welcome everybody to service driver revolution. We are starting a revolution. No longer is service the forgotten about area of business, but it is now at the forefront because fixed absorption has never been more important. And so what we do is we take service managers that don't understand profitability, that haven't been trained, or the only training they've had is through the person that they worked through before. Kind of incestuous, I guess I would call it. Handed down ideas and systems that don't work and aren't scalable and basically get you working 75 hours a week, coming in, grabbing the cat by the tail, getting drug around all day, and then at the end of the day, you don't even know if you won or lost. And we're changing that. We're going to teach you systems that are scalable and that you can have fun and have a quality of life that you deserve, have the best trained advisors and teach you some magic. Because we have some magic. And that's, that's what this is about. So we're starting a revolution bringing service from the back to the front and making it the most important department because that's where the customer retention and the profitability really, really is. How's it going, Jared?
It's good.
Going great. You said you made a little comment before we went live here that this shirt brings out my eyes.
So I love the shade of blue that that shirt brings on your eyes. Whispering something romance we have going here. Yes.
Today we're going to talk about the five unexpected ways for you to drive ROI in the service department. I think these are unexpected, maybe things that you haven't thought about or if you have thought about. We're going to kind of hopefully give you a different twist on them and. And make you kind of see them from a different side of things. Have you done anything fun lately? Going anywhere fun?
Yeah, we're doing some snowboarding with the family. So 100 degrees down here in LA. It's. There's snow in the mountains. There's snow up there in them hills.
So I love how the holidays here, like when I first moved to California and people were putting Christmas tree lights on palm trees and you could literally swim in your pool on Christmas day.
Yeah. So our friends in the Midwest are gonna like, be envious of that. Yeah, absolutely. Yes.
You're freezing yourself to death and we're, you know, wearing shorts.
Yep.
And tank tops. But hey, it's a choice.
It is. Absolutely.
Don't move here because there's too many people here.
There are way too many people are. Stay where you're at. You're better.
You hate the traffic.
The traffic's horrible. Absolutely. Yeah. So doing some snowboarding, getting ready for the holidays, taking the kids up. What? My oldest is 15, middle's 12, daughter's 9. So they're growing up fast. And good quality family time out there. So that's what we do this time of year.
What's fun. Have you got Christmas shopping?
No, I haven't done that yet. No, I'm still trying to fill that void in my soul.
The void in your soul?
It's from a previous episode.
You know, it's interesting. Like, you. You make fun of that, but the.
Oh, wait, hold on. Should I put my feet up for this?
Yeah, you should get comfortable. We'll get you a pillow. We can fix all this, Jeremy. Trust me.
You know, so you first. You kind of like said that that void started when you were four, and then later you said that that's when your dad and mom split up. So there is something to four. You weren't just making that up.
Well, maybe they split up before that. But there. Maybe there was. I don't know.
When did they split up? How old were you?
I think it was a year old.
A year old when they split up? Yeah, I was two months when my dad left.
Don't remember much. I actually don't remember them together.
Oh, really?
Yeah, my brother does. I don't.
Is your brother older?
He's a year and a half older than me.
Older.
Yeah.
And so at what point did you realize that your parents weren't together? Like, would dad come visit?
Yeah, he was always there. I mean, back then, I don't think they did like court custody things. It was just kind of like, pick.
Up the kids, they're standing on the corner.
Yes. Yeah, exactly.
You're going to watch them?
You don't have them? Yeah, no, it's all good.
Things are ran a lot tighter nowadays.
Our guests don't want to hear about my.
Oh, they do though. They do. People are asking me all the time, what is wrong with Jeremy's soul?
Wow, I had no idea you had that.
Everywhere I go, people are like, you.
Gotta get, you gotta help Jeremy because he has, you know, he's doing crazy. He's snowboarding. He needs to act his age.
People say, no, I'm only 21.
What are the chances that you, like, break something snowboarding?
You don't think about that, you just break it. It's just part. I mean, so what are the chances of you slipping on an oil slick in the garage and you break your elbow? Like, I mean, the odds are the same.
Zero.
Zero. For those of you in the real world, it could happen.
Zero.
Why? Because you're fully OSHA compliant and you.
Have not oil resistant slips. I'm not on the. I'm not on the shop floor.
