Dealers Are Selling $17.76 Oil Changes

Tyreese: Good morning. Welcome in. Coffee's hot, doors are open, let's get the day started right.

Tyreese: Look, here's the thing. Yesterday, on Wednesday, one of the biggest dealer groups in the country basically told us their whole playbook out loud. Group One Automotive reported their third quarter results, and their CEO said their service departments just set an all-time record for customer-pay revenue and repair orders in the United States. Same-store repair orders were up more than four percent, and customer-pay revenue was up three point two percent, and they did it while car sales were soft and everybody's wallet is tight.

Tyreese: So how did they do it? They went cheap on purpose. Back in June they launched a seventeen dollar and seventy-six cent oil change campaign, and that one offer drove more than thirty-six thousand customers into their shops. Thirty-six thousand people walked through the door for a seventeen dollar oil change. And once those folks were in the building, the group sold them on financing for bigger repair bills, and on a discounted maintenance plan they call OneCare. They have already sold nearly sixty-two thousand of those plans this year, and they expect to finish the year around one hundred thousand.

Tyreese: Now, I am not telling you this so you panic. I am telling you this because you need to see the game for what it is. That seventeen dollar oil change is not a service. It is a door. The dealer is not trying to make money on your oil change. They are trying to buy the customer, get them in the building, and keep them coming back with a plan. And here is the part that matters for us: their CEO said the average vehicle rolling into their service drives right now has more than sixty-seven thousand miles on it, and those customers are coming out of their factory warranties with real affordability pressure. Those are exactly the customers who are ready to leave the dealership for good, if somebody gives them a reason.

Tyreese: So here is the tactic, and I want you to steal this one. Do not try to race the dealer to the bottom on price. You will lose that race, and you do not need to win it. The dealer is selling cheap. You sell convenient and kept. Your door-opener is not a seventeen dollar oil change. Your door-opener is showing up at their driveway, on time, with no waiting room, and leaving them with their next visit already booked before you pull away. That is your version of their maintenance plan, and it costs you nothing to offer. Every job you do today, before you close the hood, you book the next one. You say the date out loud, you put it in their phone, and you make it harder for the dealer to steal them back with a coupon than it is for them to just stay with you.

Tyreese: So here is your action for today, and it is small enough to finish before your first job. Pull up your list of customers who are overdue right now, pick ten of them, and send each one a short message before you roll out. Not a flyer, not a discount blast. Just this: you are due, I can come to you this week, and I will get you set for winter while I am there. Ten messages, ten customers the dealer is trying to buy with a coupon, and you are reaching them first, from the truck, like a real person.

Tyreese: The big groups are spending millions to buy back customers they already had. You just have to keep the ones you already earned. Go take care of your ten, and go have a great day out there.