Articles for Service Experts
Friday, January 18, 2008
Don Reed - Starting today, ask each of your advisors what maintenance is required by your respective manufacturer. I’m betting they don’t know. If that is the case, then require them to read the warranty book and they will find the words...
Friday, December 21, 2007
Don Reed - It doesn't matter what the price of gasoline is or what the interest rates are because there will always be opportunities for improvement in dealing with the retail service customer...
Saturday, December 08, 2007
Don Reed - First, I want you to determine the condition of your technicians. To do this, you should start by asking your service director/manager to conduct an assessment of their individual skill levels. This will answer two questions...
Monday, November 05, 2007
Don Reed - Any customer who declines a technician’s recommendation for these needed repairs and/or services should be turned over to the service drive sales manager or service manager for a second review with the customer ...
Monday, September 17, 2007
Don Reed - Total vehicles in use are at their highest levels in history totaling over 244 million. So, with a record number of vehicles on the road with a median age of 7 or more years, why isn’t the new car dealer thriving in the retail service and parts business?...
Thursday, August 16, 2007
Don Reed - If new unit sales are down, of course F&I gross profits are also down. When new unit sales go down by 30 percent or more, there is a direct negative effect on service and parts revenue because of fewer PDIs and declining warranty repairs...
Wednesday, July 25, 2007
Don Reed - Let’s get serious about service and analyze what the real consequences are of this action. First, do you really believe your service manager will be able to spend the time needed to properly service 18 customers a day?...
Monday, July 09, 2007
Don Reed - Having a lot of one-item repair orders also tell us that your technicians are not inspecting 100 percent of the vehicles they service, and your advisors are not reviewing the results of the 27-point inspection with 100 percent of your...
Monday, June 25, 2007
Don Reed - Common sense tells us that increasing your profit margins is the easiest of the three ways listed above. This is the result of nothing more than an attitude on the part of the dealer and his management team to follow NADA guides...
Tuesday, May 22, 2007
Don Reed - Once you have your service advisors working with 12 to 15 customers a day, you must then measure your shop productivity, which needs to be around 120 percent...
Friday, March 30, 2007
Don Reed - For all three positions, is your Service Absorption rising year after year? If any of your answers were “NO” then you must ask yourself why?...
Friday, March 09, 2007
Don Reed - Can your service department increase its customer pay labor and parts sales by 40 percent? YES! Can your service department increase its customer pay labor and parts gross profit by 40 percent?...
Friday, February 09, 2007
Don Reed - If the number of active customers in your database is going up each month, congratulations; you are doing a lot of things right toward building strong owner retention...
Monday, January 15, 2007
Mark O'Neil - Increasingly important to dealerships are the back end profits from the sale of aftermarket products...
Monday, January 01, 2007
Don Reed - Let’s take a look at your most recent financial statement. Determine your average new and used vehicle unit sales per month...
Thursday, December 14, 2006
Don Reed - I supplied three rules to follow that would provide the basis for generating additional retail gross profit in your service and parts departments...
Friday, November 03, 2006
Don Reed - So, whether the vehicle was a trade-in at your store, purchased at the auction or bought off the street or from a wholesaler, it belonged to a customer...
Friday, October 20, 2006
Don Reed - This means that you would have to add one hour per Customer Pay repair order (your sales would have to increase 67 percent)...
Friday, September 29, 2006
Greg Goebel - What happens if a dealership was to increase their average hours per repair order by six minutes per ticket?...
Tuesday, September 19, 2006
Don Reed - The opportunities for retail gross profit improvement exist in every dealership. Let’s call these opportunities the RULES...