Turnover of service advisors is among the highest of all positions at dealerships. Meanwhile, service and parts’ importance to a dealership’s bottom line is growing, and tires are a relatively untapped source of parts revenue.
Dealer Tire wants to help dealerships keep service advisors on board longer and sell more tires. It hopes a tire sales certification program using short videos that it is creating with technology provider RockED will do both.
“Our traditional training is not going away, but we saw a huge opportunity to deliver training in a very unique way,” Chad Broski, vice president of program management at Dealer Tire, tells WardsAuto.
Around 8,000 dealerships buy tires from Dealer Tire. But dealerships still handle less than 10% of a U.S. replacement tire business worth some $57 billion, according to Statistica.
Selling Tires 101
Improving service advisors’ sales skills can help dealers grab a bigger share of the replacement tire business as well as boost Dealer Tire sales. Well-trained service advisors typically sell up to 30% more tires, Broski says.
At the same time, it may boost service advisor retention by making their job more satisfying.
“If you look at the NADA statistics, the turnover in the service advisor position has never been higher. There are dealerships that churn through 100% of the service advisors on an annual basis. That is not healthy,” RockED CEO Matthias Stoever tells WardsAuto.
Part of the problem may be that dealerships are hiring more people without automotive experience to work as service advisors, he says.
“If you don’t know anything about cars, you will have a hard time making it as a service advisor,” Stoever says.
Dealer Tire aims to change that, at least on the tire sales side, by working with RockED to create short training videos of up to 120 seconds. There will be different topics with several videos underneath them, Broski says. They will teach service advisors everything from how to initiate general conversations around tires to specifics about the right tires for the right make and model vehicle.
The idea is to give service advisors the skills to not only sell tires but also plant the idea in customers’ minds that the dealership is the right place to buy tires when needed.
“It’s not always about making the offer (to sell a tire), right?” Broski says. “It’s also about awareness. So, when a customer does need tires, they’re totally aware of the fact that dealers are a fantastic option.”
To obtain certification, a service advisor must watch 50 short videos and be tested on them.
“We want to make sure that service advisor has the right skills,” Stoever says. “If they have the right skills, they will be more successful in their job (and) it’s less stressful.”
First of Its Kind
Dealer Tire aims to introduce the certification program in April. It will pay for service advisors to take the training, Broski says. The plan is to make it part of the manufacturer certification process for service advisors.
He thinks it is the first short-video program to teach service advisors how to sell more tires. It’s not meant to replace Dealer Tire’s traditional in-person and online training, Broski says. But it will meet a need.
“Attention spans are much different than they used to be,” he says. “People don't have time to step away, go to class or sit in front of a computer for an hour and take a class. So, these are little snippets that they can go to. They are also reference points, if they need to fine-tune something.”
