108 - Fortune Favors The Follow Up: Strategies for Successful Confirmation With Mike Carillo & Neil Daly

108 - Fortune Favors The Follow Up: Strategies for Successful Confirmation With Mike Carillo & Neil Daly

October 9th, 2024 - 00:46:12

 

Show Summary:

Looking to boost customer retention, convert more leads, and drive sustainable growth for your business? This podcast recording, Fortune Favors the Follow-Up: Strategies for Success, is exactly what you need. Featuring top industry leaders Mike Carillo (Founder & CEO of AutoShop Follow Up), Neil Daly (Owner of Oceanside Motorsports), and Jimmy Lea (VP of Business Development for The Institute), this session is packed with valuable insights and practical strategies.

In today’s competitive landscape, the follow-up process is one of the most overlooked yet powerful tools for growing your business. This webinar dives deep into the techniques successful shop owners use to build long-lasting relationships with their customers and maximize the lifetime value of every lead. Whether you're looking to nurture your existing customer base or convert new prospects, this session provides actionable steps that you can implement right away.

What’s in it for you:

1. Unlock the full potential of your customer base: Learn how to effectively nurture and retain the customers you've worked hard to gain, turning one-time buyers into loyal advocates.
2. Build strong, lasting relationships: Discover strategies that strengthen customer relationships and foster repeat business, helping you create a loyal clientele.
3. Transform follow-up into a growth engine: Understand how a well-executed follow-up process can convert leads into paying customers and significantly increase their lifetime value to your business.
4. Real-life examples and proven techniques: Neil and Jimmy share stories of how these strategies have worked in real shops, giving you the confidence and knowledge to apply them to your own business.

If you want to elevate your approach to customer interactions, turn leads into lifelong clients, and see real results, this podcast is a must-listen. Gain the insights and tools you need to transform follow-ups into one of your most valuable business assets.

 

Host(s):

Jimmy Lea, VP of Business Development

 

Guest(s):

Mike Carillo, Founder & CEO of Auto Shop Follow-UP

Neil Daly, Owner of Oceanside Motorsports

 

Episode Highlights:

[00:04:03] - Mike explains how simple, consistent customer callbacks can increase retention by up to 60%.

[00:06:40] - Neil shares how follow-up efforts now generate nearly 30% of his shop's car count.

[00:10:31] - Handwritten thank-you notes to first-time customers significantly boost return visits.

[00:14:21] - Declined service follow-up is best done with postcards; phone calls work better after trust is built.

[00:17:12] - Scheduled maintenance reminders through follow-up calls help shops mimic the dentist model.

[00:20:35] - Follow-up calls can lead directly to appointment scheduling and deeper customer insights.

[00:23:25] - Tracking and reporting on follow-up results gives actionable data to improve shop operations.

[00:24:40] - Follow-up calls help identify and resolve issues before they turn into negative reviews.

[00:26:26] - Shops that care about customers should prioritize follow-up—it proves you’re invested in the relationship.

[00:39:44] - Mike recommends starting with basic weekly follow-up calls to build trust and consistency.

 

In every business journey, there are defining moments or challenges that build resilience and milestones that fuel growth. We’d love to hear about yours! What lessons, breakthroughs, or pivotal experiences have shaped your path in the automotive industry?

Share your story with us at info@wearetheinstitute.com, and you might be featured in an upcoming episode.

 

👉 Unlock the full experience - watch the full webinar on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GEGJ-C4_LUc

Don’t miss exclusive insights, expert takeaways, and real talk you won’t hear anywhere else. Hit Subscribe, drop a comment, and share it with someone who needs to hear this!

 

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Jimmy Lea: We're going to have an awesome discussion today. I have often said there is a fortune in the followup and I am so excited for this topic that we are going to discuss today as we talk about this fortune in the followup. My name is Jimmy Lee. I'll be the host with you today. I'll be the voice for you today.

Jimmy Lea: You've got questions. Make sure you put them in the Q and a so that we can ask our esteemed panel of professionals. And first up is Mr. Mike Carrillo. Mike is from auto shop. Follow up, Mike. Thank you for joining. How are you? 

Mike Carillo: Good. Jimmy. Thanks for having me. 

Jimmy Lea: Nice. Nice. 

Mike Carillo: Excited to be here. 

Jimmy Lea: Yeah. I met Mike at the Southwest auto professional expo in Phoenix, Arizona in July.

Jimmy Lea: Like who goes to Phoenix in July? 

Mike Carillo: I assume it's a cheap time to get a conference room. I mean, I did, it was great though. We had a great show. 

Jimmy Lea: But that was like down the street for you. That really wasn't that far. Was it? 

Mike Carillo: No it's pretty easy. It was like 115 or something like that though.

Mike Carillo: So it was not it was a little aggressive. We'll put it that way. 

Jimmy Lea: It was aggressive. 

Mike Carillo: It was a great show though. 

Jimmy Lea: It was a great show. Phenomenal show. Any of you in July looking for something to do and hang out in a Phoenix, Arizona, come on down. The Southwest Auto Professionals has a phenomenal show.

Jimmy Lea: It's continuing to build and build and become bigger and they're doing a phenomenal job. Thank you for being here, Mike. Really appreciate you. And joining today as well as Mr. Neil Daley. Mr. Neil, how the heck are you brother? 

Neil Daly: Good guys. Thank you for having me. It's good to see y'all again.

