Increasing your Wheel Alignment Sales

“Alignments are incredibly impactful to a store’s bottom line because they are 100$ gross profit,” says Executive Director, George Kingman, Dealer Strategic Planning Inc. Low-risk and high profit are just some of the benefits alignments bring for your Workshop. Kingman suggests your business should be aiming for with every four of your retail tyres sold, at least one alignment is complete. Is it possible?

Setting Targets

This seems challenging, but don’t get confused “that doesn’t mean a car getting two tyres doesn’t get an alignment, and it doesn’t mean every car getting four tyres gets an alignment” continues Kingman (DSP Executive Director). This is merely a suggested gauge, “but all the retail tyres sold, the ratio should be about one to four.”

Think of it as does Kingman, “the alignment rack is the most expensive piece of equipment in the entire shop. If the alignment rack is not being utilised, it’s a wasted profit center.” This is a highly motivational and beneficial strategy, as mentioned before they do produce 100% gross profit and the chances of something going wrong whilst undergoing an alignment are quite slim. Finally, the percentage of customers questioning this service is minor. 

So how do you go about reaching this benchmark?

Leading workshops secret is to simple ask every customer (big surprise, right?). Be it a customer who is in for an oil change or set of tyres, make it a priority to ask every customer if they want an alignment. Then, in order to see the percentage of who says yes, it’s important to document this request on both the job card and invoice, to show whether the customer approved or denied the alignment.

Priortising your metrics around alignment sales brings you closer to the outlined benchmark of one alignment for every four retail tyres sold. Consider hiring or dedicating technicians specifically to handle all alignments. In doing so, while these specified technicians are inspecting the vehicle, they can uncover any additional issues which can generate additional mechanical work. In-turn you’ll find yourself receiving many up-sells from alignments. It’s important to note that, the issues advised by the tech alignments, should be inspected by a brake technician and performed on a separate service bay.

Kingman states, “the challenge dealers have is the easiest rack to lift a car on is the alignment rack.” This proposes an obstacle in alignment sales, this often occurs when alignment racks are used for oil changes. The instant this happens, your service or customer sales team are unable to sell on the spot alignments as your alignment bay is already in use and 9 times out of 10 your customer cannot or does not want to wait around. 

Furthermore, it is not enough to only make the sales but reporting on them too. Reporting is one of the most important business activities, as it lets you know exactly how your business is doing based on your metrics and removes favourable guessing. “If you are not looking at reports, you have to guess where you stand, and you always overestimate your success,” believes Kingman. Cross populate yours to counter-point the number of alignments performed to the number of sold tyres.

If you need a refresher in customising and analysing reports, simply contact the Microhouse Support Team. Once configured, use these metrics to motivate you and your sales team to meet your alignment sales benchmark.