At Mike Terry Automotive Group in Refugio, Texas, managing partner Chris Singleton checks one metric every morning before anything else: how many repair orders from yesterday included photo or video attachments.
The reason: If a dealership technician doesn't document a maintenance or repair problem with evidence, they often never end up recommending the service at all.
And no recommendation = no sale.
So, what Singleton calls the “media attachment rate” becomes a proxy for whether techs are actually identifying work, not just what advisors are trying to sell.
Big picture: "One of the key metrics that I think is often overlooked is my additional service recommendations," Singleton told Daily Dealer Live hosts Sam D'Arc and Uli de' Martino. "You can't present anything that wasn't recommended. If you aren't tracking your technicians on their additional service recommendations, that's what's going to tailor the presentation of whatever RO."
So, Singleton uses Xtime's media utilization report to enforce accountability across the entire department.
Advisors propose services during write-up based on time and mileage.
Technicians independently document the issues they find with visual evidence.
And then, customers see the recommendations from multiple sources, naturally increasing approval rates.
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As a result, Singleton has achieved 80% service absorption at his small-town dealership.
Zooming out: This framework also creates a natural alignment between technicians and advisors because both understand their roles more clearly in the value chain.
"I will show my advisors what my average ticket with media attached and my average RO without media attached, and look at the difference," he said. That difference is "usually substantial enough to where everyone in the department sees the benefits of it."
The takeaway: Maintaining high rates of service absorption often lies upstream with technician workflows, rather than downstream with advisor training.
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