How to re-train retailer staff to raise revenues

Recent years has seen a growing importance in the role of the service department within retailers. As customers can often delay their purchases – and retailers work to increase their profitability on new and used sales – service appointments have become a strategic touchpoint with prospective customers.
When combined with the right tools and process, the insights gathered from routine service visits including vehicle mileage, condition and repair history can be used to predict which customers are preparing to return to market.
This data can also be leveraged to create personalised communications that spotlight new market opportunities such as improved pricing, attractive financing options or newly available models.
Instead of waiting for customers to come to them, proactively engaging prospective service-to-sales customers enables retailers to meet consumers where they are in their buying journey – effectively converting and closing customers before they re-enter the market.

Understanding the service-to-sales transition
Successfully mining the service drive for new and used car sales requires buy-in from service, sales and F&I to ensure a consistent and collaborative effort.
Often in a auto retailer, there is a disconnect between service and sales. By learning how to break down those barriers, retailers can more effectively convert service-not-sold customers into qualified leads. This process starts with every member of the team understanding their role in the service-to-sales transition. Service advisors are particularly important to this process and need to understand their value in an effective service-to-sales process.
While the approach may vary based on a variety of factors including retailer size and staffing, an effective service-to-sales process comes down to four key factors:
• Knowing service customers’ history and buying motivations
• Presenting the right offer, at the right time, in the right way
• The right technology and platform to make the process efficient
• Consistency and the time to make the process work
To create a seamless transition between departments, retailers need to develop comprehensive service-to-sales training. By equipping service teams with the skills needed to capitalise on the rapport built through regular service interactions, retailers can turn these connections into sales conversations while growing strong customer relationships.

Integrating predictive marketing technology
To proactively identify and engage potential buyers in the service drive, retailers need to go beyond traditional equity mining tools. Retailers need to train their sales and service teams on how to leverage a combination of first and third-party data from their CRM, DMS, maturity manager, equity mining platform and sales platform to identify and pre-qualify service-to-sales prospects.
Predictive marketing technology enables dealers to take this one step further, automatically sifting through service data to identify, segment and prioritise potential buyers based on factors such as repair frequency, vehicle age and customer behavior during service visits.
Knowing in advance which customers are likely to be receptive based on these insights, service advisors can take a targeted and personalised approach to sales conversations, subtly introducing the idea of purchasing new vehicles with messaging that aligns with a customer’s known preferences and service history.

The role of training and communication
To integrate sales conversations into their normal service interactions without it feeling too forceful or opportunistic, service advisors need to develop effective communication skills.
Role-playing exercises are crucial for this training, allowing staff to practice smoothly transitioning from service topics to potential vehicle purchases. These scenarios help advisors identify opportunities to use feedback from service experiences to introduce new vehicle features that could resolve their concerns, improving customer satisfaction while supporting future sales.
By scheduling regular training sessions, dealers can keep the team informed about new vehicle features and financing options, making sure that conversations with customers remain relevant and engaging.
With any process, it’s important that retail staff ‘inspect what they expect’; monitoring the effectiveness of these strategies is essential. Look for opportunities to capture, measure and analyse the effectiveness of service-to-sales efforts, applying feedback from staff and customers to make continuous improvements to the process.

Collaboration between service and sales teams
To maximise every customer interaction, creating a cohesive environment between service and sales departments is crucial. Ensuring sales and service teams’ efforts are working together helps improve overall performance and create a seamless customer journey that can lead to increased sales opportunities.
Joint training sessions can bridge the gap between these two critical departments, ensuring all team members understand their interconnected roles in the sales process, from greeting customers in the service drive to closing deals in the showroom.
Finally, by setting shared goals or incentive programs that reward successful service-to-sales conversions, dealers can help create a team environment that supports collective success and customer satisfaction.
As the automotive retail market evolves, it’s important for retailers to recognise the value of re-training their sales and service teams to achieve continued success.
But re-training sales and service teams involves more than just teaching them new sales techniques; it requires a holistic approach that includes understanding customer behavior, leveraging data analytics and adopting advanced predictive marketing technologies.
By taking this data-driven approach, dealers can equip their teams to proactively identify prospective service-to-sales customers and engage buyers with personalised interactions tailored to their unique needs and preferences.