It's good. Hey, snowboarding's fun though. I mean, it's, it's, it's a great way to get some fresh air up in the mountains and spend quality time with your children. For me, what I love about it is the time on the chairlift because we get to actually communicate without screens. So those are things that I look for is how do I connect with my children in activities that don't require a screen or technology.
What does your wife say about the void in your soul? What is her opinion on that?
She's still trying to figure that out.
Yeah. So what does she say?
Well, I think the mystery of that is why she stayed married to me for 21 years.
Trying to fix you. Yeah, she's a fixer.
Yeah.
She wanted a Big project either.
She's accepted it by now.
So you think. How long have you ever made?
21 years.
Oh, yeah.
She's gonna correct me. I think it's only 20. So I'm in deep trouble. She watches.
When's your anniversary?
I don't know.
Come on. You don't know.
Okay, Google. No.
Siri.
Do you have a Google phone?
Yeah, I do. I'm one of those. It's August 22nd. I know. The day that we got married, I think it was 99. So we could do the math if we need to, but I don't know.
It's funny.
It is. Let's talk about profit.
The five unexpected ways to drive ROI in your service department. ROI is return on investment, everybody. In case that one escapes you. You haven't heard that term before?
Term. As well as service advisors, we talk about customers are always asking, you know, for discounts or is that the best you can do? You know, and we're talking sales. I think we don't bring up ROI enough into the investment in their vehicle. Right?
Yeah.
So ROI is huge. Like, taking care of your car is going to give you a good roi. And, you know, large tickets today are not that hard to sell because car prices are continually going up. This is the second year in a row that the new car payment average in the United states is over $500 a month. At $500 a month, that's a $6,000 repair bill paid off in 12 months. It's not a bad investment in your vehicle. So good roi, we're a good return on investment.
Do you know what ROL is?
R. No, I don't.
No.
What? Rol? Yeah. No. What is that?
I think so. When I had. I think it was Brian Benstock, when we had him on the show.
He said, rol, return on learning.
Oh, well, that's what we do, right?
Well, he was talking about it in context of they were going and picking up customers cars and they were using an app. And so they were running their shop 24 hours a day. And they would go get the cars, and while you were sleeping, they would service your car. And he. In the beginning, when they were testing it out, he's like, you know, a lot of it was Rol. It was return on learning. It wasn't ROI because they weren't making money on it yet because they hadn't executed it. He wanted to be ahead of the curve, you know, and it worked. Now it's working and he's got roi. But Rol sometimes comes first. Return on Learning.
It is.
And I think as we move forward with society and the shift that we're gonna see, I think you should budget a certain percentage of your profits for Rol. You can be ahead of that curve.
No, totally. Yeah. That's what he. Yeah, that's what he did. It's. Nobody else is thinking that way, so if you're thinking that way, it's gonna give you a huge advantage over everybody else.
So we were successful in getting you the Cracker Barrel, I think will be successful getting you either on a mountain bike or a snowboard in the next 12 months. Any takers on that?
I have a. Have a mountain bike, actually.
You do.
In the warehouse.
Do you ride it on the actual mountain trail or just paved streets of la?
You know what? So here's the true story. Is gonna be boring, and I apologize to everybody, but. So I had a client in the Bay Area who lived out kind of.
By.
What is it called up there, over the hill from San Francisco. Yeah, out there. But it wasn't Marin. It was, like.
Where Santana has his restaurant. What is it called? Something Creek. I don't know. Out there. Like, there's a mountain out there that everybody likes to mountain bike on. So when I would go up to visit this client, he was super into mountain bikes. So he owned a BMW dealership out there. And so I got a mountain bike that he helped me pick out. I got all the stuff, all the gear, and I would go. I would take it on the airplane for, like, 50 bucks. You can take an oversized bag. So I had a flight case for it.
Oh, my gosh.
You just take off the front wheel, and I would. You know, he tricked it out, suspension, the whole thing. And we would go riding. But the last two times I went riding with them, I had ticks on me. And so we'd do a tick check, and I had ticks. And once again, the fun of riding with him, just like you're crazy drifting or jumping out of a perfectly good airplane. The math didn't work for me. Like getting Lyme disease from a tick in the hour or hour and a half that we would mountain bike. Didn't. Didn't. The math didn't work. I didn't care for mountain biking as much as I didn't want to get Lyme disease.
