Effective Service Operations Must Address Four Fundamentals

There are four fundamental areas where the average garage fails, says trainer Mac McGovern.
“Installers are not in the sales business,” says McGovern, who works for KYB America LLC. “They are technicians, turned garage owners, turned entrepreneurs. They are not in the sales business. And they are not in the parts business.”
Speaking at the 11th Annual AIA Aftermarket Forum in Canada that wraps up this afternoon, McGovern told the nearly 300 attendees from all sectors of the aftermarket that the installers are mistaken in this thinking.
“Some 50% of their gross sales are parts. But their goal is to replace as few of them as possible. They will drive with a part hanging off their car. They think their customer thinks that way. They think they are doing the customer a favour if they replace that part at the last possible second.”
Those are wrongheaded strategies that can be traced back to four areas missing from their business. He says most shops lack in four fundamental areas:
–A mission and a policy.
Nothing else matters.” I don’t care how many dollars they can make, if they don’t have a mission to sell that category, they won’t sell it,” says McGovern. “You have to tell the technician that the shop policy is to have the technician check for those service needs.”

–You need a way to identify worn parts.
“They know how to find failed parts. 98% of your customers do not know how to find worn parts. Do they teach road testing a vehicle? They get no training on when and how to replace worn parts.”

–Facts needed to justify a sale.
“We don’t have those, so we come up with words like ‘fried’, toasted, etc.”

–Communication tools and training.
Every part category should have some way of determining when it needs replacing. “Every time we do that the need for experience starts to drop. Whenever we give them the tools and procedures to do the job. Experience is nothing more than the time it takes it know what is worn and not worn.”
“Any program or solution you offer should include each of these four steps,” says McGovern