The 250K Mile Maintenance Mindset: Mastering the Art of Vehicle Delivery [THA 475]

This is the Automotive Repair Podcast Network.

Everybody, Karm Capriotto, remarkable results, radio.

So glad to have you here.

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and authentic actionable content that directly addresses

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wonderful industry.

Glad to have you.

We're gonna do a part two of an episode

that we did with Arena and Brett.

I think just about three or four or five weeks ago

on 250,000 mile maintenance,

but we're gonna now do the episode

that we promised you on the delivery aspect of that.

And how does it all feel and look

when the customer comes to pick up their vehicle?

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Look at my panel.

I think you've seen them before,

been on the show a bunch of times, Brett Beechler,

CEO, Beechler's Tyron Automotive Center,

or as he says, the owner and culture leader at Beechler's.

Family owned since 51, that would be 75 years.

Rena Rena-Bomb is here.

Coach and consultant at Empowered Advisor.

At Empower, your advisor.com.

Did I get that right?

Yep.

So the last episode was Tonnell Academy 470.

We discussed leadership builds the plan for longevity

when you're discussing a 250 mile maintenance program

with your clients.

Therefore delivery is where the commitment is reinforced.

The vehicle delivery moment is not the end

of the transaction.

Don't ever think of it that way.

It's the continuance of a professional relationship

and a shared commitment for the vehicle's future.

Did I summarize that pretty good?

Perfect.

Podcast over.

Just kidding.

Let's go home.

I wouldn't do that to our listener.

Everyone wants to hear this.

Brett, one of the things that I love,

I've been to your place

and he's got this really beautiful, unique front end.

Those standalone kiosks and that to me,

that intimacy there, standing next to them

and becoming their advocate is in my mind,

one of the biggest keys in this delivery piece.

Well, you remove the phone.

You remove all the documents and the paperwork

that advisors, advocates are working on at their desk.

I mean, divorce them from all their activity

and they come out there with a computer

and they just talk to their client one-on-one.

Shoulder to shoulder if you want.

Gary Pontius is doing this in his shops.

I know I got this idea probably about 10, 15 years ago

from another shop and somewhere out west somewhere,

but I will never go back to a desk

that somebody walks up to and maybe slightly intimidated,

but there's definitely a disarming kind of an atmosphere

that comes about when you go into a pod

or into a pod like that or to a pod like that.

We love it.

I mean, we've had it 11 years.

We'll always have those pods.

You know, I gotta stand corrected.

I don't like the word kiosk, but I do like the word pod.

You just say a pod or is there a larger definition for that?

We just call it an advisor pod.

An advisor pod?

Boy, I like that.

Fewer syllables.

Have you seen a lot of them out there?

Advisor pods, Rena?

I'm starting to see more and more, but I don't know if Rena is.

I haven't, no, and so I'm curious.

So when a customer walks in,

do the customer walks up to the pod

and the advisor meets them there or?

Yeah, that's the design is that the advisor leaves their desk

and then they can leave.

If they're in the middle of something,

they can leave it right where it's at.

Their computer doesn't get disrupted

and they come out to the computer

and formally greet the client walking in the door

and everything, all the busyness is behind them

because I don't know how many times we had a desk like that.

I mean, we've been here 75 years.

We always had desk without the pods.

And so somebody would come up to the desk and you're distracted.

You got all this paperwork in front of you, it looks cluttered

and it just, you go out to the pod and it's clean

and nobody sees any whatever you got scattered all over your desk.

They're not distracted.

You're not distracted.

I would strongly suggest if anybody's ever thinking about

doing a remodel to their place, adding a pod or two.

And so what if all of the advisors are busy?

Do they say, I'll meet you at the pod?

Or what happens when everyone's busy?

My guys are so good that when somebody walks in the door

and if all three guys are on the phone,

they say, we'll be with you in just a second.

As long as people are acknowledged, they're pretty cool.

Now, if it's 28 minutes later when they get acknowledged

or when they get intercepted, then there's a problem.

But all of our guys are just really good at that.

When somebody walks in the door,

hey, we'll be with you in just a minute.

And people are, it's almost like a pressure relief valve

for people and it happens.

All three guys are on the phones.

They have three desks, we have three pods,

and they all have the respective pods they can come out to.

It just makes for a very, like almost like an inviting,

very warm atmosphere when somebody walks in.

Do customers feel like it's an organic place

for them to go as well?

Would do customers naturally gravitate towards the pod?

