Strut your knowledge when selling shocks

With the average age of vehicles on the road in the U.S. surpassing 11 years, and considering many of those vehicles' odometers have clocked more than 100,000 miles, one would think shock/strut replacement sales would be going through the roof.

But they are not.

A reluctance on the part of tire dealerships and repair shops to sell such an expensive service to cost-conscious consumers is partly to blame, industry representatives told Tire Business.

Manufacturers of shocks and struts recommend replacing the original equipment parts after around 50,000 to 75,000 miles, depending on vehicle and driving conditions.

Yet many older vehicles are still running on their original shocks/struts, and that poses a safety issue, they said.

"I bet north of 80 percent of vehicles never get one set (of replacement shocks/struts)," said William "Mac" McGovern, director of marketing and training, KYB Americas Corp.

"A lot of customers aren't going to come in to buy shocks or struts just for the sake of buying shocks or struts. It's just that they do so because they find out that they failed, there's clunking noises and things of that nature," said Justin Hynes, ride control product manager for ZF Aftermarket, maker of TRW automotive parts.

"Your shocks and struts play a role in the safety and longevity and maintenance of the car, because changing the shocks will help prevent tire wear. It helps to reduce braking distance, and it helps with the comfort of the vehicle's ride performance," he said.

"And when all those things are worn out — at say 75,000 miles on a vehicle — you're going to see your tire tread life is pretty much worn out. So you're going to spend $500 to $600 on a new set of tires," Mr. Hynes said.

"If you don't take into consideration the shocks and the struts, then more than likely that 60,000-mile warranty on those tires potentially could be reduced, and you're coming in at 30,000 miles with bald spots or spotting on the tires."

"People have to be aware that with worn-out shock absorbers, the braking distance increases tremendously," added Dirk Fuchs, technical training manager for ZF Aftermarket.

Mr. Hynes said typically a vehicle that is around 11 years old has had only one suspension component replacement because the average consumer doesn't pay attention or notice when the shock absorbers are worn.

It's also not in the customer's mindset to replace shocks/struts automatically at 100,000 miles, following the adage that if it doesn't seem broken, don't fix it.

"When your car gets that old, it's not just shocks and struts, it's about everything on it — ball joints, control arms — there becomes more safety concerns," he said.

"I think there is a big lack of doing (inspections)…," noted Mr. Fuchs, adding, "Education at the technician level is really, really important."

"You would be amazed at how often we hear from consumers that their service providers have never informed them of the need to replace worn shocks and struts," said Ethan Bregger, aftermarket training manager, North America aftermarket, for Tenneco Inc., maker of Monroe-brand parts.

"This is a missed opportunity for the service industry."

A holistic approach

KYB, ZF Aftermarket, Tenneco and other parts suppliers are encouraging auto repair shops to adopt a holistic approach to undercar service by training their technicians and communicating to customers how shocks/struts, brakes and tires all work together to stop a moving vehicle.

"Unfortunately, I would have to predict that something north of 80 to 85 percent of all vehicles…aren't operating within the vehicle's designed performance range, and the motorist doesn't realize it," Mr. McGovern said.

"Maintenance to them is fluids, but it's not. It's an awful lot of hard parts that have a performance life expectancy. They may still function, but they're not going to function within the vehicle's design."

Too often, especially in newer vehicles, motorists rely on dashboard warning lights to know when to replace or fix a part on their vehicles.

"Unfortunately, there is no light that comes on the dash that says, 'Your electronic stability control is activating 10 times more frequently than it did when the car was new.' So at some point that bandwidth that the safety system can work within to keep the driver safe reaches the end....

"A bald tire won't stop a vehicle, and the best safety system in the world is not going to work. You're still going to crash," Mr. McGovern said. "It doesn't just stop at tires. Anything that affects traction has a negative effect on all of the safety systems.

"So if the shocks and struts aren't maintaining road grip, or the brakes aren't controlling the tire well, or if the vehicle's not in alignment — all of those things have to work in concert with one another in order to keep the onboard electronics safety systems operating within their controlled environment," he said.

"What scares me personally is the second or third owner of a vehicle. People are keeping their cars two years longer, and average age is above 11 years old.

"What about all the people that can least afford a new vehicle? They're starting out with a used one and buying 70,000-, 80,000-, 100,000-mile vehicles that haven't been maintained, and they assume that because it has electronics, they're safe. Well, they're not."

Steering systems, tires, shocks and struts all have to be in working order in the vehicle for the brakes to work properly. Typically, struts are on the front axle of the car, and standard shocks are in the rear. Several SUV models have struts on all four corners.

"The thing they don't understand is that none of the onboard electronics or computerized safety systems can work unless ride control is up to its task," Mr. McGovern continued. "So ABS brakes, traction control, ESC (electronic stability control)?