I would completely agree with you on that. Absolutely. Which is why.
So I have a mountain bike, but I don't. I don't ride it. There's no chance you'll get me on a snowboard. I've done That I didn't like it. I spent the whole time on my butt with little 7 year old kids going by like just cutting.
Yeah, absolutely.
I'm too old for that. I don't need that.
So ticks like water. Luckily in Southern California we import all of our water so we don't get a lot of ticks where we ride up there. So maybe we'll get you up to Snow Summit this upcoming summer.
Oh, up there in the Bay Area, there were a lot of them.
A lot of ticks. Yes, absolutely.
And then the other thing about mountain biking is I'd break my chain a lot.
Really?
Yeah. And so then you're out there like fixing the chain or you get a flat tire. It's kind of a pain in the ass.
It's probably a reason you were breaking your chain.
I'm kind of bougie with that stuff is like, I'd want somebody there to fix that for me. Like, well, you know, I want to go riding with like bike mechanic.
You know what they have now? They, the E bikes are like all the rage right now. Right. So it's like that's cheating though. I totally agree with that. My son and I absolutely cannot stand E bikes. And we think we should ban them from all trails, everywhere. Like, what's the point? It's almost like a motorcycle. Right. So that's.
So we're just suggesting that I get one. Even though you want them banned?
Yeah. So then I could ban you from something. That would be really cool.
Yeah. No, no, I think that's funny. Downtown la. Like people on the scooters and the electric bikes. It's funny. I don't know.
Number one, here we go.
Five unexpected ways for you to drive ROI in your service department.
The first one is stop chasing gross and start chasing profits. So you have been lied to in our industry. That gross is how you get fixed absorption. And I have a video up on Chris Collins Inc. Dot com. If you go to Chris Collins Inc. Dot com and wait for like 30 seconds, there'll be a pop up. Opt into that and I'll send you a video explaining why fixed absorption is a house of cards. But for you to understand it right now is most of the time what happens is you're chasing gross. And to chase gross you chase traffic. And to chase traffic, you discount. And so you end up making less per hour of labor that you sell. And the secret is to understand how much profit you make for every hour of labor you sell, not to just have gross. And I speak to 20 group meetings and groups all the time. And most of the time their gross will be up a little bit and their expenses will be up more. Like the last group I spoke to, their gross was up 3% for this year and their expenses were up 15. So your expenses go up.
More than your gross goes up. And so stop chasing gross and start chasing profits and get, get educated on how you do that and how you, you know, the effective labor rate matters more than anything else. Learn pricing strategies and you know how to do that. But that's the first one.
Well, I think it's important to, for everybody to understand as well that we live in an age that you can drive whatever you want to your service base. So for instance, last weekend I made a comment in one of my classes that I don't do three o' clock oil changes. Just my shop's not set up for that. Right. So for me to staff to do a 3pm Oil change just doesn't work for us. It's not my business model. We're a repair shop. And so what I want is a broken car. I'd rather a customer come in at 3pm with a check engine line on that they want to resolve rather than an oil change. Now you can yell at me all you want about, well, Jeremy doesn't do oil changes at 3 o'. Clock. Well, it just doesn't work for me. It might work for your business, but for me to staff that the numbers just didn't work right. To have the space and take bay capability out when I can make 10 times the amount of money during that one hour doing a repair versus an oil change. So I think a lot of people don't, whether it's a dealership or independent. I think a lot of times we're just looking at the car count game. Right. We need so many cars. Well, what kind of cars do you want? What's the demographic of the car that you want? What years are your sweet spot? What repairs are your sweet spot? For instance, if you work on BMWs, doing the bushings and the suspension on that is probably a really profitable job. Well, how do you identify how to get that job in and duplicate it more? Right. So yeah, stop chasing the gross and start chasing profits. Find the profitable jobs. Find the profitable cars and target market those and get those in because we have the technology to do it these days. Right?
Yeah. Now I would say so you're saying that from the independent shop side of things because in a dealership, I think if somebody wanted to come in at 3 o' clock for an oil change, we would have the resources, and that's something that we should do. I think it's a little different business model, if that makes sense. I also think it's important for independent shops to know their lane.
