The Competition is Eating Your Lunch

Take 10 minutes out of your day to look at your local yellow pages phone book under Auto Repairing. Count how many auto repair businesses advertise there. Now go to the Tires section and count the number of tire dealers that are listed and then add these two numbers together to see how many people you compete with everyday.

Now go a step further and actually read the ads. Read what they offer and imagine that you are a customer shopping for a place to have your car serviced. You will read things like “Dealer Quality, without Dealer Prices, Factory Trained & Certified Technicians (guess who paid for their factory training), Free Shuttle Service, Open at 7 am for your Convenience, No Appointments Needed, 90-day same as cash, Loaner Cars, Lifetime Warranty…the list goes on and on. By now you have realized that these independent and franchised shops are no longer bumpkins working out of a barn – they are real business men and women and they are competitive, convenient and worst of all, they are convincing.

Everyday thousands of shoppers thumb through the yellow pages in search of a place to have their car serviced or to buy tires. I am not a big fan of the phone book, I think they charge way too much, but the fact still remains that people do use them when they are shopping for service. Now that you looked at the competition’s ads, take a look at yours. Does it stand out? Does it attract attention and make customers want to call your store?  Does it look like you are trying to sell service or just sell cars?

The independent’s ads are creative to say the least and they make it clear that they are in the service business. I read one that had a catchy line that intrigued me enough to check it out…it said “Visit our website to see the Top 10 things you should know about your mechanic”. Pretty cool, don’t you think. Another independent’s ad said, “If you are looking for a technician you can trust and afford, you just found him.” Let’s face it - these guys are aggressive – they have to be – remember, they don’t have warranty work to fall back on, but then again – you don’t either anymore, do you? Warranty is declining and maintenance intervals are stretched…so now more than ever you need every customer you can get.

Now look at the Tires section. You sell tires, so why aren’t you advertising there? I travel all over the country and I hardly ever see a dealership listed under tires – yet every dealer I know sells tires. And industry numbers will tell you that 75% of customers have their car serviced where they buy their tires…so why not advertise under tires?

My message is simply this: It is time to get into the customer pay service business and you need to get in all the way. You have to be willing to roll up your sleeves and get your hands dirty – you have to get aggressive with your prices, you have to fight the competition and you have to convert your service department into a service ‘Sales’ department. Are you ready for the challenge?