By Bob Cooper

If you are falling short of your sales goals, before you start blaming your service advisors, you need to make sure that your technicians are providing them with the adequate recommendations. For example, if you have a labor rate of $90.00 per hour, and your average ticket (including parts) is only $300, the first thing you’ll need to learn is what your technicians are recommending. If your technicians are only recommending an average of $300 in repairs, then you can’t hold your service advisors accountable for generating more than $300 in sales.

Here at Elite we have a term we use with all of our Coaching Program clients that’s called the TARO, which stands for Technical Average Repair Order. Simply put, it’s the average ticket value of the services recommended by each tech. If that number is too low, then you are falling short of your sales goals because of your techs, not your service advisors. If your goal is to see an ARO that is in the mid $400 range, then you’ll need to see a TARO of $500.00 or more!  If you want to achieve a complete understanding of your sales process, and where you may be missing the mark, I highly recommend monitoring and measuring your TARO.

For the last 20 years, Bob Cooper has been the president of Elite Worldwide, Inc. offering automotive professionals sales, marketing and employee management solutions. For additional help with your sales, learn more about Elite’s Nov 10-12 Masters advanced service advisor training course.