In my shop we heavily focus on each and every customer we HAVE, getting new ones have been much harder to get through Google, Instagram, and FB. FB is pretty much a joke. It's been much slower from last Nov to current. I talked with our World Pac rep and he said it's even worse on the west coast. Focusing on your customers is excellent advice, I agree but when you don't have enough of them to focus on because people aren't even doing brakes when they are at 2%, then what? Trying to keep an open mind is also good advice, but that gets hard as the percentage of sales to the last fiscal year grows further apart! I know many shops in this same situation too.....we've had some HUGE dealers go out of business here, and one comes to mind that's been in business for a very, very long time with 5 HUGE lots, all gone, 144 employees lost their jobs, business closed, land owners probably freaking out now wondering what to do with their space...it's just a horrible time period right now. Usually, when we are in a recession or recession-like period customers still fix their cars because they know buying new isn't an option, that is VERY different from where we are now.
