ScottSpec

Joe, I think this is a valuable discussion and I agree with most of your last post. A good attitude is the first thing I look for in a new employee. In this business, we have to remain positive and continue to look for ways to succeed. But when you are coaching a shop owner, and sales, car count, ARO, or even profit margins go down, I think the first question you are going to ask is why. If you can't identify the issue, it is hard to address it. Denial can be just as damaging as a negative attitude. If a customer's car came in with a loud knocking noise under the hood, I don't think you would tell them all is well. Being overly optimistic has gotten me into trouble a few times in my life, and I've seen it do the same to others. In fact I just purchased the customer base, phone number, url, social media profiles, etc. from a shop owner who was getting coached, increasing his marketing, and was convinced he was going to get his business back to its peak sales days, only to end up in bankruptcy. I think it's good to look for the reasons why business is bad or when something is not working. I think what is most important is what you do with that information. Do you use it as an excuse and become a victim, or do you put it to use, to find ways to overcome the situation and succeed. Scott

Joe, I agree that we need to do all we can to keep customers coming thru the door, and none of us know what will work and what won't until we try it. If you do the math, scheduling the next appointment is very appealing. If you can add one more car a day with a 5 day work week and a $300 average R.O. it would add $78,000 a year in sales. I have just not been able to get it to work for me. I realize this has gotten a little off the original topic of how was your April. We were down 33% from last year. I believe there is a lot of uncertainty with the new administration and we are just outside of Washington so it is very pronounced here. Scott

I don't know much about bolt on, but I would highly recommend digital inspections over hard copies. Scott

We have tried booking the next appointment. Most customers are reluctant to do so and most ended up being a non show. We tried offering an incentive. If they came back within 6 months for their next service, they would receive 10% off labor. This just irritated a lot of customers. If they did not make it back in 6 months, the felt like they were cheated. As far as asking my dentist, I did just that. His response was that they we are in 2 very different businesses and he could not see it working well in auto repair. For what it is worth, this is a young guy who has taken over a practice recently and is very business minded. He has doubled if not tripled the practice in just a few years. He said for it to be successful in his business, it takes a lot of follow through. Multiple reminders via email and text and they have to call any patient who has not confirmed. He said skipping any of those steps, the success rate drops off dramatically. I know some shops that swear by scheduling the next appointment, but I know a lot more that found it ineffective. Scott

I don't know if this has anything to do with it, but I understand that WorldPac updates their database daily to make sure they have all catalog info as current as possible. I image that part of that update includes pricing. Scott

We have been with RepairPal for a little over 2 year. It has brought us some decent work and with the towing program we get a car towed in every now and then. About $22,000 worth of work. Not a huge number but it helps. They are now involved with CarMax and another warranty company. We are listed on the Carmax website as a recommended service facility, and have had 2 new customers come in recently from there. Plus we can add that we are RepairPal certified to our marketing, Having said all that, if we got busy enough tomorrow, it would probably be one of the first things I would drop from our marketing. We waste a lot of time with calls from people just wanting a price, and a lot of them are shocked that you don't know the price instantly. Not even sure I would call them price shoppers. I think it is more of an extension of the site. People go there to find out what something should cost, then they call to get a price as part of further research or curiosity, not necessarily because they are going to get the work done. If you need more work in your shop, I would say give it a try and see how it works for you. At $199 per month, it won't break the bank to try it out. Scott

Here is one of the most important things. I did a search on google for automotive tires in Pensacola Fl and you were on the first page. https://www.google.com/webhp?sourceid=chrome-instant&ion=1&espv=2&ie=UTF-8#q=automotive+tires+pensacola+fl&* and #1 in google places. Scott

Harry, If we had enough work, I would not bother with Groupon. Over the last few years, we have been trying everything we can think of to get new customers in the door. We have been finding that each thing we do brings in a few customers. Not much seems to bring in a steady stream of new customers. So casting a wide net is what seems to be working for us right now. Scott

Nick, I think we all know the type of customer Groupon generally attracts. Having said that, we have used Groupon continuously since August of 2015. For the most part it was a losing proposition at first, we lost a significant amount of money doing it, and as you can expect it did not generate return customers. Then we tweaked it a little. Now I believe Groupon increases our web presence, helped us get more positive reviews, and it does generate a little income for us. Here is what I recommend. While you may get one or two, don't create offers in hopes of getting more repeat customers. Create offers that open the door to profitable work. It does not always work, but here is what we do. Right now we have 2 Groupons and are working on a third. The first is for a check engine light diagnoses. If the car is coming in with the check engine light on, it will most likely need repairs and that is where you make your money. The second is an AC evacuate, recharge, and performance test. Again, if the AC is low or not functioning, repairs will most likely be needed. Work is not always purchased, but quite often it is. The new one we are working on is essentially a vehicle health inspection. We are a NAPA Autocare Center. NAPA has this great little booklet with a coolant test strip, brake fluid test strip, a serpentine belt wear tool, a page to check fluids, and a check list of items to inspect on a vehicle. They also have a nice YouTube video promoting it. It has a 29.95 retail value. We put the value at $84.95 with the inspection. We are going to offer them on Groupon. When someone comes in for one of the inspections, they will most likely need work performed. None of these offers have a huge upfront cost for us, but do have good upside potential. Scott

