Just when I thought I was doing everything that I could to increase sales, I learned something very important: I very rarely sold struts or shocks. Basically, I really didn’t know when struts or shocks were bad until they completely failed.

I’m finding that my clients, and most shop owners who I speak with, don’t know either. A lot of stores will automatically sell struts when the car gets to 60,000 miles. But why? How can you possibly convince your customer to spend over $1,000 just because the car has 60,000 miles? I don’t think that’s ethical.

Here’s what I learned: Test drive every car at 5 mph and hit the brakes. If the nose of the car dives, then it needs struts. I learned that bad struts will increase the stopping distance as much as 20 feet! Bad struts also put more wear and tear on the front brakes. In fact, front brake rotors are more likely to warp with bad struts.

I’ve already tried this 5 mph test drive on several cars and it works; the low mileage cars I drove had no nose dive and the high mileage cars did, so I would recommend using this testing method in your shop as well.

This article was contributed by TJ Reilly. TJ is the owner of one of the top shops in the country, and is one of the 1-on-1 business coaches who help shop owners through the Elite Coaching Program.