Every shop owner I know is constantly called by people trying to sell them the latest and greatest in marketing solutions. If you listen, the pitch sounds great. It sounds like you would be a fool not to sign up. As in life, not all things are created equal. If spinach tasted like pizza, then we would all be healthier. Listen, I’m not saying that some of the marketing companies aren’t great. They are. We use a lot of them and recommend them to our members.
The real problem is that none of them can do it ALL for you. There are things that YOU HAVE TO DO YOURSELF. These things take work, dedication and persistence. Right now, some of you are making that face. You know, the one you make after biting into a lemon. You cannot, as owners of the business, just sign away or pay away some responsibilities. If you want to get the most from your shop and your marketing dollars, then there are three things that YOU must do. Let’s listen to Head Coach George Zeeks explain the three.
Customer frequency reports
Let’s start with one of the basics, a Customer Frequency Report. For an automotive shop this is must-have information. While there are some companies out there that can generate this report for you, there is a way that you can gather some of the basic information yourself. It is nowhere as complete as a computer-generated product, but it can get you started in the right direction. Either way, you must look hard and long at the results and many shop owners don’t do that. If you have a company that is giving you the information, please spend the time to go through it and begin to make changes based on the information. Otherwise, you could just give the money you paid for it to the guy who wants to wash your window at the stoplight.
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Just in case you don’t have a company generating the report for you, I can give you some key things to look for. First, pull up the week from this time last year. Look at all the customers who came in this week last year and pull them up in your Point of Sale System. If you don’t have a Point of Sale System, then you are in danger of becoming the next buggy whip maker; you might want to keep reading. Then look at each customer and see how many times they have come in since last year. Have a notebook and write down each customer and next to it have columns for 0 visits, 1 visit, 2 visits and 3+ visits. If this is done week after week, you will begin to see what is really going on in your shop. Any customer who has not been back into the shop in 12 months you may have already lost. Think of every person who has ever come into your shop. If you still had every one of them, would you even have time to read this article?
Whether you generate the information yourself, or have a company do it for you, now it is time to follow up. You might want to give the customer a call. The only one who can tell you why they didn’t come back is the one that didn’t come back. Call them up, send a text, send an email or a postcard — but do something. You can recover a lot of these customers and that is way cheaper than trying to generate new ones. Have a plan and then follow it through. Tons of shops have gone out of business in the last 10 years; don’t be the next one. Do the work.
A phone log
The second key thing you must do — and no one can do this one for you — is to have a Phone Log. If you are spending any time, money or energy on marketing, then you must follow up and see what is causing people to call your shop. Anything else is a hope and a prayer. You have to track how people are finding your number. You have to know what is driving them to call you. Anyone can just throw money at a car count problem, but that still doesn’t guarantee results.
The Phone Log will let you know how many cars a day your front staff is handling. Is it causing a problem with getting the job done? Is it generating cars in the door? The phone is your lifeline and it needs to be treated with respect. A Phone Log, kept on every call, will track what is or is not coming in your door. It takes only seconds to write down a potential customer’s name, year, make and model, phone number, how they found you and make the appointment. Not only will this help you follow up on the no-shows, it lets you know how people found you. Then we can look at the different marketing that we are doing and see what is working. Then we take a hard look at who is actually showing up. Is there one marketing source that provides more people showing up than another? Do we have something that is creating phone calls but not people giving us the keys? As they say, talk is cheap… We need people to come in our door.
On the other hand, just suppose that we are getting a lot of calls but very few are showing up. Perhaps we need work on our phone skills? Selling starts at the phone, not when the customer walks in. Either way, this is information that you have to know.
Marketing Source Report
Finally, you must have a Marketing Source Report. Every customer who walks through the door must be asked how they found out about you. Every possible marketing source must be included. Did they find you from a friend? Are they a repeat customer? Was it a mailer, the Internet or a sign you had at a local baseball game? You must know. You are spending time you could have with your family. You are spending money that you could have gone to Graceland with. You have to know what is working and what is not. This is the only TRUE WAY to measure the success or failure of your marketing.
More important than that is: you must know how many are coming back a second time. The vast majority of shop owners NEVER track the SECOND VISIT! It’s great if they come in for the first time, but it tells so much more about your business if they come in a second time. Way too many shops get people to come in one time and they never see them again. The worst part is that they never even know that the customer did not come back. Don’t be that person that just doesn’t know. You are doomed to spend money without really knowing the results. We see a lot of internet/Google customers coming in one time and we never see them again. Why? Again, the only person who will tell you why they did not come back is the person who did not come back. You have to find out what happened and if there is anything YOU can do about it! You can’t do that unless you have the information. This is easy enough to do and is found in almost every Point of Sale System. The real key is how do you have yours set up? Does it track the right information?
If you would like a copy of the Marketing Source Report and the Phone Log, you can download a copy at www.ationlinetraining.com/2017-08 for a limited time.
