Long before technology was available to detect lethal
gases in coal mines, miners carried canaries into the
mines with them to act as an early warning system. If
the canary died, it meant the gas levels had risen to a point that
the miners’ lives were in danger and the miners were evacuated.
While we don’t actually use canaries in our dealerships to alert
us of potential issues, we do have three simple numbers that
warn us of impending doom.
THE SERVICE DEPARTMENT
In a service department, we know how many hours we must sell
each day by simply multiplying the number of technicians you pay
by the number of hours you pay them. If you have two techs and
they are being paid 8 hours per day to work, then your manager
has 16 hours of time to sell each day. If 16 billable hours each
day are not coming out of your shop, then you need to observe
for about 30 minutes to figure out what is going wrong. Your
manager’s job is to define and improve the process so that a
minimum of 8 billable hours each day are coming out of each
tech that you have employed.
THE PARTS DEPARTMENT
In parts, we are looking at the average transaction time: the
amount of time it takes for a parts person to move a parts
transaction from start to finish. In most parts departments, the
common theme is “We need more help”. However, it should be
“Do you need more help, or do you need your parts people to
be more efficient?”.
Not all parts people are inefficient. But, if you just have two
parts people and one of them takes twice as long to care for a
10
customer as the other, the answer is not to throw a body at the
problem but to train and coach the one who is having issues.
THE SALES DEPARTMENT
There is no measurement more important in sales than
knowing a sales person’s closing ratio. It’s a simple calculation:
qualified prospects/sales. Most trailer sales people today have
no understanding of the sales process. Things like qualifying,
presenting, negotiation, closing and follow-up are foreign to
them. They cross their fingers, hoping beyond hope, that the god
of sales will grant them favor and the customer will hand them
money.
The easiest way for a dealership to increase their trailer sales
is to improve the quality of the sales person. It’s much less
expensive than marketing and better for the dealership’s bottom
line.
In a trailer dealership, there are a lot of numbers to watch, but
there are few that act as our “Canary in the Mine” to show us
the health of a department and of the dealership as a whole.
NATDA Dealership Performance Training program
includes online modules and documented processes, so
dealers can improve every aspect of their dealership –
from the parts department to trailer sales. For more
information and to sign-up, please contact NATDA at
727-360-0304.
NATDA Magazine www.natda.org