How to increase the ROI in your parts inventory and in your service specials, with Partsedge and FixedOPS Marketing

Let’s Talk Parts!

Parts Managers are Asset Managers, plain and simple. Their job is to turn the second largest investment a dealer makes (the parts inventory) into profit. According to NADA, the average dealership gets 49.6% of its gross profits from the parts department. A Parts Manager’s goal is to keep inventory lean, bring down idle inventory, increase parts sales, and most importantly, increase the overall ROI. But with complex manufacturer programs, endless DMS settings, and employees to manage, they’re fighting an uphill battle. There simply isn’t enough time in the day to do the things that need to get done to be proactive rather than reactive.

The DMS is ever-changing and fickle while manufacturer programs aren’t always made with the benefit of the dealers in mind. Simple demand-based decision making for stocking parts in a dealership must now consider, among many other things, manufacturer programs, compliance, & guidelines, stricter return policies, diminishing margins designed into suggested retail prices, and endless DMS manipulation.

This has to lead to a trend in the industry of increasing obsolescence and damaged profit margins. Parts Managers are experiencing more pressure than ever with limited tools or support to aid with the ever-increasing complexity. Over 20 years ago, Cliff Cope, a DMS specialist, and Chuck Hartle, a Parts Manager, recognized this dilemma and got to work creating a tool that monitors the DMS’s sourcing, source accounting, and settings daily to revolutionize the way Parts Managers manage their inventories.

PartsEdge is a monthly service that maximizes gross profits without sale proofing your parts with an expert pricing matrix. Dealers who work with PartsEdge experience on average a 20% drop in overall inventory, a 50% higher ROI, a 20% increase in parts sales, and 15% less idle inventory. These numbers translate to more profit, better service, and a proactive parts department. We provide monthly inventory performance reports designed for parts managers and upper management to easily review and understand what is going on with the inventory so EVERYONE is on the same page.

“I can’t count the man-hours that they have saved us, not to mention improvements they have made that just wouldn’t have happened otherwise. PartsEdge has been, and will continue to be, a huge asset for our dealership.”

Marketing Your Service Department

Just as it’s important to keep track of your parts inventory, it’s also important to keep an eye on the website conversions that come into your service department through your service website. Unfortunately, many Service Departments don’t have the time or resources necessary to effectively manage their service marketing. At FixedOPS Marketing, we understand that Service Managers and Directors are busy, and therefore, simply don’t have the time to effectively manage their service department marketing. And, let’s face it, many Service Managers simply don’t want to! And, that’s okay.

To help Service Departments through these hurdles, we have made it as simple as possible for them by managing these service pages ourselves, performing updates ourselves, and creating the embedded videos ourselves, all starting at $399, with no contract and no obligation. We want our customers to be happy with our product, therefore, we offer a ‘cancel anytime’ policy.

The Service Department provides the most profit for the dealership, but spends the least amount of money on marketing. Wouldn’t it make sense to put your marketing dollars in the department where it is most effective? At FixedOPS Marketing, we firmly believe that Service Managers should be capable of effectively marketing their service department without high costs, increased labor, unlimited resources, or long-term investment.

With only 20% of service customers being made aware of fixed ops services, it’s not surprising that most dealerships aren’t attracting new customers. And certainly, many dealerships are not attracting new online customers through their service specials pages. On average, FixedOPS Marketing clients are seeing a 20% conversion rate on their service specials. Why? With six different ways for customers to save, share, or schedule service through the specials page, our clients are catering to every conversion preference of their customers.

Between being able to cater to the conversion preference of all demographics and tech skill levels, the videos offer the opportunity to educate the customer on the importance of premium services, increasing lines per RO. Service Advisors and Managers don’t need to convince customers to purchase premium services when a quick video will do the work for them.

Video traffic accounts for 80% of online consumer traffic today, so investing in video marketing is essential for any company. We understand the complexity and cost in producing videos, which is why we also create these videos for our customers and encourage customers to market them in their email marketing, mobile marketing, etc.

The options for dealerships to have their service pages managed by a third-party company is limited, generic, unprofessional, and expensive. We understand these obstacles. It’s also clear that marketing in general – and specifically service marketing – is complex. Most Service Managers don’t have the time nor resources to manage their own marketing to an A+ degree. If you’re the type that does like to understand all the marketing channels your Service Department could take advantage of, then the Fixed Ops Mastermind presentation will be worth looking at for you. The more in-depth presentation of service marketing do’s and don’ts for Service Managers is available here (PDF).

If you’d like to learn how easy and inexpensive it is for your Service Department to embrace fixed ops marketing, check out our website: www.fixedopsmarketing.com, or visit our demo site: www.demo.fixedopsmarketing.com. Contact us for a 15 minute online demo if you’d like to see the full functionality available to your Service website.

“We’ve had a 23% increase in online conversions since we started using FixedOPS Marketing!“

Contact Partsedge to get a free inventory analysis and learn more about how PartsEdge can transform your parts operation.

SOURCES

Partsedge

FixedOps Marketing