mspecperformance

I hope you don't mind that I had mentioned you in the thread. My own experience was not a good one however I know you are very successful and have used their services with positive effects so I felt it was only fair to counter my position with another perspective.

Exacty the reason ill never get into the used car game

That is a customer you never want. Once a customer dictates what needs to be done and how to do it, u have to shut the door on them. The only people who will take on this work are 1 person operations just getting started types.

Question for you guys. I've some customers recently with older vehicle (1980's 3 series e30 chassis if you are familiar) and have been a real pain in my ass. The car is old but the market for these cars are still decent. I have a lot of clients that own them and will put a few thousand in repairs without thinking about it. I've had 2 customers recently that have been a real pain in my ass. You present them with a few hundred dollar ticket and they go ballistic. Remember these cars are old and there are tons of problems on older vehicles. Most recent customer is a forum guy and is scrutinizing any estimate for any work he needs. I would love to get rid of him but he had an overheatin issue. We fixed a leaking heater core for him but come to find out his cluster is shorting out his electric fans and his thermostat appears to be stuck closed. What do you guys normally do in these situations, I'd like to just send him down the river.

Hey guys, wondering if anyone out there has a good spreadsheet for their service advisers for phone call lead capturing. I was looking into building one but I am not the best with spreadsheets so if anyone has a pre made one I can get ideas from that would be great.

Good point. I would counter that though by saying why would you change your policy for a very small percentage of price shoppers calling you? If you are finding success in selling the value of your shop and a visit to your shop before price is discussed then why would you go and change what you have been doing? You might start seeing adverse effects from this. The customers you would normally convert from price shopper to value shopper will stay price shoppers with your quote in their hand comparing it to the other shops. I have learned the hard way trying to run my business for the minority instead of the majority.

Hey Alan, nice to hear Elite is working for you. I remember you had mentioned about an service advisor that you were contemplating on sending to the masters course. How did that pan out? I am sending my guy in September.

The follow up should always be done by your staff and preferably aways done by the service advisor who was taking care of them IMO

Great reputations take time to foster. For a lot of shops converted price shoppers into valued shoppers is what is needed to grow. Not everyone is blessed with a decade long established reputation.

Andre on this forum has gone through their program with good success i think. My personal experience with their company was horrendous. I wouldnt personally recommend them to anyone.

The time is worked out with you and your coach. I talk to my coach after hours however at times i talk to him during the day. Part of what you may want to work on is spending more time being a shop owner and working ON the business opposed to work IN the business. Its a tough hump to get over i know!

Although I don't like to price out commodity repairs, it is the nature of the beast. It is one thing to not quote out a water pump due to many factors making the right repair possibly not the water pump however I am not trying to put off people when it comes to giving a price quote for an oil change or an AC charge... Some people out there are vindictive enough to bad mouth you over something as trivial as not giving a price for an oil change. Also +1 to stow on that line, I like it a lot as well and will try it out!

Good point stow, my thoughts exactly. I was just wondering what kind of responses you were getting.

If you are a shop with highly competitive prices (and when I mean "competitive" I mean its going to be hard for a price shopper to find a lower price) then by all means give a price over the phone. If you are a shop that sells value and benefits with your service then the only way for you to effectively get that across is to show the customer. Over the phone and with a price every shop looks the same. There is no way for you to win that battle. You win by having them visit you and your facility and give them an amazing experience where price is the last thing on their mind. At that point you have sold them on your shop and your people and not on a price. Also lets keep in mind if you are dealing with a true "price shopper" then your goal is to get rid of them as fast as possible and let that customer be someone else's problem. Sometimes it is hard to differentiate between someone who is looking for only a price rather than a person who doesn't know what to ask or has been "inceptioned" by a friend/colleague/family/neighbor/other shop.

Stow, since you saw more engagement with your test method, what was the actual feedback that you got? We're people just too busy? We're they not happy but didn't want to hurt your feelings? Did they hate you? Do they not like picking up phone calls?

Commodity items such as oil changes i give prices for. If a price shopper is going to cross me out because I have a slightly more expensive oil change then GOOD RIDDANCE! you bet your butt I educate every person who calls up the chance to see our value though. "Just to inform you sir/ma'am we perform oil changes a little bit differently here. We perform what we call and Oil Service. This includes fully synthetic Liquid Moly oil which is made in Germany and carries all of the Factory recommended certifications so you know this is the oil you need in your vehicle. Secondly one of our professional certified German Car technicians will perform a courtesy digital inspection on your vehicle. Any recommendations we have for you will be presented on a report complete with pictures and explanation on anything we see that might be in need of attention. You get all of this for $119.97. I'd be happy to book you for the next most convenient appointment." If we reel that off and they still want to price shop, GOOD LUCK!! For everything else we avoid giving prices like the plague. You cannot possibly make a buying decision on service from a price. What I tell my service advisor is you have to have the mentality that we are the absolute best place for their car needs. The only way to help customers to understand that is to get them through our doors.

