Winter Car Prep: Sell the Check Before the Freeze

Tyreese: Good morning. Welcome in. Monday morning, November ninth, coffee's hot, the van's warming up, and we've got a full week in front of us. Let's get into it.

Tyreese: Here's the signal. Last Tuesday, November third, Pep Boys put out a five-step winter prep checklist. Now Pep Boys is a Philly company, started here back in nineteen twenty-one, and they've got nearly eight hundred shops, so when they put out a checklist, it's not a suggestion, it's a sales campaign. Step one on that list is a pre-winter oil change. Step two is the battery. And this is the number that got my attention: a car battery can lose up to thirty-five percent of its strength at thirty-two degrees, and up to sixty percent at zero. Their own master tech said it plain, a battery that was borderline in September can fail completely once the temperatures drop.

Tyreese: Now here's the thing. That checklist isn't really for the customer. It's for the shop. Pep Boys just told eight hundred stores to go sell winter prep, right now, before the first real freeze. And every chain in the country is doing some version of the same thing this week. Winter prep season is here, and it's the best sales window of the year that nobody talks about, because everybody's still thinking about the holidays.

Tyreese: So here's the tactic. Don't wait for January, when the phones ring with dead batteries and frozen cars and everybody's miserable. Sell the check now, while the customer still has a choice. And here's your edge as a mobile operator: Pep Boys needs them to drive to the shop. You do the whole checklist in their driveway. Oil change, battery test, tire pressure, top off the fluids. One visit, one price, done before they leave for work. That's the pitch. And you don't even have to write the script, because Pep Boys already did. Five steps. Oil, battery, tires, inspection, roadside info. Steal the structure, make it yours, and put your price on it.

Tyreese: And look, the battery test is the whole ballgame here. You're already under the hood. A battery test takes ninety seconds. If the battery's three years old or older, test it every single time, write the number on the invoice, and tell the customer what it means in plain English. Your battery's at sixty percent. It'll start today. It might not start on the first ten-degree morning. That's not a sales pitch. That's a fact, and the customer will remember who told them before they were stuck in a parking lot.

Tyreese: So here's your action for today, before your first job. Pull up your last thirty days of customers and send them one text: Winter's coming. Want me to run a pre-winter check on your car this week? Oil, battery, tires, fluids, one visit? That's it. No coupon, no discount, no fancy graphic. Just a text from the guy who already serviced their car. Send ten of them before you pull out of the driveway. The ones who say yes are your week.

Tyreese: Alright, that's the briefing. Go take care of your customers, get those winter checks on the books, and I'll see you tomorrow morning. And stick around, the full show drops right after this one.