Fixed Ops Journal - June 2018 - F31

FIXED OPS JOURNAL

Using service data to boost sales can be a gold mine

ALYSHA WEBB
foj@autonews.com

ining a dealership's base of service customers for new-vehicle
sales makes sense financially,
says Nicole Tournaud, business
development director of the LaFontaine Automotive Group in Highland, Mich.
"It is completely more economical," Tournaud told Fixed Ops Journal.
The LaFontaine group operates 17 new-vehicle dealerships, five body shops and two
used-car stores. Selling out of the service lane
is one way the group pursues its mission to
"build lifelong relationships," Tournaud says.
Her group uses ELEAD1ONE's Xchange Trade
Up Program software to promote vehicle sales to
service customers. Although she declined to say
what the company pays for the product, she says
its cost "is not even comparable to what you
would pay to acquire a new customer."
The typical dealership spent $629 on adver-

tising last year for every new vehicle it sold,
according to the National Automobile Dealers
Association.
Equity mining in the service lane "has a
manifold positive impact on the dealership,"
says Sandy Cerami, managing member of Applied Selling Dynamics LLC, a dealership consultancy in Wyckoff, N.J.
"On a cost efficiency basis,
you are reaching into your
own database of customers to generate repeat
business," he says.
Encouraging customers
to trade in vehicles a dealership has been servicing
regularly saves the usedTournaud: Keep
car
manager time, Cerami
it in the family.
says. The service department gains business from reconditioning
these cars and trucks, he adds.
And, "there is an enormous wow factor

when a customer comes in expecting to spend
money in the service lane, and they can take
that money and put it towards a new vehicle
that is going to be covered under the manufacturer's warranty," Cerami says.
Selling out of the service lane begins when a
dealership's salespeople introduce new-vehicle buyers to the service department at the
point of sale, says Todd Farrell, president of
Benchmark X Inc., a sales consultancy in
Sioux Falls, S.D.
That handoff lets buyers know that the dealership's service department can take care of
them, and also repair vehicles that weren't
purchased there, he says. It is a "100 percent
profitable situation," Farrell says. "Sales sells
the first car, service sells all the rest."
Helping service customers use the equity in
their used vehicles to buy new ones builds
loyalty to the dealership, Tournaud adds: "The
whole goal is to keep them with the LaFontaine family." 

"One thing we don't want is to impede the service
process. We believe in a respectful approach." TODD STEWART, Dealer Wizard

SOFT

continued from Page 30

the service lane, Hocking says.
Todd Stewart, chief sales officer at Dealer
Wizard, says his company's software "helps
dealers retain their owner base." More than
1,000 dealerships pay $1,695 a month for the
software, with no set-up fee, he adds. Dealerships also can use Dealer Wizard to contact
customers before their service appointments
to let them know they are eligible to trade in
their vehicles.
"One thing we don't want is to impede the
service process," Stewart says. "We believe in a
respectful approach."

Exchange rate
A service department that is writing 50 or
more repair orders a day needs an exchange
specialist, says Mark Queen, a partner at
ELEAD1ONE, a dealership software provider
in Valdosta, Ga. The company's Xchange
Trade Up Program software lets a service department know which customers have vehicles that are good candidates to be traded in

based on their model year and mileage.
The service department can print out the information and hand it to the customer, or
"softly leave it on the dashboard," Queen says.
He recommends that a dealership exchange
specialist be "diplomatic enough to do this
with kid gloves but still consistent enough to
convert people into test drives."
ELEAD1ONE will send a trainer to a dealership to teach the process, he adds. "Stores
have realized that face to face is still the best
opportunity to sell to a customer," he says.
About 2,000 dealerships used the trade-up
software. ELEAD1ONE declined to disclose its
price.
At Ray Catena Lexus in Freehold, N.J., a porter scans the vehicle identification numbers of
customers entering the service drive. The porter prints out each vehicle's estimated tradein value, using Vin-UP, a new product that the
dealership is pilot-testing. The porter hands
that information to the service adviser, who
passes it along to the customer.
"We tell them, this is a rough idea of what
your vehicle would be worth if you have any
interest in trading it in," service manager Eric

Cohen says.
Cohen adds that he likes the instant valuation. "I don't have to pull my sales manager
away from another deal" to appraise the vehicle, he says.
Vin-UP aims to enable service customers to
explore a trade-in while avoiding the "enormous amount of negative feeling" from having a salesperson approach a customer in the
waiting area, says Bruno Lucarelli, who, with
his wife and business partner Rochelle, created Vin-UP.
They distribute Vin-UP in the United States,
where the software provides both Kelley Blue
Book and Black Book values, and in Canada,
where Vin-UP relies exclusively on Black
Book, Lucarelli says. Since the company is only a few months old, Lucarelli says, it hasn't
settled on pricing for the product.
Cohen can't yet say whether Vin-UP is generating more vehicle sales in his dealership's
service lane. But it's a great way to start the
conversation, he adds.
"Say the repair bill is $2,000 to $3,000," Cohen says. "We say, why don't you put that
money into a new vehicle?" 

JUNE 2018

PAGE 31

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Fixed Ops Journal - June 2018