They do, because all three pods are kind of out front

with the exception of one.

It's right next to one of our advisors desks.

The three advisors desks are behind glass

and they're kind of working away.

But nobody ever, it's very rare you get somebody

that walks in the door and they're not acknowledged.

So I think that's 99% of the battle

when a client walks in a business is having them be acknowledged.

And we know that.

All of us know it's basics 101.

Do you need the three pods, say, in the morning

when a lot of people show up?

Yeah, we do our best to schedule appropriately.

I mean, we open at seven, you know, but we do,

but I've heard of a handful of shops that will say,

hey, you come in at 7.15, you come in at 7.30,

you come in at 7.45, you come in at eight.

But the problem with that in real world is

sometimes it doesn't work that way.

Like I got to be to work at 7.30,

like you might have three or four people

that have to be at work at eight o'clock

and they drop off between 7.40 and eight o'clock

and you just got to roll with them.

You got to take care of them the best you can.

So we have three guys on deck.

I have one guy on deck at 6.30, one's at seven,

one's at 7.15 and one's at 7.30.

My client experience rep comes in at 7.30.

So we have four people at 7.30.

So that's not necessarily an issue.

So I'm not necessarily thinking

that the entire 250K maintenance delivery program

happens at the end at delivery,

but it really happens up front

as you're attempting to explain, understand,

develop this plan.

But the delivery key is not the end of the relationship

and not the end of that may never see them again.

This is your chance to, if you will,

keep the marriage alive.

Yes.

So there's two distinct client drop-offs.

There's a night prior into the night drop box for us.

If that's the case, our guys switch gears

and then they say, hey, if you don't mind,

I'm gonna review preventative maintenance schedules,

see what Carfax says, see what you might be due for

and I'll send you an email and or a text saying,

hey, by the way, your car's coming in

for a check engine light.

It looks like you have about 105,000 miles on it.

These three items are due.

Let's do the check engine light testing.

Let's get the results, let's get you the estimate

and then let's talk about these other items

and your kind of plans for the car.

It really is about planning the seeds

and letting them know like, hey,

we're taking a big picture of you, your car,

not just your complaint today.

So that's one.

Number two is that drop-off,

which is in between the seven and eight in the morning.

That's the perfect time to talk to somebody about,

hey, by the way, it's in here for check engine light testing

or a noise testing, whatever the case may be.

You do the proper inbounding and by the way,

and then we turn around and show them the sheet

that we already have filled out night prior

and we say, by the way, I notice your car

is due for these three items

or we've already talked about it from the last visit.

Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, I forgot about that.

Thanks for reminding me.

Yeah, can we get the check engine light testing

and then what's the estimate on doing

those other three things?

Here's the estimate.

Okay, let me see, make sure my engine's not falling

on the bottom of the car

before I proceed on any of those three things.

Is that okay?

I know there's different psychological advantages

of saying no and yes and all that good stuff,

but you get them kind of saying like,

hey, think about this for a bit.

And once it percolates and you plant the seeds of saying,

hey, do you wanna keep your car a long time?

You ask the right questions, one or two questions.

You don't need to ask six or seven questions.

Rena knows this.

They walk away going, okay, I'm gonna be prepared

to whatever the results are in check engine light

and then the three preventative maintenance items.

Okay, we'll talk about it later.

When he calls me, we can kind of walk through this thing.

The problem is, is if you don't present these three items

at drop off either night before or in the morning,

guess what happens when one of Rena's guys calls up

and says, hey, the check engine light,

it needs a post oxygen sensor and oh, by the way,

there's three maintenance items we wanna talk about

and they're like, what are you talking about?

You never pre-qualified the lead.

You never made them warm up to it.

It's almost a cold lead at that point, not full cold.

You're still taking care of the car.

You can still switch gears a little bit,

but the key is telling them, explaining to them

at the beginning or on the phone call.

That's it.

It's not rocket science.

It's a muscle memory that everybody's gotta build up,

but it's super effective.

And then what you do is you start having guys

work on fewer cars every day.

You get down from six cars a day,

down to two or three cars a day,

or in the European world,

they're probably working on one car a day.

It works really, really well.

Yeah.

I have a shop that we brought this concept to the extreme

and the role that we have created in this shop

is the pre-appointment advisor.

So before any car shows up at the shop,

the customer gets a phone call

and that call is to like some of them,

they could be different,

but let's say that you're a repeat customer of the shop,

we might just be planting the seed.

