WHATS WORKING Somebody get the phone! by Rodger Bland€¦ · on Ferris Bueller’s Day Off? Picture the monotone, uninspiring voice of Ben Stien (the actor) answering your shop’s

24 GEARSJanuary/February2008

It’s been said that you never get a second chance to make a good first impression. When it comes to

marketing your shop first impressions are what you’re hoping to attract.

And according to our What’s Working study, the most common form of advertising (one form of marketing) is the Yellow Pages. 99% of you said that your phone-book ad constitutes the majority of your annual advertising budget.

So, you’re spending your money on getting your phone to ring-great; what are you doing when it actually rings?

If I were to ask you to rate your phone answering procedure on a scale of 1-5 (with 5 being the highest score), I bet that almost everyone reading this article would rate themselves either a 4 or a 5 on that scale. And for good reason too. After all, why spend all those thousands of dollars each year on Yellow Page ads just so you could blow

off potential customers (read sales) right out the door with a poor phone answering procedure.

Our theme for this year’s What’s Working management track at Expo is “Getting ‘em in the Door” And what better place to start that process than with the phone.

If you’ve been following these What’s Working series of articles, or attended last years Expo, or checked in on the What’s Working e-mail forum, then you’re probably aware of the fol-lowing comment:

“We don’t know what we think we know!”

and, “We won’t know until we measure it.”

We recently called 100 shops from all across North America and Canada to measure just how the phones in our industry were getting answered. The purpose of our phone calls was to re-qualify GEARS subscribers and to update our databases on new contact

by Rodger Bland

WHATS WORKING

Sombody get the phone!

0

10

20

30

40

50

60

1

no answer/machine

abrupt, rude and unclear

dull- robotic- monotone

clear, professional

Prompt, personalized,professional

Somebody get the phone!

The phone is answered in an enthusiastic manner suggesting

that whoever is on the other end is important to the business, and that

that person has your undivided attention.

GEARS January/February 2008 25

information. Once we identified who we were, and the nature of our call the scoring was over. We were after their initial phone answering procedure. We rated each shop's phone answering pro-cedures on a scale from 1-5. Here is the breakdown of what each number represented and how our unsuspecting respondents did.

One (1): To get this rating a shop would have to do, or not do a few things. First, never answer the phone. That’s right after letting the phone ring 12 times we hung up. As crazy as this would seem, some shops never answered their phone, and we made sure to call during normal business hours too – We know that their still in business because we called them back and they did answer – so much for that good first impression. Now I know some shops close on Fridays, and some close down for lunch. That’s cool, but don’t you think some type of message might be in order here?

Another way a shop could get a score of 1 from our poll was to put us immediately on hold. Notice I said “immediately” on hold. “Please hold” was their greeting – no shop name, no greeting –just, “Please hold.” In other words, I don’t know who you are, or why you are calling my business, but I want to ignore you. No thanks, we hung up.

And finally, a shop could earn a score of one by answering their phone with a machine. I said could, because some shops have some pretty sophis-ticated phone answering machines, or automated phone systems which might take you through a menu of options before you actually get the chance to talk to a human being, or at least leave

We recently called 100 shops from all across

North America and Canada to measure just how the phones in our industry were getting answered. .... We rated

each shop's phone answering procedures

on a scale from 1-5.

S a m e n a m e , S a m e q u a l i t y p a r t s a n d s e r v i c e ,

S a m e m a n a g e m e n t… f o r o v e r 5 0 y e a r s !

• U s e d , N e w & R e b u i l t

H a r d P a r t s

• S o f t P a r t s

• E l e c t r i c a l C o m p o n e n t s

• F l y w h e e l s

C u t t i n g e d g e i n f o r m a t i o n

r e s o u r c e s… f o r t h e n e x t 5 0

y e a r s , a n d b e y o n d .

• S l a u s o n . c o m• S m a r t P a r t ™ P a r t s i d e n t i f i c a t i o n /o r d e r i n g s y s t e m

• T h e N e w 2 0 0 8 S l a u s o n B o o kF o r C u s t o m i z e d c a t a l o g s , a n d S m a r t P a r t ™ f o r s u p p l i e r s . . . c a l l e x t . 6 0 3

O f f e r i n g q u a l i t y p r o d u c t s f r o m t h e s e f i n e v e n d o r s :

Tr a n s t e c • R a y b e s t o s • A l l o m a t i c • A l t o • D y n a x • S o n n a x

S p x F i l t r a n • L u b e G u a r d • Tr a n s g o • B o r g W a r n e r • S u p e r i o r

R o s t r a • Te c k P a k • H a y d e n • Tr u - C o o l • A u t o c r a f t • AT S G

P h o n e H o u r s : 7: 0 0 a m t o 5: 0 0 p m / P S T

C a l l (8 0 0) 4 21- 55 8 0 • L o c a l ( 310) 76 8 -2 0 9 9

FA X ( 310) 76 8 - 8 2 9 8

O r d e r O n l i n e 2 4 / 7 a t w w w. s l a u s o n . c o m • S e h a b l a E s p a ñ o l !

