mspecperformance

I have 1 tech that would definitely whine if I tried to implement such a plan. Mostly due to coming toward that extra hour opened he would probably start whining about how he doesnt want to stay and that there isnt much to do. Certainly comes down to hiring the right people haha!

Great post AJ. RLO's GSM course is really great and worth every penny. Glad you have had such great success!!!

Think tanks, support groups, 20 groups, mastermind groups are always great! Love to see what your progress is. In my opinion though the reason why 20 groups work so well is that the group members are financially invested in the group. Since they are paying, they will take participate and remain responsible for their duties and deadlines set forth by their group or facilitator.

We have all been caught with our pants down. When business is slow we blame it on everything but ourselves. This is what we can do to smooth out those lows. Follow up calls. Call back customers for their declined work. Schedule ahead work with your customers. Repairs that we are recommended in 3 - 6 months have on a schedule so you can call them back and get them back into your shop. Increase your ARO by having high value inspections. Build systems around this and above all else be consistent.

Just remember that we can get very caught up and almost on a high when we have a lot of cars. Business is great, we are making money life is good. The problem is we then forget to do all the little things that will keep us consistent. Follow up calls, small customer service things we need to always be doing and INSPECTIONS. Inspections are what feeds tomorrow's good days and next week and next month and so on an so forth. They need be done all the time on every car. If you want to think of it this way... you are doing a real disservice to your clients because you are not performing proper inspections for everyone. If they have a problem their car and they were not notified prior they can be all kinds of upset and leave you a bad review, go to another shop, tell other people of their bad experience. If you have build an incentive program for your techs since you pay hourly then I would suggest you do it. High quality and usable inspections are the life blood of your sales operation. You already have Bolt On so you HAVE to get it done. Lets go!

Jeff, I think the general feeling is that if you keep your operation as a 1 man you are not able to step away from the business. You rise and fall with your presence. If you decide to take a vacation, slack off or get sick then your business will feel the affects. A business should be separate entity in which can operate without you in the picture. Ideally you would want to have a business that can go on without you by developing processes that a trained employee can pick up. In that regard a 1 man shop is more like building a job for yourself opposed to building a business that can operate without you. Just my 2c. I have a lot of respect for anyone who can go at it alone and still kick ass!

CarER, if you are already using bolt on then you should definitely be performing inspections on EVERY car. Its a no brainer. Do you pay your tech salary, hourly or flat rate? I personally give .5 for my inspections to my technicians. This is on top of whatever service they are already performing. I have been told this rather generous for an inspection but this way I make the technician more invested in performing a proper inspection both due the fact they are getting paid for it and they will prosper from any additional sold work.

Matt, send me the contact info for the direct mail guy you use in Cali please

Per mail piece. Direct Mail response rate is 0.25% - 0.50% so out of 1000 mailers if you get 2.5-5 people to respond you are in good shape. Of those you still have to convert. At best if you have a really compelling mail piece you might get 1-3% response rate. Response rate is always low on direct mail pieces but you have to think bigger picture which is brand awareness.

you just have to turn it into a strength. Some people can be very analytical and not let much rattle them. For those of us who are more emotionally charged we have to figure out what works best for us. If you are like me, I am a dreamer so its tough to get into the more technical aspects of being a business person.

I love this list and I think a lot of us can relate to parts of it. To be honest I think all of your concerns are the exact same problems I've had! You definitely need to work on 3 areas... Leadership / Management / Sales. I was in the exact same boat trust me. If I can make any suggestions is to read read read. Soak as much info as you can on how to be an effective leader and manager. Also if you are the only sales person which I think is what your situation is, you really need to work on becoming a decent service writer. It seems like you know exactly what needs to be done and what you should be doing but you are having a hard time with implementation. The better you get at sales the more money you will be making and in 6 months to a year I would highly suggest to look to hire a service adviser. I personally did a pretty good job as a service adviser however there were still things that were hard for me to do at times like charge appropriately for parts or charge for diag. After I hired my service adviser things got a lot easier. Margins were holding and even going up. Since I've hired my second adviser as a team they are able to hold to my parts matrix and will not discount unless you get the go ahead from me. I actually set parameters in which they can offer any types of discount which they follow to a T. It helps because I don't have to get emotionally invested with a client or the sale. After all you are the owner and you hold all the keys to give discounts. Both you and the client know that.