Hey, you know, Karm, the last time that you were in,

I noticed that you had 85,000,

so you're probably about that 90,000 mile mark.

Instead of just scheduling you for the oil service,

we also want to keep in mind

that you're due for these additional items.

So we have that type of phone call.

And again, this is like maybe a day or two

before your appointment.

And then we also can be looking at,

like if you're also a repeat customer,

hey, the last time that you were in,

these were the items that we had talked to you about last time,

are you ready to schedule those for this appointment?

Then we have a brand new customer to us

or maybe somebody who hasn't been in in a while,

maybe like two years or more.

And that call goes a little bit differently.

So that one's gonna be like,

hey, Karm, this is your first time coming in.

And so we just wanted to be ready for your appointment.

And so what we would like to do

is if you have time right now,

I'd like to get either your VIN number

or your license plate number.

And I'm gonna go ahead and I'm gonna take the liberty

of looking up what is due

based off of the age and mileage of your vehicle.

And you might say to me,

I just really only have time for the oil change.

Okay, that's fine.

That's fine.

Yeah, no big deal.

But you might say, gosh, yeah,

I didn't even know that I was due for other things.

What are those things?

And then I'll say, well, I'm glad that you asked.

I'm gonna go ahead and I'm going to look up

what we can see about your vehicle and car facts.

I'm gonna use some other resources that we have

to determine what other needs you're going to have

at this age and mileage.

We don't have to sell them right now.

And this can just be a plant to seed,

but this might be like the customer saying,

gosh, I want to get it all done right now.

So whatever I need.

And then like you're saying, Brett,

of course we're not going to go forth

with all of these different maintenance services

if we find that the car has something bigger.

The technician will always start with the inspection first,

but why not have this stuff pre-sold?

Absolutely.

You're absolutely right.

If our advocates are not able to do that on a phone call

or it drop off, then you do need to establish

something like that to where you have somebody calling them.

Now I will say, I like the idea,

but I almost think you need to stay with the person

that you originally talked to because they call up

and they talk to Jeremiah and then suddenly

somebody from Beachlers two days out is going,

hey, I'm so-and-so, you're not gonna talk to me

when you drop your car off,

but I was just calling about these things.

Anyway, if it works, it works.

I'm all for that.

But I just think you have to be understanding

of like people and like, wait a minute,

I already developed rapport with Jeremiah.

Why am I talking to you now?

Yeah, I agree with you.

I think that there is that beautiful thing

of we buy from people that we like,

that we love, that we know, that we trust.

And so I agree, but we also,

there are ways that we can do it where I could say,

oh, hey, Brett, this is Rina calling from Rina's Auto Repair.

Jeremiah asked me to give you a call.

Yeah, you can tie it together.

You can still make it feel like Jeremiah's involved.

What I find is that shops are more likely to do

declined service or lost customer calls over this type of call.

And to me, this one is so much more proactive than,

hey, we haven't seen you in two years, where have you been?

I would rather call and make each appointment bigger

and better trying to find people

that we haven't talked to in a couple years.

I agree.

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I love the idea of keeping the team on the same page.

Brett, if you wanted to keep that singular advocate

speaking to that customer perpetually

or all the time since the previous call, I get that.

But I love the idea, hey, you were just talking to Brett,

this is Karm, I need to update you on my vehicle.

And that's the only way I think that you connect

with the client at the other end of the phone or text.

You don't want to interrupt the trust.

That's perfect world, the way I'm describing it,

but I will tell you, tomorrow on Tuesday,

we have 52 client contacts to make.

I will help these guys out tomorrow

because I'm leaving on a trip.

And I want to get them all done tomorrow.

We got a two hour window to get them done.

And my verbiage when I call is,

if it's Tyler's client that he talked to last time,

hey, Bob, this is Brett from Beachlers.

Tyler's kind of bogged up right now.

He asked me to help him out a little bit,

but he asked me to call you in specific.

Like a light bulb goes off inside their head.

Oh yeah, I do remember talking to Tyler last time.

Okay, go ahead, Brett.

Like you have permission to speak to me now.

And that system does work.

And so, Rena, you're absolutely 100% right.

I understand we're here talking about delivery,

but you just hit a really big important thing.

Rena, did you hear what he said?

We have 52 calls to make tomorrow.

I know, who are those,

like are those people that were in last week?

Those people that they were in last visit on an oil service

or say they came in in mid-January,

and one of my advocates said,

hey, are you okay if I call back next month

or this particular day or whatever the case may be?