Jimmy Lea: Good to see you. So the last time Neil and I were together, and this is a few years ago, because Neil's been grounded here for the last little bit. Neil was traveling North America With kids in tow homeschooling saying, Hey, you want to see Mount Rushmore? Let's go check it out. Hey, you want to see the Grand Canyon?

Jimmy Lea: Let's study it on the way to the Grand Canyon. 

Neil Daly: Yeah, that was quite the adventure, man. 

Jimmy Lea: Dude, that was awesome. How long did you do that for? 

Neil Daly: We traveled for just over a year and I worked remotely running the shop while we did that. 

Jimmy Lea: For a year. I'd love to do that. I got a glimpse of that. A glimpse of that with the Kukui van.

Jimmy Lea: I was able to travel around, visit shops all across North America. It was not a full solid year, but together one solid, if you took four years and smashed it together, I may have gotten a year out of it, dude. Congratulations, that was awesome. Yeah. 

Neil Daly: Thanks man, it was a really good time. 

Jimmy Lea: You are being very humble.

Jimmy Lea: I'll bet it was awesome. 

Neil Daly: Totally. Yeah, and just to, you know, be able to, you know, like most of my position as the GM at the time, you know, like most of that stuff could be done remotely. And this stuff that I maybe wasn't supposed to be doing was the stuff I'd Actually needed to be here for. So it was a, it was good at putting me in the position of where I really needed to be.

Jimmy Lea: Nice. I like that. I like that a lot because we're going to talk about working in the business versus working on the business. That's going to be some of our discussion here today. Some of the questions that we're going to ask and really, Mike, I want to start out with you and talk about auto shop follow up when we met in Phoenix.

Jimmy Lea: I was, this is a British term. I was gobsmacked with what you were doing. Do you understand this term? 

Mike Carillo: I do. I actually, I am familiar with the term. And I appreciate that. I think it's a compliment if I understand it correctly, at least in this context. 

Jimmy Lea: In this context, it is. Yes. Absolutely. So I'm excited because of what it is that your company does.

Jimmy Lea: So if you can give us a breakdown of what you do for shops all across North America. 

Mike Carillo: Yeah, no, excuse me for sure. So make it really simple and really quick auto shop follow up. We help shops follow up with their customers. We do personalized follow up phone calls and and do that on behalf of shops, but rather than like diving into that too much, I really like if we can today, just share some of the best practices, some of the things that we implement in our shops that I think will probably bring the most value to folks on this call that works.

Jimmy Lea: Okay. Okay. So, so this is best practices. Anybody watching this, anybody taking notes, write down all this information because what Mike's going to share with you is best practices. Best practices is stuff that you can do yourself. 

Mike Carillo: Right, but those are all things that you're a you can apply in your own shops.

Mike Carillo: And I think what's interesting is it's not things that these aren't wildly difficult things. I think that, like, a lot of things in life, the results come from discipline and consistency. Right. And that's where I think sometimes this can be a little bit of a struggle, but I'll tell you the steps are really simple.

Mike Carillo: And the results are phenomenal. So, part of the reason we got into this to begin with is, you know, We have seen shops implement phone calls and in, I'm going to say phone calls. Some people call it three day callbacks, some call it weekly callbacks, right? But essentially calling your customer after they were in the shop, following up, really just asking and engaging in conversation to find out how things went, right?

Mike Carillo: We're not asking them for a review on that call. We're not trying to get them to do another decline service. Truly just making those customer callbacks, right? That's what we're talking about with shops. We've seen shops that have implemented that and done it consistently over 12 months, have increased the retention by as much as 60 percent of retaining and keeping their customers, which is, if you know, in the scheme of the lifetime value of a customer is astronomical.

Jimmy Lea: Okay, 60 percent increase. Neil, you're shaking your head here. Have you seen that type of a retention on making the follow up call that first time customer turns into a second time customer? Have you experienced this in your shop? And maybe not to that number. You don't have to know the number, but have you seen an increase in that?

Neil Daly: Yeah. I wish I was matured enough to have the data on it. But yeah, the combination of the follow up calls and the reminder calls and what we have it for sure. Like I can attribute probably just under 30 percent of the car count that I can control to the follow up calls. So, you know, and it, that gives me that Yeah.

Neil Daly: It's stable. It's one of the keys to stabilizing car count and not just kind of hoping for people to come through. 

Jimmy Lea: Okay. And Mike, we're on my computer, so I'm using my mouse. I'm coming all the way over here to this welcome call. Is this where you are in the welcome call? This is the thank you call that says, Hey, thank you for coming into the shop.

Jimmy Lea: And that's purely what we're saying is thank you. 

Mike Carillo: Yeah, and I think that sometimes this is the part that can get lost, right? And because we want kind of immediate results, especially if we're going to be having our team spend their time working on something. Right, we want to see an ROI and that makes sense.

Mike Carillo: But retention really is a long term play, although there are a lot of short term wins along the way. And I think one of really the main things to, to focus on is the idea that remembering that all of us. Like you, me included, we all do business with people that we know, like, and trust. Right. And that know, I can trust comes through relationship and proximity.

Mike Carillo: And there are an amazing amount of great tools in our industry that help you automate a lot of those relationships and automate a lot of communication to where we can now have a car dropped off. We can get a digital inspection. We can pay over the app. They can pick up after hours and we can truly never have to interact with our customer, which that's a lot of cool technology and it allows for a lot of good business.

