Tire Sales Tool To Boost Dealership’s Income

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Hey, welcome to this Friday's drive by on Service Drive Revolution. I'm Chris Collins. This is Chris Jones. Everyone, big announcement. Christian's growing a beard.

For those of you at home, it just grew more.

You know, most people are listening, not watching this.

That was my side models.

Yeah. And moving his head side to side. So this is your Friday drive by, and what we do is we answer your questions and should you be so inspired to call in and ask a question, we're going to go to the prize closet and send you some swag. T shirts, notebooks, pens. We got lots of stuff that's brand and service. Drive Revolution that will add to your collection and be fun to have around. Also, your question might inspire other people. So don't think like, oh, hey, my question's weird or different. There's probably somebody else out there with the same question. So you're helping others by, you know, posing some thoughtful questions. The number. Write this down. Get a pen really quick. If you're driving, pull over.

Do not do this while you're still driving.

Open the notes on your phone and the number is 8333. So 8333, ask SDR. 8333 ask SDR. That's how you call in and ask the question.

Yeah.

You know what's funny is I used to be really optimistic and I used to think that I used to even say this thing when I do training classes. I'd be like, the only stupid question is the one that's not asked. I've been proven wrong many times.

Sometimes people just ask stupid questions.

Yeah, but you got to make people feel comfortable.

Yeah, but I definitely agree with your thing about, like, if one person asks, there's almost always someone else in the room that has the same question. So it's good when someone asks.

All the people that call in don't make the show either. So it is what it is.

Oh, current events, too. I was going to tell you this. I don't know if you heard it or not. The inventor of the throat lozenge died recently. There will be no coffin at his funeral.

That's pretty good.

Thank you.

Just a little humor to lighten up the the Friday. Okay, let's listen to this week's question.

Hey, Chris, it's Mitch calling here. Question I have for the service driver revolution is our dealership seems to struggle with tire sales. We can't get people on board, whether it be a service advisor or even the sales department, on the importance of having tire sales and what it Will benefit down the road. Can you shed any light on any experiences you've had like this and how best to move past it? Thanks. Have a great day.

Okay, so one of the things that I would say just in general, as I think back to my career, I've had service advisors on my drive and then people that I've interviewed, mostly coming from the advisors that I've interviewed, coming from independents like your Firestone, your Goodyear, everything like that. The one thing that I notice is a difference on the selling side is that those people that come from the independent, they have a lot of confidence, they're really comfortable around the tires and just kind of remembering that the time to sell tires, I know this sounds crazy, is when tires are brand new. That's when you start to talk about it and have the conversation like you're introducing a customer to their tire and having a conversation about it. And when a car is brand new, the tires never look better than that day. So I think that having early and often conversations is probably the way to really spark tire sales. Obviously, that happens on a walk around and doing it interactively, as opposed to just administratively, is probably a really, really good little push down there. But as time goes on, mark our words that tire sales will be much, much more important than they were even 10 years ago. That's coming.

Yeah, because the cars are heavier and all that, especially electric cars. So I think, Mitch, that whatever you give energy to is going to, you know, grow. And we. There's a thing I talk about in the irreplaceable service manager, the book that I just threw across the room because.

It kept falling down off camera, unfortunately.

That you use the rule of five. And I say in there, five is good, 10 is better. So if you want to sell more tires, it isn't going to be one thing. It's going to be a bunch of different things. So things that just kind of come to mind is if you have a system in the drive that every customer coming in, the advisors are measuring the tires and riding that on the ro or on the walk around and you're documenting it. That's bringing. And the customers are there with the advisors when they're doing the walk around, not inside.

That's right.

So there's a little show and tell. You also could have the advisors ask a question when they're measuring the tires. Something about when's the last time you check the tire pressure? You know that they. We've said forever in our industry that you should check your tire pressure every time you fill up. Nobody does that, but you could bring that up. And so you're creating kind of a gap between what we should be doing and what we, what we are actually doing in the customer's mind. So creating a little doubt, little psychology. So giving it energy by measuring them always brings up tire sales. The other thing is putting it in all your marketing. Having tires out in the drive displayed good, better, best. So it's very effective to have your parts manager get, you know, a low end tire that's basically made out of concrete, it's like 1995. And then a really high end Pirelli that's like for an F1 and then a middle one which is where we want the customers to land. But doing a good, better, best in that sense.

Telling a story about tires and your marketing in a sense of, you know, personal stories about people that were stuck in a situation where they were surprised by a flat tire or the first snow or the rain and they slid all over.

Go.

You know, a story about somebody going on a road trip and not replacing their tires. Also alignment sales, recommending alignments is, you know, a fire starter or a tripwire to selling more, more tires. So you're marketing your parts department, displaying it like you could come up with 10 different things to give it energy that will create tire sales. But just don't expect that it's going to be one thing, that there's a magic pill. It needs to be a bunch of different things and it needs to be constant and continuous. So the rule of 5, 5 is good, 10 is better. And then consistency. Don't give up, don't let anybody else set the narrative. You're the leader in this situation. And so, you know, tired doubters, if there is such a thing, should not be controlling the narrative. You should be. So, you know, probably the number one part is making it a part of the walk around. Like, I don't know how many times we go into dealers and they're like talking about prices of tires at Costco and it really has nothing to do with your tire sells. You're just focused on the prices of tires at Costco and you think that you need to be competitive. But the truth is everybody coming in would rather have their tires done there and they'd pay a little more to save time. We're just not making it easy or we're not presenting it in a way that makes sense to them to do the tires. So that's what we need to focus on. It's not really, we're losing them to Costco. Because we're not pointing it out in time.

Yeah, I, I just think get comfortable with it. Is, is by far the, the easiest thing to do. So.

Yeah, and it is, you know, for the parts department is a little more work. You got to, you got to stock more, you know, you got to get them that same day. So you have to have some sort of relationship where if you don't have it, you can get it. The parts managers are going to do a little research if you want to do the good, better, best. But those things do pay off. And you know, if we're doing their tires, we're going to do their alignments, we're going to sell brakes, we're going to do other things. And so only good things come from selling more tires, as you probably understand because you're asking the question. So lots of energy create momentum and consistency and it will, it will start to flip. But I don't know how many times we've gone from selling very few tires to being the number one tire sales for that brand or, you know, in our market. Whatever it is, it's, it's an easy thing to do when you just give it massive energy in a bunch of different places. So thanks for your question, Mitch. Swag bag is on the way and we will see you guys next time on Service Drive Revolution.

Oh, that was fun.

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 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.

Sam.