THE MOST IMPORTANT MEETING YOU SHOULD HAVE

Running a successful shop means you have the freedom to run the business from afar. But when you leave the shop, how can you be sure things will continue to run smoothly?

Terry Keller hasn’t had to step a foot into Keller Bros. in years, except when he wants to. I spend most of my time coaching owners of other shops across the country, which means I’m not even in the same state most of the year. And yet, together we run one of the most successful shops in Colorado. In fact, Keller Bros. was recognized this year at city, state, and national levels as the Best Auto Repair Shop.

I’m not bragging — I’m sharing this to show you that you can have it too.

The key? Keeping your finger on the pulse of the shop and holding your team accountable every single day.

The best part? You can do it in only 10 minutes.

Terry and I now manage our shop completely remotely, and one of the biggest keys to getting here was establishing what we call the 10 Minute Meeting™.

It’s the reason the service writers and techs in our shop and our clients’ shops start off every day knowing exactly what they need to do that day to lower their stress and intensify their focus. This 10-minute investment leads to increased sales and gross profits, boosted production and a happier, bigger shop.

Don’t waste time

Did you ever play with a magnifying glass in the sunlight? One of my strongest childhood memories was spending hours outside of grandma’s house using a magnifying glass to chase ants or light scraps of paper on fire.

If you hold the magnifying glass too far away and the focus was too wide, there’s no heat, no results. When it’s too tight, you could burn your name into the sidewalk.

When you have that focal point just right, you have precise control over the heat from the sun.

Meetings are like that magnifying glass. When used incorrectly, they can burn through the trust in your team, create more problems than they solve, and turn into an unfocused complaint session. But when used correctly, meetings can turn up the heat to motivate the entire staff towards the same goal. The key is finding that focus.

Many other shop owners I talk with have negative feelings towards meetings. They say things like, “They are boring and a waste of time” or “You never resolve issues or decide anything.”

Why do they feel that way? There’s no follow through.

Follow up is where most organizations fail. Without proper follow up, the meeting will be a waste of time. Your time is too valuable to waste even 10 minutes on something that won’t benefit your shop.

That’s why it is so important to have this meeting every day, so you can hold your team accountable every day.

When you have that meeting each day, you are empowering your team to make lasting change. Each day they must report back on their progress towards the goal of the last meeting. This eliminates excuses and gives you direct insight to catch and fix problems.

It’s a small routine, but it makes a huge difference. It allows you to keep track of your employees’ goals and motivation. It enables you to identify opportunities and fix broken systems. It lets you synchronize your team towards the same goal. It gives you the freedom to manage the shop remotely with confidence knowing exactly what is happening at your counter and in your bays even when you are not physically there.

Remote management

The biggest factor keeping owners tied down and stuck in the shop every day is fear — fear that the moment you leave town, the shop will turn to chaos; fear that employees will take advantage of you; fear that customers will disappear overnight.

This fear stems from a deeper truth: shop owners often don’t know what they don’t know.

How can you know what is going on in the shop when you are not physically there? If your only optics into your shop come from calling your manager and asking for an update or a report from your point-of-sale system, you can only know what they tell you.

Ask a general question like “How’s the shop today?” and you’ll probably get a general answer like, “It’s good” or “A little slow.”

But what does that mean exactly? Is car count down by one or two cars? Are the techs performing thorough inspections, and the service advisors filling your pipeline for the next day? Is the team goofing around, smoking in the parking lot, or pencil whipping inspection forms?

When you ask the right questions, you can get the answers you need to take care of your shop, even from afar. But, again, most shop owners don’t know what they don’t know.

If you don’t know what you don’t know, how do you even know what questions to ask?

That is why it is so important to be measuring, tracking, training, and following up every day in the shop. When you know exactly where your shop stands every day, you know exactly where you need to go the next day and you know exactly the right questions to ask to find out if you’re headed the right direction.

If that sounds like a ton of work, it doesn’t have to be. You don’t have to go through the trials, tribulations, and years of struggling we did to learn the most important numbers to measure and develop the tools to measure them. With the right system in place, you can have access to all of the most important numbers at your fingertips when you need them.

By bringing your team together each day, the daily meeting becomes a tool to refine your focus, create synergy, and keep track of the performance of your shop. It only takes 10 minutes to get everyone, including the owner, synchronized and focused together to run an efficient and productive shop so that you don’t even need to be there to be sure that it’s working.

In our shop, it’s the 10 Minute Meeting™, and it’s how we measure and hold our team accountable every day. You can do it too — take 10 minutes to ask the right questions and get more productive, focused employees who do exactly what you expect.

Make this the year you can go fishing, play with your kids or grandkids, and relax knowing the shop is full, techs are productive and customers are well-served.