The post Service Turn CEO and founder Bill Hamlin shares the Service Turn philosophy appeared first on Service Turn.

Service Turn, powered by TEGA Technologies, is a turnkey software solution that automates the way automotive dealerships turn their service customers into sales customers. The Service Turn™ platform supports a proven process that generates a nightly report of all high value service appointments that are coming into the service drive the next day. It integrates with book values, DMS and the dealership CRM.  The Service Turn technology automatically identifies such items as current payoff, equity, book value, as well as a host of other valuable information.  Service Turn’s process then integrates these customers into real sales leads and provides point of sales material to help turn the service drive into a non-invasive selling drive. Service Turn dealers sell up to 6 times as many vehicles out of their service drive compared to non-Service Turn dealers.

MPi’s leading service department software EDGE WorldClass™ is a powerful solution that creates trust by standardizing the inspection, estimating and recommendation processes. It empowers the service department and management team to build connections with customers that drive retention throughout the lifecycle of the vehicle.

According to a recent study of more than eight hundred franchise dealerships using MPi’s system, EDGE WorldClass, produces a much sought after average monthly up-sell from inspections of $81,996. With EDGE Service Turn™, MPi plans to provide yet another revenue source and further increase the ROI for its dealership clients.

“MPi has already perfected the art of turning service departments into profit centers. EDGE Service Turn will be an even more powerful profit tool to help auto dealer service departments further connect with their customers and tap into every revenue opportunity,” said Bill Hamlin, founder and CEO of TEGA Technologies and innovator of Service Turn™.

Commenting on the new partnership, MPi president Rich Holland stated, “I am very excited to partner with such an industry leader as TEGA Technologies. EDGE Service Turn combines the industry’s most comprehensive system for buying and selling vehicles out of the Service Drive, with one of the industry’s most powerful tools for customer pay profitability. It promises huge results for our auto dealer clients.”

For more information call: (888) 702-8350 or visit www.serviceturn.com or stop by booths #4482 and # 360 at the 2013 NADA Convention and Exposition, February 8-11 in Orlando, Florida.

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About Service Turn powered by TEGA

Service Turn™  is a personalized, 100% customer service to sales solution that integrates with book values, DMS, and CRM to give all the info an auto dealership needs to sell 3-5% more cars out of the service drive.

Service Turn™ was developed by TEGA Technologies founder Bill Hamlin. Hamlin has extensive experience in the auto industry, including being a dealer principle of a Chrysler, Dodge, Jeep, Buick, GMC store for over 14 years and the president/CEO of an 8 location automotive group for 8 years.

As a dealer principle Hamlin saw many service to sales programs come and go and none of them really worked the way he thought they should. Service Turn™ was born from his frustration with not being able to sell as many cars out of the service drive that he knew was possible.

With Service Turn™, auto dealers have the ability to maximize those sales with both technology and proven processes.

About MPi:

Mobile Productivity, Inc. (MPi) is a leader in providing dealerships the necessary tools, processes and training to successfully institute a comprehensive, world class vehicle inspection program in service departments across North America. Since 2003, it’s proven and results driven solution has been helping over 1,300 dealerships achieve a 4 or 5 to 1 return on investment.

The post TEGA Technologies and MPI™ Partner to Increase Revenue and Customer Retention in Auto Dealer Service Departments appeared first on Service Turn.

Would you think I’m crazy?  Well, I am not, but I can show you many dealers that are because over 90% of them are doing nothing to capitalize on this real opportunity!

For years, dealers have struggled to effectively buy and sell vehicles in the service drive. Dealers spend tens of thousands of dollars in advertising, trying to drive customers to their showroom, all the while they have a steady stream of quality traffic coming through their service drive. Now THAT’S crazy!

Let’s compare two scenarios:

Scenario 1

Your sales person is waiting for a customer that they know nothing about to walk into the showroom to qualify them to purchase a vehicle. Sound familiar?

