You may not realize it, but there are two ‘bank accounts’ that you need to be paying attention to filling every day. Most everyone focuses only on their ‘current bank’ account. This is the account that gets filled with the sales that you are making every day. But every bit as important is your ‘future bank’ account. In a management perspective, think of this account as a giant bag of seeds that you are planting every day that will sprout into little money trees in the future. Let me explain…
For the purposes of auto repair shop marketing, you run an ad on Facebook for a free oil change. Sixty prospects click on your ad and then enter their email addresses in order to get their free oil change certificate (This was all explained on my free critical marketing mistakes video series advertising that I produced).
Let’s say eight of those prospects come in to redeem their coupon and purchase an average of $80 in additional services. You can deposit $640 into your ‘current bank’ account, and you can now also make a sizable deposit into your ‘future bank’ account from the 52 remaining prospects that haven’t come in to your shop yet.
How much money is put into that ‘future bank’ account? For most auto repair shops, nothing. This is because they’re off chasing after the next ‘current bank’ customer. But for you, because you’ll be following up with a few emails to the remaining 52 prospects and inviting them to come to your shop to redeem their certificates (remember, they gave you their email addresses in order to get the certificate). The sky’s the limit using these email marketing strategies.
Let’s assume that your follow-up email marketing strategy brings in twenty more of those prospects, each spending the same $80. That’s another $1600 in profitability. And if you want to project out into the future even further and figure out what this could be worth to you over their entire lifetime of doing business with you, the number is closer to $630,000.00 (If you’ve been to one of my seminars or have any one of my repair shop marketing systems, you know that the lifetime value of each your customers if you treat them right and do the proper follow up as I have laid out in the system is about $22,500).
When times get tough or sales start to slip, it’s all too easy to fall into the trap of only paying attention to the current bank because you need money and you need it now. That’s what’s so dangerous about the economy right now. The temporary cash crunch has shop owners forgetting to invest in their futures. It’s all about how much you can extract from your customers wallets right now – not about creating a ‘wow’ experience for your clients, being a trusted adviser, and developing a long-lasting relationship with him.
Equally, if not more dangerous, is a failure to focus on the education that you’ll need in order to help you get more customers, keep them coming back, be a better salesperson, and run a better shop. The shops that have already invested in their education and are properly applying these strategies in their shops every day are doing well these days. Many of the shops that haven’t, are struggling right now.
If you want to move fast, but at a snail’s pace and are willing to invest more time and money in your future bank, give my office a call at 513-779-3660 and we’ll be glad to put you on the fast-track.
Best,
Ron Ipach, Repair Shop Coach
