Townsend: How to Boost Your Sales

I have heard many tire dealers in both the commercial and retail sectors say, “Tires drive service sales and service drives tire sales.” In this article, I will give you five things you can do to grow your overall sales.

But before I do, you should know this: If you are mainly selling tires, you should strongly consider adding easier auto repair services to your arsenal. Why? Because some day — probably within the next five to 10 years — tires could become a loss leader for your business. Selling tires could even deteriorate your market share. Here are five ways to boost your sales: 

1. Finding and installing a strong store manager ;

2. More product and sales training;

3. Developing and implementing a customer service process;

4. Adding services to your shop, and; 

5. Adding a customer loyalty program in the form of a point-of-sale system that’s tied to a CRM 

First, what does a strong store manager look like? A strong store manager understands how to motivate, inspire and lead the workforce of today. They know how to interview top talent, earn the respect of that talent and get a team firing on all cylinders. Most can read a P&L statement and know how to set and reach goals. But the best store managers that I have coached know how to get a store on “autopilot” by making sure their number two person — in most cases, the assistant manager — can run the store in their absence.

A strong manager is not afraid to make a decision and can defend a controversial decision with confidence if a dealership owner disagrees. They are always looking for ways to improve upon how they lead others and are open to more training in the area of leading others. I remember asking a manager of a multi-store regional chain if he would be open to leadership coaching. He immediately made a very lame argument that he was too busy. (Several of his team had already given me enough information for me to ask him this question.) 

He later lost his role as a manager. I saw it coming, but could not tell him. My point is simple: I have never met a strong manager who did not know and/or suspect that they could always improve and I have never met a strong store manager, executive or leader turn down being coached. If you want to hire a strong manager, always ask, “Would you be willing to learn new techniques through a coaching process on how to lead people?” If the answer is no, don’t hire them because leadership has radically changed in the last five years. 

After you have a strong store manager in place, I would say that product and sales training would be the next factor in what will drive sales. When I visit tire stores, I am amazed at how inept some salespeople are on the phone and in person. Many do not ever go out to the car to perform a free tire inspection! 

I also still hear salespeople lose a sale because they did not ask the right questions at the right time and they allowed the customer to guide the call. Some dealers think that product knowledge will help close more sales, but even though this is helpful, the issue is usually with the salesperson not knowing how to play conversation ping-pong with today’s consumer. We live in a time where everyone wants to be heard. The best salespeople know how to time questions with answers and how to service, educate, listen, inform and probe the customer. The best salespeople have a workable sales process and execute it flawlessly many times per hour. Furthermore, they know how to follow up on missed sales and make all customers feel served and never sold.

As far as product training goes, every salesperson should be a product expert in every brand that you sell. Being able to give the customer options and explain those options is very important if you want to close more sales. 

After you get a strong manager and a trained sales team, the next thing you should do to drive sales up is implement a customer experience process. Why? Because word-of-mouth advertising does not exist any longer. Today, you must create ambassadors for your store. Today, customer service is the bare minimum.

Let me explain it to you this way. Customer service is going to a restaurant and getting your breakfast in a reasonable amount of time and served hot. A customer experience is getting your eggs in the same manner, but the human interaction causes you to say, “Wow!” and makes you want to leave a bigger tip — and not only the extra tip, but to go post something online about your experience, telling others to go eat there. 

In a tire store, customer service is your team performing an oil change or mounting a set of tires without “the wow factor.” The customer experience is your team impressing the customer to the level as mentioned above: “Wow! I must tell everyone about this place!”

Often, a salesperson, owner or manager feels like they did enough to impress a customer, but this is only customer service. Customer experience always involves how the customer perceives the interaction with your store. At the end of the day, it does not matter what I think or what you think. What matters is what your customers think about how they were treated? 

After you have installed a strong store manager, have gotten your sales team trained and have implemented a customer experience process, you should now consider what service or services and/or products you need to add. Are you offering batteries or wiper blades? I will never forget speaking to several hundred tire dealers and their wives at a large meeting. I had seen a commercial shortly before my talk, where a parts supplier was selling batteries and wiper blades to the public. After describing this expensive commercial to this dealer group, I asked, “Why would they invest millions into running this commercial?” After receiving many wrong answers, someone asked me what I thought the reason was. I stated respectfully, “I know everyone in this room works very hard in their tire stores every day. However, many are too lazy to implement the processes and training needed to check/inspect wipers and batteries. And you have made it possible for retail parts stores to fill that void by selling millions of dollars in blades and batteries to the public.” Every single dealer in the room shook their head in agreement with what I said. 

Today’s dealership needs to add every service to its tires that will take three hours or less to complete. Period. By doing this, they will build equity, grow tire sales  and increase profit margins. Is it hard to do? Yes. Is it worth it? Absolutely. How do you get started? Start with the small stuff first. You can also set goals and offer spiffs until habits are built. Be pragmatic and “just do it.” You will be glad and your customers will be happier. 

Finally, here are some thoughts on the value of a good customer loyalty program. This may require you to upgrade your point-of-sale software. We live in a reward-centered economy. People love to be rewarded for doing business with you. The idea of a customer loyalty program was once unheard of for a person who owned one to three tire stores, but now it can be done “on the cheap.” It could be as simple as a punch card where the sixth or seventh oil change is free. It can be a points system, where a percentage of each dollar spent can earn the customer points and those points can be redeemed in the form of a discount or something else for free.

At the end of the day, it needs to be something that has perceived value and something that will help you retain more customers. Most newer point-of-sale systems can even send the customer emails to remind them of their points balance, while reminding them of an upcoming service. Some will even incorporate your in-house financing applications. 

As you already know, there are many other ways you can increase tire sales, as well as increase profit in your store. These are a few proven ways that I have seen tire stores become ultra-profitable. They also usually lead to less turnover and better customer and employee satisfaction.

Insert Mike’s bio with contact information here.