BUSTING THE GROSS PROFIT MYTH!
By Terry Keller Who should you listen to when it comes to setting a target for your gross profit percentage in your shop? There are a LOT of opinions out …
SINK OR SWIM… OR FLAIL AROUND?
By David Rogers In some of my recent travels and coaching sessions, I’ve run into what I believe may be one of the 3 most COMMON, CRITICAL, and COSTLY mistakes …
WILL HYPER-INFLATION KILL YOUR SHOP?
By David Rogers A few weeks ago, the Federal Reserve announced that it would purchase $600 billion in U.S treasuries. What does this mean? What could it mean to your …
REPAIR SHOP MANAGEMENT: COMPARING YOUR SHOP’S NUMBERS TO WHAT?
By Terry Keller Benchmarking Most of us shop owners understand the process of comparing our numbers to a set of benchmarks or standards. I remember way back over 35 years …
REPAIR SHOP MANAGEMENT: WHY CAN’T I GET MY PEOPLE TRAINED RIGHT?
By Terry Keller I can just imagine some of you thinking, “Why waste time reading this when I’ve already tried everything to train my people to act right and perform …
REPAIR SHOP MANGEMENT; MANAGEMENT STYLES… TOO HEAVY, TOO LIGHT, OR JUST RIGHT?
By Terry Keller This issue keeps coming up! Last September I wrote a blog on Holding Your Team Accountable and David Rogers recently did a great class on the Two …
REPAIR SHOP MANAGEMENT: INCENTIVE PAY PLANS
If you are finding yourself somewhat resistant to reading this article because of its title, you are exactly the shop owner who needs to read it! If your employee pay plans have little or no incentives in them, I’ll bet your team’s productivity and your profits are lower than you want or are on a serious roller-coaster. Even if you do have an incentive type structure set up for your employees, are you sure they’re truly incentives under all circumstances and don’t have accidental disincentives built into them that some of your people resent?
ARE YOU BETTER OFF NOW THAN YOU WERE TWO YEARS AGO?
When it’s all said and done, the times we’re living in make it almost impossible to imagine that small business will survive. So, what will you do? You’ve got one of three choices…
REPAIR SHOP MANAGEMENT: HIRING AND RETAINING QUALITY PEOPLE
How good are the people that work for you? How loyal are they? How long do they stay with you? Are they better than you are at their position? For 25 years, I really struggled with this one. Because my shop was not consistently profitable during that period, I was always looking for ways to hold costs down including the wages I was willing to pay.
REPAIR SHOP MANAGEMENT: HOW TO KEEP SCORE AND KNOW IF YOU ARE WINNING
By David Rogers If any principle of management is true and valuable, it’s this… The Numbers Don’t Lie! There are many issues and problems every business owner, CEO and manager …
REPAIR SHOP MANAGEMENT: HOLDING YOUR TEAM ACCOUNTABLE
If you are like I was the first 20 years as a shop owner, you have worked very hard to hire good people, set up efficient operating systems, and train everyone to use them. You have spent countless hours trying to communicate your expectations and teaching your team to reach them – all with sporadic or little success. WHY? What is missing?
SO, YOU HAVE ALL THESE NEW CUSTOMERS FOR YOUR REPAIR SHOP… WHAT’S THE REAL MARKETING SECRET FOR KEEPING THEM?
One of the most important things to understand is that GREAT advertising is only as good as the service received by the new customer who responds to your advertisement. Assuming your shop is already providing cutting-edge customer service, there is still more to accomplish! How do I know? Well, my shop did $22,500.00 yesterday with only 5 technicians and two writers… Want to know more?
REPAIR SHOP MANAGEMENT: MAKING SYSTEMS STICK
If you are like I was for the first 20 years as a shop owner, you have introduced dozens of policies and procedures that could have brought some order to things, but fizzled out after a few weeks. WHY? What are the causes of this fatal flaw in your business?
Over the next few weeks I will blog on the twelve most important components of “How to Make Systems Stick” in your shop. Today, let me share with you what I have found to be a foundational process for making all policies, procedures and systems stick with individuals and organizations. It’s how we help our clients actually change permanently!
AUTO REPAIR CONSULTING DOESN’T WORK! UNLESS….
Most shop owners come to consultants looking for some little “trick” or “gimmick” that’s somehow going to magically support everything the owner thought he knew, and when they don’t find it…they’re unhappy.
SERVICE ADVISOR TRAINING… HOW TO MAKE IT STICK!
One of the greatest things that ever happened in our shop is service writer training. We have tracked our training experiences and how they affect each individual, and have at times actually experienced an increase in our sales, average repair order, and of course, our profits…sometimes as much as 30% after a single training!
BLOWING SMOKE AT THE BOSS OR DOING YOUR JOB
It’s funny what I’ve learned now that I’m a business owner that I never would have been able to predict when I was working on the front lines and in the trenches as an entry level service writer many years ago: when someone tries to flatter me, it makes me want to fire them, run from them, slap them, or just laugh in their face while publicly calling them a LIAR!
TIMING THE ADVISEMENT OF AN OIL CHANGE… WILL YOU WASTE THE CHANCE OR ADD $200+ TO THE RO?
In a session with a client last week, something I had been trying to teach everyone for a long time suddenly became brilliantly clear to both of us…and it’s going to mean a HUGE difference for his shop this year.
WHY ISN’T MY MARKETING WORKING FOR ME?
It’s really interesting to me how time after time, repair shop owners fall for the same couple of marketing “tricks” to try and fill their bays. The truth is, if there are “tricks” to marketing your shop, they’re about how you run your shop and who you’re marketing to…not about tricking people into bringing their car to you…
WHAT YOU DON’T KNOW CAN PUT YOU OUT OF BUSINESS
Should you spend time reading this article? Answer this: Are my net operating profits trending down over the last 3 years – in other words, am I bleeding and don’t know how to stop it?
THE FIRST 3 QUESTIONS TO ASK A TECHNICIAN YOU’RE THINKING OF HIRING
Whenever I am hiring a technician, I’ve found that it’s critical to ask a few questions before I even identify my business. It’s important to make sure that “the word doesn’t get out on the street” every time I need to upgrade or replace a staff member. No one wants to work for a shop that they have “heard” is suffering from a turnover of people. When they hear from the tool guys, the parts salesmen, and others that the shop is having “personnel problems,” or “can’t keep their techs,” your shop is suddenly plagued by the famous Can’t-Find-A-Tech-To-Save-Our-Lives disease.