Mike Carillo: I think where the downfall is. Is if we've built our businesses around just convenience, right. And that, that making it easy to do business we're leaving their only choice to come down to price convenience, right. And now we're coaching our customers to really be looking, deciding based on the things we don't want them to decide on.

Mike Carillo: So follow up phone calls is one of those ways you can maintain that personal relationship and that personal connection, because in our industry, everybody wants to have their person, right. That they can turn to. 

Jimmy Lea: Oh, yeah, for sure. Neil, in your shop, did you, do you have a person or did you have a person that was making all these follow up phone calls like the thank you call?

Jimmy Lea: Did you have a person doing that? 

Neil Daly: Oh man, we've always known it was something we should have been doing and I could never really implement it. I'd say we tried it here and there, but it was definitely just one of those things that we should have been doing and weren't. 

Jimmy Lea: Yeah. I've been impressed by the shops that do make those follow up thank yous and truly, Neil, truly, it's just a thank you.

Jimmy Lea: Thank you. How's the car? How's everything? Okay. We're here for you when you need us. Wow. That's awesome. Okay, Mike, beyond that, beyond the phone call, now where are we going? What's another best practice here? 

Mike Carillo: Yeah, for sure. So yeah, your initial call is just truly a welcome call, right? You don't want it to feel like a survey.

Mike Carillo: We just saw you had your car in. We want to make sure everything's going all right. And let the customer lead that call, right? Don't try to drive them down a specific path, but let them take you where they take you because this is where you're going to find out. all kinds of good stuff about your shop that maybe you didn't know to begin with, right?

Mike Carillo: And I think that's where there's a level of intentionality that has to go into these calls that sometimes I think we're missing and it makes sense, right? And I've had a one of my favorite pastors used to always say, are you trying to make a point? Are you trying to make a difference?

Mike Carillo: Right. And I think it's really easy to check a box and make a point here and say, yes, I made my calls. But if you really want to make a difference, it's important to try to engage and actually not have the goal be, how do I get off the line with this customer as quick as possible? Right. So I think that those things are really key in the beginning.

Mike Carillo: Another another big thing that we see a ton of success in that's really simple. And again, these are simple, basic things that, you know, we've been doing for a long time. Your dad, when he owned the shop, was probably doing it for a long time too. Right. But handwritten thank you notes to your first time visitors.

Mike Carillo: Holy moly guys. The return rate on this is it is kind of ridiculous because really again what we're trying to do. And I know like at the flinch a lot of the time is, hey, do we really want to spend more money on the first time visitors maybe you're already marketing with a loss leader and they're coming in bringing a coupon.

Mike Carillo: Do we really want to spend more money. Absolutely. Yes, we do. Right. We got them in the door and we know we're not making money until that third, fourth, fifth visits. So we want to invest that time to get those people who are shopping and coming and checking you out to reactivate make sure we get that next visit.

Jimmy Lea: Nice. I like that. I find that has a lot of value and I agree with you because using a broad brush, you know, using a broad brush, what does it cost for you to get a first time customer into your shop? 

Neil Daly: Oh man, another good number, but a couple of hundred bucks, probably. 

Jimmy Lea: A hundred bucks. So let's say it's anywhere from two to three to four to 500.

Jimmy Lea: Let's settle on 200. That's a good number. Solid round number, 200 to get them in. Okay. They have come into your shop. They have purchased from you. Get them to come back a second time and if it only costs five bucks, eight bucks, ten bucks to get them in the second time, the retention is going to skyrocket because they keep coming back.

Jimmy Lea: They know you. They trust you. They love you. They love the experience they're having with you. Hopefully your shop is of that quality. Of course, anybody that we're talking to on this webinar, you're going to have a shop that's of that quality, right? Neil? 

Neil Daly: Yes. I hope so. 

Jimmy Lea: I hope so. Yeah. So do you, Neil, do you send out thank you notes?

Jimmy Lea: Handwritten thank you notes. 

Neil Daly: No, I would love to, and I probably need to implement that. We currently don't collect addresses, so it's a little bit harder than just asking them to do it. 

Jimmy Lea: What about emails? Do you send a followup emails? 

Neil Daly: Yeah, they get, no, you know what? We're texting phone call. We do the text for the review request and which works really well.

Neil Daly: And then a phone call for the the feedback, which is awesome, which is really good. 

Jimmy Lea: Nice. Nice. And Mike, I see that we're going on here. You've got to client services. Are you ready to go there? Are we still talking about? Thank you. These thank you notes. That's huge. And by the way, and I'm glad you nailed on this a little bit here, Mike, when you say thank you, you say, thank you.

Mike Carillo: Yeah. No, I completely agree. And even for our shops who who use our handwritten note services, they you know, if a shop wants to put something in there, then we'll always say like, okay, but my advice, and I don't think we have any shops that do it. My advice is always just let thank you be.

Mike Carillo: Thank you. Just let that, that be that you don't have to have a reason why it's like, oh, this is really cool, but they just want me to come back. And now, and not that there isn't a place for those things that I think you touched on text messages there and email. You know, everything that we do, obviously we're really big on the human driven side, but there's so much value in that text follow up.

Mike Carillo: There's a ton of value in that in those emails and be able to communicate things. It's just about the right medium and the right place. Like Neil touched on for review generation that follow up text message is fantastic. Most of our shops run that alongside what we're doing. You don't want to hit our customers over the head with follow up but it can be really powerful.

