It always seems hard to predict how an election is going to affect local business, but depending on what happens, do you see big changes coming in our industry? Are there things we can do to prepare?
Jeremy O’Neal, founder, Advisorfix.com
It’s always interesting, in that after an election, there seems to be a lot of confidence in the direction our country’s headed—and that’s regardless of who wins. If someone’s re-elected, then people are excited about the course we’re on; if someone takes over, then people are excited about the change.
Often, that can affect people’s spending. Let’s say the economy starts to improve—or that people really feel it’s going to improve—there’s going to be a lot of pent-up buying energy among consumers. A lot of people have withheld their spending and didn’t want to go into more debt. So, people are going to go out and start buying again.
Your customers buying newer cars isn’t good, right? That’s not necessarily true.
What we need to start doing, right now, in our industry, is go back and cultivate the relationships in our databases. If you don’t focus on the relationship with your customer, you’re more of a transactional-based person for them; they only think of you when they need that transaction, that work done, which isn’t often on a new car.
If I’ve been bringing my Volkswagen Jetta to you that has 200,000 miles on it, and all of a sudden I buy a brand-new Volkswagen Passat, I get two years of service from the dealership on that. Now, I’m looking at you as just a transactional relationship, and that’s where turnover comes in.
If you mine this customer base every six months, it can add huge revenue dollars to these shop owners over the next three years. You have to go from a transaction-based relationship to a relationship-based transaction
