I wish I would have done it sooner.” I have heard the statement dozens of times from operators across the country; owners who held off on initiating or growing an unlimited program for a host of reasons.
There was limited competition nearby and no fear their loyal guests would be picked off. The common-sense owner couldn’t see how turning a customer consistently paying $25 per visit four times a month into one paying $39.99/month for unlimited visits made any financial sense. Or it was just apathy and comfort with the status quo.
Whatever the reason, not one owner I have ever interacted with who decided to grow their unlimited program regretted the decision, even those who were late-adopters and initially did so begrudgingly.
Those conversations have long since shifted from whether it is in the average operator’s best interest to grow unlimited to how best to do so. Notwithstanding the host of benefits of having five or even six figures of recharge revenue coming in monthly, there are landmines to avoid.
What good is growing your member base if the guests (and everyone they influence) who decide not to join, do not return to your wash at all due to arm-twisting sales tactics and high pressure? What if your on-the-drive efforts are capturing sales, but at the cost of deceiving people overtly through outright dishonesty or through more subtle lies-by-omission from not disclosing recurring charges?
When a business owner is contemplating how aggressive their staff should be when offering an unlimited program, they should not only be concerned with internal member churn, but non-member retail churn and overall car-count losses from heavy-handedness which can do real damage to a brand and business.
Below are several tips for ensuring your guests feel served and not sold, allowing you to grow healthy unlimited revenues wisely without risky unintended consequences.
Six-Step Sales Process
In most industries where a frontline sales associate is making upgrade or membership offers at the point of sale, the guest interaction follows a common pattern. This is true if the business is selling car washes, oil changes, rental car upgrades, or travel bookings over the phone. The representative will:
1. Greet warmly
2. Identify wants and needs
3. Offer the best product
4. Overcome objections
5. Ask for the sale
6. Close positively
Although a similar method works successfully when selling memberships in the express
environment, there are industry idiosyncrasies we need to consider before crafting our sales process. The number one difference between the car wash industry and most others from a sales perspective is the micro-speed of transaction, and the need to move quickly to avoid guest frustration and drive-offs.
Here is the general process our firm has successfully installed with car wash clients for more than 20 years. Over the last five years, it has been customized and sculpted specifically for the unlimited environment.
Step 1: Greet Warmly and Break the Ice
Objective: Make the guest comfortable and willing to listen.
How to do it right. Twenty-to-thirty feet in front of the guest-interaction area, begin smiling and waving the guest up politely. When they stop, greet them with, “Hi.,” “Hello.,” or “Good morning/afternoon/evening.” Then, add a quick icebreaker like, “Are you staying warm/cool in there today?,” or comment/compliment an area on the vehicle like a license tag, sticker, or something decorative. This will make the transaction less robotic and more casual.
Step 2: Help the Guest Select a Wash
Objective: Move the guest through the menu quickly without confusing them with too many options and prices.
How to do it right. Keep it simple. Avoid bringing up unlimited options until the guest has selected a single wash. This will prevent them from getting confused by too many wash features and avoid pricing overload.
Step 3: Offer the Unlimited
Objective: Share the plan benefits in detail without over-focusing on price or cancellation.
How to do it right. Most car wash salespeople offer unlimited plans, but do not explain the wide array of benefits. Avoid cutting off the offer after mentioning your 30-day promotion. Explain “what that means,” and add two or three quick benefits like unlimited access to your vacuums and other locations, as well as the convenience of using your express lane. Avoid spending most of your time talking about price and cancellation; focus on the guest’s #1 question: “What’s in it for me?”
Step 4: Handle Responses Confidently
Objective: Master responses to common guest objections like “I am not from around here,” or “I don’t want a recurring charge,” without getting defensive. This builds your credibility, your influence, and keeps egos and the need to “be right” out of the interaction.
How to do it right. First, understand customer responses are confined to 10 common objections you will hear over, and over, and over again. Second, recognize comments about price or how to cancel are not objections at all. They are buying signs. Customers only ask about prices or how to cancel items they are seriously thinking about buying. Address their questions and end your conversion back on a guest benefit.
Step 5: Prompt a Decision
Objective: Make it easy for the guest to say yes by avoiding awkward pauses and asking for the sale.
How to do it right. Did you know that 64 percent of sales transactions across all sectors result in the salesperson never asking for the sale? How tragic! Most people do not like to make decisions. Think about a four-way stop when all the drivers arrive at the same time. What happens? Most will sit there pensively for 15-20 seconds, staring and false starting forward, each wondering and waiting if another driver is going to burst through the intersection first. To combat this guest indecisiveness, use a trial or assumptive closing phrase like, “How does that sound?” or “All I need is your card, and we can get you started.” — which makes it much easier for the customer to say yes.
