Well, what if there was a secret to getting rid of that monster? 

Much like the monster himself, the average parts department’s obsolete inventory stems from one thing: special order parts returns. 

Special order parts are one of the biggest drivers of obsolescence. When customers put in a request for a specific part, they either order the wrong part, find parts cheaper elsewhere, or just return those parts without reason. As a result, they pile up on the shelves and are often forgotten. 

So, how can you prevent special order parts from piling up?

Why Obsolete Inventory is a Killer

The costs associated with obsolete inventory are astronomical. Obsolete parts do more than just take up valuable space; they carry inventory costs by occupying valuable space in the warehouse, reducing cash flow, diverting attention from more critical tasks, and tying up capital that could have been used elsewhere. 

If you’re not keeping proper track of how many older parts you have in stock, you may contribute even more to your obsolescence rate. You can end up over-ordering older parts that you already have in stock. Knowing exactly what you have in stock and is essential to ensuring you don’t overorder parts that contribute to more back-stock.

How to Set Up Your Return Policy for Special Order Parts

A well-defined return policy can help go a long way in reducing returned parts. This is especially true when dealing with specially ordered parts. Ordering parts that are harder to source for specific customers has a ripple effect on your inventory.

• It increases costs for your parts business by ordering an already difficult-to-find part, which contributes to higher costs to get that part to your shelves as quickly as possible.

• With the aftereffects of supply chain interruptions still being felt, getting special-order parts to you takes time. Time that your customers may not be willing to wait. 

• If the part ordered is incorrect, arrives late, or is no longer needed by the customer, instead of going back into the sales cycle for customers looking for similar parts, it gets stuck on the shelf and stays there.

So, what can be done about returns of special-order parts? This is where policy flexibility should come into play. 

If a part is ordered that doesn’t fit the customer’s needs, offer them to exchange it for parts they need at a small fee. This ensures that you don’t lose money on the parts you’ve already ordered and rotate out your existing inventory to make space on the shelves. This encourages your customers to make their purchases without fearing getting stuck with an unwanted item. You can also offer them a discounted or free service for installing that part.    

Having this much flexibility in your return policy strategy presents a few benefits for your parts business. 

• Reduced holding costs for obsolete inventory.
• Enhanced customer trust and loyalty due to the flexibility in the return policy.
• Better inventory turnover ratio, leading to increased profitability.
• Potential for repurposing or reusing returned parts for other customer orders.

Key Components of a Flexible Return Policy

Setting up a return policy that suits your and your customer’s needs is crucial. 

To set up the right return policy, you must have the right parameters.

Dealing with Setbacks

No matter how fair your policies may be, you’ll deal with some negative feedback and other setbacks from customers. The important thing is not to panic. Transparency and education are essential here. 

Educate your customers about policy stipulations to ensure clarity and establish a dialogue with them during their returns or exchange processes. This will help them better understand the policies themselves and establish relationships with customers that lend to increased brand trust. 

Set up automated systems to quickly process returns and restock items. When an influx of order returns or exchanges occurs, help your team process them as efficiently as possible. Utilize automated systems to help you keep track of returns, stay on top of customer comms, and accurately track your inventory. This will help you avoid obsolescence problems in the future. 

These can help you deal with any friction points between you and your customers to deliver the best overall customer experience.

Keep Your Inventory and Parts Sales Alive

While it may not be entirely painless, a strong and effective returns process can help you keep your inventory stable. Drive down obsolescence with flexible returns and exchange policies. Stay on top of inventory rotation with automated inventory management systems. Be consistent when communicating with customers about return guidelines to establish a trusting and transparent relationship. 

Looking for more ways to tackle even the scariest obsolescence rates? Check out our free guide, “Parts Manager’s Guide to Beating Obsolescence,” for more expert tips.

What’s a major challenge facing online retailers today? Two words, abandoned carts. Abandoned carts are the result of customers who add items to their online shopping carts but leave before making a purchase. 

There are many reasons why a customer may wait to make a final purchase, even with a cart full of items. Capturing their business is essential to maintaining sales success.

What Are Abandoned Cart Recovery Emails? 

An abandoned cart recovery email is designed to encourage or remind customers to complete their purchases. Abandoned cart recovery emails are essential to streamlining the customer buying journey. They can help grow the sales side of your parts business and customer relationships at the dealership.

Why Are They Important? 

Abandoned cart recovery emails are your gateway to building consumer trust, growing sales, and establishing customer loyalty. From a sales perspective, they’re an obvious way to close on sales opportunities. They’re also an effective way to show your customers that you’re committed to simplifying their buying experience.