Scenario 2

Your sales person receives a list of service customers coming in for service the next day highlighting those with vehicle equity and who are in a good trade position.  They have a client information sheet that identifies all the needed customer information that would allow them to create a selling strategy… all before the customer arrives.

You would think the second scenario would be the solution to effectively buying and selling vehicles out of your service drive.  While it is a huge improvement over scenario 1, most dealers who have tried that approach still fail.

So why have dealers struggled to capitalize on the single most untapped opportunity to increase a dealership’s profitability?

The answer is simple.  Dealers have never properly committed to implementing a well-thought-out plan supported with the proper tools and support.  At best dealers purchase the latest and greatest data mining tool to identify customer’s appointment times and equity position (scenario 2) and think that is the solution, only to find little to no increase in vehicle sales out of the service drive. That’s like trying to drive a car with no steering wheel.  Sure, it will run but it isn’t going to take you where you want to go. Salespeople cannot be expected to turn a sheet of equity information into a compelling reason to trade. That is – unless they have the tools, training and a processes to do so.

So let me share the basic building blocks to implementing a successful program for buying and selling vehicles out of your service drive.

1.      Create the Right Customer Experience

The customer experience should be less of a traditional sales presentation and more of a customer service experience that will enhance your CSI and SSI.  Let’s face it; the traditional sales experience kills CSI and SSI. We need to turn the expectation a customer has of being “sold” into the shock of being “served”.

2.      Use Technology that is Designed for Buying & Selling Vehicles out of your Service Drive

Technology is critical to the success of your program but not just any technology.  The technology you choose should be built for the specific purpose of buying and selling vehicles out of your service drive.  Be careful of vendors that try to adapt a data mining tool or CRM tool to what you need.  The technology should be built to fit into the selling process and it should be easy to use. Technology should include the following:

a)      Daily management report that showcases appointments coming in the next seven days with key information including customer equity and book value.

b)      Client information sheet that provides information about the service customer

c)      Walk-in customer technology that allows you to capitalize on your walk-in customers

d)      Automated vehicle written offer to purchase

e)      Flexible equity calculator that can adapt to new information the customer provides

f)       Customer payment reduction analysis with gas and future maintenance cost savings estimates

3.      Implement Proven Process and Procedures

It is critical that your dealership utilizes proven process and procedures as you will lose too much business trying to figure it out yourself.  I might also note that most initiatives fail because dealers try to figure it out by themselves just to get discouraged and give up.  I would recommend that you partner with a company that has experience at implementing this type of program.  Again watch out for the companies out there that want to be a jack of all trades but master of none.  It will jeopardize your success.

4.      Ensure Staff Accountability

Even if you use the same technology as the most successful dealerships, you will fail 100 percent of the time without accountability. Partner with a company who understands the need to provide specific job descriptions, daily routines, call guides, scripts and pay plans. Your success depends on it.

 5.      Implement Proper Training and Support

This is maybe the most important element to success of all.  Your team needs to be properly trained and supported if you want to achieve the greatest success. Again partnering with a company that’s core competency is helping dealers buy and sell vehicles out of their service drive will pay you huge dividends.  They will be able to facilitate the learning curve and help to implement best practices that will ultimately generate more sales. When looking for a company to work with I would strongly recommend choosing one that offers ongoing support through a performance manager or coach.

 6.      Track Results and Return on Investment

You’ll never know if you are succeeding unless you are tracking your activities and results. Partner with a company that can not only deliver your results but can also compare them to other dealerships similar to a 20 group composite. It will keep your team motivated!

Consider this… a well implemented plan that supports all six of the building blocks above will take the guess work and risk out of trying to successfully buy and sell vehicles out of your service drive.  Do you want to increase your dealership’s profitability?  Stop being part of the crazy 90 percent and get serious about buying and selling vehicle out of your service drive!

The post Service To Sales, The Untapped Cash Cow appeared first on Service Turn.

