Salesperson/Service Writer

[davidmc]

Has anyone ever used the salesperson to also be your service writer? I heard a large dealership in the Ohio area that the salesperson was also the service writer. Once a customer purchased a car from that salesperson, they also took care of the customers service needs. They have 30 salespeople and 30 service writers. They say since they implemented this both sales and service dollars have both increased. This idea has sparked our dealerships intrest, I welcome your comments on any downside effect this might have?

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Follow up: They had 25 salespeople and 8 service writers. Now they just have a 30 employees that are both salespeople/service writers.

[This message has been edited by davidmc (edited 01-12-2000).]

[sallen1]

This is an idea rattling around in my head for quite a while, but I have not tried it.

The dealer you refer to, are there a total of 60 (30 sales + 30 writers)? That's a good size operation.

I suspect that if you want to have the salesperson also take care of service concerns, you'd need patience and training going up the learning curve. But if this strategy improves sales/service$$ then I ought to try it.

scott

[Michael White]

As a service director, given the same paramters all of us have to deal with and all the rules and regulations, it would scare me to death. Its hard enough to keep 6 advisors going in the right direction and following all the rules, let alone 30.
I would propose a modification to this. Set up a team where you would have 2-4 sales people tied into 1 service advisor.Control their actions by altering pay plans.
What happens to the customers and the stress it creates when you have 20% turn over in your sales staff yearly? I would not train 30 advisors. I am well paid, but not enough to ride herd on 30 plus and then go through the time and energy and mistakes that happen training new advisors.
Scott, we have had discussions before on warranty management issues. Consider your sales staff, and then consider them as adviso, writing up those Cadillacs with nearly $400 per car warranty expense. I think the first records that will be broken in your store is a great gross profit in warranty sales; at least it would be short term until the bad boys come and visit you
Mike

[sallen1]

Mike, point well taken. Here's a couple of things to concider under what David is suggesting.

I would take a guess that if you combined the sales person and the service advisor, you'd have turnover similar to what you have with your advisors and not your sales people. Our turnover with advisors is very low. The learning curve will be very steep: cross training a combined position would take time.

However, there are a couple of things that bother me with this strategy. What is the work schedule for the sale/service advisor? If this individual is responsible for the service needs of customers they sold a car, who takes care of them when service is needed on the sales person's day off? You could schedule some service, but there's always those emergencies...

You would probably need to have 'teams' that work together (sort of what Mike suggests). Otherwise, it would be confusing.

There is a very strong conviction by my sales staff that the advisors are better trained at handling service issues and likewise, the advisors respect the patience and training of the sales people. There just seems to be an inordinate amount of wasted time (waiting for the next customer, appointent, whatever).

A big thing to concider with the combined sales/service position is it would help solve the 'Open on Weekends for Service'. I have a ton of resistance opening on Saturday, mostly from the advisors, (they're used to M-F) and I don't want to hire additonal people. However, our sales staff is there 7 days a week.

i'm going to think about this a little more and hope we can continue this dicussion.

scott

[This message has been edited by sallen1 (edited 01-13-2000).]

[This message has been edited by sallen1 (edited 01-13-2000).]

[Michael White]

this is a interesting discussion. I would hope David would look into the dealership to see if they would join us in this discussion. We are are obviously missing something here because there are a million problems to overcome. Too many to be a simple transition.

Mike

[JerryM]

Another thing to consider is the fact that sales people could tend to warranty everything under the sun for a steady customer. In these days of "Maintainence Free Cars", air filters, brakes, and tires are STILL wear items, and your warranty "picks" could go through the roof!