And we can talk about scheduling in the tires.

Maybe the tires were 95% used at that point.

They didn't have it in their budget

to do it right then and there.

We have a system where we just go click, click,

and we go call up on this week.

And so, most of them are generated by an oil service,

is generated by 5,000 miles down the road,

and these people are popping up every single week.

Generally, like I said, between 50 to sometimes 85 clients

are contacted.

And like I said, last podcast,

if you're not doing it as a shop, figure out how to do it.

Even if it's a bunch of text messages that go out,

that's okay.

I've worked with Steer,

and Steer does it by time-based only.

The problem with that is,

and I said I will talk to your programmers

to kind of help change this,

but you've got to get mileage-based

because it's not fair if Rena drives 2,000 miles a month

and I drive 1,000 miles a month,

and we get the same time-based reminder,

it's not appropriate,

and people start discrediting that kind of information.

They're just like, whatever.

They're not even close to where I'm due.

They don't have it dialed in,

but I can tell you from anecdotal evidence,

I've talked to hundreds of clients that go,

how do you know that I'm almost due?

I'm like, well, the system's not dumb.

I don't say that to them,

but it's smart.

It figures out the miles you drive per month,

and then it calculates when you're going to be due.

And I say, anybody that does time-based,

you've got to switch to mileage-based.

It's not fair.

You should do time or miles, whichever comes first.

I have some clients that might use

a mobile super-synthetic 7,500-mile oil,

and they drive 3,000 miles a year,

and I say, but you still need to come and see us after a year

because that oil expires after a year.

This is my pride and joy having this system,

and I had a guy job-shadowing today.

I had him test pilot sending out texts

to customers who are due for only oil services.

We don't call those customers.

We text them, and they generally text back and say,

hey, can I get an oil change on Friday at 11.30?

Yep, done.

You want to make it as seamless as possible

for clients coming in the door.

And then tomorrow is a big day.

That's when we call our big preventative maintenance items

that are due, or tires requested permission to call.

What piece of software spits this out to you?

I am using Paul Stewart's AutoApp system.

You know, Paul, I'm sure very well.

He and I have been working with each other for about 14,

15 years on dialing this system in,

and he actually built his electronic preventative maintenance

system off of my paper system.

If Paul is listening, he keeps trying to get me

to go over to the electronic system, but I said, Paul,

there's nothing like putting a piece of paper

in front of a client and letting them touch and feel it

versus a screen on a computer to go,

hey, trust me on this, this is what you're doing,

and they can't walk away with it.

That's the only drawback.

I just brought it up on the screen.

You should watch this on video because we're showing

pictures of Brett's place and his great sheet,

which you do not want to electronefy.

You just want it to be paper, right?

I'm not saying don't electronefy it.

I love that word.

Is that in Webster's dictionary?

I think it's made something up.

But I'm not saying you shouldn't do it,

but it doesn't work in our system yet.

And maybe someday down the road it will,

I will continue to monitor this.

I'm not opposed to it.

I love technology and I love progression.

But when we can, generally we're doing about,

I don't know, 15 to 20, sometimes 30 of these a day.

And once they're established in our system there,

you can make them and I kid you not

in probably 120 seconds.

It takes no time whatsoever.

And, but the key is you've got to be diligent

in documenting all of the services the first time,

and then you can build it from there quite easily.

I'm not telling people not to electronefy it

because I have friends in the business that do it that way,

but the problem is this is almost like a,

you know how humans like to have paper checklists?

We do.

Whether we like it or not,

we like to have paper checklists.

The problem is you remove that paper off my advisors

or advocates desks, it doesn't get executed

the way it does with having these pieces of paper

or these blank pieces of paper that just becomes art.

And it doesn't get completed like it should.

It's just the way it is.

I can't explain it.

I don't know what psychology is behind it,

but when they got a piece of paper

and they go check, check, check,

and they got like my guys have four or six of them

sitting on their desk right now for tomorrow.

They're all prepped and ready to go.

Rina, can we change the world?

I think we can.

You know what I think that is,

is what I'm hearing from Brett

and what I'm hearing from a lot of other shop owners

right now is it's,

we're kind of going back to the simple,

back to the basics,

back to like the checklists

and back to like phone calls.

And I think that technology is amazing and beautiful

and it has helped us,

but I think that just having the simple things.

I think what's happened is we've become numb

to texting on our phones,

like marketing and things like that.

Like, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Political, all the stuff we just, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Oh, it's kind of refreshing to go,

hey, Brett, how you doing?

