In your sales departments and F&I departments you are probably measuring the performance of your salespeople and managers on a daily, weekly and monthly basis, right? Do you do the same for your technicians, advisors (writers) and managers? Most dealerships have sales goals for new and used vehicles and F&I products. Simply put, a writer is essentially a clerk.

An advisor writes the customer’s concern on a repair order, walks around their car with them, advises them of any obvious service needs, makes recommendations for a maintenance program and advises the customer that a factory trained technician will perform a 27-point inspection of their vehicle at no charge. Now ask yourself this question: “Do I employ service writers or service advisors in my service department?” What is the difference, you ask? Well, a writer simply writes the customer’s concerns on a repair order and dispatches it to a technician. That being said, let’s take a front end approach to making your Dealership recession proof through maximizing your profits in the back end.

To begin with, most dealers tend to be front end oriented since that is usually where they came from, as opposed to “back end” oriented, which is a place that they are unfamiliar with and possibly do not understand. In simple terms we are talking about getting your service and parts departments to generate enough gross profit to pay for 100 percent of your dealership’s total fixed overhead expenses, which means that your sales department is left with covering the variable selling expenses. If you would like to “recession proof” your dealership this year, you can do so by raising your service absorption or fixed coverage as some like to call it.

Service writer