What happens when a customer’s warranty is about to expire? In many cases, customers take their vehicles to independent workshops, or maybe to another dealership. The reasons may be many: cost, proximity, or ease of booking an appointment… but there’s one reason that remains hidden.
Customers often service their vehicle somewhere else due to the lack of a commercial relationship with the dealership where they bought their vehicle. With this in mind, the aim of a Service Marketing strategy is to help the dealer attract all of the services their customers will need during each vehicle’s lifecycle.
What is the ideal process the dealer should follow?
Here are some tips and strategies that help dealers nourish each stage of their relationship with the customer.
Make the Most of Each Customer’s Sales Potential
Modern dealer management systems (DMS) can generate a report that shows the sales potential of each customer based on their vehicles, and on how much of that potential they have “used up”.
This information enables dealers to plan calls, web campaigns and mobile campaigns (for instance, through the dealership’s app) to make the most of that sales potential.
Knowing the customers service history and their sales potential allows the dealer to reach conclusions such as:
- Which customers have consumed their entire parts and service potential? These customers are loyal and the dealer should work hard to retain them.
- Which customers haven’t used their entire potential? The dealer can reach out and offer them services that they haven’t purchased yet.
- Which customers haven’t used any of their potential? In this case, customers may be taking their vehicles to another workshop, so it is essential that dealers call them and get them back.
- Which services might each customer need? Dealers should use this information to offer customer specific services before their car, truck, or equipment breaks down.
Improve Your Relationship With Your Customers
Once you’ve detected the sales potential of each customer, it is a good strategy to analyze in depth who these customers are. This is a great competitive advantage and requires that dealers keep a detailed history of each customer: their personal information, interests, services performed, vehicles purchased, etc.
With this information, your sales staff can provide customers with the following recommendations:
- Preventive services for their vehicle
- Vehicles based on their job, family, interests, preferences, etc.
- Services to perform before holiday season
- Additional products and accessories that may interest them
Service Marketing not only automates many marketing tasks in your DMS, but also helps dealers analyze the information in the dealer management system so they can make smart marketing decisions and realize the full sales potential of each customer.
Strengthening your relationship with each customer and making the most of their sales potential is one of the key strategies used by successful dealers around the world.