"All those semi- and fully automatic driver-assist features all depend on the tires' gripping the road. And the tires can't grip the road unless steering, suspension, shocks and struts are all within the vehicle's design."

The problem is that motorists, and technicians, seem to be reluctant to address the issue of shock/strut replacement due to a lack of understanding of their importance — or more likely the high price tag.

Selling ride control

Selling to cost-conscious consumers has been a challenge since the beginning of commerce. Tire dealers and auto repair shops can meet this challenge by learning how to sell value and provide information, the parts makers said.

"The vast majority of (repair shops) are incredibly underselling ride control," KYB's Mr. McGovern said. "It's something that just has evolved over a few decades going all the way back to the first vehicle that got MacPherson struts and no longer had simple shocks.

"At that moment in time, they became much more difficult to do, much more expensive. And anything that is expensive on a vehicle can be a difficult sell.

"But on top of that, the condition is almost invisible to the motorist because the performance of ride control degrades quite gradually, in most cases, and the motorist doesn't know they have a problem until, maybe, they crash the vehicle and realize they didn't have all the control over it that they should."

He said the company tries to help dealers who struggle with overcoming the obstacle of: "How do you sell this stuff because it is really expensive and my customer doesn't necessarily believe me, and there's this cost-conscious element?

"The beginning of that journey or transition is ride-control knowledge. We find that most shops, and a little bit deeper into the technician themselves, don't have a firm grasp on the relationship of the systems within ride control," Mr. McGovern said.

He said KYB's training involves "retooling" the dealership "into not a brake shop or an undercar shop but a true ride-control shop."

"I think it's important when they are talking to their customers that they need to emphasize the safety, and not just about the shocks and struts, but there are other components, like the ball joints and control arms and their bushings, that are important, too," Mr. Hynes said.

An important factor is for the shop to determine if the customer plans to keep his/her vehicle for a long time.

"Do they want it for the life of the vehicle up to 11 years? Then you need to think of the safety and well-being of the car itself and those you're carrying in it," Mr. Hynes said.

"We've developed communication devices, forms that speak to the technician to show them what they should be doing on a road test, how to translate what they experienced and even a numbering system so that they can rate conditions," Mr. McGovern said.

"So when they do talk to the customer, it's not just a personal recommendation. It's more of an orchestrated numeric approach to wear vs. the benefit of replacing the units.

"The evidence almost has to be there for the cost-conscious consumer. Most consumers are reasonably intelligent and when you give them facts and an audit trail for the steps the shop took to come to a conclusion, the ratio of closing sales goes up dramatically."

"It's a matter of giving the motorist the correct economy of scale: 'If your goal is to keep (the car) within its designed performance, here's one choice. If not, you can defer the expense but be aware that you're driving a vehicle that's not within the designed performance.'

"So the responsibility of the decision and the consequence for not doing on-going maintenance to keep it within designed capabilities lies on the shoulder of the motorist, not on the shop," Mr. McGovern said. "So we never train the shop to push anything or make a personal recommendation beyond 'Here's the facts.'"

Mr. Bregger said Tenneco encourages service shops to follow a four-step process for every customer and vehicle that visits their shops:

Ask the consumer if he or she has noticed any symptoms that could be related to worn shocks and struts — strange noises, severe brake dive, lack of steering precision, reduced stability around corners, excessive brake wear and/or abnormal tire wear;

Take the vehicle on a road test. A trained tech can quickly spot steering, stopping and stability concerns that could point to ride-control issues;

Perform a visual inspection of the vehicle's shocks and struts. Like the road test, this is a fast, easy add-on to any other common vehicle service, whether an oil change, brake job, tire replacement or alignment, he said; then

Share the findings with the consumer and, if warranted, recommend that they replace worn ride-control units.

"Some service providers are reluctant to recommend add-on services, but they aren't doing their customers any favors by keeping them in the dark about potential problems," Mr. Bregger said.

"Remember, the vehicle owner relies on your expertise. If the need for new ride-control units exists, make sure the customer is informed and offer to complete the repair for them.

"Also, ensure that you communicate any product warranties and guarantee offerings for the product to help the consumer feel confident that their vehicle is being repaired with a quality part."

Training

KYB offers training online where technicians can register and take training 24/7 for free, or go through a KYB supplier for one-on-one training at a dealership or large group training with a chain of stores.

"Many years ago we departed from the position of selling just to distribution and created more of a pull-through market so our salespeople's daily routine is to call on shops," KYB's Mr. McGovern said, noting a common question among dealerships is how to sell the expensive ride-control service.

He said part of the shop owner/technician training involves developing a belief in the sale, teaching them about shocks and struts and how they work, how they wear, when is a good time to replace and why.