Check out elite as well http://www.eliteworldwide.com/automotive-service-advisor-training.html

I can completely understand your skepticism. Most of these coaches are retired shop owners that for the most part do their own thing. What I can gather they are coaches because it's a flexible schedule and they genuinely enjoy helping folks out. For instance I'm currently a coaching client with elite and my coach is still a operator. He had 3 shops all making great money but he spends the time with me because he gets fulfillment from coaching. The money that I pay to the program is really a drop in the bucket to my coach I'm sure. I have also met a lot of the other elite coaches at a live training event and I can honestly say no one would put that much effort for the measly couple hundred bucks they might be getting a month to be a coach. With that being said I'm sure it's similar for RLO's independently contracted coaches.

set a time at the end of the day where everyone cleans up OR before a tech can close out a job they must clean their work area as the final step. BTW none of these have worked for me I am just throwing suggestions out there that I've heard lollll

The tracking numbers have been really helpful in seeing where people opt in from. All that information gets graphed and pie charted on my Kukui dashboard. For instance where it has helped me track my marketing efforts is that I have seen a steady increase in Yelp opt in phone calls. I have also seen Organic SEO and Adwords give me a nice share of new leads. I had also added another tracking number to Facebook. I have seen a low return but probably a larger return than most from facebook from what i have seen. Certainly not enough to invest into facebook ads as I have tried a few campaigns with small results if any. In regards to what happens if you cancel your service with Kukui and what happens with the tracking numbers? I am not sure. also I haven't had a problem with website load speeds for years. Everywhere you go cell data speeds are very high as well as wifi is available in many places. I don't think how fast a website is relevant unless it has an effect on SEO.

In the next few years I will be looking to purchase a building for my shop however for the money I will be investing into that I could probably have 2-4 locations if I lived in a different area around the country.

Great post stow. It really goes back to perception. If we are charging enough for our parts and labor then we as an industry should be able to offer long warranties to our customers without blinking. I think more time should be focused on what margins do you need to remain profitable, what kind of value you can give to the customer and how to keep getting more of these customers. If you are charging the right amount as stow has stated, you should be charging enough to cover your end if problems arise. What also gets lost in the mix is the value of the customer to your business. Sometimes we are so quick to deny claims or push off responsibility to someone else such as our suppliers, the customer, the roads, etc etc. When in fact again if you are charging properly you should be making enough to confidently tell your customer, "Of course. Mr. xxxxx we will take care of that for you because you are a valued client and we are here to help." Something magical kind of happens after that... you create a happy customer that wants to spend more money with you and wants to sing your praises to others. Like everyone else I really hate having to eat jobs, time, money, parts when we know we are not at fault however in the grand scheme of things it is worth more to me not to "fester" and brood over small things and look at the bigger picture which is you have tons of money to make moving forward and taking care of your customers will net you far more value than to "win" and not take care of them.

What i have learned over the years is I needed to get it out of my head that I needed the most amazing looking website to drive customers to my door. Honestly... hardly anyone cares. I don't want to say no one because there might be the few out there that will rule you out because you don't have a website that looks like a billion dollar company's site but serious YOUR customer will be coming to your site which is nice, neat, organized, with the right message and information and with the opt in buttons and windows where you need them. I learned the side of effective web marketing actually through a martial arts school I used to be partners of. At the time we were hung up on getting a website put together that had our instructor bios, info on the classes, class schedules etc etc. What I learned was the most effective martial arts school web marketing included NONE of those things. It was just enough information and areas which were the most effective for people to opt in with their information. That is basically what you want from you website. People to add their Name/Phone Number/email address and for your sales team to follow up with them so you can actually generate an appointment. Get them through the door. Websites need to generate leads. LEADS LEADS LEADS. If my website looks like CRAP but I am getting a ton of leads from it I wouldn't change a damn thing.

sounds great I wish I could afford to do the same in the city. Properly costs are horrendous here.

Some people might be put off by his age however if he carries himself with maturity and confidence I am sure he can win them over.