Getting Back to Fundamentals
By Vance Breese
If Your Customers Aren’t Having Fun, They Won’t Spend Money
A friend called me the other day and told me how badly his shop was doing. He cried about how business had fallen off. Even though he was a friend, I felt better once the conversation was over.
When I went to visit him a couple of days later, his customers all knew of his troubles. It occurred to me that instead of dropping by because they knew they would feel better after spending time in the motorcycle dealership, they, too, were visiting because they felt an obligation.
It seems fundamental to me that the point of a motorcycle store is to make the customer feel better. My friend had lost sight of this because he was not having fun.
I’m not sure he heard me when I told him it was his responsibility to have fun and his job to make sure that his customers had fun.
Taking the Plunge
The condition of his shop reminded me of my early days in this wonderful industry. I had been around the industry for 40 years, but I had been clever enough never to depend on it for my income. Then I took the plunge.
Is there a motorcycle shop around here? Sometimes you have to face challenges that are beyond your control.
April Fools’ Day of 1987 was the day I made my commitment to the motorcycle industry. As I sat behind my desk in the shop I had just purchased, the dark reality of the situation closed in around me.
The person who had owned the store before me looked like a Harley dealer and was at the shop every morning at 8:30. He usually didn’t go home until after?7 p.m. His wife also worked there full time.
He had come to this small town with a lot more money than I had, and nine years later, he was leaving town with next to nothing. I did not want a rerun.
I knew a lot about motorcycles, but little about running a motorcycle store. It occurred to me that I had made an error.
From the outside, the shop looked like what it was: a dream gone bad. The paint wasn’t good, the place still had an AMF Harley-Davidson sign in front that you couldn’t see from the street because it had a tree in front of it. And since the shop was located on a state highway, city officials told me they couldn’t get rid of the tree or change the regulations that kept people from parking in front of the store.
First Impressions
The previous owner had been lulled into a sense of inaction by the success of his friends in the late ’60s, a good time to have a Harley-Davidson shop. But I had bet everything on this place, so I had to take action to turn the business around.
I rolled a motorcycle out front so that you could tell it was a bike shop. This was a farming community, so we had to wash the dirt off it often, but it worked better than any sign I have ever had.
I hired a painter to paint the building, and he used the money to make a down payment on a motorcycle. I hired a homeless guy to police the grounds. Together, we painted the inside and realized how dark the place was, so I bought used fixtures from several stores in town that were going out of business, and installed them. Each morning when I walked in, I would stop at the front door and imagine what a customer’s first impression would be. Then I would try to imagine how to improve it. You only get one chance to make a first impression.
I started asking my customers what they would like to see in their shop, and they not only gave me good suggestions, but helped me turn their ideas into reality. I quickly discovered that there was a lot of talent in my customer base, and I was careful to mention the names of all my volunteers in our monthly newsletter.?We started having weekly rides at night and a monthly shop ride. I found that customers who had better social skills than me were willing to help. It seemed they all wanted to be in the motorcycle business, but they were too accustomed to money to do it.
Business Expansion Plans
Business grew and the shop expanded. The customers felt a part of it.
I found that growth costs money, so I made friends with one of my customers who was a banker. He loaned me the money to buy a computer to manage the ever-changing inventory and keep track of my customers’ needs. I had a customer who was a bookkeeper, and he helped me understand business on a much higher level and provide reports that the banker needed to justify loans.
I hired a second mechanic, and every winter we taught a course on working on motorcycles. Once people found out all the work that was involved in a service, they were happy to pay our new, higher labor prices. But more than raising the hourly rate, we worked at making sure we were actually charging people for the time we spent on their motorcycles. There are approximately 2,000 working hours in a year, and it turned out that we were only charging for about 600 for each mechanic.? During the summer, I would hire a lot kid to wipe the fingerprints off the motorcycles and make sure that when a customer picked up his bike it always looked better than when he dropped it off.
Even mistakes can help attract customers, if you handle them right
We started taking bikes to car shows in the summer and placing them in malls at Christmas. Yes, the motorcycles got a little scratched up, but it was worth it.? We sponsored a bowling team and a girls’ softball team. We gave a free T-shirt to each graduate of the motorcycle safety course. We had donuts on the weekend and always had free coffee.
Personal Connections
We made it a matter of company policy that each customer was to be greeted as soon as he came in the front door, before turning left or right. And instead of saying, “Can I help you?” our employees asked, “What brings you in today?”
We tried to answer the phone before the third ring so that we made a good first impression. And we made sure that the fun we were having came through on the phone.
We created a bulletin board where we would post pictures of our customers. We offered a free 21-point safety check to identify the things the customer needed to buy to be safe.
If one of our customers was considering buying a used motorcycle, we would perform a thorough inspection and provide him with a detailed quote on what it would cost to bring the motorcycle up to snuff.
We changed the look of the store every few months so that it made a new first impression of our customers. We set aside one area for new products, with information on all kinds of seasonally appropriate accessories. And we set up a bargain table to get rid of our mistakes. It is amazing what people will buy if it is really cheap.
All of these ideas didn’t happen at once. Some, I came up with on my own, and many others I got from customers or from looking at successful stores. All of them contributed to creating a different outcome from the one experienced by the shop owner who preceded me. And together, these ideas meant I was able to make a living out of a store where he’d been losing money.
I’m sure you can think of a lot more ideas. But good ideas aren’t worth much if you don’t make them happen.
Remember, your shop can always be better.
Tags: Business Basics, Counterman Pro, develop the right attitude, have fun with business, Know Your Customers, marketing, motorcycle accounting software, motorcycle inventory software, motorcycle mechanic, motorcycle shop rate, Point of Sale Software, PowerSports Dealer