Transmission Repair

I agree, Joe. I would send the customer the report AFTER making the sale.

I put them in the "hiring pipeline" and work on trying to fit them in at a later date. Good techs are looking for a better opportunity, not looking for a job. I never hire unemployed techs.

Great information. Six months after we changed our shop's location, we purchased a Frost & Sullivan report in 2009. It was similar, but more detailed, than the Lang Report; and more costly at $5,000. It gave a 5-year forecast for the transmission and engine rebuilding industries. Over time, I found the forecasts to be accurate. The report was 183 pages. You can download the 2009 report below. The latest report(s) separate transmissions and engines in two separate reports. The latest transmission-only report is $3,712.50 and can be had here.--->

I would always give my employees Thursday & Friday off for Thanksgiving. Our shop is normally closed on Sat-Sun so it turns into a 4-day weekend for employees. I had a shop phone extension (VoIP) in my home office so I can take in new work on holidays and weekends. Admittedly, I didn't answer every single phone call but I did answer most calls. It worked pretty well for me.

We hooked up with 4 technical colleges: UVU - https://www.uvu.edu/auto/auto-tech.html ============================= SLCC - https://www.slcc.edu/.../programs/automotive-technician.aspx ============================= WyoTech - https://www.wyotech.edu/.../core.../automotive-technology/ ============================= Weber State University - https://www.weber.edu/automotive/j_kelly.html ============================= All had "Job Fairs" in an Expo-like setting. We had a hiring booth set up on the Job Fair floor. These colleges and universities provided us with trainable candidates that had already exhibited a strong desire to go into automotive/transmissions. We would offer R&R careers with the hope to move up to rebuilding eventually. I had brochures printed, took our cutaway transmissions, and tried to make our hiring booth look the most appealing. Out of all the ways we tried to hire, this strategy was the most fruitful for us, although it was A LOT OF WORK. If a shop is looking for help, hookup with the local colleges, universities, and tech schools in your area like we did. Yeah, we struck out more than a few times but overall, the strategy worked.

We hooked up with 4 technical colleges: UVU - https://www.uvu.edu/auto/auto-tech.html ============================= SLCC - https://www.slcc.edu/.../programs/automotive-technician.aspx ============================= WyoTech - https://www.wyotech.edu/.../core.../automotive-technology/ ============================= Weber State University - https://www.weber.edu/automotive/j_kelly.html ============================= All had "Job Fairs" in an Expo-like setting. We had a hiring booth set up on the Job Fair floor. These colleges and universities provided us with trainable candidates that had already exhibited a strong desire to go into automotive/transmissions. We would offer R&R careers with the hope to move up to rebuilding eventually. I had brochures printed, took our cutaway transmissions, and tried to make our hiring booth look the most appealing. Out of all the ways we tried to hire, this strategy was the most fruitful for us, although it was A LOT OF WORK. If a shop is looking for help, hookup with the local colleges, universities, and tech schools in your area like we did. Yeah, we struck out more than a few times but overall, the strategy worked.

What a great topic, Joe. I agreed with you when the first sentence in your topic-starter post said, “There are many things to consider when creating a marketing plan.” My experience of creating a marketing plan didn’t come until later in my career, the last 8 years to be exact. For the 32 years prior, my idea of marketing was having the nicest sign and the biggest Yellow Page ad I could afford. I quickly learned I couldn’t afford to pay someone to build a website, let alone the SEO/SEM/keywords work. During the last eight years of my career, I learned to build a website which included learning to write HTML and CSS3 code. Marketing and the activities involved with it were a never-ending project. Having a happy crew and great shop curb appeal was a given for me. We already had that. But to stick to the topic, what would be my advice for the first step in a marketing plan? It would be to have a great website. That’s key. A shop’s digital presence is top of the list nowadays. Everything digital should point to your website. Oh, sure, I could add to that ad infinitum. But I won’t.

I've "fixed" more transmissions we had problems with at 2:00 am than I care to mention. 🙂

Thank you! Our YouTube channel has over 2,200 "Show-N-Tell" customer videos.

Always be recruiting. 24/7

I once had a customer that complained about our labor on a pinion seal. We lost the sale with the customer stating he has a brother-in-law that could do it for much cheaper. To measure the pinion bearing preload we normally pull both axles and the carrier. Labor was almost $400 bucks. Here's how the customer "saved money". Here's the results 2 weeks later.--->>>

Nope, at the end of their first week they don't get a paycheck. Great filtering to find out if they fit in.

I was never a fan of a sign-on bonus. Instead, I would advance the their first week's pay. That worked for me.

