that buying new inventory with high margins and good turns will
more than offset the loss. Obsolescence is a real concern for
stores that stock items such as hitches and truck accessories.
Any item that fits only specific makes and models, is always
prone to be obsolete within only a couple of years.
GO SHOPPING. The slow season is
the perfect time to renegotiate pricing and
purchasing terms. Pull a report of some of your
best turn items and your worst turn items and
start working on better pricing. Remember
that it’s a slow time for your manufacturers
and distributers also. Now is also the time to get better terms.
If you are able to make preseason stock orders now, many
distributers will give you dating terms. This means that you can
place the order now, and pay 25% in 30 days, another 25% in 60
days, another 25% in 90 days and the final payment at 120 days.
We expanded our store by double and received 24 months of
payments at 0% interest! You will never know what you can get
until you ask for it.
REVIEW LOST SALES REPORTS.
Hopefully you have been logging “lost sales”. If
not, start doing it now.Your customers are telling
you exactly what they will be expecting you to
stock for them, you just have to listen.You may
have lost sales because you ran out of product.
This is something that needs to be addressed.You should have a
re-order procedure that your team is following. Sometimes the
product gets ordered, but doesn’t make its way to the shelves.
This is another procedure that needs to be implemented. The
problem could be that your distributor has a low fill rate (items
ordered vs. items shipped), if this is the case, it’s time to go
shopping for a new distributor.
CLEAN AND ORGANIZE. You can’t sell
parts if you can’t find them. Now is when you
want to have the team clean and organize the
stock room, parts crib and warehouse. During
the prime season, our parts crib can look like a
disaster zone. Techs have access to shop supplies
and bulk materials; all they are tasked with is being efficient with
their time, which means that materials are not put back where
they belong.Yes, it’s our parts teams’ responsibility to keep all
that organized. Another place that needs attention is the shop
work benches and any other place that new parts may have been
left out in the shop. Our techs are notorious for stashing new
parts and not returning them back to the parts department.
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Organizing is also essential for performing an annual inventory; it
will make that chore go much faster.
PLAN FUTURE SALES PROMOTIONS.
Because you are now negotiating for better
prices, plan your seasonal specials now. Do
not wait until May 26th to plan your Memorial
Day (May 30th) weekend sale, and do not wait
until hail season hits to order vent lids! Also,
plan where you will place them in the store and how you will
advertise the promotion. We have one prime location gondola
that we use exclusively for seasonal product. We prefer social
media and our mobile app to alert our customers of parts and
service promotions.
Service Department
The primary focus on the service department is TIME
management.
TRAINING YOUR TEAM MEMBERS. I
cannot emphasize this enough! Everyone from
your prep tech to your service advisor should
be receiving reoccurring training. The slow
season is when several of the manufacturers
and distributors host one-day service training
clinics. The clinics are almost always free and will always have
good information, even the most senior technicians will learn
something of value. If you have people that operate heavy
equipment such as forklifts, now is the time to get them
trained and safety certified. A highly trained team is the one
differentiating quality that will set your service department
above your competitors. A well trained service team will always
outperform the competition in terms of efficiency, because at the
end of the day, all were selling in the service department is time.
REPAIR AND MAINTAIN. Now that your
team has been maintained, it’s time to make
sure that the tools and equipment that they
rely on is ready for battle. We prioritize the
equipment to be serviced first is that if a piece of
equipment were to fail, would it leave our service
department dead in the water, if the answer is yes, get it