No Excuses

OK, so let's talk about the service department.  I know, some sales departments look upon them as a necessary evil or in the words of Dave Page "Redheaded Stepchild".  He wrote an article yesterday on Drivingsales.com that not enough people are talking about out loud.

Most dealerships will admit that the service department carries them through at least a few months out of the year, and the reality of not having service or offering bad service, will ruin your sales department.  So why don't they get the love in your virtual world?  In particular your website and listing templates.  In Dave's article this passage got my attention:

This got me to thinking- how many dealers out there really give the marketing, advertising and development of their service departments the attention they deserve? When you take into consideration that 20% of people who walk onto a showroom floor buy and 100% who walk into a service department buy- might make sense to pay this red headed stepchild of a store a little attention.

Now I know you do market your service department, some of you do a great job but you've got that nice website - why not utilize it for your service department too.

I always recommend to my clients that when designing and building their listings templates for inventory that you include a great background and sales pitch for your dealership.  That includes a section for your service department.  Talk about your "award winning", "ranked #1 by...", XXX years combined experience of staff, kid friendly waiting area, courtesy shuttle...need I go on?  Oh yeah, I do - don't forget to personalize it with photos, customers really start to make a connection when they see smiling faces.

It doesn't take a lot to put this in place, and once you do it you only have to update it occasionally.  So no excuses about not having the time or the people.  Your customers have time to read it, you have time to write it. 

If you build the overall picture of your dealership it will build trust and confidence in doing business with your organization.  You'll see an increase in sales and in service customers.