How They Contribute To Sales

Abandoned cart emails are excellent sales tools for two reasons. First, as we’ve already stated, they can help close sales opportunities for new customers at the dealership. Second, and most importantly, they can help salvage potential sales losses of returning customers, turning returning customers that are on the fence about making a final purchase into loyal repeat buyers. 

How They Contribute To Customer Retention

These kinds of emails also help improve customer retention rates. They act as reminders for both new and returning customers. This helps them pick up where they left off in their buying journey, especially if they have multiple or large orders in their online shopping cart.

Steps to a Successful Abandoned Cart Email

Setting up an abandoned cart email can be broken down into five simple steps. These steps can be modified, tested, and re-run to help you tailor your campaign strategy.

Measure Your Success

An abandoned cart email strategy is ultimately a sales strategy. Understanding how it contributes to your sales growth is key. To do this, you need to identify your key metrics and define your campaign goals. Once you have an idea of how you want your campaign to perform, you can adjust them when you run them again.

Key Metrics 

In order to set up your north-star goals for your abandoned cart recovery email campaigns, you need to have a base understanding of your email metrics and how you want to measure them. 

There are a few standard metrics you should use to measure the success of your campaign:

• Open Rate: The percentage of people that open the email. 

• Click-Through-Rate (CTR): The percentage of people that click through the email to their shopping cart.

• Recovery Rate: The percentage of people who complete their checkout purchase after receiving an abandoned cart email.

Create Your Target Goals

With these metrics in mind, you should create your target goals to measure the success of your campaign. If this campaign aims to turn 10% of abandoned carts into final sales, figure out how your email metrics can help reach that goal. You might need a 0.75% CTR or higher to get customers to complete their purchases and reach that 10% goal.

Bottom Line

Starting an abandoned cart recovery campaign from scratch is a pain. However, if you follow these abandoned cart email best practices, you can set up successful campaigns time and time again.

Click here for a free downloadable guide with abandoned cart email templates. It’ll help you get a baseline for what your emails can look like and how to use them effectively.

If your parts department still relies on a long, complex parts form, you’re in trouble. With more than half of consumers choosing not to buy new or even used vehicles, the parts department can be a great source of additional revenue. With such a massive surge in the number of parts buyers on the market today, your parts department must provide a seamless online buying experience.

Online Parts Shopping Is The New Normal

The online retail market is the new standard for today’s consumers. Online shopping provides convenience and speed for your typical customer and is oftentimes, a more cost-effective buying option. 

With the distinct advantages that the online retail market offers, consumers are more inclined to make all their purchases online and forgo visiting brick-and-mortar establishments. The auto industry is no exception to this change in buyer behavior. 

The digital influence on auto parts and accessories market is estimated to generate close to $177 billion in total revenue by the end of 2023. How can your dealership capitalize on this growth?

The Traditional Parts Form Isn’t Working Anymore

The traditional parts form has various problems, each contributing to a poor customer buying experience. It’s slow, inefficient, and highly error-prone. When the buying experience isn’t seamless, your dealership essentially drives business away.

The Limitations of a Parts Form

The parts form limits your parts department’s ability to run efficiently in three ways.

Time Lost

Once a parts form is completed, it takes hours and sometimes even days to confirm with customers about the status of their parts order or give a quote. Hours spent making phone calls to customers and tracking down the right contact information make getting a part ordered, purchased, and delivered an incredibly time-consuming process. 

Error-Prone Manual Entries

Customers and department staff alike can easily make errors when dealing with a parts form. Complex forms with lots of steps, unclear information, and mismarked fields can lead to hundreds of customers getting the wrong part for their vehicle. This means more steps are required to get the right part ordered, sell or send back the wrong parts, and leads to high inventory pile-ups. 

Difficulty Tying to Inventory Tracking

How do you know the state of your inventory if you don’t know where certain parts came from? Parts returns are one of the biggest contributors to obsolescence in the parts department. High obsolescence makes it more difficult for your parts department to determine what inventory you have, what you need, and what inventory you can turn into a quick sale.

Risks of the Parts Form

There are significant risks that result from the inefficiencies of a parts form as well.

Lost Sales Opportunities

The most obvious financial risk to the parts department due to a parts form is lost sales opportunities. When customers have a complicated buying experience with your parts department, they’re more likely to go straight to your competitors. This drives down revenue for the dealership.

High Operational Costs

Order errors are one of the biggest issues with the parts form. Ordering the wrong parts leads to wasted time and money for the parts staff. High overhead costs for parts that end up not being sold cut into the dealership’s total profitability. 

Damage to Brand Reputation

A poor buying experience is the same as bad advertising. Customers talk to each other, and if your parts form prevents them from getting the parts they need fast, they’ll tell others about it. Before you know it, a large percentage of your buyer market will have turned against you. An inefficient buying experience damages your dealership’s brand reputation more than you may realize.

