Distributed by BSD Group Inc
BSD Group Inc is an authorized licensee of Diamon-Fusion®, the world's leader in protective coatings for glass, tile, porcelain and granite surfaces, utilizes a patented nanotechnology, improves and protects the surfaces of glass, tile, porcelain, granite, and most silica-based surfaces.
Surfaces treated with Diamon-Fusion® become:
- Highly water repellent (hydrophobic); less water on the surface results in:
- Less frequent cleanings
- A reduction in mold and bacteria
- Stain and graffiti resistant
- Oil repellent (oleophobic)
- Scratch resistant
- Impact resistant
- Resistant to leaching of calcium and sodium (etching caused by hard water)
- At least 1,000 times more electrical resistant (additional electrical insulation)
- At least 20% more brilliance (shine in glass surfaces)
- Environmentally friendly is DFI’s technology
- Diamon Fusion® is the only PATENTED AND AWARD-WINNING glass coating that can actually help make driving safer.
- Creates a surface that is 10 times more resistant to rock chips and pitting by reducing the co-efficient of friction on the surface of the glass making the glass slippery.
- Provides up to 20% more brilliance for increased visibility to increase driver reaction time.
- The treated glass is easier to clean and maintain. Insects, snow and ice are easily removed or washed away.
- Gives drivers a 30% reduction in nighttime glare by improving the optical clarity and reducing the prism effect.
- Provides an unprecedented hydrophobic property which causes a water repellant sheeting action.
What does F&I have to do with Service and Parts?
Let’s talk about a topic that should be on every dealership owner’s mind today: service absorption. Do you know what your absorption rate is? Every franchised automotive dealer should be searching for ideas and products that will assist their back-end operations to offset the reduced showroom activity.
Over the past decade of working with automotive dealerships, I’ve noticed that many dealers concentrate on their front end in order to gain the attention of the OEMs but falter in getting involved with the back end. Sure they acknowledge the service and parts department but many operators have fears of losing their service manager or director because they truly have little understanding or desire to learn what goes on in the back of the dealership. In my career as a sales & marketing manager, I also admit that the front-end sales number was my priority and rarely became involved with the back-end. Maybe it was the thrill of the sale or the instant gratification of breaking single-month sales records but as the economy began to slow and sales began to slow, I searched for a product that could help out all of my past dealership friends build up their absorption and retention rates.
Most dealerships, domestic and import, are suffering from lower vehicle sales. This has been a trend we have been watching for some time now. What have you been doing at your store to combat this? Many dealers I speak with admit they are not doing enough or even anything at all, even though they see what is happening (or not happening) with vehicle sales every day! They ‘pulled in the reigns’ and are going to either attempt to expense their way to a profit or leverage what they can to hang on until retail comes back. In my opinion, these are the times that dealers should be searching for alternative ways to keep their store profitable. Common sense tells us that it is much easier and less expensive to keep the customers you already have then to go and find new ones. Do you agree with this? If you do, then what are you specifically doing to boost your customer retention and, in turn, your absorption rate?
Building up your service department business is a serious matter and takes a long-term commitment. You cannot think of short-term profits and be successful at boosting absorption. As a dealer, the easiest way to grow service absorption is to either pack all of your vehicle sales with products that add to your service base or have your F&I department sell these types of products. These two options will add to the long-term profitability and growth of your service and parts department only if the product(s) are designed to bring customers back to only your service department.
I applaud dealers who provide 12 months of oil changes to their customers and the retention rate during those 12 months is generally 50-75%. After those 12 months, the retention rates drop down to 20-30%. I have friends that tell me as soon as the 12 months is up they will not be going back to the dealership. There are reasons why the independent shops such as Jiffy Lube do so well and why 70-80% of all vehicles are serviced outside of new car dealerships. Did you know there are approximately 1.5 million service technicians in the country but only about 300,000 are employed by franchised dealerships? It’s not about cheap and quick oil changes either. I agree franchised dealerships should offer quick lube but franchised dealerships need to give a customer a reason why they need to return to their specific dealership!
What would you think of a product that is exclusive to your franchised dealership that would allow your customer to return at least 9 times in a course of 5 years? What if I told you that the product was patented, award-winning, established on a global scale and a product that a customer could see every time they get into their vehicle? Would you be interested? If you answered ‘yes’ then please visit the rest of our website and please contact us with any questions.____________________________________________________________________________________
“Retention is so important because it costs less to retain a customer than to get a new one.”
– Ward’s Dealer Business
Life was good three years ago when all problems were solved by just selling more cars. After all the banks were advancing 140% line 3 plus all the backend we wanted at 5% buy rate plus 3 points. Thousands of ups were on the lot every month in response to the hundreds of thousands we spent in direct mail, TV infomercials and BDC departments we developed. Every phone call and email we received was informing us of another way to sell more cars for less. Life was good.
We knew that the car business came down to People, Processes, Product and Promotion…the 4 “P’s”. Most of us only applied this to the variable side of our operations. But what did we do to retain any of these customers? Many of us got together with our department heads to brain storm and came up with:
§ Pre-Paid Maintenance for one year with every purchase
§ Tires for Life
§ Reward Cards towards future purchases
§ Assign sales people to work the service drive daily
§ Lifetime Warranty
§ CRM Programs
§ Service Mailers
§ Complimentary Car Wash
…Sound familiar? How’s it working for your store? Is your customer retention any better than the 20% to 30% that most stores realize? What’s your absorption rate? Can you even answer these questions?
Don’t get me wrong…no one saw this coming. The bottom fell out from under all of us. Many of us reacted by expensing our way to a profit or worse, break even. Who needs the practice? Some of us cut out all spending all together and are “riding it out”. Maybe we are scrambling to find a way to get the customers we sold back in the “hay days” into our stores to spend dollars. However it is we are trying to weather this storm, we all find ourselves with a suddenly strong focus on how we can strengthen our fixed operations and to retain more of our customers getting us as close to 100% absorption as possible.
Especially in this economic climate, customers are keeping their cars longer. According NADA, trade cycles are now up to between 48-54 months. As a result, these same customers are spending dollars servicing their vehicles. Unfortunately 70% to 80% of all vehicles sold at franchise dealers are serviced outside the originating dealer! The retention rates drop dramatically when you look at pre-owned sales…approximately 10% retention!
With over 90 years experience in the retail, finance, service and wholesale aspects of the automotive industry, BSD Group Inc brings you a product designed to increase your customer retention dramatically. Sold as either a hard add in F&I, a product offered in the service drive, or a product pre loaded to your inventory to help your organization stand apart from your competition in the eyes of your customer, you will see results. Your customers will come back to you every 3 to 6 months over the next 3 to 5 years. The customer is not required to jump through any hoops or pay any additional costs. The dealer is not required to enter information into any sort of data base to make the program work. This is a tangible product the customer will see and experience every time they sit in their car.
Focusing on your fixed operations requires dedication and commitment. What you do now will pay dividends months and years down the road. The dealers that make the commitment to improving the 4 P’s in fixed operations now will add some 0’s to the end of their net worth in the next few years. Fixed operations is where the money is at. It’s always been that way, we are just accustomed to the quicker and easier way to make money up in the front end. Unfortunately in this economic climate, making it in the front has got a whole lot harder if not close to impossible when compared to years past.