Top tips for a successful Car Care Month
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National Car Care Month comes around every April (and in October for Fall Car Care Month, too). In talking with shops and distributors, we’ve come up with some tips and areas to focus on in your free events this year.
Be picky
Choose two or three products and focus on those during your events. Alan Mosher with UNI-SELECT, says by doing that, they can make drivers aware of these items and realize their importance to vehicle maintenance. One such item is filters. Whether you suggest cabin air filters, fuel filters or transmission filters, which some call “forgotten filters,” these easy sells can increase your business.
“One (item we promoted) was cabin air filters, which a lot of people didn’t realize existed in their vehicles,” Mosher says. “From the musty smell to the bad bacteria and everything else that’s involved in that, we actually educated them in the fact of what it does and what it means to them, the safety of the vehicle and the vehicle.”
Check out our listing of filters.
Flush it away
Bud Vollmer, owner of Vollmer Motors Sales in New Brighton, Pa., says flushing the cooling system or transmission system if the fluid is dirty is an easy thing to do during Car Care Month.
There are simple examples you can have out to show the difference between clean and dirty fluids to highlight the need for regular maintenance.
Check out these chemicals.
Light the way
After looking at the fluids, or even before, check all the lights on the vehicle. “Nobody checks their lights anymore. They’ve got headlights out, turn signals out,” Vollmer says.
Bob Pulverati, with Independent Garage Owners of North Carolina, says making sure the headlights are properly aligned also is an easy thing to do during Car Care Month.
Check out our lighting products.
Safey checks
Pulverati says Car Care Month is also a great time to educate your customers about safety recalls and Technical Service Bulletins (TSBs) on their vehicles.
“A lot of times people feel intimidated when they go to a shop and don’t want to ask questions. But in this format, people see there is no cost, there is not some kind of a catch to it,” he says. We aren’t trying to get them to sign on the dotted line, and we aren’t trying to sell to them.”
Check out our listings of recalls and TSBs.
Fueling the month
For the last few years, fuel prices and getting better fuel economy has been one of the first things shops focus on during Car Care Month events. Rich White, executive director of the Car Care Council, says this still can be looked at during the month.
“There are several factors converging here. You’ve got the gas prices creeping up higher, so there’s still gas prices at top of mind. And there’s vehicle maintenance that you can do that will improve your fuel efficiency,” White says.
This can be done with the tried-and-true methods we all know.
“At Car Care fairs at shops, they try to drill in today more than anything fuel mileage. You can achieve that by maintaining tire pressure, proper alignment, good air filter and doing maintenance tune-ups at the proper intervals,” Pulverati says. The other thing that they try to instill is an oil change for the longevity of the engine and in some cases depending on viscosity of oil,that could help with mileage also.”
Check out our fuel systems products.