What's going on?

I haven't talked to you for five months.

Hey, you know, and just keeping that rapport on.

Well, these phone calls,

I can't put a price tag on it.

Yes, I probably could.

I could probably track these things really, really closely,

but sometimes, you know,

eight out of 10 times you're leaving a message.

It's kind of a marketing message.

Hey, how you doing, Bob?

Hunting's going, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

And they may call back in three weeks.

It's kind of ambiguous sometimes,

like, how do you measure this kind of stuff?

But we're still keeping in contact with them.

I can actually put a price tag on it,

because we did have some shops,

and look, I love the ability to have customers

authorize electronically.

But the idea that we went full electronic with our clients,

where we weren't picking up the phone and calling them

and saying, hey, you know,

I wanted to talk to you about what we found

on your vehicle today.

We were just doing it all electronically.

We actually watched shops dip two, three,

four hundred dollars in their average ticket.

I totally and utterly agree.

I looked at the system that does it all electronically,

and I just couldn't warm up to the fact that

it's almost like in the social media world

where people hide behind their keyboard

and they battle with their keyboard,

but they can't have a nose-to-nose eyeball-to-eyeball

conversation with people and just say,

can we just talk this out?

Instead, they become almost meaner behind their keyboard,

and I kind of feel like my advisors,

my advocates, it might happen to them

if they're just gonna spit out these $2,000 estimates

and go, I don't know, let's drop the bomb,

let's see if they take anything.

You still have to talk people through some things

to whatever degree it is.

You still have to have human connection

and human conversation.

I don't mean to sound like this,

but make them feel better about what they're doing.

There has to be some analytical items that go with that too,

but you gotta make them feel better about what they're doing.

Keyboard warriors is what you're looking for,

those keyboard warriors.

I wanna make a comment on telephone.

I really recently had to call a doctor

to get a scheduled appointment.

And I have to tell you,

the people at the other end of the phone,

they were so nice and so gracious

and to your point, Brett,

it's almost like the world of professionalism

is stopping and saying, listen,

if they want a text relationship, fine,

but the people that want a voice,

a personal, the right pentameter in their voice,

I mean, excitement, a little personality coming out,

and you end up hanging up the phone and says, wow,

you start saying to yourself, wow, that was nice.

But you say that's gonna be a good experience.

When I see them, that's gonna be a good experience.

It's interesting, I think, Karm,

you saw when I did the,

what image does your phones at your shop create

for your shop, what's the image?

When your advisors answer the phone

and they sound pleasant, happy to help,

the customers create this,

they start to create a mental image

of what is that visit gonna look like for me.

It's gonna be pleasant, I'm gonna walk in,

they're probably gonna be smiling,

and well, this is gonna be nice,

so I'm excited to see them.

Have your advocates become phone Picasso's,

is what I say.

Oh my God, I love that.

It really is, like you're painting a picture

of what they're imagining when you walk in the door.

Uh-oh, Karm's writing it down.

I gotta write it down, the phone Picasso.

Not pistachio, Picasso.

I got it, Picasso, yes.

Picasso, pistachio.

I mean, I wanna talk about one of your great talking points

about how to help the customer out

with any funding that they may need.

It's tax return time coming up.

We've got things that this individual needs.

Is it more at the point of delivery?

Is it more at the point of getting the ticket in process?

You know, I think it depends

on when that conversation happens

that you now can approach the customer.

So some customers are gonna come in

and they're gonna say,

hey, they're gonna lead with that.

I only have time or money for this service today,

and so you'll know that.

I don't approach the customer any differently

knowing that they tell me

that they have a certain amount of time or money,

meaning that I'm not going to tell them anything different

about their car.

So if you came in and said,

I have a million dollars and I wanna spend it all today,

I'm not gonna treat that customer any differently

than somebody that says,

I only have $100 in one hour to spend with you.

You're going to get the same service from me.

I'm going to tell you the same things

about your vehicle, what it needs.

However, if I am going over your needs with you

and you tell me, gosh, Rina, you know,

I'm gonna be getting a tax return coming up here.

This is when I'm going to wanna invest in the car.

Well, we should make that appointment.

So when you're leaving my shop,

my goal is that you always know

what you're going to do the next time that you come in.

You should have an idea

of how much you're going to spend next time,

what the visit it's going to include,

how long it's going to be.

That is what an exceptional service advisor does,

is we don't look at your car today,

we look at the life cycle of your car.

This is how long you wanna keep this car on the road.

