General Motors Required Maintenance

[DER]

How do we succeed in selling needed maitenance when General Motors continues to tell customers cooling systems, transmissions and differentials require no maitenance until 100,000 miles? With the extension to 5 years and 100,000 miles on powertrain warranty, it will even be more difficult to overcome customers objections to having these services performed. General Motors continues to coach us to increase our customer pay business, but tell customers not to have these services performed. What are your thoughts!

[MIKED]

I'VE BEEN PREACHING THIS TO GM AND ANYONE WHO WOULD LISTEN FOR THE LAST 4 YEARS, THEY JUST DONT SEEM TO GET IT. THEIR ANSWER, SELL MORE TIRES AND BRAKES, LIKE THATS GOING TO MAKE UP FOR THE LOSS. BRAKES ON THE GMC P/U LAST FOR OVER 100K , NO PROFIT MARGIN IN TIRES , IF YOU WANT TO REMAIN COMPETITIVE, I DONT HAVE ALOT OF ANSWERS, YOU CAN ONLY FLUSH FLUIDS FOR A CUSTOMER SO MANY TIMES, THE OLD BUSINESS SHE'S A CHANGING. HEY I'M OPEN FOR SOME IDEAS , BUT I THINK I'VE PRETTY MUCH TRIED THEM ALL IN THE LAST 40 YEARS , GOOD LUCK, MIKE

[newbie]

I wish they'd tie in matenaince to the dealer period but with the new 5/100 they don't even need to maintain their vehicle at the dealer to hold that warranty, just have documentation that said they did it somewhere.

[btk]

I think we all face the same dilema, I took the approach a few years ago to follow the factory schedules and although we lost alittle ground at first I feel the volume increase offset anything we lost.The key to this game now is retention. If you dont know what your market share is then you are going to spin your wheels trying a bunch of tricks that will give you short term success.I think you have to look at some of the benchmarks that are out there now to get an idea- I hear anywhere from 30-60% retention at most dealerships-it is that 40-70 % that doesnt return that we need to go after and then retain them after they come.It is hard work but the payoff is huge, we currently run at 80% customer retention based on UIO, plus 6,000 customers that we have pulled out of market. Last benchmark report from factory had us 1500 cp repair order higher then the zone average year to date. We also sell more cars because of the retention. Sales manager says 40 % of all sales comes from service department customers. If your retention is low fix the service department and the culture if your retention is high -"hold the course" as Bush would say and stay profitable.

[zekensted]

Goodyear, Firestone, Jiffy Lube, and all those independents associated with Bumper to Bumper and Napa and others dont seem to be closing. Why not? I dont know. But all of there work is customer pay; and, they dont seem to be going away. Since we have better tech info, better techs, better managers, better parts, we should be kicking there ...

They look over every car...no whining techs allowed. They arent afraid to sell fluid services. If the fluid is dirty, they sell it..no matter what GM, Ford, Chrysler, Honda, Toyota, or anyone else says.

Have you ever price shopped the independents? Not much cheaper than us!!!

And what time do you open? What time do you close? How long do your customers have to wait for an appointment?

Now, dont get me wrong...those guys dont have to worry about internals, or warranty, or CSI..but if we let all the dealership stuff get in our way...we loose, and they get all the customer pay.

[GMFXDOPSMGR]

I also have had to "adjust" to the aftermarket. Customers were starting to question if they needed the maintenance. My solution!
I went on to SI (GM) printed the maintenance schedule for all 5 of our car lines, used an Excell program to set up the maintenance as outlined by GM. Priced it as suggested by this publication, added an ala carte section, details, accessories and have not missed a step. The factory list is less than what we were using (our own version of a 15k was more than GM's). This lowered the price of the menu, but the advisors did good walk arounds, recommended alignments, rotates, balances, fuel filters, wiper blades etc and actually increased their sales per RO, gross increased, and hours per RO increased. They were disappointed that the menu prices went down, but now the customer did not have anything to complain about and they wanted to buy the extra. We are less for a 15K service than most of the tire stores and we tell customers that we do not "add" anything the factory does not recommend to our menus. We show, the sell the adds to the customers. Works good here.
ps. 1st time something like this worked so good for me>>>>>