The words McDonald’s and dentist don’t often come up in our workshops, but author and consultant Rob Purfield said the motor trade can learn from them.

As part of McDonald’s’ sales process,  said Purfield, you get asked if you “want fries with that”, “make it a meal”, “go large”. This upsell is something we have come to expect.

Similarly, if your service adviser asks a customer how they would like to pay – credit card, cash, service plan etc. – and they answer anything but ‘service plan’, Purfield said the service adviser should say “you haven’t got a service plan? I thought everyone did – I’ll talk to you about it when you come in”. This is a pre-sell, because they’re now wondering what a service plan is.

O2, Delphi and Vodafone are already offering on-board diagnostics tools to the independent aftermarket elsewhere in Europe.

“If I went to your service adviser and asked what a typical service plan costs, they’d probably give me a monthly payment,” he said, which can imply a cost to a customer.

What they probably should be saying is: “the service plan is free, it’s just a way of spreading your yearly service cost across the months”.

Purfield said dealers should make time-sensitive special offers available on the service desk, and incentivise service staff to sell them.

Another way of retaining customers, he said, is to ‘think like a dentist’ and book amber work in, in advance.