This is what you wanna get out of this car.

This is how you budget and I'm gonna help you with that.

So I am going to help you create a tailored approach

to your car needs based off of what your budget is,

if it's time or if it's money.

If you have a customer that uses their car every single day

because they are a driving salesman or something, right?

They can only bring their car in to my shop

for two hours at a time.

Well, every time they come in,

I need to make sure that my technician is ready

to hammer out two hours worth of work

every time that that person comes in.

On exactly what you're saying,

the key on what you're saying is,

say somebody comes out with a $2,000 estimate.

You've gotta walk them through things,

like if somebody comes in and says,

you got leaking hydraulic fluid out of your struts.

You and I know what that means,

Karm, you know what that means.

But the average client doesn't know what that means.

You don't have to do those today, correct.

But it will have an adverse effect on your ride

and the wear on your tires.

And I always say, do you know what fish scales feel like?

And they're like, yeah.

I said, that's what will happen to your tires

if you let this go too long.

Yes, you don't have to do it today.

You're correct, 100%.

I'm not gonna let you go and make it like

your wheels are gonna fall off your car,

you're 100% correct.

But you always try to kinda educate them

through the whole process.

And the more you can educate,

the more they're gonna trust you,

the builder rapport,

you can say, yeah, we can do the 60 days down the road.

That's not an issue, it won't be a problem.

Again, you're trying to make them feel better.

That's it with their decision-making.

Let us help you in your budgeting needs.

Everything that I hear you saying

and everything that I believe with the future

of service advising or a client advocate training is going

is creating, if you will, the phone Picasso to your point,

but an individual who wants to hang their hat

on your doorknob for all of your,

basically, listen, I got struts that are leaking.

You know, that job is not to give you this greatest ride,

but that does ultimately happen.

But if that vehicle doesn't touch the road,

it's going to affect your stopping ability.

And that's one thing you don't wanna.

And so when you explain these,

in fact, I think, tell me I'm right or wrong.

Are we not explaining to people how this thing works

and how it can go bad and how it actually wears out?

Or are we just assuming they don't wanna spend any money?

So I'm not gonna bother.

I mean, we have an obligation to explain the consequences.

We're educators and you should know what will happen

if you choose to not replace those shocks or struts.

And sure, you're gonna be fine.

Like you're gonna be able to leave here

and your car's gonna drive the way

that it did when it drove in here.

However, it's going to cost them,

the longer you wait on those shocks or struts,

the more expensive it's going to be down the road.

We're saving you money by fixing them now.

There isn't a repair or a maintenance item

that if you wait on it, it gets cheaper.

Those things only get more expensive.

The longer you wait, the more expensive everything gets.

If that customer says, look, I don't want to do this today,

I don't have the money or the time,

then I ask for the appointment.

When would you like to get this on the schedule then

and we can book it now?

If the customer says, look, I really don't know,

well then what I do is I schedule a phone call with them.

Then my next step would be,

is it okay if I call you in 60 days to check in

and see if you're ready now?

So now I don't have a cold call,

now I have a pretty warm call

where I'm calling the customer and saying, hey, Carm,

I told you that I was gonna give you a call in 60 days

to check on those shocks and struts,

are you ready to do them?

And if it's what month is it that they do specials on those,

is it like March or something like that?

It's always spring, yeah, it's always spring.

Is it spring?

Yeah, it is, it is.

By the way, oh, see, you're in California,

you don't know what spring is, see, I know.

I'm in Buffalo, I know what spring is.

It's 51 and raining.

Oh, you poor thing.

I know.

We may not have a spring this year

because Lake Erie's 98% frozen.

Oh.

That's my problem, not yours.

How do you, as, Brent is a shop owner,

Rena as excellent educator in our industry,

how do we ensure that the consistency is excellent

in everything that we do when it comes to

not only delivering but inbounding our client

in a new, brilliant, bright system?

It has to be the shop's process.

Yeah.

Or you flick the advisors in the back of the year

when they don't get it right.

I'm just kidding, I'm kidding.

But when you say get it right,

it means your shop has a process.

You know that as an advisor,

this is what you're required to do.

And so you have to have it in writing.

And I think the best way that I help shops come

is we go in and we listen to each other,

make these calls, and then we make sure

that everybody's doing it in the same way.

So that's like one of the things we do

is when we have shops that make whatever type of phone

call, decline service loss customer,

a reminder call, a thank you call, a sales call,

price shop or whatever call.