Of course. Yes, absolutely.
Right. Like if you're a tire shop and it's tires and oil changes, know your lane. If you're a repair shop, know your lane.
Yeah. And I guess I should set the stage. You know, my shop is set up for. We have, you know, three technicians and basically five bays. So if we're doing repairs and we're doing a transmission in one and we're doing an engine in another and we have our diagnostic work going on, realistically, I'm not going to pull one of my technicians off of a job at 3 o' clock to have him do an oil change. The solution for me to do that.
I agree completely. I don't want to turn customers away, but at the same time, yeah, in a dealership, I would. I wrote service all day long. There wasn't. If a car came in, write the ticket. You've got the resources to get it done. So you just got to find the mix and balance of what is your business model and how do you cater to that? Because if I made a promise on a repair that it's going to be done by five and I don't have the resources to do that oil change. If I pull my guy off of that job, I'm breaking a promise. So just got to be careful with that.
Yeah.
Yep.
Number two is stop playing the short game. And by playing the short game, what I mean is that you are stepping over.
You know, $10 to pick up a dollar. Or what do they say? Stepping over a nickel to pick up a penny. What's that old hillbilly saying, you're stepping over a nickel to pick up a penny. Or. I don't know, but whatever. You're like, you're playing the short game in a lot of areas. So one area that this comes into, and I had this conversation in a coaching meeting the other day, is we were talking about selling alignments, and for some reason, this manager got stuck in the vortex of paying technicians to do alignment checks.
Okay?
So then he stopped doing that because he's like, I'm not going to pay technicians to do alignment checks. And I'm like, well, why not? And he goes, because I get tired of paying him. And I'm like, okay, well, here's the math on that, right? Like, how much does it cost you to pay a Tech to do an alignment check. So you're paying him 0.3. So what, it costs you like 15 bucks, 16 bucks? Not even that. Right. Nine bucks. Nine bucks, right. So you're paying the tech nine bucks to do an alignment check. Now, if you're only trying to sell it to customers that are 12 months or 12,000 miles, 80% of them are going to be out of alignment. In some areas it's going to be 100%, but let's say 80% are out of alignment. So you offer 10 customers to do an alignment, five of them say yes, and they do the alignment check, and one of them doesn't need it or whatever. Right. So you sold five alignments, basically, or four or five alignments for 500, 600 bucks. Depending on what your pricing is, it could be as high as seven. And you paid six bucks to do that.
If you do the math, I would pay for alignment checks all day.
Correct.
As long as you're consistent and you're offering it, would you pay 6 bucks to make, you know, 5, 600 bucks? Yes.
You would.
And to that point too, I think a lot of times we judge our success based off of a shorter window of success. So even. Yeah, the short game, Right, right, the short game, absolutely. So. Well, just because you did five alignment checks, now you have five customers who want the information. Right. They want to know, is their suspension in good shape, is their alignment in good shape? They care about protecting their tires. And if they do have these control arm bushings or things that are starting to wear, guess what might come back within 12 months. Now you could have a $2,000 strut job, control arm job, undercar work that comes back. But because you're so short sighted on that short game, you're not seeing the actual ROI on it.
Okay, so another one, Same sort of conversation, right? So competitive market in.
In Massachusetts, in the Boston area, Subaru store, and we were talking about how to get more traffic. And when there was this recall out for something, they were sending cars three hours away, they were sending porters to pick up the car because the recall paid like a thousand bucks.
Okay?