The Top 3 Benefits of an Online Auto Parts Store

To keep up with the modern buying experience, you need to provide your customers with a seamless, easy way to purchase. The best way to do this is through an online parts store. A website dedicated to just auto parts available at your dealership is a surefire way to capture and keep new business.

A designated parts store gives you three significant advantages. 

Switch to a Strong eCommerce Approach 

The parts form, like many traditional business approaches at the dealership, is holding your business back. To effectively grow your parts business and maintain steady revenue, your parts department needs to invest in robust eCommerce tactics and tools and throw the old parts form out. 

Ready to dive into the world of automotive eCommerce but not sure where to start? Get our free guide, Selling Parts Online 101, for a crash course on eCommerce today. 

The traditional auto parts quoting process at the dealership can lead to a poor buying experience that can drive customers away from your business directly to your competitors.

Often, it can cost you time, resources, and money. Turning parts quotes into final sales is an essential process, and when done correctly can help improve your sales numbers. 

But if the traditional quoting process isn’t working for the average dealership, what can you do to fix it?

How Your Current Quoting Process Impacts Customer Experience

The traditional quoting process is often slow, inefficient, and lacks transparency. This can lead to several issues that result in a poor customer experience.

Four Tools to Implement Into Your New Quoting Process

So you’ve decided to get rid of your outdated parts quoting system. Where do you go from here? You need to implement a more streamlined, automated process to help you maintain quality customer service.

To create a better buying experience for your customers, consider using the following tools.

▶ CRM (Customer Relationship Management) System

A CRM software system helps you manage customer information, track interactions, and streamline the buying process.

It can also enable sales staff to access customer and product data quickly, resulting in faster and more accurate quotes.

CRM tools are an essential component of your customer experience strategy.

▶ eCommerce Platform

The right eCommerce platform can provide your dealership with a website plugin that allows customers to search for parts, view pricing, and place orders right on your dealership’s website.

This can save time for both the customer and the dealership while reducing the likelihood of errors.

They can also check to see if parts are in stock, back ordered, or out of stock.

This will help them get a better idea of how long it will take to get access to those parts. 

▶ Automated Quote Generation

Integrate software that can automatically generate quotes based on predefined rules, like discounts for bulk orders or price adjustments for specific customers.

This can speed up the quoting process and minimize human errors.

The RevolutionParts Quoting Tools is the perfect example of how technology can be used to help automate quotes for customers, whether the request comes over the phone or by email.

Check out the video below to learn more about how the RP Quoting Tool works.

▶ Customer Communication Tools

Utilize tools like email, text messaging, or chatbots to keep customers informed about the status of their quotes.

Transparent communication can help build trust and improve customer satisfaction.

It’s also a great way to help train your parts team on their customer communication skills.

Utilize all of these tools to help you streamline your quoting process and maximize your overall efficiency.

Set Up a New Standard Operating Procedure 

You know what tools and systems you need to implement to ramp up your new quoting process.

You’re ready to get the ball rolling, but you need a plan of actionable steps to take to make sure you don’t overcomplicate the process before you start to use it.

Consider following these five steps to establish a new, more efficient SOP for your auto parts department. 

Step 1: Choose The Right Tools

Evaluate and invest in a CRM system, an eCommerce platform, automated quote generation software, and communication tools that best suit your dealership’s needs.

Ensure they can be integrated with your existing systems to streamline the process.

Step 2: Train Your Staff

Train your parts department staff to use the new systems and tools effectively.

Ensure they understand the importance of accurate data entry, timely communication, and providing prompt quotes to improve customer satisfaction.

Have regular training follow-up sessions to help them get used to new tools and processes and reinforce this knowledge. 

Step 3: Define Your Rules

Establish standardized pricing and discount structures to be applied consistently across all quotes.

Incorporate these rules into your automated quote generation software to ensure accurate and consistent quotes.

Step 4: Create a Communication Plan

Develop a clear communication plan for keeping customers informed throughout the process.

This should include:

• Confirmation message acknowledging receipt of the quote request.
• Regular updates on the quote’s progress.
• Notification when the quote is ready.
• Follow-up messages to ensure customer satisfaction.

Step 5: Implement the New SOP

Roll out the new quoting SOP, ensuring all staff are aware of the changes and understand their roles within the parts department.

Help them train new hires to maintain these processes and keep the customer experience consistent.

Improve the Customer Experience to Double Your Sales Growth

Improving the customer experience is essential to growing your parts sales and securing future business for your dealership.

Streamlining your quoting process is just one piece of the puzzle.