Step 6: Close Positively
Objective: Be pleasant whether the guest purchases a plan or not to ensure they return and begin influencing the next guest positively.
How to do it right. Guests remember the last thing that happened to them at the car wash, good, bad, or indifferent. Make it count! Whether the customer purchases your top unlimited package, or a single basic wash, treat them like gold. They, and your next customer, will notice.
These six steps will not turn every guest into a yes, but they will put you in the best position to capture as many yeses as possible without alienating your customer base with excessive,wilting pressure.
Minimize Excessive Churn
“It’s killing us. We have to get it down.” When I first started working in the industry in 2005, I heard this phrase from owners everywhere. I encounter just as often today but for a different reason.
Back then, getting labor percentages down was most companies’ top cost-control priority. Although still important, today, an equal focus targets minimizing costs from excessive member churn. Although member cancellations from uncontrollable influences like moving or customer income losses are reasonable and customary, others are not and are preventable. Here are a few ideas for keeping your member base solid and secure.
Avoid the advisor code-red behaviors. One of the most powerful ways to constrain your churn rate is to ensure your CSAs are not demonstrating the two code-red behaviors.
The first is intentionally or unintentionally accepting premature yeses before the customer has been told about the recurring charge. Usually, this happens when the CSA stops right after they state the 30/60/90-day discount window. They will either purposely omit it or hear a guest say, “Thirty days. Wow! I’ll take it!” and then be too afraid to lose the sale if they go back and disclose it properly.
The second is selling the ease-of-cancellation rather than the plan benefits. A high percentage of salespeople will spend over 50 percent of their plan explanation talking about how to cancel a plan instead of how to use and enjoy it. Sell the benefits, not the ease of cancellation. Set clear, firm standards of acceptable and unacceptable dialogue and your team will rise to your level of expectation.
There are some new technologies on the market that can provide invaluable churn percentage data by individual and benchmarking to raise CSA and manager accountability. This can be used to direct more intensive coaching for high churn creators and stem that financial damage.
Set a standard for advisor-member interactions. Obviously, churn is also affected by how well we treat our existing members as they drive through. Often, I will see a CSA begin to approach a guest, pulling in, only to turn their back on them when they recognize they are already a member.
In fact, they will even say, “It’s ok. It’s just a member.” Just a member? That casual-disregarding mindset is dangerous. Creating lifelong members may be the number one success objective for your organization. Remember, it’s called an unlimited plan, not an “ignore me” plan. When you have opportunities, smile and verbally thank members for passing through. Even if the customer keeps their window down and does not make eye contact, show them appreciation.
Reimagine Your Loader. As important as CSA friendliness to members is, odds are it is the loader who has the most interaction with your precious subscribers. See that position for the truly valuable one it is — your member service specialist — and revere it as such.
Loading employees who do not smile, lean forward, make eye contact, and wave up people politely leave poor final impressions and repel members. The good news, is those that do, retain and attract them.
Avoid Overpricing the Wash Multiple. Your price point for your top plans should reside within a two-times single price multiple or lower. If a guest tries the membership but doesn’t perceive the probable “pain” of paying more if they terminate it, they will do so much more readily. Keeping your top plan multiple to two times the single wash price or less is optimal.
Reinforce the Right Behavior. While your menu pricing uses guest psychology about weighing costs and benefits to influence their behavior, your incentive structure does the same for your salespeople. An incentive paying handsomely for sales without consequences for CSA outliers who mislead guests may be rewarding the wrong overall behavior. Consider applying commission debits to salespeople who exceed acceptable churn thresholds.
The Bad, The Good, and The Awesome
The bad news about our industry is there are all manner of profit influences out of our control: weather, geopolitics, inflation, taxation, regulation, and competition, among others. They can hit and hit your financials hard.
The good news is the ability to apply these subscription revenue-vaulting best practices rests 100 percent in our hands.
The awesome news is that small percentage gains in revenue from these efforts translate into much larger percentage gains in profitability. This is due to the high numbers of fixed costs that remain fixed as our revenue grows, increasing the profit percentage dramatically. Your frontline representatives can unlock that potential and there has been no better time in history with the tools, technology, and expertise now available to make it happen.
Chris Brown is the owner of Myrrh Consulting, a sales performance improvement firm with more than 20 years of proven success in the car wash industry, and the developer of the Myrrh In-Sites Online Academy Unlimited Sales Training System. He has helped businesses in 15 sectors and 150 markets dramatically improve their frontline service and sales effectiveness, including 65 of the industry’s best operators of all sizes. Over his career, he has helped clients generate over half a billion dollars in revenue gains, and over two billion in increased valuation. Chris can be reached at chris@myrrhconsulting.com.
See Chris’s Expo Hall Quick Talk on this topic on February 27 at 2:30 pm during the Southwest Car Wash Association’s Annual Convention.