When the work will be finished?

I’m going to share with you my script for this. Then I’m going to break it down to explain why it’s so effective and why it works.

“Good news! I have the parts in stock and it’ll be ready by five, provided we don’t have a parts issue.”

Let’s break this down.

“I have good news for you!”

You say this because the customer has started with bad news. There is a problem that they didn’t expect, and now it needs to be fixed. It’s going to cost them more than they expected. They’re kind of down. So you need to bring them up. You need great body language and tone to bring them up, you want to be positive, you want to be chipper. The great news is that you’re solving the problem.

“I have the parts in stock.”

You know you don’t have the parts in stock, you’ve got them at the parts distributor. You know that you can order them and they’ll be in shortly. You don’t need to explain the whole process to the customer.

You can’t say: “Well if you go ahead and order this, I can get the part, it’s gonna take an hour to get here, then we can fit your car in and get to work on it, and then it’ll be done by five.” It’s too much complicated. You bring a lot of room for objections.

When you say you have the part in stock, they think you already have the part in the shop. It’s sitting on your desk next to you and you’re simply waiting for them to give the green light.

“And it’ll be ready by five”

Be very specific in how you’re saying this. You’re not saying that if they approve it, it’ll be done by five. You’re suggesting that you’re doing the work and assuming that you’re just going to take care of this for them. You’re taking the question of yes or no out of it. You’re telling them what you’re going to do.

Also, I picked five because it’s the end of the day. Maybe you close at six then you say six. The reasoning behind this is to always underpromise and overdeliver. Give them more value than what they’ve paid for. If you say it’s going to be done at five but you call them at three, imagine how happy they’re going to be. They thought they had a whole day without their car, but now you over-delivered by being done early. Now they have time to do that activity they thought they couldn’t do. Even if you think that tomorrow you’ll be done by eleven in the morning, tell them five. You’ll look like you’ve knocked it out of the ballpark when you’re done earlier in the day.

“Unless we have a parts issue.”

Most of the issues that can set you behind are a parts issue. You could have a problem getting a part off. You could have a problem with getting a part on. You could have a problem where you got the wrong part. There’s a lot of variables that are usually caused by the part. Any delays are because of the part.

Clearly explain how the part caused the issue.

“The vehicle’s old, we had a heck of a time getting that part off.”

Or

“Sometimes the vehicle manufacturer changes the part halfway through the production line of that year’s vehicle. While we ordered this part, it didn’t fit right and we had to order the other one.”

Use the part as your scapegoat because often, it really is the cause of delay.