It’s important to look at all customer journey aspects and identify your weak points. This will help you meet customer expectations in the future. 

Looking for more ways to improve the customer experience at the parts department?

Check out one of our most popular guides here to learn three top strategies that can help you do that.

Knowing the cause of your inventory problems is the first step toward solving them. The more difficult step is implementing the right processes to fix them.

The Most Common Inventory Hurdles

What do most parts managers cite as the dealership’s biggest inventory issues? Overstock of slow-selling parts, low to no stock of fast-selling parts, missing inventory, and mistagged inventory are the most common inventory management challenges to overcome.

Overstocked & Obsolete Parts

Nothing hurts your bottom line more than an abundance of parts that don’t sell fast. Overstocked inventory can lead to a variety of problems behind the parts counter.

First, it takes up space on the parts shelves that could be used to house more popular parts. 

Second, it quickly contributes to your obsolescence rate, the percentage of aging parts that don’t get sold. 

Third, it ties up cash that could be spent elsewhere to help drive revenue. Having dead stock that can’t be moved quickly is no help to you.

Understocked Parts

While overstocked parts hurt your bottom line, understocked parts hurt your customer retention. Without enough of the right parts on the shelves, ordering the parts your customers need takes longer. This drives customers away from your dealership to your competitors. 

Understocked parts can also make it difficult to accurately predict what parts will need to be ordered in future sales cycles, as there’s less product for you to pull data from.

Missing & Mistagged Inventory

The biggest headache for any parts department employee is missing and/or mistagged inventory. It’s one thing to have too much or too little inventory; it’s another thing to have inventory that doesn’t match your system data. 

When inventory gets mistagged, your parts department scrambles to find it. It can also result in labeling those parts as missing, leading to over ordering parts, and the vicious cycle starts all over again.

Tips for Solving Inventory Challenges

If your parts department is experiencing one or all of these inventory issues, how do you go about fixing them?

Streamline Your Parts Department

Inventory management can be a nightmare, but you can turn your parts department into a well-oiled machine with the right tools and strategies. Be consistent with your management processes, make data-driven decisions, and invest in high-quality digital tools to do the heavy lifting for you. 

Want more tips on how to manage your auto parts inventory successfully? Get more insights into how you can reduce special order parts returns here.

The eCommerce industry depends on convenient shipping options, quick turnaround times, and in-tact packages. However, things can go wrong when shipping automotive parts. Once the transaction is complete, shipment damage, lost items, and package theft can occur. 

Protecting your shipments is essential to the customer experience when shipping car parts.

What is Shipping Protection? 

Shipping protection, also called shipping insurance or package insurance, is a way to help ensure purchased products get to the end consumer after transport. During transport of car parts, damages to items can occur easily. Items may get lost during transport or stolen after delivery. Shipping protection helps cover the costs these incidents incur and resolve issues to help get auto parts to the buyer.

Shipping Protection for the Parts Department

Providing shipping protection in your parts department can greatly benefit the dealership. The online auto parts market is rapidly expanding, meaning more and more vehicle owners are purchasing car parts online. As a result, auto parts sales are becoming the number one source of revenue at the dealership. 

This means that parts buyers will be one of the most important customer segments for the dealership. Securing their business and turning them into repeat customers is essential. One way to do that is to provide protection for shipped car parts and accessories. 

As vehicle owners continue to keep their older cars for longer, buying older vehicle parts is more important to them than ever. These older vehicle parts are more difficult to find, meaning that the delivery of these parts is essential to online auto parts buyers. When parts orders are damaged, get lost in transport, or result in theft, it negatively impacts these customers on a much deeper level. Shipping protection helps to alleviate this problem.

Benefits of Providing Parts Buyers Shipping Protection

While it may seem like the cost of shipping protection would cut into profitability at the parts department, it has various benefits.

• Protect packages from theft, loss, and damage: Provide protection for shipments to cut down on replacement costs.  

• Boost buyer confidence: Give parts buyers confidence that they’ll receive their orders one way or another.

• Positive customer experience: Provide customers with a positive shopping experience that builds loyalty.

• Save time and money resolving issues: Cut down on costs and time it takes for re-shipments and shipment tracking on your end.

• Protect dealership reputation: Maintain a strong brand image and reputation for your dealership that’s practically free advertising.

Is Auto Parts Shipping Protection Worth It? 

Many dealers worry that the potential benefits of shipping protection for car parts don’t outweigh the costs. However, losses generated from unprotected shipments can end up crippling a dealership’s sales. As eCommerce transactions have increased over the past few years, so has the number of packages that have been reported lost or damaged in transit. 

