New Vehicle Dealerships

[mrchip]

ive been going to car dealerships for 20 years and i dont give discounts as a standard practice i got 45.oo for dealers and if i did 3 repairs i charged 135.oo period. ..and i didnt loose my accounts and i charged a service fee of 5.00 or 10.00 depending on distance.. no complaints..45.00 was not retail.. but standard price. true they want as cheap as possible but doing 3 repairs is peanuts compared to what other vendors charge and make at a dealer in one day a pdr person would do over a 1000.00 in his stop at my dealer.. interior guy would get a lot more than my 135.00 ..sometimes on 1 car. also i still say our business is the least of all vendors paid out in one month

[SGT]

Just wanted to share my initial experiences,

1st, I have been able to secure 3 new car dealerships out of 10 I approached.

2nd, Contrary to what I have read on the forum, in my area at least there is a strong loyalty among dealerships and their WSR vendors. This is a good thing if you have accounts and treat them good. Almost all dealerships had a WSR vendor that was either a close friend or long time vendor they said. The three I was able to acquire had someone that was not reliable and the one dealership had a salesman doing the repairs but the General Manager was not pleased with the work. I will keep perusing the others periodically though, you never know.

3rd, Initially they could give a crap about your sales pitch, how good your repairs are, what your warranty is etc. etc. They care about RELIABILITY. I think for future dealerships I will pitch from that angle first but will still pitch the other stuff as well because in the end, once I did some work they wanted to see it and also liked the fact that I offered a lifetime money back warranty.

4th, And this was a point of contention for me was price. I have basically always done retail at 65.00 10.00 10.00 per chips. I quickly found out that the going wholesale/dealership rate in my area for dealership work was $25-$40 per windshield. Sure I tried to get more but in the end if I wanted the accounts I had to come off my price point to get my foot in the door. (So, with some logical advice from people in the know! Hey thanks again Jeff & GWT. Sorry Mike, but I did find what we talked about very helpful and will be put to use with fleet accounts for sure and new high end dealerships in the future.) I decided it was worth it to have a definite source of revenue and the possibility to network from there and accepted the offers with the intent of the bigger picture.

5th, The process that we have learned is show up on the day you say you will be there and check in with the pre-owned manager to see what new inventory they have, walk the entire lot, write down stock #'s, check back with manager for approval to do work, do work, get invoice signature from manager, get PO number and submit invoice for payment.

I would also like to thank all that posted ideas; I will definitely be marking the windshields to make the process quicker!

Note: For those that have a fear of getting out there to sell your service, please know that I always did as little face to face selling as I had to due to the same fear. I will tell you this, selling is an emotional ride as you meet all types of people, good, bad and in different. Be prepared to get told no and be bummed out, but also remember the next yes is right around the corner and your on top of the world. To me it is like golf, very frustrating at times and sometimes you want to quit but it only takes one good shot and your back in the game. I can honestly say that now that I am out there in front of people my fear is gone and I will talk to anyone at this point and as I learn, I become a stronger salesman. Should have done this years ago!

[northidahotim]

Thanks for the post sgt. I'm new and have been in the biz for about six months. Relying on network referrals, friends, family. Am investing in a tent and looking for a location this month. but I think a guy could set his own schedule and make a good income if he found the right fleets and hit the dealerships. Its just getting over that fear of the face to face sell.