We go in and we listen to the way

that each person at the shop makes the call

and then we create a process

and then we have them listen to each other

to make sure that they're all saying

and doing the same thing.

So a lot of shops, you will find that

it's like almost little mini businesses.

Everybody kind of does it their own way.

Instead of having this is the shop's way.

This is ABC auto repairs way.

This is the way that advisor A does it.

This is the way advisor B does it

because the shop doesn't have a way.

So your shop has to have,

it has to be part of your culture.

You cannot wish for consistency, can you?

You have to manage it.

There is no wishing, I would 100% agree with you.

Yeah.

And to me, I don't know guys,

just chatting with you

and so many other people in the industry,

I just see that this is one of the most singular,

important areas of concentration

and focus in our entire organization, that front counter.

It's been 15 plus years since I've been an advisor,

but the shop that I worked at

when I was a service advisor,

the shop owner had a little cup of toothbrushes

that sat at my desk.

And on it, it said, ask me why this is here.

And I hated that thing.

And he said, well, if you don't want it here, Reena,

then you need to ask for your exit appointments.

So that was the way that he got,

cause everyone would say to me,

why do you have toothbrushes?

Cause I'm supposed to be asking you

for your next appointment.

It was so embarrassing.

It's so-

Robot, robot.

It was horrible.

But it did, it made me do it

because I didn't want this stupid thing of toothbrushes

on my, it ruined the vibe of my desk, you know?

But it's brilliant.

But why can't we just take one toothbrush,

tape it across the computer terminal, right?

And then start telling the dentist's story.

You can't get out of a chair unless you're scheduled

the next cleaning period.

So what he did is it just encouraged me

to find the reasons why everybody

needed the next appointment, you know?

And most of our customers go over on their oil changes.

And so it became really easy for me.

And also I worked at a shop

that we were booked out a minimum of two weeks.

And so I would say, hey,

so that you don't miss your next appointment,

I'm gonna go ahead and schedule you.

Can we do this date?

What are you thinking?

I love that.

Oh my God.

Guys, I'm sorry, my mind's going a mile a minute.

The whole toothbrush idea.

Every time I leave, I get a toothbrush.

You get floss, you get a toothbrush,

you get a little card that says when the next stand time is.

And you get toothpaste.

Why aren't we at our counters giving away

a singular toothbrush in a case, right?

All bubble wrapped up and telling clients,

well, what's this?

Well, you know, and then tell them the dentist story.

It's in their hands.

If they're good hygienists and they want their teeth to last,

like they want their car to last.

I love that.

Listen to this marketing genius.

Right?

Listen, we're giving them water.

We're doing coffees and cookies and all this stuff.

Why don't we give them a toothbrush

unless they're already,

they may just come in and say,

you listen, I am here three or four times a year,

but I need a toothbrush.

Give them the toothbrush.

Yeah, I love that idea.

Am I crazy, Brad?

No, you're making my wheels turn.

This is what the show has been about

for almost 11 years coming up in another month,

is that we get together and we spin these ideas

all over the place.

Well, that's part of our line.

I mean, I sent that into you.

That's part of our line is,

you always want to get people thinking like,

because you're making them uncomfortable in an auto shop

for the first time, if you say,

hey, you're ready to schedule your next appointment.

So what we do is we tie it together with the dentist

and we say, hey, we do a lot like the dentist

and pre-schedule, we do it because of this.

You don't have to wait two weeks to get in,

like Rena's saying, get your appointment now.

If we schedule this far in advance,

we can reserve a loaner vehicle for you.

At that time, you probably won't get a loaner two days out.

Kind of getting them over the hump of, come on,

you can do this, everybody else is doing it.

And I say this, a lot of people are scheduling future,

like appointments in advance.

So you want to get them not feeling

like they're the only person.

You want them going, oh, if other people

at B-Series are doing it and the dentist does it, why not?

Like, let's do it.

And I love listening to my guys.

They're all at different levels.

Like Tyler's the leader, like he's so good at it.

Jeremiah is my guy who's been an advocate for six months.

He's like taking second place.

And it's fun listening to these guys

because they know it's filling their schedule

and building up appointments so we don't have to call them

in six months and text them in six months.

Now we still send the text reminder a couple days out,

but they've almost made the atmosphere flat fun

to be working here.

I love it.

And they all keep growing and growing and growing

and getting better.

It's got to make you so proud to listen

and watch all this going on for all the right reasons

to really service your clients to an exceptional way

that they can't find anywhere else.