In fact, according to the 2022 Package Theft Annual Report, last year saw more than $2.4 billion in losses due to theft, affecting more than 49 million Americans. On the other hand, 10.7% of returned items in 2022 were found to be fraudulent, costing retailers $22.8 billion. Why were these losses so high? 

When packages are damaged, lost, or stolen, the ultimate decision-making power is left to the parts buyer. They can either decide to re-order the part directly from your dealership and hope for the best, get refunded, or go directly to a competitor to get the exact part for a lower price. Consumers with a lousy shipping and delivery experience are more likely to leave bad reviews and go to a competing auto parts seller. 

More than 60% of businesses cite experiencing increased customer effort as a top factor leading to poor customer satisfaction rates. If claims and support processes are not frictionless for the end buyer, they will quickly pivot to making purchases from another business. 

Shipping incidents like these impact the buyer experience and result in low customer satisfaction, poor brand loyalty, and high customer churn rates that send them straight to your competitors.

How Auto Parts Shipping Protection Enhances Buyer Experience 

To be truly competitive in selling parts online, retailers must invest time and money into making the buyer experience as frictionless as possible. Shipping protection helps achieve this by reducing the impact of making a second purchasing decision after a shipment incident. 

Suppose a customer knows before making a purchase that their order will be eligible for a refund, a discounted shipping price, or be easily replaced. In that case, they’re more likely to go through with the purchase than without those assurances. It gives them confidence that they’ll still get their part order if any issues arise. 

Building buyer confidence is an essential part of the customer shopping experience. It helps establish trust and loyalty to your dealership. By offering shipping protection for parts buyers, you help build a trustworthy brand image. This can help secure repeat business for your parts department and profitability for the future, driving down your overall losses in the long run.

Additional Ways to Protect Parts Packages

While offering shipping protection to your customers can help ensure your products arrive safely, there are additional things you can do to further reduce the risk of damage during shipping. Here are a few examples:

• Choose the right packaging material: Select sturdy boxes or crates that are appropriately sized for the parts being shipped. This will provide sufficient protection and prevent damage during transit.

• Use proper cushioning materials: Use materials such as bubble wrap, foam padding, or packing peanuts to provide ample cushioning for the auto parts. This will help absorb shocks and vibrations during transportation.

• Secure the parts: Prevent parts from shifting or moving within the package by securing them with zip ties, straps, or other fasteners. This can help avoid damage from parts colliding with one another.

• Seal the package securely: Use strong packing tape or other sealing materials to close the package securely. This will help protect the contents from external elements, such as moisture or dirt.

• Label the package clearly: Provide clear and accurate labels on the package, including the sender’s and recipient’s addresses, contact information, and any special handling instructions. Use labels or markers to indicate “Fragile” or “Handle with Care” if necessary.

• Provide clear communication: Keep your customer informed about the shipping process and provide them with tracking information so they can monitor the progress of their order. This helps build trust and ensures a positive customer experience.

• Properly document the shipment: Keep a record of the shipping details, including the tracking number, insurance information, and photos of the packaged parts. This documentation can be helpful in case of any disputes or claims related to the shipment.

Protecting auto parts during shipping is crucial for ensuring customer satisfaction and maintaining a strong business reputation. By selecting the appropriate packaging materials, providing adequate cushioning, securing the parts, sealing the package securely, labeling it clearly, maintaining transparent communication with customers, and documenting the shipping process, you can significantly reduce the risk of damage to your products during transit. Implementing these best practices helps maintain the quality of your auto parts and fosters a positive relationship with your customers, leading to repeat business and long-term success.

RevolutionParts + Extend Shipping Protection

RevolutionParts has partnered with Extend, a leading shipping insurance carrier, to provide dealers with shipping protection for online auto parts orders. Through Extend, dealers can cover insurance costs, decrease the time it takes to process claims, and stay on top of customer communications when handling order issues. 

Extend Shipping Protection covers items from the second they leave the parts department until they reach the buyer’s front door. Should issues arise when you ship auto parts to your customers, they can initiate the claims process with no hassle and get in touch with someone to handle the problem right away. It also eliminates the need for your parts business to absorb the cost of replacement parts and accessories when claims are approved. 

Extend Shipping Protection is just one of the ways RevolutionParts dealers can lower shipping costs and increase overall profitability from online auto parts sales. There are many ways in which dealers can help turn a profit from their shipping and handling processes. 

Get our free guide, “How to Profit Off Shipping OEM Parts,” for full insights into how your dealership can generate revenue from parts shipments and maintain quality customer service online. 

For more information on RP + Extend Shipping Protection, get the full details here or call one of our experts for a one-on-one walkthrough of the claims process.

One of the biggest challenges for dealerships recently has been keeping the dealership staff. In 2023, 55% of dealers say they are still struggling with staffing. With proper staffing, it can be easier to provide the high level of service customers expect from your dealership. 

