Service advisors can turn down a customer refusal into a future sale by scheduling appointments weeks ahead, aligning them with paydays, and using the "piggy bank" method: writing down the recommendation and following up later to keep the conversation open without pressure.
And then the last one, which I think is, is probably the most important one, is, you know, framing it with the customer. So if I offer— if I'm going through the inspection sheet with the customer and I'm like, you know, the car is due for this, it needs this, um, and I give, you know, I give them one kind of total at the end. And we teach this process in our advisor training. And the customer says, oh no, I can't do that. Then the thing that I will try to do right there is I will say, oh, okay. Um, can I make an appointment for this in the future? Do you want to do it in a month or two? So that's completely different than challenging their no. It's, it's taking them into the future. And now if the customer says, well, yeah, I get paid on this day, then I can start to create a plan for the customer, understanding their payday and, you know, what they have coming due. But also if they say, oh no, my brother-in-law Hoagie is going to do it for me. That teaches me something also, right? That they're, they're going to have somebody else do it or they're going to take it to a different shop. But they're more willing to tell me that when they don't feel confrontational or they don't feel challenged when I'm trying to make a future plan. Now, the other thing that I can say right there is I can say, um, you know, can I, can we book this out a couple months? And they're like, well, no, I need to think about it or whatever. Say, do you mind if I, uh, write this down and I follow up with you in 30 days? And that's the piggy bank, right? Like if I'm creating a piggy bank. But both, both of those, you know, approaches are very, very effective and non-confrontational. They, they feel like I'm trying to serve them and take care of them versus trying to just sell them something today. And the information that you will get and the feedback from the customer when you try to do that will be closer to the truth of what's really going on. They have another mechanic. They just can't afford it. That, you know, that sort of thing. And then you can work on it from there.