Mike Carillo: But for actual feedback, right? Generally speaking with text messages, you can hear from everybody who loved you and everybody who hated you. And our money is in the middle there in that, that yellow neutral zone, right? That's where phone calls can really drive them into the next zone, if that makes sense there.

Jimmy Lea: Totally does. Totally does. And what's your declined service follow up? That looks like a postcard to me. Is that what that is? 

Mike Carillo: Yeah, it is. We, there are a variety of ways to do this. We, so, I always encourage shops. If you're going to start making phone calls in your shop, a lot of the time the jump to, is to jump into declined service because it feels like the low hanging fruit, right?

Mike Carillo: Hey, we know these guys need more service. Let's give them a call, invite them, try to trigger them back in. However, like one of, at least one of my philosophies, right, is When people aren't buying in your shop, it's typically one of two reasons. It's either A, they genuinely don't have the money, or B, they genuinely don't have the trust for it yet, for you yet, right, to spend that kind of money with you.

Mike Carillo: So if the case is A and they just genuinely don't have the money, right, they're going to, we've won that customer over, we have that relationship, they're going to come back in when they need that done, right? And which means makes the phone call somewhat moot. A postcard triggering that and reminding them, hey, don't forget that you need to get this done might be sufficient in that case.

Mike Carillo: Right. If they don't have the trust yet, if we're just calling and inviting him to do it, we've almost doubled down on that a little bit because now what I was saying, not only do you not really have the trust to buy initially, now we're just calling you asking you to buy again now versus taking the time to build that.

Mike Carillo: Right. And that's why I always encourage shops. If you're going to start somewhere, start with just weekly callbacks. There might be a problem at the front counter that you're not aware of. There might be issues in the shop. That are causing reasons why customers aren't buying or why they're not coming back for that decline service.

Mike Carillo: Start with the fact finding and the relationship. And a lot of times the decline service side takes care of itself. 

Jimmy Lea: I love it. I love it. Okay. Now what? Yeah. Like, is there a time period here? I mean, you got a first visit and a second visit. It kind of looks like you're 60 percent of the way across the board.

Mike Carillo: Yeah. And so this is an important thing, right? And I'll be honest, the intention of this graphic is to illustrate What can come from these calls and the types of calls, the types of follow up that you can do, right? And the idea isn't, Oh man, Mike, I can't make all the single one, every single one of these phone calls.

Mike Carillo: I can't do this. Yes, of course you can't have been everything at one time, but right. What can we implement? What are the pieces that we can do and be able to show you get so many things out of this. I think that shops don't realize by doing it, such as being able to collect and understand customer sentiment.

Mike Carillo: Right. And understand where your customer base is as a whole. Right. Being able to being able to schedule appointments from this. So many times it's as simple as, Hey, you guys took care of my oil change, but my wife's AC is blowing a little bit warm. Let me get you back in. Right. And it's as simple as that and being available and making a call and being consistent.

Mike Carillo: So whether you're doing lost customer calls or oil change reminders, right. There are all different tools that you can implement for me, like my two cents. The biggest bang for your buck is going to be making those weekly customer callbacks, just getting on the phone with your customers, making sure everything's okay, making sure that our perspective matches with their perspective.

Mike Carillo: Because we all look at our businesses with some rose colored glasses sometimes. And so I think it's good to get some good, honest, unbiased perspective. 

Jimmy Lea: Oh, I love that. Neil, in your shop, do you have customers like me that forget about that oil service reminder on that next visit and then it's four months and then it's five months and then it's six months?

Neil Daly: Yes, but as your automotive professional, it is my responsibility to remind you of that. You know, it's not your fault. So yeah, we're trying to. Schedule all of that for you. And now auto shop follow up is making a call as the second part of that. Cause we've been great at exit scheduling for a long time and setting that appointment.

Jimmy Lea: Yeah, actually like a dentist. You're doing it like a dentist, right? 

Neil Daly: Yeah, but that's just the first step of it. And now we can actually call them ahead of time. When we say we're going to without having to do anything, which is great. 

Jimmy Lea: And that's awesome. I've been in those situations. My dentist is very good about doing that.

Jimmy Lea: And they'll send a text message. Hey, you've got an appointment next week. You've got an appointment tomorrow whatever that might be. And what's interesting is. One time they sent me the reminder and I was getting on a plane and I was going to be gone for a week. So I text them back. Oh my gosh, I totally forgot.

Jimmy Lea: I'm getting on a plane. I will be back for a couple of weeks. They're like, okay, we'll get you on the hotshot list. As soon as you get back into town, let us know. And they were able to work me in within a few days. So those, that follow up is so key. I'm glad you're doing that, Neil. That's really cool.

Jimmy Lea: Do you have a lot of customers that. Appreciate the reminder because they would have forgotten or they did forget and now they have to reschedule. 

Neil Daly: Okay. So once again, I wish I had some data, but I bet you that I would get about 1%, like 1 out of 100 exit schedule cards would probably come back for that service.

Neil Daly: And now it's again, probably closer to 30%. So our success rate on getting the car back when we talked about getting it back. 

Jimmy Lea: That's solid. 

Neil Daly: There's so much more. There's so much more we can do to improve that as far as how we're exit scheduling them here. Setting the expectation and also with consistency, because now we're teaching our customers that we will follow up with them.

Neil Daly: And they'll begin to trust that and just start waiting for that call. When they call me, it's time. So I think the success rate of the exit schedules will keep going up as we keep working on it. 