I owned a transmission repair facility. We would shoot ~3 minute video of every transmission we disassembled telling 3 things: What failed. What it's going to take to fix it. What we are doing different to keep it from happening again. We have over 2,200 videos on our YouTube channel. Check out https://www.youtube.com/user/LarryBloodworth

If a transmission shop (or any shop for that matter) had the room and money to invest in ADAS adjustment equipment, it would certainly be another revenue stream for the transmission shop. My fear is that it would become like front end/4-wheel alignment equipment by which it isn't really profitable unless you sell front end parts. What additional parts and labor can one sell with an ADAS alignment job? The only thing I can think of is peace of mind.

I never offered a sign-on bonus per se, but what I did often was advance the new hire their first week's check before they even started working. When the first week's pay period came around, they wouldn't get a check because I already gave it to them when hired.

Great tips, Joe! I wish I had those tips when I was in business before I retired. The one tip the I, as well as most shop owners struggle with is "Hire the best people and have enough staff." Easier said than done. I hooked up with 3 automotive technical colleges in our region with limited success. They were Automotive Technology | Transportation Technologies | Utah Valley University Automotive Technology I still had to train the students as if they were green off the street. That part didn't bother me. What bothered me was the unrealistic expectations the student had as far as production and salary expectations. The students couldn't grasp what a major investment we were making in training them. They weren't used to working alone and having production expectations put on them. After many years, I went back to hiring out of the industry and paying above normal salaries/hourly pay to attract the best of the best.

Although I've never personally met Brian Bowersock, I know of him and I'm impressed. The thing that impressed me and had a great influence was his use of TV to promote his shop. He had a TV show where people would call in with their automotive questions and he would be "the answer man". Outstanding! Through his influence, he gave me the confidence to use a TV personality to promote our shop. Let me explain... Just about every TV market area has a TV investigative reporter. In our market area we have Bill Gephardt. I approached Bill about doing a promo video for our website. He said yes, under a few conditions. A. Use the video only on our website. and B. Give an $800 "donation". And the rest is history. Bill and his camera crew came out on very cold winter day and did the shoot. His staff did all the editing, sound, and everything a promo video entails. Here's the results...

The only trade shows I don't like are the ones with low turn out. IMHO, you can always learn something from any tradeshow. I used to go to a lot of technical trade shows when I was young, but as I aged and my career advanced, I went to more sales/management/marketing seminars instead. I haven't been to a technical trade show in 25 years.

I wholeheartedly agree you can't judge a book by it's cover, the same goes with a new car dealership, or any business for that matter. I will say this, we were at our former location 14 years before we moved to Draper and the best year we ever had was $498K. After moving to Draper, we were doing a consistent $1.2M/yr. We were getting so much work, I was seriously considering putting on a second shift of techs. At that time, I was in my late 50s and didn't think I could handle it, so I never did put on a second shift. Besides, we were netting $300K/yr. so I couldn't really used the excuse we needed more money. Fond memories, for sure.

Like the old saying goes, "You can't manage what you don't measure." What really amazes me is how CHEAP call tracking has become since I retired. I had a friend that was using call tracking for his five shops and he was paying $500 a month for 100 phone numbers. At our shop we were paying $200 a month for 25 numbers. Now call tracking phone numbers can be had for as low as a $1 apiece or less. What's amazing is the concept of a phone number pool connected to your website. To give you an example of what this looks like, look at this spreadsheet at column A through tea and you could see all the fields that get trapped when somebody calls and you have a phone number pool connect you to your website. This is for just one day at our shop.

I'm sort of old fashion. We paid very well by the hour except for builders. We paid our transmission rebuilders salary. Nobody in our shop made less than $25/hr., and some made $40/hr. Money speaks volumes when compared to a dangling carrot. Once we were without a builder for several months and couldn't find one. Finally one day I get a call from a guy out of Phoenix. Long story made short, I had to offer him top Phoenix wages to get him to move up to SLC. He was getting paid by the hour. Some weeks he'd make $2K, most weeks it was $1,500 or less. For $102K/yr. salary I hired him. Money talks B/S walks.

The most important strategy that we had was our curb appeal. We had to move locations to find the building that had very good curb appeal. Our old shop had no curb appeal as did all of our competitors. People see the curb appeal of any shop before they ever set foot in the front door. The curb appeal sets the customers expectations. We had 3/4 of an acre of paved parking that was double fenced. We kept the parking spaces next to the front door always clear for our customers. If somebody left a car there we would move it to keep it clear. The customer waiting area was as nice as the outside. I tried to have the curb appeal new car dealership. I've been asked several times if we were a franchise because it looks so nice. I had one customer say "This place looks expensive." speaking about our pricing. Let's face it, most transmission shops have bad curb appeal. Here's a video about our curb appeal. I've posted the following video before.