Why are successful dealers implementing Service Marketing in their aftersales departments? Not only to obtain more revenue, but also to address two characteristics of the current industry:

• Increased competitiveness from other dealers and workshops
• Customers stop taking their vehicles to the dealership when the warranty period is over

The retention rate after the warranty period is only 20% in the U.S. In Latin America it is even lower.

What Is Service Marketing?

Service Marketing is a new concept that successful dealers in the U.S. and other parts of the world are already implementing successfully

A Service Marketing strategy focuses not only on the vehicle that is being sold, but also on all services related to it. Usually, the sales force is proactive and generates new customers, while the aftersales area is reactive and responds to demand. Service Marketing proposes that the Service Department should also work proactively. How can dealers achieve this?

Task Automation

Thinking of the aftersales area as an active piece in the sales process doesn’t mean that dealership staff need take time from their daily duties and invest it in new tasks. On the contrary, it means that staff members will have processes and tools that will automatically generate contacts and program tasks. Therefore, those in charge of contacting customers will focus only on calling them and offering them the services they may need.

Make the Most of Your Customers’ Sales Potential

Another Service Marketing strategy is detecting and working on the customers’ parts and service sales potential. Modern dealer management systems (DMS) can generate this information so that dealers know the sales potential of each and every customer based on the vehicles they own and how much of this potential they have “spent”.

With this information, dealers can call customers and send web and mobile campaigns (for instance, through the dealership mobile app) so as to get the most out of this sales potential.

What Outcome Can Dealers Expect?

If you adopt the Service Marketing concept in your dealership, you will have the tools to generate service sales throughout the entire lifecycle of each vehicle that you sell.
To do so, the DMS generates automated contacts with each customer based on their unit’s mileage and on service jobs that haven’t been performed yet (in the case of agricultural equipment, the DMS will take hours into account). This way, the dealer can stay ahead of each customer’s needs, preventing them from turning to unofficial workshops or to the competition.

Dealers that have implemented Service Marketing not only take advantage of new sales opportunities, but also make sure that employees remember to make all the calls they should be making. They will also create new opportunities that naturally come up during interactions with customers.