Jimmy Lea: And your swag is very much appreciated to go from a 1% to a 30% e even if you're half wrong and it's only 15%.

Jimmy Lea: That is such a huge lift, Neil. And 30%, what if you're 50% off and it's actually 60% lift? I mean, that's even, that's awesome as well. So dude you're cranking it. This is awesome. 

Mike Carillo: Well, Jimmy, I would say, if you wanna hop onto the next slide, I think one of the main net like. One of the main pieces I think that shops are missing when trying to implement and do these.

Mike Carillo: Neil's like, yeah, I love this! But I think one of the, one of the main things is the kind of the so what, right? Because when we've made, had our people make calls or when we force them to, we try doing it ourselves. We just make the call, right? And we get off the phone and okay, everything's fine.

Mike Carillo: Okay, everything's fine. And it's like every call is almost dodging a bullet, hoping that nothing bad comes up, right? And then you get a, you get something that goes wrong. And now you don't want to make calls next week. But that's because we're not collecting the overall data and the information, right?

Mike Carillo: We're just trying to get off the phone and we're just trying to make that connection that we're missing a big piece. So when we're doing these calls, or whoever on your team is doing these calls, you want to have to make sure, how are we reporting the results of this? Is anything that we're doing right?

Mike Carillo: We should be able to measure and we should be able to track if we're going to have our time. Our people spend their time on it. We're going to spend our time on it. We're gonna spend our money on it. We need to make sure that we're able to track that. And so having a place where okay, are they recording?

Mike Carillo: What kind of appointments were we able to generate out of this? Right? What kind of what actions are needed, right? What other steps you take? Who's expecting a call back because they had a weird noise? Who wants to call back next week because they want an appointment scheduled, right? But having a place where You as the owner are able to go back and kind of see an overview of, Hey, here's everything that's going on.

Mike Carillo: Here's the negative things that happen. You get to actually start to see trends and what we would call actionable data, right? Things you can actually apply in your shop to improve and make things better. Right. And keep driving forward. 

Jimmy Lea: This is huge. So, help me understand this information here. What is the one, what's the three, what's, here you are making these phone calls to these people, so I'm assuming Dale, Thomas Dale and Elaine are all three different customers, clients for you. 

Mike Carillo: Yeah. So in this case, this is this is just a clip of a report from one of our current customers, just so you can get an idea of kind of how to structure.

Mike Carillo: And so we track the results of those things, right? So in this case, we scheduled an appointment she had questions about her car, curious about a loaner car in the future. And so that's just a, Hey, we had an appointment scheduled. The next section down are action needed. So these are things that are coming back to the shop saying, Hey, okay.

Mike Carillo: Thomas has a check engine light came back on and there's Mazda. You know, and we kind of go through the problem. But these are things that, okay, a service advisor needs to call back on or somebody's expecting a call back. So maybe you're taking the car care of the calls yourself. Having some sort of means of distribution, because we have to have that follow through, right?

Mike Carillo: If the customer, if we called and said, Hey, we had a question or they had a question about a noise and we don't follow up. That's not great, right? We want to make sure that we have a system of output. Okay. Make sure that these things, as we're making these calls, the needs that come through get taken care of.

Mike Carillo: And a place where you're able to review and start to see over time, like, are we improving? What are we learning? What are the issues that we have that we hear on a consistent basis? Yeah, I'm sure Neil can speak to that a little bit. He is he gets to see the reports, reporting a lot. 

Neil Daly: Yeah, dude, these are great.

Neil Daly: You know, the action needed ones are really good because we would just divide those up between the team and then someone else reaches out to them. This, one of the greatest things too, though, is it's really getting ahead of, you know, if some, if something didn't go right with somebody or if they, you know, if something else did break or whatever, or they weren't happy with the service for some reason, having you guys call versus us, they're so much, they'll communicate so much more.

Neil Daly: I'll tell you guys exactly how it is, because they didn't have to work with you in person. And it's been really good because I feel like, you know, if somebody has a bad experience, there's like four different ways that they'll handle it. There's the people that go public on the review sites. There's somebody Maybe a little more rare that they'll deal directly with you and let you know they'll have a problem.

Neil Daly: And then the two most dangerous ones, I think, are the silent ones. They won't say anything. They just won't come back. The other ones that only tell their friends. And you're allowing us to get ahead of all of those and handle a situation before it becomes something bigger and hopefully put it at rest or at least show that we care.

Neil Daly: And like, I mean, we don't get in the habit of getting bad reviews anyways, but we haven't had one since we started with you guys and we've been, I feel like we've been able to get in front of anything that, that has not gone right. Because we get it right away and then we handle it. 

Mike Carillo: I think that's one of the powerful things about making calls and having the opportunity to connect with your customer is we get there's so many things that are truly just a misunderstanding right in our industry when we deal with our customers and they just don't know better and that's okay.

Mike Carillo: But it's so many calls man that we run into and say like, they're like hey it was fine you know you guys fixed my car, but. And service is fine, but I mean, I googled the price on Amazon of the part and you guys charged me double. As like, well, well, that gives us an opportunity. Oh, well, now we get to speak to the warranty.

Mike Carillo: Right. And your technicians, we get this, we get to address that, which is an understandable concern. If you're not educated on why that would be the case. Right. But that's a customer saved. And I think that's why it's such it makes such an impact in. Retention is not just the relationships and the trust, but it's eliminating those misunderstandings and those people who did have issues and you were the person who took the time to educate them.