"It seems like we have to teach them the difference between replacing failed parts and replacing parts as a maintenance category to keep that vehicle within its designed performance," he said.

"Once they have a grasp on that subject, we move on to the awareness piece because most shops don't have a very good vehicle inspection process and consumer reporting process."

Mr. McGovern said there is a paradigm shift occurring in training — rather than focusing on fragment services, such as brakes, training is "evolving toward another paradigm where you're looking at the vehicle holistically and trying to make sure that everything in that connected vehicle works the way it's supposed to work."

"Most shops don't think in those terms. So when they come to a service counter, they talk about the price on brakes, they talk about the price on tires perhaps, but because they don't usually grasp the concept of the connected vehicle, they don't start out with, 'Hey, everything on your vehicle works with all those parts working with one another. Let me give you a picture of where you stand within those systems.' So a system-selling technique is usually foreign to most chains…," Mr. McGovern said.

He said he has found shops' vehicle inspections forms vary widely, often take a random approach to evaluating vehicle condition "and the motorist doesn't have a prayer understanding what it really takes to keep their vehicle within designed performance."

Mr. McGovern said the function of ride control is "obvious stuff that people don't pay a lot of attention to."

"That's why, when we approach service provider training, we have to start out telling them, 'Look, you may think you know what you're doing, but let's go back to blocking and tackling and go through the fundamentals because it's unlikely that you've really thought this through and put all those elements together,'" he said.

"It's really that component of awareness, that component of belief in the sale, that component of ride control knowledge. It really comes back to that," Mr. McGovern said.

"Once their experience and knowledge range is where it needs to be, (repair shops) usually become advocates, and the number of sales goes up, but not because they're selling more — it's just that they're identifying and communicating the condition much more clearly," he said.

"The differentiator is going to be technician knowledge and shop posture. If the posture of the shop isn't to be proactive, then their technicians never will be."

ZF offers online training, including webinars, explaining how parts work, including driver assistance functions, and how to replace shock absorbers.

For the past two years, Tenneco said it has encouraged several hundred tire dealers and other service providers to implement its four-step inspection and sales process, and "an impressive number of these businesses have seen significant, sustained increases in ride control service opportunities," Mr. Bregger said.

Trends

In an effort to make ride-control replacement easier for technicians, several companies have been selling loaded assemblies with the spring, mount and all the parts needed for installation.

"The major shift we're seeing isn't for overall (shocks) sales to change so much as the product mix.… The loaded strut assembly is becoming far more popular, and the bare unit that requires some more expertise and time at the service provider level has become less and less popular," Mr. McGovern said.

"But there will become a point where it won't grow anymore because there are far more springs on a new vehicle than there are different struts. So as manufacturers try to offer more and more part numbers, it will never cover all vehicles. So it will level out that product mix. But it will probably be a number of years before that actually occurs."

He noted that loaded assemblies are still a low percentage of the overall strut/shocks market.

"Just about all name brands — KYB, Monroe, ourselves, Gabriel — all have strut and spring assemblies…," ZF's Mr. Hynes said. "That's more than likely where the industry is headed for faster installation for a technician to do than to do a shock and strut by themselves."

However, Mr. McGovern lamented that repair shops tend to select parts that are half the price of a premium-level components, making the assumption that something half-price is as good as full price.

"It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that something half the price isn't going to live up to OEM standards. But because the shop doesn't know any better, they tend to approach the subject with some enthusiasm that what they're offering is just fine, and they don't offer options (to the customer) because the other options are more expensive," he said.

"So that level of parts training is another hole in the chain, to at least understand all the differences, so that they can sell appropriately and give the consumer a choice."

Overall, the current offerings of electronic and mechanical shocks and struts are expected to remain relatively unchanged for the next several years.

"The foreseeable future still has almost the same kind of shock construct that we've been seeing the last 30 years," KYB's Mr. McGovern predicted.

"Although they've gone through a process of improvements in sealing technology and performance attributes, they remain today and for the foreseeable future a mechanical hydraulic device. And that's mostly because of the margin pressures to keep costs down," he said, noting that high-end electronic versions most likely will stay in high-end vehicles.

ZF said OEMs are requesting more and more electronic shock absorbers where the driver-assist system can adjust the shocks immediately from a hard setting for sharp steering to a soft setting for low-speed comfort.

However, all the driver-assist features, including accident-avoidance features and emergency braking, can't function effectively without fully functioning shocks, Mr. Fuchs said.

"Our car knows exactly what would be the braking distance at this speed to make a full stop. And now we come to the point that our shock absorbers are worn out," he continued.

"We make the shock absorber hard, but it can't get so hard as we're expecting when we have internal wear. Then we have a longer brake distance and that could be a problem when our control unit estimates 50 feet (in braking distance) when it's 55 (feet)."