O yea, and I'm proud of it so I wanted to pat myself on the back a little.

xrac, No problem. I just wanted to fill in some of the details about it and let Markas know he could use it if he wants. It's on my site for public consumption so I don't see any issue with sharing it without clearing it. Scott

Marksas , It's interesting that you are required to charge. My agent told me that if I charged anything to use the cars, they would be considered rentals and insurance would go from $100 per month to $300 per month. I actually have full coverage on the cars. I don't usually carry collision on my own cars, but I thought the cost was pretty reasonable for the loaners. The reason insurance is affordable is because the customer's insurance is primary. Which is why it has to be a loaner and not a rental. The loaner document Xrac posted is actually ours. I'm guessing he got the link off our site. I invested some time into the agreement to make sure it addressed all my concerns. It's a word file, so you are welcome to download it and modify it for your use. We keep (4) 5 gallon gas cans full so we can top off the cars without running to the gas station for a few gallons. But fortunately, most customers bring them back full. I hear so many shop owners talk about setting up a separate company to own the cars thinking this will protect them from liability. From the research I have done this may actually do more harm than good. In fact, it is illegal to do this and would probably lead to more liability than less. To provide any protection, you would have to prove that this company does something beyond putting a firewall between your customer and you. And even if that firewall does stand up, the argument can always be made that your company was the one that supplied that vehicle and are in some way liable.

I wanted to add that adding loaner cars has dropped the stress level in my shop dramatically. Both for our customers and the employees. It's hard to measure the effect on the bottom line so far, but I know more work is being purchased because of them and the shop is more efficient.

I buy the cars from customers. We all get those customers from time to time that want to sell their clean well maintained car because they are tired of it or it needs work and they don't want to repair it. One needed an engine, one had a cracked oil pan, one was purchased from a widow. On average I probably have 2-2500 in each car. And if it doesn't work out, I could probably get twice that for them now. So it's hard to classify that as an expense. For operation expenses I am currently allocating $300 per month per car until I can see what the actual expenses are. $100 for insurance and $200 for gas, registration, and maintenance I don't think I have even come close to the $200 per month. But I'm going to keep using that figure for now. I'm sure some repairs or tires will be needed at some point. I only buy cars that I know customers will be comfortable in. They have to be clean inside and out. The first loaner I got is a 1999 Volvo S70 with about 70000 miles on it. The car is spotless. Most customers don't realize how old it is and can't believe the low miles. The down side to having nice loaners is that I continually get harassed to sell them. The cars are registered to my shop. I have a 1,000,000 liability policy + 1,000,000 liability policy on each car, and a 1,000,000 umbrella policy. For a total of 3,000,000 in coverage. The are shops that do the create another company to own the loaners thinking this gives them some protection from liability, but I think that is a bit of a fantasy.

My customer's get a follow up email ~3 days after they are in. 4 months later they start receiving email reminders. They will continue to receive them every 2 months for 3 years unless they come in or tell me to stop. Having said that, this yields very little return. There was a post on this site a while back that talked about how studies showed that reminders in the automotive repair business are not effective anymore. This has been my experience as well. We do get a few responses but not many. At times I send out several hundred and it is not uncommon to get no response. The one thing I do not do with my reminders that might make them more effective is to offer a discount, incentive, or something of value. I have always tried to get customers to see us as professional just like their doctors, dentist, lawyer, and accountant. None of mine send me coupons, so it seems counterproductive for us to so. I don't like the discounting game, don't want to be in the race to the bottom, and don't want to attract the discount shoppers. I will continue to send out the reminders because there is no cost involved, it keeps us in contact with customers and on their minds, and it does yield an appointment from time to time, But I would never see it as an effective way to recover lost customers. Scott

So far the loaners have worked out beyond my best expectations. Just about every customer who uses one really appreciates it. Most bring the cars back with at least as much gas as it left with. One customer lives a mile away from the shop but still stopped at the gas station to fill the tank that was full when she got the car. Having them takes so much stress out of the equation. We don't have to rush to get cars done when they have a loaner. Customer's buy more repairs because it is more convenient for them. Several new customers said they would not have come to us if we did not have the loaners. It might see odd, but the biggest challenge has been turning the cars around. When it gets dropped off, we like to do a quick check to make sure it is full of gas and ready to go for the next customer. It only takes a few minutes, but the busier we are, the quicker the cars are going in and out and when you are busy, you don't want to pull employees off other tasks to check over the loaners.

