Increasing Your Shops Productivity, Easily!! Before we get started, let me just state this up front: “this is only one of many ways to increase productivity”!  The reason I picked this one is because it is one of the easiest ways I know that has the most significant gains of anything else you can do.  It doesn’t affect customer costs or sales, so nothing has to be done regarding any more sales or G/P adjustments, If there is anything that might have to be done differently, it is to spend a little time watching parts IN / OUT and Getting Credit for them. Now that we have your attention, let’s write / read about your parts vendors for a minute.  Do you spread your purchasing dollars around, a little to everyone, or do you use a couple of primary suppliers of aftermarket (non-dealer) parts?  As I’m sure you want and like your customers to be loyal, your parts suppliers also look for, LOYALTY!  So try and keep parts ... read more

It Happens So, it could never happen to you…….you take care of yourself, you eat right, you exercise, basically you do everything you should to live a long life.  GREAT JOB!  This isn’t about the things that you can do to live long, this is about what happens when something unexpected goes wrong…….like an accident!  Are you and your business prepared to not work for a month, two, maybe more?  And if you are self-employed like so many of us entrepreneurs are, where is the money going to come from if you are out for a while? This article is about that, the unexpected, the accident, the unwelcomed mishap.  Remember, bad things happen to good people every day, and most of them probably had nothing to do with you or what you did other than, “wrong place at the wrong time”.  It can happen to anyone, at any time and if you think about it hard enough has probably happened to someone you know.  T ... read more

This is Real!! Have you ever heard the statement, “you’ve run out of customer base”?  It is a real phenomenon!  The end result is almost the same every time, business is great 1 week and then it drops off by as much as 50% or more, seemingly overnight!  To understand what causes this to happen we have to look at one VERY important issue first!  That issue is caused by a failure in measuring your New to Total customer numbers!  See what I said there, “measure” because unless or until you know that number, you could end up with a “Shop Closed” sign in your front window and never know why this happened.  Sure, you’ll justify it somehow, but it happens so quickly that most don’t see it coming in time to stop it from happening. The primary issue in this phenomenon is the lack of measuring, or understanding why you should measure it!  Did you know that we statistically lose 30% of our ... read more

The Power of a Review…. OK, I’ll be honest; we may have almost gone too far pushing for reviews from our customers.  A good review can make us feel like heroes or at the same time a moment later, zeros.  After all, it is how people think or perceive us right?  So, how much power should customer reviews have? First we need to know where those reviews are going to be seen!  Are they going to our website, going to post to Facebook, or are they simply there for our betterment and not seen by anyone else?  These are questions that require answers before using reviews for any discussions regarding letting people go based on a review or reviews! All reviews are important, because they can tell a tale of how our customers perceived our service or services.  And they all deserve to be given some degree of significance when reading them.  However, many reviews can be meant to hurt, some even come from people we have never seen a ... read more

BAD THINGS HAPPEN TO GOOD PEOPLE Part 2 This is the continuation story I promised when I wrote the original “Bad Things Happen To Good People” and although this story will continue on for years, this is the part where it starts getting better…. let’s recap: One of the facilities I coach and train with recently brought a car into the shop for a starting issue that had yet to be diagnosed or inspected for the cause of the customer complaint and as the day came to an end, the vehicle was pushed into the shop, luckily it was the last car go into the shop that night.  The shop manager did his normal walk through to make sure all the shop doors were locked, all the driver side vehicle windows were down (you all do this or should to make sure a vehicle does not “auto” lock with the keys in them, right?), checked that power is off to all the equipment, set the alarm and left.  Normal right?  It is 99.9% of the time and ... read more

This blog isn't about the Hybrid I just bought, but instead how shops MUST change their current thought processes towards more education to embrace these vehicles or end up closing their doors.    First a little back ground; my recently departed vehicle had just shy of 300,000.00 miles and although still running like a top I was really starting to get worried about its future reliability @ that mileage.  One day I was scanning Facebook and I saw an Internet ad for the end of the current year Hybrid sale, and started checking into it.  Short story, No Interest for 72 months, substantial vehicle markdowns (as the year was closing out) and they gave me more than expected for my 300,000.00 mile vehicle, they made it too simple and forced me to buy it!  I now own a Hybrid, which given the miles I drive a year will pay the monthly (no interest) payments in fuel savings alone!  This is where it gets interesting; I was at a client's recently and he notice ... read more

A New Year “Out with the old and in with the new” is but just one of the sayings that go around the beginning of every year when people speak of The New Year!  This article is about just that, changing the old and trying the new. Interested?  For the purposes of this article I will be referring to the Independent Automotive Repair business, but this applies to all business, big or small!  This is about changing with the times, growing any business and getting more: time, money, freedom (you pick).  So, let’s take a moment and look at each one of these items and how they may/do affect business….. your business! Changing with the times!  Do you do business as you did 10 years ago, 5 years ago or even last year?  If you have seen any growth in your business the answer is probably a resounding “NO” followed by how could you?  And although there may be MANY reasons, one of the biggest and most trendin ... read more

The Advantages to YourSilent Salesman As automotive professionals we all understand that maintaining a vehicle is the most important part of its ownership. Maintaining a vehicle is the single biggest way to protect the investment available. We also know that it is the most forgotten item from the customers stand point, and is usually the last thing they want to buy. Since there is always so much pushback in maintaining their vehicle because they don’t see the value we thought we would discuss how to add value to maintaining their vehicle in this month’s column. Most of us spend a large sum of money for repair information access and are not using the information access tools to their potentials. Most information systems have information you can use to be your “silent salesman”. Silent salesman you say? I don’t have a silent salesman! If you own a computer based Information system, you do, you just may not be using it f ... read more

That Won’t Work Here! You know the old saying, “if I had a dime for every time I heard that”? Well, I’m here to tell you, we’d be RICH!! And the almost funny part is that we could have retired early, and been sitting on a beach right now if we had that dime every time we heard, “that won’t work here”! So, “it” won’t work? Ideas, thoughts and proven methods have worked in countless numbers of other facilities around the country, but won’t work in your shop? What makes your facility so unique that it won’t work? Maybe the bigger question you may even be asking yourself right now is; what is the “it” that I am referring to? The “it” is irrelevant, what is relevant is if you have ever said the words, “that won’t work in my shop” or “that won’t work here”! Those are all good questions for sure, so let’s see if there is an answer ... read more

Perception Can Kill Us “Perception” for the purposes of this article is more about, “what people believe based on what has been said”, instead of the Wikipedia definition. It is about a persons understanding, real or imagined, of what was heard, either completely or partially, by another person. A harsh title indeed, so how can perception really get to be that bad? Everyday people base what they are going to do, what they have done in the past and even what they will do in the future on what they have been told. And it is within that statement that things can, and do go terribly wrong! In the many years I’ve been Coaching and Training individuals & businesses, there is one thing that I have learned to be absolute and true almost regardless of what has been said; any statement can be and is (every day) interpreted in at least 2 distinctly different thought processes. It is these processes that cause us to act on what has been said, an ... read more