While hiring new employees and retaining existing ones may be difficult, there are some strategies that can be implemented within the dealership to help attract and retain more employees.

How to Compete for Employees at the Dealership

Currently, the national unemployment rate is low. This means that employees have many options when it comes to finding work, and employers need to be more competitive with their hiring strategies.

Many employees with trade skills are taking up jobs with higher pay, while many older employees with years of experience in the industry are entering retirement and leaving the workforce altogether. So what can you do to hire new employees, and what can you do to ensure they stick with you?

Finding New Employees

How is your dealership finding new employees? If people don’t know that your dealership is hiring or what roles they are hiring for, it will be very difficult to fill open positions. 

Some excellent platforms to help find new employees include:

• Job Boards/Websites: Websites like Indeed, ZipRecruiter, Monster, and SimplyHired are some of the most popular places candidates look for jobs. You can also post open positions through AutoNews.

• Social Media: 82% of the US population is on social media platforms like Facebook, Linkedin, and Twitter, making them a great place to advertise open positions.

• Employee Referrals: Offer your employees a reward or bonus for referring people they know to open positions. For example, if an employee refers a candidate that gets hired and stays with the dealership for three months, you can reward that employee with $500. This incentives employees to refer people they know will work hard and not quit.

• Career Page: Your dealership website should have a place where candidates can find open positions and learn more about the company and the job. They should also be able to submit an online application. With SEO best practices, you can even market your careers page to make it easy for candidates to find you.

Hiring and Retaining Employees

Your dealership needs an employee with the right skills, relevant experience, and a willingness to learn. But how do you get those employees to apply at your dealership, aside from offering a great place to work? And how do you ensure the ones you have don’t leave you for another dealership?

Here are some things you should consider:

• Better Pay: There is a lot of competition out there, and let’s face it, pay matters.

• Good Benefits: Incentives such as health insurance, wellness benefits, vacation time, and sick time mean a lot to employees.

• Employee Rewards Programs: Employee of the month, bonuses, and company culture events.

• Quality Training: Help employees grow their skills and show you’re invested in their success.

• Company Culture: Establish a positive place to work by bringing people together through a shared sense of goals and ideas.

• Company Perks: Providing job perks and incentives can help encourage employees to stay with your department.

Post-Hiring Tips

Once you find a candidate that is a good fit for your dealership, don’t wait! Not only should you stay in contact with the candidate after an interview, but once you’ve decided to hire, you need to act fast. Because you’re competing with other businesses for candidates, time is limited, and they could accept another offer at any time.

Once you’ve given your offer, make sure your onboarding process is smooth. A good onboarding process can improve retention. Here are some additional tips for a successful onboarding process:

• Hold a new employee orientation
• Assign a mentor
• Give clear expectations and relevant training
• Give one-on-one time with their direct manager for scheduled check-ins

Combatting Staffing at the Dealership

A dealership that is properly staffed is able to provide more for its customers. However, if your dealership is facing a staffing shortage, there are many things you can do to help alleviate some of the difficulties. Hiring more employees may mean changing your hiring and retention tactics. 

Want to be able to do more with less staff? Download the RevolutionParts guide on how to Combat Staffing in the Parts Department. By focusing on the parts department, your dealership can generate new revenue streams, increase profitability, and provide a better customer experience with less staff.

Packaging Auto Parts 

With the variety of sizes and shapes in the average dealer’s auto parts inventory, it’s important to know what size containers you need and what additional packing materials you need to ensure products don’t break during transit. 

Remember to use packing materials designed to help fill the space between the item and the container when shipping breakable items. Use enough to reduce the risk of parts breaking or cracking. When shipping multiple items in one package, wrap individual items to prevent them from breaking or getting stuck together. 

Security isn’t the factor that should impact your packaging. You should also use your packaging to reinforce your dealership’s or OEM’s brand image. Make your packaging easily recognizable to your customers. Use packaging inserts, pamphlets, and even standard thank-you cards to reinforce your brand image in your customers’ minds.

Good Packaging Matters

Good packaging helps you keep your brand image consistent across all stages of the customer buying experience. 

The right packaging in your shipping strategy can help:

• Reduce returns and refunds
• Improve the customer experience
• Increase brand awareness
• Increase repeat sales

Shipping Specialty Auto Parts

Not all auto parts meet the same shipping criteria. Some require additional steps, specific transportation methods, and unique packaging. This is especially true for larger, heavier parts like engines and transmissions. Larger auto parts are more expensive to ship, so you need to have an air-tight shipping system to ensure that they get delivered on time and without damage. 

