In response to one of my previous articles for this magazine, I received an e-mail from a GM dealer thanking me for adding a minimum of five additional sales a month directly attributable to service drive promotions. In that article I suggested handing a flyer to all service customers of the dealership with current specials and preferred customer discounts. I suggested that a sales/marketing coordinator pre-screen all service drive appointments to identify customers who had bought one or more vehicles at the dealership and have a ‘preferred invitation’ letter prepared that would be handed to the service customer on arrival at the dealership. Think about it…our service customers are generally our best customers in terms of loyalty and trust. They are also captives for a period of time during their service experience and it doesn’t cost a whole lot of money to reach them with a sales message.

Here is one example of a letter handed to a service customer at time of write-up:

Dear Mrs. Jones, (type the actual name of the recipient…NOT Dear Customer) 

As one of our preferred customers, thank you for your business and for your trust in our dealership.  Because we are experiencing strong demand for vehicles like yours, we are offering special incentives to our service customers who decide to trade for another vehicle.  In our experience vehicles that have been serviced at our dealership bring a higher resale value, which allows us to offer our customers a higher trade allowance.  In fact, we are prepared to make a cash offer for your vehicle outright!

If you would like to test-drive any vehicle we sell and receive a preferred service customer quote, please ask to speak with our V.I.P. coordinator. 

As a token of our appreciation for your business, we have a gift for you. Please show this letter to Max or Amanda in our parts department.

Sincerely,
Bob Jefferies (letter should be personally signed in ink)

Here is another letter to lease customers who are 12 months from lease expiration:

Dear Mrs. Jones,

When making your service appointment we noticed that your lease is ending soon.  Because of the lower mileage and maintenance programs, vehicle such as yours are in high demand on our lot. With special factory incentives, we may be able to trade you into another vehicle now, for about the same current payment.  Please ask our V.I.P. coordinator for details. 

Thank you for choosing our dealership for your service needs.

Sincerely,
Bob Jefferies (letter should be personally signed in ink) 

“Our service customers are generally our best customers in terms of loyalty and trust.”

Here is a flyer distributed to all service customers 5 days before a special advertising promotion is run at the dealership:

SPECIAL SERVICE-INSIDER CONSIDERATION!

This weekend our dealership is holding one of our biggest sales celebration events of the year.  Last year, we sold over 85 vehicles in three days.  Our goal this year is over 100 vehicles and as you can imagine, in order to reach that goal our deals have to be pretty crazy.

Because we consider our service customers to be our BEST customers, we’d like to extend our marathon sale prices to you now, before advertising this event to the general public.  You’ll not only get a great deal, you’ll have absolute best pick of the inventory!

If you’d like to see just how incredible our pricing is, and how much we can allow for your current vehicle, please ask for Dan, Josh or Tanya and tell them you’ve received a preferred customer invitation.  

Sincerely,
Bob Jefferies

The tactics employed in a successful service drive sales strategy can make all the difference in the world.

• Letters with custom salutations personally signed and inserted into envelopes with the customers’ names hand written on the envelope.
• Sales bonus for sales directly converted from service drive.
• A dealer friend from Texas always has at least one salesperson on the service drive when service opens at 6:30AM. The two salespeople who volunteer to come in early also happen to be two of the consistently top selling salespeople at the dealership.
• Distribute a daily e-mail list of all service customer appointments to the sales team in the event a salesperson wants to say hello to a customer while they are in for service.
• Video of current promotions, vehicle specials in vicinity of service reception area.