As a general rule of thumb in sales, it takes roughly 5 or 6 contacts before a prospective client is ready to buy from you, yet most sales persons only make 1 or 2 attempts. It’s no wonder why it is hard to grow a business without an automated system in place. While this rule of thumb may not directly correlate to automotive service and repair businesses, the idea behind it FOLLOW-UP certainly is worth paying attention to.
So I ask how do you follow-up?
If you already have a wonderful group of people, processes, and systems in place already, Great! This post will be one that you can skip. For everyone else read on.
Paper based business processes are the enemy here at AMT, this would include the tracking of sales leads, and follow-up on sheets of paper. When we recently visited a customer’s location that has been in business for years we were amazed to see that they had a stack of small sheets of paper with scribbled down names, numbers, e-mail addresses, and estimates. When we had walked in the owner was trying to find the little sheet of paper with the estimate they had quoted the week prior for a retail client that wanted to schedule a repair. Imagine how embarrassing it was for him to admit that he couldn’t find the paper estimate they had just completed the week prior. Nevermind, the fact that the owner now needs to have the work re-estimated, or ask the customer if they brought in the quote, OUCH.
Here is where a paperless digital system could have helped this automotive service and repair company.
- Online storage and retrieval of all relevant customer information
- Easily search for inspections, estimates, work orders, and invoices including associated damage photos, voice notes, and descriptions
- The office team could easily print the estimate off, updated it if necessary, get approval, and schedule the repair
AND LAST but Certainly not least
- Automatic lead nurturing – This is likely a new keyword for some of you but it refers to the process of pro-actively following up with a prospective client, on some type of timed interval. This is one of the tools that can really accelerate the growth of your business when used properly.
One of the unique components that many of our customers have already taken advantage of is intelligent lead nurturing, here is how it works.
A retail or wholesale customer is provided an estimate for work to be completed but no additional work has been approved. SO, our system automatically starts to send follow-up reminders, and promotions on a timer. Asking the customer if they would like to have the repair scheduled, perhaps even offering a discount, etc. This high-touch follow-up process has been successful used in a variety of other industries, and it is completely configurable within our solution to meet your specific needs.
If you are interested in learning about how other automotive service and repair companies have been able to benefit from this kind of technology, please contact us today by clicking the button below and scheduling a demonstration.