Engines & Transmissions

Engines and transmissions can be shipped in one of two ways: on a pallet or in a crate. Both options can be costly, so you must determine which shipping method fits your budget. 

Depending on the part’s classification, one option will be slightly cheaper. Crates are often less expensive than pallets, but that doesn’t mean they’re the best option for you, depending on the dimensions and weight of the engine or transmission you’re shipping. Always compare both options and consider the pros and cons carefully. 

*It’s important to note that not all shipping companies will ship an engine or transmission that isn’t packaged in a crate due to liability policies.

Offering Convenient Shipping Options

Fast and easy shipping is one of the biggest contributors to buying decisions among today’s consumers. Offering convenient delivery options is a crucial component of your shipping strategy. Overnight and same-day delivery are two consumers’ most popular options. 

Same-Day Delivery for Local Orders

Same-day delivery is an excellent way to grow your parts business at the local level. With same-day delivery, like RP’s Same-Day Delivery, you can deliver parts to customers in your area in as little as an hour when you take advantage of crowdsourced drivers. This can be a great option for your wholesale customers. The faster they can get the parts they need for repairs, the more likely they will become repeat buyers at your dealership.

Profiting Off Shipping

Many dealers hesitate to ship parts and accessories because they’re concerned about the overhead costs of shipping. Selling parts online at lower prices might make it difficult to turn a profit, especially with high shipping costs. However, with the right strategy, you can actually profit from shipping auto parts. 

Price parts and accessories accordingly. Find the best shipping rates among different carriers (especially when selling through additional online marketplaces). Sell parts at higher volumes to help improve your gross profits, and offer the right promos and discounts on parts during high sales cycles. Once you determine these things, you’ll start to reap the benefits.  

Utilizing Free Shipping

Within any business, there are certain pricing thresholds where offering free shipping yields the most results. If you offer free shipping on parts priced at $25-$100, chances are those parts will be more likely to sell. However, these thresholds may not work specifically for your parts department. It’s important to determine what parts you can offer free shipping on. 

Offering free shipping on smaller, cheaper parts won’t cover the cost of shipping them, so it doesn’t make sense to offer free shipping for those parts. Find the threshold where your parts department feels most comfortable with offering free shipping on parts that will still turn a profit for you and cover overhead costs.

Providing Tracking Information for Shipped Parts

When customers are on a time crunch, it’s important to let them know whether their orders are on schedule. Tracking information on orders is essential to maintaining quality customer service and ensuring that there isn’t an issue with your shipments in transit. 

When you decide to ship parts with a shipping carrier, it’s important to select the option to track your shipments (some offer this automatically, and some require that you opt-in). Set up your tracking information to sync up with your email automation and send reminders as to when orders are shipped, on track for delivery, and delivered. 

Providing tracking information helps you grow your parts business by:

• Promoting professionalism 
• Giving customers a great experience
• Encouraging customers to return
• Setting clear expectations
• Building trust through transparency
• Minimizing customer complaints
• Allowing you to engage with your customers
• Helping you recover lost packages

Defining Your Auto Parts Return Policy

Returns are inevitable. Even with the most accurate parts order system, you can’t stop human error, especially on the part of your customers. Customers can still order the wrong parts, order the wrong-sized parts, or simply be dissatisfied with their order and decide to return it. 

Returned parts are one of the biggest contributors to high obsolescence. Once they get back on the shelves, it can be difficult to get rid of them. Having a well-defined return policy is the key to dealing with online returns effectively and reducing parts obsolescence. 

How should you structure a return policy to work in your parts department’s favor while still catering to your customer’s needs? 

Take Advantage of RevolutionParts’ Shipping Solution

RevolutionParts’ Shipping Solution can help you ship auto parts with ease. It’s designed to be easy to use and offers a variety of tools to help you stay on course with all your shipments. 

The RevolutionParts Shipping Solution offers you:

• Competitive industry shipping rates
• Print shipping labels directly from the PR Platform
• Share tracking information with parts buyers
• Improve listed shipping prices for maximum profit

Ship Parts With Confidence

Stay on top of this growing trend in the automotive industry and see your parts department skyrocket. With the right tools and the right strategy, you can easily make a profit off of shipping OEM parts and accessories. Interested in learning more about shipping specifics and, more importantly, how much you can profit from it? Download our free guide, “How to Profit Off Shipping OEM Parts,” and get expert insight into the processes you can implement to maximize your potential profits when shipping auto parts.

As we begin 2023, the lasting effects of supply chain shortages, lowered new car sales, and the rising cost of steady parts and materials are still being felt. Experts tell us that these challenges will continue well into the year. 

