Overheard: Dealerships must sell tires as part of customer retention strategy

“From a parts standpoint, it is challenging. Tires are big; they take up a lot of space. Unless you’ve got a really good distribution source, you’ve got to stock a lot of tires. They’re very price sensitive so [you] don’t make a lot of money on them. … But when you go up another 10,000 feet in terms of looking at it, tires are a tremendous source of defection amongst customers. We’ve seen statistics that up to 90 percent of customers who go somewhere other than the dealership to buy tires never returned back to the dealership for anything at all. It’s a real point of defection. The importance of retaining that customer for tires cannot be overstated. It’s critically important as part of the dealership’s overall retention strategy that they’d be in a tire business, and dealers that do that and do that well find they do retain customers.” — DriveSure CEO Bill Springer on the “Parts Girl Podcast” hosted by Kaylee Felio.