What do your customers need from you now? Somewhere in your marketing plan, that is probably one of the most burning questions. I have noticed a few trends.
In my involvement with lots of shops as an instructor and as a board member of the Automotive Service Association (ASA), I have noticed a few trends.
Let's look at a couple of the more common behavioral changes I have seen.
Maybe they will give you some ideas
Cutting back to retain margins
While the media has been saying that people are fixing up their old cars instead of buying new cars, that is not exactly what we are seeing in repair shops.
We are seeing old cars alright, but when you suggest a laundry list of deferred maintenance, more than half the time you will not sell that whole list. Fact of the matter is a lot of folks are doing damage-control maintenance only. The most common shortsighted question is, "What is it going to take to get me by for X months?"
Vehicle owners either think that conditions will be better after X months or they expect future discretionary funds to service their vehicle down the road. This results in fewer labor hours sold and a need for more cars per technician to meet the same sales numbers.
Status quo technology
The other pervasive problem is that lack of investment in information technology may cause shops to lose relevance to their customers. I am not just talking about scan tools, although that is a big problem.
I called a shop the other day that did not have voicemail. The phone rang about 20 times before I hung up.
Product marketing plans
This past year saw a number of new products and suppliers that I would like to try to market to my customers on both the hot rod and general repair side of our business, but $5,000 buy-ins kill any desire I have to roll the dice on a new product or vendor.
History has shown that sometimes when you make the purchase, the company never calls again except to see if they can sell you more.
Creating a successful program that delivers ROI without forcing a business to neglect the other, already successful areas of their business is really your job. You are the focused expert in your product. The need to diversify services for repair shops may mean that some potentially great customers are the customers who do a lot of things well. They might take your product on if you can help with the marketing, generating profit and reducing the initial risk involved in working with your company.
So what can you do?
Demonstrate good business practices. If you provide customers information by e-mail, then you may have to encourage the holdouts to get an e-mail account. If catalogs are not printed anymore, then you will have to come up with ways to encourage folks to use your Web site.
If you work in efficient and responsible ways, your customers will recognize it or at least be forced to step up. Here is wishing you a successful year in 2010.