Many dealerships today are experiencing stagnant revenue growth. While 2023 is expected to be filled with challenges, there are plenty of opportunities to help your dealership generate more revenue and scale its business. 

Here are the top five opportunities your dealership can take advantage of in 2023 to improve its sales growth.

Invest in Quality Digital Marketing 

Digital marketing is a must-have to succeed online. If your dealership has no online marketing presence, your customers won’t know you exist. To build the right marketing strategy, you must look at what digital tools and resources will work best for your department’s needs. 

Standard marketing tools like email marketing, pay-per-click ads, and SEO implementation are all great starting points for the dealership. However, to truly have an effective marketing strategy, you need to have the right messaging that you can implement across all of these tools. 

Going into 2023, dealerships should streamline their messaging to be more than just priced-focused. Focus on the dealership’s value across all departments, from easy online shopping to convenient delivery. Vehicle sales are important, and you want a solid marketing plan to sell more. 

Don’t forget about fixed ops! The parts department is a great place to grow revenue and increase your absorption rate, but if you don’t market your parts department effectively, you’ll miss out on revenue. Unfortunately, 23% of dealerships are not marketing their parts department, meaning they are not reaching many potential customers. Fortunately, dealers using RevolutionParts have access to a team of parts marketing specialists to help drive more traffic and conversions for their parts web store.

Modernize the Customer Experience

It’s no secret; online shopping is the number one way to buy among many of today’s consumers. If your dealership wants to keep up with modern shopping habits, you must adapt to the online retail model–for the whole dealership. This is the year to empower customers to shop exactly how they want.

Start by taking a multi-channel approach. Sell cars, parts, and accessories in-store and online. You should also allow customers to schedule a service online. People are shopping online now more than ever, and many consumers would rather do the bulk of their vehicle shopping from the comfort of their homes. Others prefer to do some (or even all) of the buying experience at the dealership. You should offer both options to create a seamless shopping experience.

Finally, continue this online approach into the service lane. Make it easy for your customers to schedule services appointment online. Plus, by providing an option for customers to make their own appointments online, you can free up your service staff as they will spend less time on the phone.

Sell Parts on Multiple Selling Channels 

New car sales are waning, and forward-thinking dealers are turning to other profit generators in the dealership. Drivers are keeping their vehicles longer. This means more of them are coming into your parts and service departments rather than purchasing a new vehicle.

Parts sales, in particular, felt a significant impact during the pandemic. Dealers felt a sharp decrease in their conventional parts business, losing close to $6 billion in parts sales. However, online sales weren’t decreasing in the same way but were instead increasing. RevolutionParts customers saw a 27% increase in parts sales by selling online in 2020. 

Selling parts online is the new way to generate more revenue at the dealership. Selling at your parts counter alone isn’t enough to meet the demand for auto parts. To turn auto parts sales into a strong source of revenue, you need to be selling across multiple channels. 

Selling online doesn’t just mean selling your parts on your dealership website. You should be selling on multiple channels, including your dealership’s website, a designated web store, online marketplaces (i.e., Amazon and eBay), or a combination of all three. The more places you have available to sell through, the better. Meet your customers where they’re already shopping. 

Use Crowd-Sourced Services 

Retailers across all industries are taking advantage of crowd-sourcing services. Companies like Uber, Lyft, and DoorDash offer cost-effective and convenient delivery services that can fulfill same-day orders to millions of consumers. Automotive retailers are beginning to use these services to deliver auto parts to local buyers. 

Close to 112 million people in the U.S. reported using a delivery service app at least once in 2020. The use of these services is expected to continue to grow. With most consumers moving toward this kind of shopping model, automotive retailers will have to quickly pivot toward this buying experience to meet the demands of their local consumer base. 

Another great way to use crowd-sourcing services is to use them in tandem with the service lane. Dealers can use services like Lyft and Uber to schedule rides for customers with cars being serviced. When they drop off their car, order a ride to get them to their destination and return later. They’ll be thankful for the convenience.

Improve Shipping Practices

For dealerships taking steps to grow their parts customer base beyond their local market, shipping auto parts can be the biggest hurdle to get over. Between the cost of materials, the cost of shipping carriers added insurance, and delayed delivery times, it can be a nightmare keeping track of all the moving parts to get products shipped out. 

Dealers should simplify the shipping process as much as possible. With the right tools from RevolutionParts, dealers can print their own labels, use their own branded packaging, ensure that the right parts are shipped to the right customers, and ensure their packages are protected.

Get Ready for New Opportunities in 2023

Ready to start the new year off right? Get your eCommerce strategy in the water now and grow your dealership’s business. Gearing up for 2023 but want more insight? Download the 2022 consumer report to learn more about online parts buyers so you can include these insights in your dealership’s 2023 strategy!