It has been so long since we did the frames. I have a box in the back that still has a few in it. If I get a chance this week, I will see if there is a label on it. Check out google https://www.google.com/webhp?sourceid=chrome-instant&ion=1&espv=2&ie=UTF-8#q=custom+tag+frames&* you will find many companies there. Scott

We have several websites. Maybe a bit of an identity crisis. http://www.scottsautospec.com/ http://www.autorepairrockville.com/ http://volvorepairrockvillemd.com/ http://bmwrepairrockville.com/ Scott

I put license plate frames on all my customer's cars (with their permission) years ago. I am not aware of any new customer coming in as a result. I imagine bumper stickers would stand out more, but not sure how much. We have 5 loaner cars with very obvious advertising for our shop and the fact that we have free loaner cars across the top of the rear glass. They have all been on the road since last August. We have not had a single customer come in because of that; and I have to believe seeing free loaner car is more of a motivator that just our info on a bumper sticker. Scott

#1. It is fun and keeps your interest. #2. Stirs up negative feelings with the rejected sticker and the hassles of dealing with it. Scott

We use a bulk tank for 5-30 conventional. This is our most commonly sold oil. For all other weights and synthetics, we use the boxes. I hate dealing with all the plastic bottles, both the time to use them and the disposal. Most suppliers will give you the rack and jugs. My jugs have lids so we have never had a need to clean them out. Scott

My post was added multiple time so this is a delete.

My post was added multiple time so this is a delete.

I would proceed with caution. I started in 1989 as a Volvo specialist. It was great for many years for most of the reasons you stated, you can make more on parts because you can usually lower your purchase cost, you don't need to invest as much in equipment or information systems, less time is usually wasted on diagnostics, your techs can usually turn out a lot more hours doing the same jobs over and over again, and you can increase your turn around time. You also become know as the experts which can help reduce marketing costs and help with SEO. But for us, things started to change in the mid 2000's. Volvo's became more and more reliable and routine maintenance was reduced considerably. Volvo's popularity and sales also started to slow and the new class of Volvo owner's did not seem to understand the need for regular maintenance. They were buying Volvo's because they heard "Volvo's last forever" and were usually shocked when problems arose after driving for 70-100,000 miles without doing more than a few oil changes. When I say few oil changes, 15,000 intervals were not uncommon. By 2010, we were starting to lose money. Along with many other Volvo specialist, we then realized that we had to make the transition to a General Repair Facility or at least other vehicles if we wanted to survive. One guy was a Volvo/Saab specialist. On top of having to deal with the slowing Volvo business, he had to deal with the loss of Saab. Our business is still about 60% Volvo, the rest is General repair. It has taken us until last year to start making money again. Another fellow Volvo specialist went through a similar situation. He has a large operation, >10 technicians. He got into General Repair but one make in particular took off and is now about 60% of his business and probably responsible for most of his profits. He talks about how he would love to specialize in that one make but after what happened with Volvo, he said he would never put all his eggs in one basket again. You say there are a lot of registered Subaru owners. As we first started our transition from Volvo Specialists, we thought it would be best to keep some focus so we chose Toyota/Lexus because there are so many around here and a lot of our customers were buying them as they could no longer afford them. This never got much traction. We did start bringing them in but soon realized Toyota was a very different class of car. Most Toyota owners are economy minded and are reluctant to spend a lot of money repairing them. Toyota's tend to require less repairs, and unlike Volvo's a most European cars, you can take a Toyota to just about any non-specialists. If you are thinking to yourself that you can always get the customers back if you need to, you may find it harder than you think. Over the years we sent many non-Volvo's to other shops. I image like us, you would never refer a customers to another shop unless you believed they were going to get treated well. Once that customers starts going to the other shop and is treated well, given good service, and builds a relationship with them, why would they come back to you. To this day, we see a lot of our old customers in the parking lot when they take there car to the shop next door or the one across the parking lot that we recommended them to. These were long time customers that we built personal relationships with. My suggestion would be to focus on growing the Subaru business and leave the other part alone. If the Subaru side starts doing well, stop promoting the General Repair side. If you get busy enough, you can stop taking on new non-Subaru customers. We now call ourselves Volvo Specialists and General Automotive Repair. Scott