TEGA Technologies announces a revolutionary, turnkey software solution, that automates the way automotive dealerships turn their service customers into sales customers. Service Turn™ generates a nightly report of all high value service appointments that are coming into the service drive the next day. Service Turn automatically identifies such items as current payoff, equity, book value, and auction values (MMR). Service Turn’s process then integrates these customers into real sales leads. Service Turn even provides point of sale material so that everything can be handle right in the service lane.

 ”Coming from the auto industry and from being a dealer principal myself, I understand the frustration of knowing there is untapped sales potential in the service drive, but not being able to get to it.” Says Bill Hamlin, founder and CEO of TEGA Technologies and innovator of Service Turn™. “Out of that frustration Service Turn™ was born. It takes all the tedious work out of doing it by hand and generates a nightly report  of customers coming in the next day, helping you to answer the question, ‘who might be ready to buy a car next?‘”

Along with the software package that integrates with a dealerships DMS, CRM, book values, and even the auction market reports, Service Turn™ also offers point of sale material, job descriptions and step-by-step training.

TEGA Technologies boasts that Service Turn™ dealers are selling 6 times as many vehicles out of the service drive as non Service Turn™ dealers, averaging just $75 per vehicle sold.

“It’s all incremental business,” says Bill Hamlin. “Every day, dealerships are throwing up big ad spends to attract new buyers when potential sales are driving in and then out of their service drive, day in and day out. Service Turn™ puts an end to that.“

Much like a dealership twenty-group, Service Turn™ dealers will get a monthly composite, comparing them to similar dealerships in non-competing  markets, so that ROI is never in question.

According to a JD Power study a dealerships service customer is more satisfied than ever, up 19 points from 2011. In the same report, 72% of service customers indicate that their last visit with a dealership was for maintenance. With those kind of numbers and Service Turns ability to pinpoint who may be in the market next, along with all the numbers needed to make a deal, dealerships now have the ability to sell more vehicle than ever right from their service drive.

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The post Announcing Service Turn, An Automated Way to Turn a Dealerships Service Drive Into a Selling Drive appeared first on Service Turn.

I know those seem like harsh words because they are and it’s my hope that you don’t take them lightly, I sure didn’t when I wrote them. In order to change your way of thinking, your old bad habits so to speak, you must replace it with a new way of thinking because that’s the ONLY way you’re going to be able to survive.

We’re in the beginning stages of a revolution, an uprising that if you choose to stand against it, will crush you. The revolution I’m talking about is the customer revolution. For so long they had no voice, they were like an infant trying to say their first words, and now that they have a way to get their voices heard, they will never be silenced again.

You’re old way of thinking, that the end justifies the means, should be tossed away because now each and everyone of your customers has a soap box and other people are waiting (and wanting) to hear what they have to say. In fact, you don’t even have to be present, these conversations are going on without you and they will continue to do so. It’s up to you, do you want to know what they are saying or do you feel that if you didn’t hear it or see it that it never happened? I’m here to tell you now that if a tree falls in the woods it still makes a sound, even if nobody is around to hear it.

It’s time to change your perspective; it’s time to adopt what Robert Green calls a “strategy in depth.” I’m not referring to what most people think about when they think about strategy, which is often confused with planning and thinking ahead. No, I’m talking about strategic thinking that includes a higher level of perspective.

Right now you are on the ground seeing things on a level playing field, you are reacting to the changing times by holding on to the past because it’s real, or was real, you lived through it, you conquered it and became its victor and nothing is going to take that from you, not even this so called uprising.

As humans, when we are faced with a novel situation, we tend to react in one of two different ways. The first way, the way most dealers are handling the customer revolution, is to deny the reality of it, to say that it just ain’t so. And of course, since they tell themselves that it isn’t they hold on to the old way. In other words we interpret the world in the ways we WANT to see them, not necessarily the way they are. How are you seeing the world?

The second way, which most definitely is the road less traveled, is to accept the new rules by throwing the old ones out the window. By doing that we move above the playing field and gain new perspective, in other words we have elevated our position and instead of looking both our competition and customers in the eyes, thus limiting our strategic vision, we can look down at the playing field and adjust our position on the fly.

