The ‘Right’ Versus the ‘Wrong’ Customer | identify and attract the right customers for your shop – and let go of the rest | May 2020
A new customer walks into your shop. She heard from her coworker that you do fast and cheap oil changes. She knows what she wants, and plans on spending the least amount of money as possible.
After about a month, you find yourself with several other customers with the same mentality—there for cheap oil changes and with no interest in any further maintenance. Soon, you and your staff’s time is spent focused on these customers. You’re working twice as hard with all the new business, but you are making hardly any money.
Shouldn’t more customers mean higher revenue?
Not if they are the “wrong” customers, says Cecil Bullard.
Bullard has been a consultant for 15 years. With a focus on sales and numbers, he teaches over 40 classes per year and has written around 70 articles. Below, Bullard shares his expertise on discovering and attracting the “right” customers for your shop, along with tips for letting go of the “wrong” ones.
Separate the ‘right’ from the ‘wrong.’
Knowing that not everyone should be your customer is one thing, but determining which people qualify to patron your shop is another. One of the best ways to decipher which customers are right for your business is to discover what they are looking for from their auto repair shop. Is it simply a cheap repair? Is it quality service? Is it a strong customer-shop relationship?
Bullard says that this can be determined through the initial phone call with the potential customer.
“A bunch of people will call me on the phone and ask about price,” he explains. “Some of those people are price shoppers, and they’re really just looking for the cheapest deal that they can find—they don’t care about the relationship.”
That’s when it comes down to the service advisor to try and figure out if the caller is the “right” customer for your business, or not. It is important that you decide who you want to work for and what your best customers look like, and then work to bring in those customers.
“I have multiple arrows in my quiver when I talk to a client on the phone to get him or her away from price,” Bullard says.
First, he will ask the customers what they value the most when it comes to getting their car repaired. Most will say that they want a shop that does the job right and creates a relationship that they can feel good about. Those who don’t mention service or relationship, and instead say that they are looking for the cheapest shop in town, are more than likely not the customers that will help him be profitable.
“If I’m not the cheapest shop [in town] and I bring those customers in, what’s going to happen?” asks Bullard. “I don’t have what they want so I’m eventually going to lose them. I’m going to waste my time, or I’m going to end up doing the job for little if any profit. And frankly, I’d rather be sitting on the beach scrounging for a living than working hard and not making any money.”
Attract the ‘right’ customers.
In order to attract the preferred customer-base, and deter those outside of your ideal market, multiple aspects of both pricing and marketing should be shifted. This switch will attract new customers who value quality service while weeding out those only concerned about cost.
“If you make changes in your business, increase the service you provide, raise your pricing and clean up [shop], some of your [wrong] customers are going to disappear on their own,” Bullard says.
While changing a few marketing aspects and raising labor rate, a shop’s image will begin to change. Not only will it begin to weed out “wrong” customers, but it will redefine the shop’s avatar, he says.
As for pricing, raising your labor rate will not only begin to reflect your shop’s quality of work, but will ultimately bring in more profit. Most people do not want to buy the cheapest thing out there and for some, the price defines—at least in some aspects—the quality of the product.
“Let’s agree that there are a lot of shop owners out there who are working their butts off and not making anywhere near the kind of living they should be,” he explains.
Customers who truly prioritize quality of repair and service experience, will not leave to find a new shop because of a labor rate increase. In fact, Cecil’s experience shows that few, if any, customers even question it.
Transforming the marketing and cleaning up the shop’s image with some added services, such as loaner cars or a waiting room redesign, will also aid in attracting the “right” customers, and more importantly, will encourage those customers to return.
Fire the ‘wrong’ customers.
There may be an instance or two where a “wrong” customer doesn’t end up leaving after the above changes have been made, and may need to be “let go” to free up time and resources for your best customers.
“There’s the, ‘You’re really not my customer’ conversation that I need to have occasionally,” Bullard explains, “which is, ‘Here’s what you want, here’s what I need, and the two things don’t really match.’”
This conversation is typically reserved for customers who patron a shop solely for oil changes or quick fixes, with no interest in truly investing in the well-being and safety of their vehicle. Bullard suggests the following as a way to tell a customer that he or she may not be a good fit:
“It’s really important to us that we are allowed to take care of your car—we believe that’s our job. It looks like what you really want is somebody to change your oil and then to not worry about maintenance, and only fix your car when it breaks. But that’s not what we do here. So I have a shop that I think is perfect for you. Here’s their phone number. The owner is a nice guy, he’ll do your oil change, and won’t look too hard at stuff. And when your car breaks, you can take it there and they’ll be happy to fix it.”
Bullard says this conversation doesn’t need to happen too often, but may need to take place in order to make room for more “right” customers.