Mike Carillo: Those end up becoming your customers for life, right? And there's a lot of ways to have that off of the past, just making a simple follow up phone call. 

Jimmy Lea: It's true. That's true. That's solid. That's solid. I, my, I, my yeah, shops can do this. They need to do this. You're able to head off the problems.

Jimmy Lea: You know, so the only reason to not do a follow up is because you don't care. If you really legitimately don't care, then don't do this. But here's what I've seen across all of North America and Neil, you can speak to this as well. Mike, you can speak to this. In the automotive industry, there is a very big heart behind every single owner inside of every single owner that I have met at all across North America.

Jimmy Lea: They would give you the shirt off their back. To help you to make sure it's right to help make sure your car is right. The follow up is just taking that relationship so much further and so much more solidified in, in that long term relationship between you and a customer. Have you ever met a shop owner, Neil or Mike, that Legitimately didn't care.

Mike Carillo: I don't, I mean, I don't know if I can say I've never met a shop owner that I felt like didn't care, but by a lot. So maybe there's one in its entirety. 

Jimmy Lea: Maybe there's one. Neil, what about you? 

Mike Carillo: Yeah. 

Jimmy Lea: Yeah. 

Neil Daly: Nobody that would be here or in any form of trying to improve ourselves. You know, you'll meet those once in a while I call them like hobbyist auto shops, so it's not a professional, but no, I'm the professionals, man.

Neil Daly: Yeah. We all. We're in it, we care. 

Jimmy Lea: We do. And I'm going to give a quick story and a shout out to Jesse Matthews. He was a a mobile tech and he was booking out about this he was doing about 6, 000 a month in his mobile tech. He worked at a dealership, but kept doing his mobile tech. And then he got himself a space, brick and mortar.

Jimmy Lea: It's a single lift. Probably a two bay shop, very small, one of those, you know, 1, 200 square foot, 1, 000 square foot, small, single door, you understand where I am, right? In one month, went from 6, 000 a month to 24, 000 a month. In one month. And I am looking forward to the day, I'm counting the days, because I think there's about six months down the road that he is going to go from 24, 000 a month to 24, 000 a week.

Jimmy Lea: Because he cares. He cares. He cares about his clients. He cares about his customers. He cares about making sure that cars are running properly on the roads. And he's one that wants to better himself, better his family, better the industry, better everyone around him. Big shout out to Jesse Matthews.

Jimmy Lea: He's not even on this webinar. 

Mike Carillo: Love it. 

Jimmy Lea: Yeah. No, that's cool. 

Mike Carillo: Yeah, I know. And I would say like, like to your point, but by and large, right, the vast majority of this industry are incredible human beings who want to grow their businesses. They want to do it well. They want to take care of the customer.

Mike Carillo: They're not looking to take advantage of people. The unfortunate part is we work on something that our customers don't understand and therefore we're immediately a threat, right? Because they have to take your word for it. So we're not starting out on the right foot already, right? They're having to trust you in something.

Mike Carillo: It's financial. They drive their family around in it, right? The stakes are heavy, right? And in order, I think that's where this comes into play and can be so powerful as you see those on your city Facebook page when somebody says, Hey, you know, does anybody recommend a good car shop? Those people who hop on within three seconds and there's like 15 of them, they're like my guy, that's what we want, right?

Mike Carillo: That's what we need to have. And I guarantee you that shop owner has relationships with each one of those people. It didn't happen because of an auto text message. It didn't happen because of DVI. It may be. That improves your shop operations wildly, right? Tremendously, but let's, we don't want to forget that last little piece, which is the main thing, which is everybody does business with people that they don't like and trust.

Jimmy Lea: Yeah, true story. True story. So Neil of this process how involved are you on the follow up that your shop does with clients? 

Neil Daly: I mean, so it's, it takes a very little amount of time if that's kind of what you're asking. So like I get to be involved and like we see all of the results from the phone calls.

Neil Daly: And then we reach out to the ones that we need to, so like 100 percent involved there, but you're talking like five minutes a week versus whatever it would take doing it manually. So it's, yeah, it's pretty effortless to do a really good job of it. 

Jimmy Lea: Yeah, it would be and I imagine you being on the road for a year with your family and knowing that this is being taken care of that.

Jimmy Lea: You don't have to pick up the phone. You don't have to make the phone calls. You don't have to draft the letters. You don't even have to have somebody inside of your shop doing that. You can. Take that one person that used to be all about the follow up phone calls and multitask them into doing something else in the shop that makes money.

Jimmy Lea: And it allows you to be able to take a step back and say, okay, Mike, take care of my clients, take care of my customers. Let me know when there's an issue and I'll pick up the phone and we'll make sure that we take care of business. 

Neil Daly: Yeah, it is nice to have it covered. We've kind of gone to just with the size of our shop, you know, we're mostly producers now.

Neil Daly: So to ask you know, I want my service advisors focus on customers at the front door and what they're doing. I want the after sales stuff done by someone else. So that the service advisor is on to the next customer that is here. And it just keeps everybody focused on their role. 

Jimmy Lea: I love that. And what does your shop look like Neil? Your Oceanside Motorsports Oceanside, California, right? So what is the makeup? What does your shop look like these days? 

Neil Daly: Okay. So we have 12 bays. We've always had a little bit too big of a shop for what we've produced and we've been changing that rapidly.