26 GEARSJanuary/February2008

Somebody get the phone!

a message for said human being to call you back. Some people are O.K. with well run automated phone systems and some people hate them. We aren’t talk-ing about answering machines here, these were more like “announcement” machines.- “Thank you for calling ABC Transmissions, we are unable to take your call at the present time; please call back later.” Are you kidding me? I couldn’t make this stuff up- give ‘em a “one”.

I can’t think of anybody who is seriously trying to run a business allowing the aforementioned scenarios to take place when answering their phones. But guess what? We found 12 such companies in just 100 calls- 12% of our phone calls were scored a one – to me, that is incredibly sad.

What about a two (2)? Well, to achieve this score on our unscientific poll, you had to display what we call “The Grumpy Trifecta”: Rude, abrupt and unclear.

Remember, we’re talking about businesses here. Businesses which pay a handsome sum each month to the phone-book people to get their business phones to ring.

“Trannyman, Bob here – who’s calling?” at least that’s what they might have said, hard to hear with the air ratchet banging away in our ear.

“Hello?” …click.Honestly, can you imagine trying

to convince a prospective customer to bring their car into a shop where their first impression of your business was an assault on their senses? Amazingly we found 20 Grumpy Old Tranny dudes during our calls – 20%.

What about a rating of three (3)? Well, here are the criteria for getting a three on our scale: Dull, un-interested, boring. It wasn’t so much what they said when they answered the phone, but how they said it. Remember the teacher on Ferris Bueller’s Day Off? Picture the monotone, uninspiring voice of Ben Stien (the actor) answering your shop’s phone: T h a n k y o u f o r c a l l i n g the

T r a n s S h o p, ... C a n I h e l p y o u ? .... Bueller?,

Bueller? Hello? You have to at least act like you

care who might be on the other end

of the phone when you answer it! The sad part is I would bet that the majority of those who fell within this category actually think their phone answering procedure is just fine. I wonder how many actually track the number of phone calls to sales, or from those phone calls to how many actually bring in their cars?

This was our highest occurrence from the quick poll – tragically 56 phones were answered with a “who gives a crap” attitude. 56%!

A quick note here, we had our resident expert on phone calls, Rick Eastwood, make every one of these calls. For those who don’t know Rick, he is the main telemarketer for the Association. Rick makes literally thou-sands of phone calls to shops all across the country each and every year; mar-keting our regional seminars, annual Expos and GEARS subscribers. It’s safe to say that Rick has heard it all when it comes to how shops in our industry answer their phones. He also provides us with a great common denominator when it comes to differentiating one shop from another- if Rick say’s you answer your phone in a boring, un-interested manner; you should believe him, and we do.

O.K. on with the study....what about a score of 4 or 5? These two are pretty close –really. A 4 is prompt (within 3 rings), clear and professional. On the other hand a 5 consists of a prompt, professional, personalized greeting. Something like....” Thanks for calling ACTION Transmissions, this is Rick, how may I help you? , or...This is Rick, who’s calling please?

The phone is answered in an enthu-siastic manner suggesting that whoever is on the other end is important to the business, and that that person has your undivided attention.

We weren’t looking for something too out of the ordinary for a score of 4 or 5 just a simple, prompt, clear and professional greeting. Rick found 18 shops that he determined deserved a 4 and another 4 shops that scored a per-fect 5 on our “Rick-ter” phone scale!

That’s only 22 shops out of the 100 polled that were rated either a 4 or 5. Not surprisingly, those numbers reflect fairly close to the percentage of shops

that scored within the highest Success Metric on our last What’s Working survey.

Do you think there might be a cor-relation here on how successful shops answer their phones compared with how not so successful shops answer their phones? I wonder.

There have been countless books, articles and seminars on Proper Phone Procedures, we might even bring in an expert on this at Expo, but for the majority of you reading this article you can’t wait until Expo to start answering your phone correctly – you need to start today!

Here’s what you need to do: First, start monitoring how your

employees are answering your business phone – call your shop and give it a score of 1-5. Have some of your friends and relatives call your shop and ask for their feedback. Next, after gather-ing your own information, have a shop meeting with everyone who answers the phone at your shop. Go over the process on what to say, and more importantly, how to say it. Stress that each time the phone rings that it’s an opportunity for a sale and why it is so important that the phone be answered in a consistent, pro-fessional manner. Post a script by each phone for the employees who may only answer your phone on certain occasions (see the ATRA Phone Procedure Pads for more information on this). Finally, never forget that you truly get only one chance to make that good first impres-sion and it starts when you pick up that ringing phone.

We’ll continue to provide informa-tion in the coming issues on how you and your shop can ‘Get em in the Door’ with solid business advice based on the facts that are occurring in our industry today –just like our simply phone poll detailed in this article.

One thing is for sure though; if you want to get more business from your Yellow Page ads by getting potential customers to come to your shop, then somebody in your organization better get the phone!