Mr Retail: Rethinking Remote Start Strategies

By Mr Retail

For many of us, the remote car starter business is upon us and now is the time to finalize our strategies for this category. For those of us on the east coast, the last two winters have been mild for sure. I don’t think I even had my parking lot plowed last winter. Add in the last 3 winters being pandemic related, and you can end up with a quandary deciding how to handle the category this season.

I thought I was onto the best idea and then I had a talk with my son Luke. He gave me a completely different thought process and I realized very quickly that his views were better than mine. So here are the thoughts he came up with and some of my own added in:

The market is surely maturing. Anyone that doesn’t realize it has their head in the sand. So, if our total market is getting smaller, we have to work even harder to raise the average selling price of one of our systems.

Around five years ago we latched hard onto smartphone interfaces like the Drone and Smartstart. And in the last  three years, around half of our systems went out the door with one attached.

Some of the factory installed smart phone systems are just plain lousy. If you have owned one of the Ford systems for example, it can take 30 seconds or more for the system to respond and sometimes it just doesn’t communicate at all. I guess that’s what free gets you.

Some factory installed smart phone systems have expensive ongoing subscriptions that can cost up to $29.95 per month. You can sell one of your systems to a client and they can recoup their investment in 3 years or less on average with a better performing app.

1. European vehicles are now adding remote start as a factory option, but there are TONS of these vehicles out there without them.
2. Sell the premium features like extremely long range 2-way remotes that don’t need a subscription to operate. And the LCD models can give interior temps so the client knows how long is needed to warm up or cool down their vehicle.
3. If you sell a brand that offers passive keyless entry, target clients that have vehicles that use a normal key. That can be an easy upsell if they wanted the higher end model of vehicle but their budget wouldn’t allow it.
4. Change your selling strategy to top down selling in this category AFTER you properly qualify the client. Your average ticket price will go up.

And finally, I hope for all of us that this year is better than the last two remote start seasons. I believe in you. So go get ‘em!

Mark  is the CEO of Westminster Speed & Sound, an award-winning retailer in Westminster, Maryland. The company was founded in 1969, and Mark took it over in 1990 at the age of 23. He first started in the industry in 1986, so he has been at it for a while. He has served on the board of MERA, taught seminars in over a dozen different cities, and served on the SEMA New Product Awards judging team.