Now the average ticket is 1200 bucks in the shop, but they're no longer picking up cars because the recall's over and the comment was made, well, I'm not gonna go pick up oil changes. I'm like, but Your average ticket's 1200 bucks, right? Like, so you pick up the car a couple times. But if your average ticket is 1200 bucks, you're gonna win some. You're gonna lose some, but you're winning more than you're losing. And so we just get caught up in this weird thing where we're managing expenses so tight that we don't see the trees for the forest. And we're not really doing the math. So, you know, part of not playing the short game is actually why don't you do the math on some of these things before you decide you won't do them. Because I know in a lot of different departments I'll go pick up cars three hours away. I'll have a whole team of porters that pick up cars. We have a dealership here in Cochin in downtown LA that picks up most of their cars from Beverly Hills and Santa Monica and downtown just because they're not in a desirable area. And other ones that just want, you know, in Chicago you just want market share. And so you'll go, you know, from parts of Chicago to Indiana to pick up a car. But the average is there and we're winning. You know, like for example, in a Land Rover store we have five hours of ticket, we want the traffic, right. And so a lot of times we're chasing discounts. And really if you just had a team of porters and you went and picked up the cars and made it super easy for customers, you would end up winning in the end. Now you got to be consistent with the inspections and offering maintenance when they need it and all that to get that average up. But you know, Brian Benstock has proved, and if you haven't listened to that episode, go back and listen to it. But he's proven, and since then his numbers have gotten better since we did that episode. He's proven that going on the attack and playing offense is way better than playing defense. And so do the math.
Absolutely. Playing defensively, I have that down here in our notes. That's a great thought. Peter Drucker, one of the world's brightest management minds, says that the principal purpose of business is to create a customer. And that's more long term thinking, not necessarily to create a profit at that time, but to create a customer. And I think that's what Apple's done really well is they've identified their client base and they create customers that want their product. And you know, they just came out with a new 16 inch MacBook Pro. So Apple knows how to cater to their client base and deliver profits for the company. But I think they have a long term view on it.
So I think that's, I think it's interesting. Like I've seen A Tim Cook interview where he's like, we don't care if people upgrade, we just want them to stay in the ecosystem. They just want you in the App Store, right?
Absolutely.
That's where they want you because their profits, they're a services company now. That's how they see themselves. So that's where, that's where they want you. Now another example of playing the short game is in hiring advisors. So a lot of times.
I would say 80% of the time we go to coach somebody or fix the service department, you got to add advisors. If you don't have one more advisor than you think you need and you can't write a pay plan for advisors that makes it work and is the right percentage of gross and you don't understand that, then you're never going to get the additional people that are trying to come in. You're never going to get those walk ins, the phone calls. If you don't have one more advisor than you think you need, you're not going to exceed customers expectations. If you think that advisors can write 20 ROS a day and they're going to give more to the customers and spend more time and pet the dog and connect, you're playing the short game. You're crazy. It isn't going to happen. You know, you want advisors riding closer to 10 so they can take walk ins and they'll answer the phone and they have time to call people and sell work and that sort of thing. And so you know, they just like, they get this, this mindset where oh, we can't add another advisor but advisors should be a cost of sale. If you do the pay plan right, they're paying for themselves.
Yeah, I think, you know, I'm sitting here as an advisor, I'm a, wait a second, you're not at another person that's going to take away from my, my opportunity. But I, you know, I've been that advisor that wrote 30 cars a day and you're juggling all the balls and.
Realistically you're going to sell, you're going to have a better quality of life, you're going to sell more per customer and you know, once you get, if you're hooked on the heroin of the, of the RO account and you think you got to write 20, 25 a day, you're, you're missing a lot of work, a lot of opportunity slipping through your fingers.
Absolutely. I think with the race to the bottom in most industries with pricing especially for dealerships, there really isn't competition in the service department. I mean, dealerships are the authority. They've got the factory trained technicians, they've got all that. So if you deliver a better product and a better service experience, your pricing becomes irrelevant. Look what Disney does. Right. So one of the captions I put in some of our workbooks is learn to deliver such an amazing service experience that your pricing becomes irrelevant. And Disney raises their prices every single year, baby.
What do you, what do you pay for your annual pass at Disney? What is this scan?
Right.
And then what was the down like the General.
Yeah. So they, they get you monthly.
Yes.
So it's $200 a month. So that's what, $1,400 a year.
It goes up every.
When we took the elite group there and your sister's mother in law, who was a vice president there, walked us through. And one of the things that we learned that is everybody in Southern California that has that pass went, they couldn't handle it.
Right.
Because like, I don't know, it's something like a million people have it or something and they can only take 200,000 a day or something. It's crazy.
And they know their numbers and they adjust them like crazy.
And those numbers are wrong. But the numbers are crazy, right?
They are.
And so, so to your point, with.
That, adding that extra advisor could be raising the service experience that you deliver to your customers, but you can also then charge premium pricing for it as well.