Neil Daly: So, 12 bays with five technicians and staffed for three people in the front office. So three service advisors. And it's a good time. A couple of years ago I had some decent leadership in the shop too. That's the only reason I could leave on that trip, but I kind of failed at that part then.

Neil Daly: So I, you know, I've been back as the one person in charge, which has worked really well. For a couple of years and we've gone through some significant growth, but it is time to start taking that challenge on again next year. So that's what I mean. Like we're kind of only producers. I don't even have a we do have a bookkeeper thankfully.

Neil Daly: But that's the only non producing employee. 

Jimmy Lea: Right, right. There's no, I'm gonna use air quotes. There's no middle management. That's what I'm hearing you say. Yeah, everybody's producing, everybody's working for that paycheck every single day, every single week.

Neil Daly: Yeah, and we get it done. We've got a good group now. We've got a really good group. 

Jimmy Lea: No, that's very cool. That's very cool. And I want to point out that what we've been talking about here, these are best practices. This is not industry standard. If it was industry standard, everybody would do it. This isn't an industry standard.

Jimmy Lea: Not everybody's doing it. And because everybody's not doing it, this is some of those best practices that you can implement into your shop to make that difference. I wonder from our audience, what are you doing in your shops? What is your follow up process? What do you do to continue that relationship with the client that takes it even further?

Neil Daly: And as they're answering that. Yeah, I'll cut you off. No please. If they are. I wanted to say one of the things I was so surprised by, because even, you know, over 10 years ago, part of the best practices was to do follow up thank you calls. 

Jimmy Lea: Totally. 

Neil Daly: And even then, I thought, dude, that's old news. We text now. People aren't going to want to pick up the phone and have a conversation. I do remember when we did actually try it, people did. It was enjoyable. People did actually pick up, but it is absolutely still current. And I can't believe the success rate of people that actually answer the phone and then talk to you guys. I am absolutely wrong about that. 

Neil Daly: I was thinking about it personally too. Like I don't like, I don't want anyone to call me or do any of that. I want to text and this and that, but I've thought about it with a couple of experiences I've happened with, we've had with companies lately.

Neil Daly: If they follow it up with me. I for sure would have had a better experience because I do want to give them a little feedback or the good ones I wouldn't mind saying something about You know, so I've been thinking about it on the customer side, kind of changing my mind about that. It's absolutely a part of our world still.

Mike Carillo: Yeah, I think it's and I get right, same thing for every one of my customers, shop owner, myself, business owner. I think we are a little bit biased in that, not answering the phone, because our phones blow up all day, every day. And we don't realize that's not everybody's world, that's not every day.

Mike Carillo: And yeah, and people want to answer the phones. You'd be surprised how much people want to have a conversation and talk. During COVID, our answer rates were through the roof. Everybody wanted to have a conversation. That was a heyday for AutoShop follow up, sadly. But it was, but even still, like, people really do want to engage and have like a quick chat and and then for those folks who don't, it's okay to let them pop off the phone, right?

Mike Carillo: Everybody has that customer, too, who's like a little short and to the point. The phone call is not giving them warm fuzzies. Just say, Hey, we know we're here for you. We appreciate you. Let us know if you need anything and let them get off the phone. Right. However, that customer is best served. I think is what makes sense.

Jimmy Lea: Yeah. And there's a lot of good that can come from asking a client. How do you prefer to be communicated with our follow up? We'd like to follow up a day after, a week after, or something like that. And what can we do to follow up with you? Is it a text message? Is it a phone call? Is it a postcard?

Jimmy Lea: What do we need to do? So, yeah, ask those questions and that'll definitely help you. So guys, as we come in to land this plane, our podcast is a plane today, as we come in to land this plane, what's your final bits of advice? Neil, we'll start with you. Mike, we'll go to you. What advice do you have for shop owners?

Jimmy Lea: Maybe they're not doing follow up or maybe they are and they're in the middle of it and it's overwhelming. I don't know. What's your advice, Neil? 

Neil Daly: I guess, It would just be that, you know, like I hear so often where people are like, Oh, how is it there or we're slow or this is affecting my car count or this and that.

Neil Daly: And if you focus on the things you can control, like following up with your customers, exit scheduling, those other best practices there's really anytime I've ever been slow and maybe even tried to think about blaming something else I'll usually look at my calendar and if there's no exit schedules on it, like I didn't do them 30 to 90 days ago, or if I haven't been doing those follow up calls and stuff, that's why.

Neil Daly: And it's really empowering because, okay, you have something to do now that you can control. So I kind of don't take any of that BS happening anywhere else as to why we're slow if we are, and I don't know, just finally with you guys, there's a way to. Have it actually checked off as something that's done a hundred percent.

Jimmy Lea: Nice. Nice. Awesome. Thank you. Thank you so much, Neil Thank you so much for being here with us and spending your time to talk about Follow up and the fortune that can be there. I know you just swagged a lot of numbers for us, but gosh dang that It's right in the place that you want to be. So it's definitely making a difference on everything that we're doing.

Jimmy Lea: So, thank you very much. I know you got to bounce. So dude, you're awesome. Thank you, brother. Can't wait to see you again soon. 

Neil Daly: Thank you guys. It was really good to see you. 

Jimmy Lea: Really good to see you too. Mike, to you as well. What advice would you have for shop owners in their followup? What are some of those best practices that they can follow?

Mike Carillo: I mean, I would say if you're going to start anywhere start with some basic week after follow up calls. Nothing fancy. 

