“You want a new engine with that oil change…?”

Measuring the wrong thing can be deadly for your business.

Everytime I drive into my local drive through oil change retailer, I feel like I’ve walked into a low budget electronics store where everyone is on 100% commission.

For those of you who haven’t had the experience, while the technician is changing your oil, the other employees come to your window two or three times to offer you additional services that your car might need like a fuel injector cleaning, radiator flush, and so on. These services are typically overpriced and your car may or may not actually need them.

Now I’m all for having employees offer multiple services to clients to drive incremental revenue -- but their dogged, relentless pursuit of that one extra sale in the in oil change bay is probably pushing some customers not to come back. 

It makes me wonder if some businesses are measuring/teaching/rewarding the wrong things.

In this case, the local oil change franchise seems to be measuring:

Incremental sales revenue per car, achieved by aggressive sales tactics

Perhaps they should be measuring:

Incremental sales revenue per car, achieved by aggressive sales tactics

MINUS

Lost oil change revenue from clients who made one visit in the last 12 months, refused extra services, and did not return.

I wonder if there’s a profitable niche out there for car owners who actually want just an oil change when they go to get their oil changed?

I wonder if clients would pay a premium for faster, hassle free service where nobody tried to hard sell you anything else?

The lesson I took away from my experience is that businesses need to watch more than just one metric to gauge overall success.

That, and customers have long memories.