Digital Dealer - January 2018 - 41

By Charlie Polston
Automotive Customer
Retention and
Profitability Consultant,
BG Products, Inc.

// Fixed Operations

The New Car
Buyers' Clinic:
A Case Study in
How to Royally
Mess It up!
Happy New Year! I
hope you enjoyed a
relaxing time with family
and friends over Christmas and had a few days
to recharge your batteries. Service directors will
need to be at the top of
their game in 2018
because dealers will be
depending on fixed ops
more than ever to keep
the dealership profitable.
The prognosticators are
saying there will be one
million fewer cars sold in
2018, so parts and service will be called on to
pick up the slack. (Savvy
dealers already know that
fixed ops is the backbone
of profitability, but there's
nothing like declining new
car sales projections to
cause everyone to get
religion about the cash
cow we call the service
department.)
There are two critical
opportunities you have to
introduce new and used

car buyers to your service
department: The first, of
course, happens at the
time of vehicle delivery
when the salesman
brings the buyer out on
the service lane to meet
the service advisor. The
second occurs at the new
and used car buyers'
clinic.
The following is a true
story that happened last
summer. Dewey and I
have been friends for
over 30 years, so he
knows what I do for a
living and he sent me a
lengthy email explaining
his experience. Everything in italics is in Dewey's own words.
My wife and I were
looking for a good,
used, larger vehicle to
better meet the needs
of our family. However,
due to some incredible
incentives, we decided to
purchase a new vehicle
instead. The overall buy-

ing experience was very
good and very pleasant!
Our salesman was just
super and the whole experience from his greeting
to the test drive to meeting the new car manager
to the finance presentation was well done.
A few days later, we
got a letter congratulating us on our purchase
followed by an email and
call inviting us to their
customer appreciation
event for new car buyers.
My wife and I accepted
the invitation.
There were about 50
people there, some with
families, but at least 35 of
us were "new car buyers."
They had barbecue set
out and lots of tables set
up on the show room
floor. After checking in,
the first person I met from
the dealership was a man
that was very busy setting
up and serving drinks
and very hastily moving

around. I said, "Hi, is
Vinny, my salesman,
going to be here tonight?"
I got a very quick and
disconnected response
of, "I don't know anybody
by that name, nor do I
know any of the salesmen." Wow, that was not
a good first impression
at all and actually, it was
rude. He had an employee shirt on, but there was
not a greeting of "Hello,
I'm glad you're here!" And
then to not know any of
the salesmen! I seriously
thought he was a low-level employee that got the
job of setting this all up.
When the meeting
started, to my surprise,
the rude guy turned
out to be the SERVICE
DIRECTOR! He ran the
entire meeting. I was not
impressed and already
thinking, "this is not the
way to retain new customers."
He handed out an
agenda for the meeting...
one he said would only
last about 30 minutes.
What a joke! He basically
just read the agenda. My
impression was that he
did not want to be there
or doing the meeting. The
agenda said we would
meet several employees, but as it turned out,
just one service advisor
showed up at the end and
there were no parts people, not a single salesman, no techs, and no
upper management. He

D I G I TA L D E A L E R . C O M

Continued on pg. 42
JANUARY 2018

41
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