They probably don't thank you guys enough for reaching out

and becoming, as you say, and I believe

and I love the word an advocate for them on their vehicle.

You know who's the biggest leader

in my professional career of this?

I don't know if you ever spoke with Greg Skolnick.

Oh yeah, oh sure.

He's got a shop outside of DC.

They're open four days a week.

They're at like a dead end.

And Greg does this all the time.

Like they have it locked and loaded.

I think Greg's backed off quite a bit from the business

and letting the guy take over running the place.

That's their culture.

That's what they do because A,

they're only there four days a week,

so they're booked out quite a bit, right?

And then B, it just becomes part of your culture

once you start doing this.

Yes, I mean, how many miles does it take to turn a ship?

I mean, isn't like 17 miles to turn a ship?

It's the same way in our business.

It's not going to happen overnight.

You have to stay persistent, consistent,

and just keep gently nudging your people to go,

this is the way we're going.

This is the way we're going.

Just keep processes and your persistence in place

and it will happen.

I've been working on this for 14 years now.

Should have happened a long time ago.

And it never ends, does it, sir?

No, it doesn't.

It doesn't.

Rena, Brett, this has been great.

It's almost, you're teasing me to have another episode

only for this particular reason.

The dialogue that comes from this little seed of an idea

ends up becoming so big and wide and expansive,

if you will, by the time we're done with this thing.

If you've listened to the very end, thank you very much.

Any final words, any thoughts, anything

in your talking points, Rena, that you would like to make?

Don't be afraid to make exit appointments.

Make it part of your culture to be the shop

that helps your customers with the lifecycle of their vehicle.

Wow, powerful words.

Brett, anything else?

A couple of things I want to offer you, Karm.

You have the preventative maintenance worksheet.

If anybody wants that, they can reach out to you or me.

I'm happy to share.

This is R&D 101.

Rip off and duplicate, take it.

I'm happy to share this kind of material.

But I also have a Word document that has all of my why

statements on, like, alignments.

Why do you do an alignment?

An alignment procedure can prolong a life

of your vehicle's tire life and maximize fuel economy.

It's one line that's all we say when we talk about tires.

It's all about geometry and fuel economy.

And it hits those receptors inside their head.

So if anybody wants this document,

I am absolutely happy to share this document with them.

Get the why's in place.

Have your people learn them and go from there.

If you are willing, I have a downloads page on my website.

And I would be more than happy to put up your,

what's the exact word of this sheet that you sent me?

The exact word?

It's the why behind my preventative maintenance items

and all my service procedures and...

The clients listing here.

Is there the Tyron Automotive Center,

the Carfax Review, the Battery Serpentine?

It's a preventative maintenance worksheet.

Preventative maintenance worksheet.

Do I have a blank copy of that?

Did you ever send me that?

I believe you have a blank copy.

I'm happy to send you a scanned blank copy.

Send me another one.

I will put that up on the website, okay guys?

And I'll take that other sheet of yours too,

because I'll tell you, this downloads page

is becoming a great resource.

We're starting to collect stuff from inside the industry.

They're willing to share.

And I'm writing some really cool thought stuff too

that I want people to get that's going on inside,

you know, all the stuff, all the content that we do.

So...

Just write credits in the back of your book for Rena and I.

Just give us maybe one, one minute.

I would be more than happy.

Kidding, I don't need that.

To give you any residual from this free content.

Oh my God, Rena, Rena-Bomb, CEO,

coaching consultant from Empowered Advisor.

And EmpowerYourAdvisor.com, Brett Beechler, the CEO

of Beechler's Tire and Automotive Center,

Peoria, Illinois, family owned for 75 years,

and a guy who's a giver when it comes to all the people

that you know in your industry

and part of the elite coaching group, right, Brett?

This was great.

Thank you all so much.

Thanks guys.

Our pleasure.

Thanks for being on board to listen and learn

from the Premier Automotive Repair Business Podcast,

Remarkable Results Radio.

Get your episodic education on the ARPN listening app

at automotiverepairpodcastnetwork.com.

Also enjoy the podcast

on our Carm Capriato YouTube channel.

Carm is all for advancing

the professional automotive service industry.

Until next time.

The 250K Mile Maintenance Mindset: Mastering the Art of Vehicle Delivery [THA 475]

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post oxygen sensor

Steer

mileage-based maintenance

synthetic oil

oil services

preventative maintenance

hydraulic fluid

struts

shocks

alignment

Carfax Review

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