Jimmy Lea: A week after. So you're following a full seven days. 

Mike Carillo: Yeah. Well, I know I would say, you know, four to seven days depending on what that looks like. But I think within a week, you want it long enough to where they're able to drive their car for a minute, but not so long that they forgot about what their business was like.

Mike Carillo: Right. So I think just starting with those calls and remember, like, listen, they are a bit of a hassle. Like, I'm not gonna lie, like, they are a bit of a hassle. Most people don't really want to jump in and do them. However, there's a reason why they've been tried and true for a long time is because it works.

Mike Carillo: And it does. It does work. You will see more appointments. You'll convert more customers. You'll see more people come into your shop. And it is a small thing. I heard a great quote the other day. It said the magic you're looking for is in the work you're avoiding. And sometimes it's just a matter of diving in and like, Just go get it, work on that and spend the time.

Mike Carillo: It's well worth the investment. 

Jimmy Lea: Dude, that's solid. The magic is in the work you're avoiding. I absolutely love that. That is very cool. As we're wrapping this up and I have a question for you, maybe you don't have this answer. Is there any data? In your company, in your follow ups that you're doing for a first customer, second time customer, third time customer, fourth time customer, is there any data that says if you can get them to come back a second time, a certain percentage will come back a third time, a certain percentage will come back a fourth time?

Mike Carillo: I don't have that in front of me but that is something that we're working on and building out because I, I do a hundred percent, we need to know, right? We need to know what that looks like. 

Jimmy Lea: We need to know because I think that there is a percentage and I'm even assuming that once we can get it a fourth time visit, that's pretty much guaranteed customer for life.

Mike Carillo: Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Right. And providing that consistent experience, right. And doing those little things that really can, it can make all the difference. I know it seems it's just so simple that it's a little too obvious, but it really does work. 

Jimmy Lea: Yeah, it does work. And here's another shout out, another testimonial from Adam, m spec performance. Thank you, Adam. 

Mike Carillo: Yeah. Well, thank you, Jimmy. Appreciate being able to be here. And yeah, for anyone on the shameless plug portion of this, if you visit autoshopfollowup. com four slash the Institute you can learn more about our followup services and actually anyone who comes through the Institute will get a hundred free follow up phone calls if you sign up and join us.

Jimmy Lea: Oh, seriously. Thank you. That is awesome. So anybody listening to this live gets it. And anybody listening to gets it too?

Mike Carillo: Yep. Absolutely. 

Jimmy Lea: Give us that website again. 

Mike Carillo: Auto shop, followup. com forward slash 

Mike Carillo: just fill out the little form on there and we can have a little have a call and ask any questions that you have. Yeah. Happy to help. 

Jimmy Lea: Bro. That's awesome. Thank you. Thank you. That goes a long way. It's going to help a lot of shops. I definitely see this going a long way. So thank you very much, Mike. Absolutely. 

Mike Carillo: Thank you, sir . Appreciate you. 

Jimmy Lea: Appreciate you as well. And those of you who are here still listening, as we talk, we're talking about leadership.

Jimmy Lea: My Neil was talking about the leadership inside of his shop and the difference that leadership allowed him to have choices and to make choices and to do things. We are instituting the leadership intensive. This is with Michael Smith. He talks about human centric thinking. Why do you make the choices you do?

Jimmy Lea: Why you choose what you choose into your team? Why does your team choose to do what they do? How can we help to motivate them to make the right choices? Our next Meeting. Our next gathering on this is in Dallas, Texas in November. QR code here in the bottom corner. Go ahead and scan that QR code. That'll get you into that meeting.

Jimmy Lea: It's going to be amazing. It's in a beautiful part of Dallas, Texas in November, the 18th, 19th and 20th, Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday, really close to the airport. Makes it easy, convenient. You Uber over, you Uber back. You don't have to rent a car. You're in and you're ready to go. It is going to be awesome and amazing time for those of you who are looking for the leadership, whether you need the leadership yourself or your clients are needing that leadership or your team is needing clients.

Jimmy Lea: Oh, my gosh. Your team needs that leadership. Your team needs that leadership. So this is definitely something for owners and managers. And once you get those managers in, you're going to want your service advisors to come in and even your technicians to come through this leadership intensive, because it talks about the human centric learning and why we do what we do sign up.

Jimmy Lea: And we'll see you there. This is awesome. This has been an amazing discussion. Thank you so much to Mike for joining us, talking about best practices in a shop in follow up. Thank you to Neil for your insight and your wisdom and the ability you have inside of your shop to even be able to go out on a year tour of North America.

Jimmy Lea: Super awesome. I'd love for your shop to be able to do the same. If you are interested, if you like this type of training, if you like this type of information, scan the QR code in the bottom left hand corner, that QR code will link you to my team. And we would love to sit down and talk to you about your shop, what you can do in your shop to take it to that next level.

Jimmy Lea: My name is Jimmy Lee. I am with the Institute. We are here for coaching and training in the automotive aftermarket for service advisors, managers, and owners, whether you are starting out as a single bay, a single lift all the way up to the garage malls. We are going to meet you where you are today and take you from that point.

Jimmy Lea: This is an awesome and elite program that you will definitely benefit from. Join us at the Institute. My name is Jimmy Lee. This is my email. This is my cell phone. Give me a call. Love to talk to you. Give me a text message. Give me an email. Let's connect. My name is Jimmy Lee. I look forward to talking to you again soon.

Jimmy Lea: Talk to you soon.