There is no doubt about it: the key to your success begins and ends with your service manager. His training enables him to provide invaluable service advisor training. Can you say, without a doubt, that your service manager and his team are not losing daily leads and sales? Few would bet the farm on a favorable answer. Even if you are not physically there to hear your phone ring, you can bet it’s ringing; after all, you’ve paid thousands of dollars in advertising to make sure of it. However, unless your ROI reflects the same, you’re just spinning your wheels, so to speak.

Today’s auto repair customer is a far more sophisticated animal. They are educated and take absolute advantage of the wealth of online information. They know they have countless choices when choosing their service provider. Your business’s profitability hinges on a great many variables, but none is more crucial than relying on your service advisor to turn every phone lead into a sale, generate repeat sales and sustain happy customers.

Every lost phone lead costs you far more than what you paid to make it ring. You’ve lost the time your service advisor spent talking with the caller as well as the estimated value of the repair order. That potential repair went to your competitor, possibly bringing with that customer a host of other folks he could have happily referred to you. Every wasted call and squandered sales opportunity cost you. When you think of it in terms of how much revenue you are currently losing, a course in service advisor training is virtually free.

The program was designed from the ground-up by the most innovative, brightest minds in the automotive industry. The best on-site trainers provide one-on-one instruction to your service manager on how to improve the service advisor’s performance and how to sustain these practices, as well as telephone customer cultivation, how to overcome objections and how to emphasize the importance of regular vehicle maintenance visits. Additional techniques, such as in-depth follow-up and customized post-class performance goals dramatically increase his diagnostic sales and services.

Service advisor training fosters pride and gives him self-discipline with quotas and deadlines. Ultimately, boosting and retaining his sales numbers will be the expected norm. If your customer retention is lower than it should be, invest in the one-time cost of service advisor training and schedule your performance review.

The popular term “return on investment” (ROI) frequently crops up when management focuses on what directly affects an automotive dealership’s overhead and revenue. Properly implemented Service Advisor Training significantly influences your ROI. It provides him with critical to transform his existing team into a new team of high performers, thus building staff competencies and ramps up revenue.

Tight, efficient, high-performance teams typically generate 30 percent more revenue than the average, in-house trained team. Can you imagine what your Service Advisor could do with a third more employees who know how to jump in and tackle any given situation, such as how to perform the “walk-around” with customers? Proper walk-around training optimizes vehicle downtime and encourages a “call to action” for customers to address potential problems and repair minor damage, thereby increasing per customer revenue. Once taught, it should only take 3 to 5 minutes to perform, but yields untold amounts of profit.

The Walk-Around: What to Look For

Service Advisor Training teaches how to conduct the walk-around in a systematic, precise order. Not varying from a specific routine actually speeds up the process. Aside from obvious issues like visual damage, every small detail is an upsell opportunity, so check:

• Battery
• Tire wear
• Damaged or leaking struts
• Lost wheel weights or damaged coverings
• Brake dust
• Carbon or exhaust build-up
• Wiper blades, lights, filters, hoses, belts and cables
• Fluid levels
• Expired stickers (inspection, service reminders)

Is Your Facility Getting in the Way?

Some Auto dealerships’ service departments do not have drive-through traffic lanes, but improvise by erecting a large canopy for sheltering customers during the walk-around. If this is impossible, the Service Advisor should still perform the inspection, make notes on his write-up sheet, and go over it with the customer. It’s all in the presentation.

Incomplete, hurried walk-arounds are not only a missed opportunity, but in reality, you are doing a disservice to your customers. Naturally, there is the safety issue, but helping them become aware of real time or potential issues such as bad tires or brakes helps inspire trust. Moreover, service walk-around training helps determine customer needs and will likely lock them in for future scheduling.

You may have decided that a training program falls outside your current marketing budget; you may even think your training practice is adequate, but remember this: cheap training results in cheap work habits, which results in low revenue. Quality service employees need quality training. Look within your organization. Is your staff living up to your mission statement? Service Advisor Training dramatically improves competency. This vastly impacts your yearly bottom line.