A car is normally bought once, but spare parts are bought constantly. Learn to retain customers and you will build a stable business with high income. Each business has its own secrets of success, we will tell you about the methods of increasing sales of auto parts in the article.

Client portrait

When selling auto parts, it is important to focus not on an abstract buyer, but on a specific customer. About which we have information – occupation, territorial location, class of car, guideline when choosing (terms, price), service requirements. You must clearly know who is contacting you and why.

All buyers of auto parts can be roughly divided into three groups:

1. Wholesalers who buy goods for further resale. It is extremely important for them to buy as cheaply as possible in order to make money on subsequent sales at retail prices. For them, the security of supply and low price is essential.

2. Car repair services that supply spare parts to their customers. For car services, the assortment and the speed of order fulfillment are important. This is the most promising category of customers since car services need spare parts regularly and in large quantities – they always have a demand for them. Car services are the main consumers of expensive spare parts and spare parts for luxury cars. But at the same time, the price may not be the lowest, after all, this is not the main business, the car service has its main income at work.

According to statistics, the more expensive a car is, the more often branded service stations buy auto parts for it, and not the car owners themselves. Build relationships with branded service centers.

3. Retail buyers – car owners, their friends and relatives who purchase goods for their own needs. The advantage of this category is that they are ready to pay 10-20 percent more if the store is located close to their home/office if they like the service and the opening hours are suitable. The downside is that the need for auto parts is not constant. And in order to have a stable income, you need an order of magnitude larger client base.

Sales and request statistics

In order to satisfy the desires of buyers as much as possible, you need to keep your own statistics on the demand for parts and regularly analyze data on sales on the Internet. This will allow you to study demand in detail and understand which auto part is relevant at a particular point in time. In other words, statistics will tell you which products are bought daily and which once a month.

• Sales statistics. Keeping statistics of sold goods will allow improving warehouse accounting and not accumulating auto parts in warehouses that are not of interest to buyers.
• Query statistics. Buyers’ inquiries are just as important as their purchases. First of all, the study of requests allows you to understand the desires of customers. Secondly, to clarify why some goods are selling poorly – perhaps they are not taken, since they are simply not available?

How to keep your own statistics? Record in the database everything that was sold and everything that customers were interested in. This information will show you the real picture of your business. Conduct a survey among regular customers, asking them to indicate what they are missing in your store. In 90% of stores, a customer’s request will only be heard by an employee. In the remaining 10%, they will analyze and make adjustments to the assortment.

What if you have just opened and there are no such statistics? Study demand using the Internet. Thanks to Google trends, you can find out the search statistics of specific keywords within a particular region. Of course, it will not show exact numbers, but at least you will understand which auto parts for which cars are searched more often in your city or region.

Features of wholesale and retail sales

Retail and wholesale trade in auto parts should differ not only in product prices and sales volumes but also in assortment and terms of service.

1. Retail. The seller in the store should be a technically savvy person who can help the buyer with a choice and unobtrusively explain the purpose of a particular spare part to a client who does not understand this on his own. Competent and relevant seller recommendations can be critical when choosing a buyer. As a result, it will affect the increase in sales of auto parts.

Hire people who are familiar with cars firsthand as salespeople, conduct regular training for them, dedicated not only to increase sales but also to car repair. For a retail client, consultation on the merits of the renovation will be decisive in choosing a permanent purchase location.

If there is a crisis in the wrecking yard and buying activity has decreased? A good option is selling analogs from independent manufacturers. It is no secret that such companies produce, in addition to their brands, auto parts for car manufacturers. Prices for new genuine parts are constantly rising, and therefore more and more people are ready to buy more affordable options. Replacement parts are a way out. Comparable in quality to the originals, they are cheaper.

Expanding the line of non-original spare parts with a base of analogs is also a good move to take on a client.

2. In the wholesale trade, the promptness of the seller matters. As a rule, wholesalers (including car services) themselves are familiar with the technical features of the parts they need, and therefore value fast service first of all. If we establish a prompt collection of orders and fast delivery, this will increase wholesales. And for this, it is necessary that the most demanded spare parts are always available in the warehouse. Debugging business processes is the only way to compete in today’s environment.

How to increase auto parts sales even more?

1. Additional products.
Sell ​​not only spare parts but also consumables – oils, candles, auto chemicals. If you form good relationships with customers, then you will also be able to order an inexpensive change.

2. Offer crazy deals to bring in the buyer
Create unrefusable offers for common consumable parts. In this case, your task, as an owner, is to attract a buyer to your auto parts store. And the task of the seller is not only to sell him the parts for which he came but at the same time, the other expensive products.

Let’s take an example:

You can announce a huge sale of wipers or brake pads, that is, do everything so that the buyer comes to buy them at your store. Sell these parts at cost or even lower. Then the seller should enter the game and competently offer the client not only the parts from the sale (on which you will not earn anything) but also something from the assortment at standard prices.

Package offers will also be an option to increase sales. Changing the oil in a car requires not only the oil itself but also filters. It is worth offering a discount on filters when purchasing a certain amount of oil.

With a high degree of probability, the client will buy everything in the store at once, than wasting time looking for cheaper options.

3. Internet.

On the Web, you can advertise an online store or service for the selection of auto parts and their reservation at the point of sale. The problem with many existing services is their “technical approach” to the client. The visitor needs to know various technical aspects of his car, which makes it difficult to choose and place an order.

Make the online store user-friendly (with the ability to select a product by parameters) offer several payment options and delivery options, simplify ordering as much as possible (without registering and filling out unnecessary forms), add customer reviews and product ratings.

But the most important thing is the correct promotion of the resource on the network. For the fastest possible result – use advertising services, like Used Engine Finder. But given the weak competition in auto parts, we were getting great SEO results. By registering your auto wrecking business with Used Engine Finder, you benefit from the engine inquiries sent to your inbox every day!

4. Advertising.

For auto parts, the sales engine can be “cold” calls to car services. Another option is advertising in specialized automotive publications or local magazines and newspapers.