dealership operations / service
How to Successfully Mine Your
Service Drive for Sales
Bill Hamlin is a former dealer with 25 years of experience in
the automotive industry and a love for technology. He is the
founder of TEGA Technologies, an industry leader in marketing
and technology innovation.
WHamlin@tegatechnologies.com
T
he opportunity to sell
an additional 20 or
more vehicles a month
to customers coming through
your service drive each day
has become a reality for many
dealers. Are you one of them?
For years dealers have struggled to effectively buy and sell
vehicles in their service drive.
Dealers spend tens of thousands of dollars in advertising
trying to drive customers to
30
their showroom, while all but
ignoring the fact that they have
a steady stream of quality
traffic coming through their
service drive. That's crazy!
Let's compare two common
scenarios:
Scenario 1
Your salesperson is waiting for
a customer that they know
nothing about to walk into the
showroom to qualify them to
purchase a vehicle. Sound
familiar?
scenario, most dealers who
have tried this approach still fail.
Scenario 2
Your sales person receives a list
of service customers coming in
the next day, highlighting those
who have vehicle equity and are
in a good trade position. They
also receive a client information
sheet that identifies all the
necessary customer information
that would allow them to create
a selling strategy before the
customer arrives.
So why have dealers struggled
to capitalize on the single most
untapped opportunity
to increase a dealership's
profitability? The answer is
simple. Dealers have never
properly committed to
implementing a well-thoughtout plan supported with the
proper tools and support. At
best, dealers purchase the
latest and greatest data
mining tool to identify
customer's appointment
times and equity position
(scenario 2) and think that is
the solution, only to find little
to no increase in vehicle sales
out of the service drive. That's
You would think the second
scenario would be the solution
to effectively buying and selling
vehicles out of your service
drive. While it is a huge
improvement over the first