Those are a lot of changes for 5-6 weeks!!!

A ride in a F16!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Sounds like it is working for you. I am of the opposite mind. I do not like people to see our inner workings nor do I like them to linger while we are working. We are trying to be efficient and tend to their vehicle. I believe that they are a distraction as well as can misconstrue things they see and over analyze what they see.

At least you get your 50% commission. That is a extinct dinosaur in this industry. Do you have 50% off the total job or only gross profit?

I dont think you are calculating correctly. at $230 ARO x 55 Cars/month = $12650. Your calculation of GP is way off unless your parts GP alone is like 80%. You have to factor your tech salary into your Overall GP to get a real number. If $12650 is a real number of the Gross sale of your shop for 1 month I think you would be hardpressed to survive even if you were a 1 man operation. Are the numbers you posted accurate?

WorldPac has some good classes on brand and model for techs

Honestly I don't really know as its not an exact science. I suppose they make it this way so no one can cheat the system. What I have done is write content for my landing pages and sprinkle a lot of key words in the articles. It is all coherent content and it seems to help boost my searches a good amount.

AJ, If you are on somewhat of a tighter budget, my suggestion would be to invest in internet marketing and grass roots level marketing. SEO, Yelp, Google Adwords, Google+, Facebook. Also hit the streets with business cards and introduce yourself. In the future you may add a direct mail campaign to your marketing efforts however to do so on a large scale would be very expensive. You may want to spam your area maybe once just to help you get the word out. Also something else that won't cost you as much money is CRM. Look into your data base and figure out a good speech to pitch. Something like, "Hi this is AJ Nealey Automotive. We are reaching out to our really great customers to let them know that we are moving to a bigger location! We are really excited to be able to better serve our community. We would love to have you come to our grand opening. Also with a new larger location we will be able to serve a lot people. We would be honored if you would refer us to some of your friends..." Your ARO seems healthy however your overall GP of 53% is a bit low. 60% or better should be the target. With that being said you can survive off 140 cars a month if you raise your ARO. Even at $550 x 140 cars = $77,000. Thats a pretty healthy number.

I know this article doesn't directly relate to how to dig ourselves out a slow period but it definitely reinforces the soul. I felt really good about the article because it was some of the exact same things I have and would have done for my clients. There are those out there and everyone knows them... the fellow shop owner that will do unscrupulous things in the name of profit. Sometimes we have to rely on our good work and reputation to see us through to better days. Anyways, check it out and I'd love to hear some other success stories! http://www.ratchetandwrench.com/RatchetWrench/December-2015/Would-you-Choose-Survival-or-Honesty/

November was horrendous for us, I think we did better last November vs this November. Our YTD is still almost double from last year though. Still doesn't make me feel any better haha.

If anyone needs any info on Kukui or has specific questions, shoot me a private message or e-mail [email protected]. I have been with Kukui for 2 years.

In regards to what is out on the market now, I would not buy any of them other than hunter hawk eye elite. I had struggled with camera based systems in the past and they are pure junk. Don't waste your money, just get hunter.

Victoria, does your google voice phone number have a local area code?

What worries me is that you are getting say 12.5% on average margins. I am not sure if you are calculating Mark Up or Gross Profit Percentage. Lets just say we are talking about Gross Profit Percentage. Industry standard is around 50% Gross Profit on parts. If you are only making 12.5% on parts opposed to the recommended 50%, you would have to raise your labor rate significantly to compensate for the loss in parts profit. We are also still not touching on liability if anything goes wrong etc.