Imagine with me if you will, that you were playing chess but you were limited to looking at the board, while standing on the board. In this position you could only see the pieces next to you which would make it very difficult to protect your king. Now, elevate your position to just above the pieces, true you have a better view but still you would have trouble seeing your opponent advance. Lastly imagine yourself with a birds eye view, not only could you see what your opponent’s moves are but you could see beyond the board, past your opponent and into the horizon. Your perspective would give you a more in depth strategic vision, you would be able to see what’s coming and adjust accordingly.

Most auto dealers are playing the game while standing on the chessboard; they react to only what’s going on around them. I’m here to tell you right now, stop it. Raise up, pay attention to what’s coming and protect your king, if not there is more than a check mate in your future.

If you want to survive then adopt a social marketing attitude, humanize your dealership and give your employees a voice, it’s in the relationships your people can create with your local market that is going to determine your market share. The choice truly is yours to make. I hope you make the right one and when you do I’m here to guide you through it.

What’s Beyond My Field Of Strategic Vision Anyway?

The promise land, the land of milk and honey, the land of increased market share, increased repeats and increased referrals. Don’t you see it? Do you want to see it?

For those of you that do it’s a beautiful thing to behold when the people in your community stop going to Google looking for a vehicle, instead they come to you because you have built the reputation of being one of them. Instead of the traditional advertising monologue you have begun to dialogue with the people in your market. Because of that you are in a the unique position of permission marketing, a term coined by Seth Godin, which means that people are giving you their permission to market to them.

So, elevate your position, take in the whole battlefield and pay particular attention to what’s coming. If not, you could be wiped off the battlefield all together.

The post Is Your Perspective Limiting Your Strategic Vision? appeared first on Service Turn.

What does that mean? It means setting up the right training and implementing a follow-up process to ensure that everything is getting done. While that sounds like a future post, I wont be covering it in this one. What I will be covering is how a sales person can set up their own inbound marketing campaign, implement it and then profit from the generation of both inbound leads and referrals.

It All Starts With Content

Content? Come on Bill, are you serious? Yes, yes I am! Content doesn’t have to be just written, it can also be:

[list list_type="ul" list_class="3"]Videos`Webinars`Podcasts`Inforgraphics`Live Streaming`Twitter, Facebook and more.[/list]

Of course there is written as well, they can include:

[list list_type="ul" list_class="3"]Blog Posts`eBooks`Whitepapers`Reviews`Testimonials and of course… more.[/list]

The idea behind content is to showcase your expertise and become an authority. Why an authority? Because with authority you have influence, and influence leads to increased word-of-mouth, inbound leads and more referrals. Beyond that, it’s great for SEO and will help drive people to your website. Which brings me to my first point:

[highlighted title="Point #1" icon="icon2" image= link=""]Each of your salespeople need their own website, or blog. This is the cornerstone of inbound lead generation and is an absolute must have.[/highlighted]

Get Social Involved

Use Facebook to connect with people, with their permission of course, and get to know them. It takes more than the time you spend selling a car to create the type of relationship that influences repeat and referrals. It’s all about being their go to guy or gal in the auto industry. Create a LinkedIn account and connect with the movers and shakers. Find ways to connect with people in your local market and become one of them. Make a difference in the local community and share what you’ve been doing on your social networks, not to brag but to get the community involved.

Become active in local online groups, talk about what interests others. Always remember to ad to the conversation, never to take away. You do that by talking about interesting topics, you do that by being real. What do I mean by that? I mean be you, don’t be all business, rather, be all human, it makes all the difference in the world. Use Twitter and learn to talk in 140 characters. Twitter is a great tool to connect with people in the local market and its easy to find out when people are in the market. Do a quick search for the term “car shopping” (with quotes) in Twitter search… would you like a piece of that action?

Lets Wrap It Up

I kept part one to two different aspects of inbound lead generation because in part two, I will be covering how to better implement the ones you learned here as well as give you two more. In part 3 I will combine all 4 parts and give you an actual plan of action along with tips on time management and implementation.

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