Steps Toward Smooth Sailing: Establishing Proper Policies & Procedures To Improve Your Shop’s Productivity
We’ve all been there. Customers keep coming in waves and your shop is crazier than it’s ever been. The bays and parking lot are completely full, your waiting room has guests who are waiting to speak with a service writer and you can’t catch your breath trying to keep it all organized. In other words, your policies and procedures broke down. The systems that worked when business was slower fell apart as you grew, and now you’re left trying to pick up the pieces or the shop morale will take a dive and your customers’ trust will fall right along with it.
The Art Of Setting Goals For Your Business: Continuous Improvement Helps Pinpoint Opportunities For Growth
For years, I’ve stressed the importance of setting appropriate benchmarks, holding your team accountable for reaching them, and measuring daily to track your progress so you can train and adjust to hit your goals by month’s end. The old way of running a shop, where you send your financials to an accountant and find out on the 15th of the following month whether you made or lost money, is long extinct. You can’t fix the month’s numbers if you don’t see them until it’s too late!
Grow Your Shop, Not Just The Number Of Vehicles – Tips To Sustainably Increase Your Car Count
“I need more customers!” I’ve heard this so many times, from so many different shop owners. If only there were more cars, they say, their problems would fade away. The problem is when you focus so much on car count, you never stop to consider why you always need more cars in your bays.
All Work And No Play Is Not The Secret To Success: Achieving Both Work-Life Balance And Shop Success
As small-business owners, we are often caught up in this obligation to do everything it takes to succeed. We feel that we owe it to our investment, to our future, to our employees and to our customers. So, we stay late, we fix employee mistakes ourselves, and we lose whole weekends working to catch up on the work that employees didn’t get done.
Location, Location, Location Should Come Last: A Detailed Guide To Help Reproduce Your Success In A Second Shop
Opening a second location is a tempting idea for many shop owners, and why not? Twice the sales, twice the profits, and a chance to go through the process again and do everything right the second time around! If only it were that easy.
Honesty, Service And Integrity: The Details That Matter Most To Customers During The Vehicle Service Process
This probably doesn’t come as news to you, but every new customer who walks through your doors comes preloaded with trust issues. They have already been betrayed by their car and probably also by the dealer at one time or another, and they expect you to be the latest one to disappoint them.
Customer Feedback: Creating Value
Good or bad, you should be ‘all ears’ with customer feedback to gain valuable insights into your business.
How A Pay Plan Can Impact Team Culture
One of the single biggest mistakes that shop owners make is paying employees a straight hourly wage. That’s because it breeds the wrong job mentality.
The Art Of Team Building And Reducing Turnover
The fire marshal came into our shop one day out of the blue and told us we had a problem. The back of the shop was too wide open, he said, and if a fire started, it would quickly spread across the entire building. And just like that, they made us put up a wall right through the middle of the shop.
Keep Your Shop’s Marketing Messages Consistent
There are several ways to reach your customers and a number of different messages that you can send. Unless you’re writing, designing, posting and mailing every piece – and keeping creative control over every aspect of your shop’s image – how can you ensure a consistent message on every channel?
The Value Of Training Your Entire Team – Including The Owner
If an owner doesn’t take the time to train employees, to teach them the processes used in the shop, and to explain the benchmarks, they cannot expect the employee to deliver on these expectations. Training for new employees is a good start, but it’s far from the whole picture. Does the rest of the team understand your expectations? Do they know who is responsible for holding other techs accountable? Are they incentivized for meeting and exceeding expectations?
Boost Your Shop’s Visibility With These Marketing Techniques
In 1995, we moved our shop from the corner of a busy intersection to a sunken strip mall a half-block from the main road. We went from 100,000 cars driving by every day to 1,000 — maybe 1,500 on a great day. We went from a locked-in customer base to building a customer base from scratch.