Yeah. So they know that. Just like I was saying an episode ago, like I need to raise my price for speaking because I'm getting too many speaking gigs. So Disney knows that there's a lot of room there to move the price because they're still selling more than their capacity. They're still oversold on it. So you can keep raising the price. Right. So there's way more elasticity when you understand a pricing strategy, how to create a customer experience, and the psychology of getting customers to spend more money, it's pretty easy to understand. So I think that that's one that I see, and I don't know if you see it a lot, is just people play the short game. They don't do the math. They don't, they don't really have a system. And they're running so tight that they're missing so much opportunity they're not executing. And they're running so tight that they start failing in other areas too because they have no resources.
Yeah. And then when you start to play defensively, you take your eyes and your focus off of where you want to go and then you inevitably will attract that defensive thing that you're trying to avoid, which is a pullback in sales or a pullback in profit. So we always have to be focused on where we want to go and play offensively and make it happen.
Number three kind of comes in two parts. And I'd kind of be curious your thought on this, but the first part is you want to start remembering that customers want to buy an experience. They want experience more than they want anything. Right. And so the car doctor service clinic that we do.
Is an experience. So having the customers come in the shop, meet the technician, technicians put the cars in the air and they inspect them is an amazing way to get customers in that are, you know, let's say you take your customer list and it's on how you chop the list, Right. So let's say you say that the customers haven't been in in six months and they're out of warranty if it's a dealership, if it's an independent, not out of warranty, because they usually probably are anyways. And so they haven't been in in six months, they're out of warranty. And you send all those customers an invitation to an event with, you know, a handwritten letter, door prizes, all the stuff we teach you in the car doctor course to do, and get the customers in, have them meet the technician, put the car in the air, and do a visual inspection with them there. Most of the time. I think our record for one of those is we did 120,000 in sales that day. It's crazy. And then whenever we do them, about 120 will come back. Whatever you do that day, double will come back in the next couple months. Wow. And so that's a great way to drive ROI is to create an experience. Right. And those, those clinics end up being an excuse for you to have other vendors there to give away free details or free, you know, car wax or rental car coupons, whatever it is. Wine tasting, you know, nothing better than drinking some wine and looking at the bottom of your car.
Absolutely.
But whatever it is, you know, there's a lot, there's a lot of businesses in your community that want access to your database that will give away door prizes or gift things to put in your gift bag to wow the customers. And then, you know, in the psychology of how we do it is they're getting a gift bag when they come in. So there's that, you know, there's that exchange of we gave you something.
And, well, it's interesting when you look at the psychology of the sale behind this. Why are the numbers so high? And then I ask, how do we create this on a daily basis? Right. So if the Car Doctor Service Clinic works really well and it generates that revenue, what you've done is you've put the customer in a position of wanting to buy what we're offering rather than feeling like they're being sold.
Yeah. Total trust.
Absolutely.
Because they. It's like they're diagnosing it with the tech.
And the advisors can do that on a daily basis with every customer by creating that higher service experience and then really building trust and listening to the customer delivering something that they want. So, yeah, the Car Doctor Service Clinic.
What do you think about that one? As far as an independent? They could do it, right?
They can do it, absolutely.
Yeah. It's have an experience. Get a taco truck out there.
Yep. And there's, like you said, there's so many different ways you can connect with the grassroots of your community through other service providers or other businesses as well. Some of our shops do a teen driving clinic as well to teach the kids about their car.
Sounds dangerous.
I agree. That's why I carry helmets with me all the time. But I mean, think about that. How many cars are coming in that teenagers are driving that are under maintained and under serviced, and the opportunities that are there especially for parents to want to help take care of their kids as well, make sure they're driving safe vehicles. So, yeah, these clinics can work out great. And you have a client base that you're giving a ton of value to that wants to take care of their car. So you're definitely going to see the money ROI come back in.
Yeah. And just one last thing with that is if you do that, try to be aware of making.
Not making, fabricating scenarios where customers can take pictures that are shareable online. So get like baby lions there, baby penguins or something that they want to take a picture with that they can share because they become shareable. You can actually in those situations, have a photographer there taking the pictures, watermarking them with your logo and then sending them to them also. But those sort of things, like, it was interesting to me when I was in Miami that the guy who owns the.
