mspecperformance

No offense but it sounds like your manager needs a lesson on ethics. Will someone get that wheel bearing job? Probably. Some hack shop. If the customer couldn't afford to properly repair their vehicle and you exhausted all of your options to help them then there is nothing you could do.

Richard, Depending on how much your techs make now (actual dollars) you may have a really hard time implementing a new pay plan and getting them to buy in. I am assuming they are coasting by making really good money at 7% a ticket (if its 7% of gross sale). Even at 7% of gross profit they still might doing pretty damn good. I have heard of these pay plans mainly from tire dealers and franchise stores like STS. With margins getting squeezed everyday its going to be hard to keep up with those pay plans. From my experience when you take away something from an employee and they will definitely feel that you are you'll have a really big break in morale. Plan B is to start recruiting.

AMEN!!!!!

I am still in dispute with them over 8 months they charged me for QB integrator for $39 per month. These A-holes even say, "OH... I see that you did cancel but I don't know why you are continuing to be charged..." I am making it my life's mission to convert any shop friends from them. Protractor has been awesome so far at one of our other stores. I can't wait to convert my original store over. I'm going to give these idiots an earful at the RW Conference thats for sure.

I think you should be open to a master tech or a solid mid level or B guy. This will broaden your search. Also don't be shy to interviewing someone with less experience that has the aptitude to learn. I have a lot of industry friends that have done very well taking the delivery boy and bringing them up to the level of a master tech! This will really determine on how strongly you have a grasp on your business financials. What I mean by that is, you won't be able to begin to figure out compensation until you know what they are costing your business as a COG. Generally speaking my advice is to start a culture of some sort of meritocracy. Make sure that a compensation plan is based upon performance. You will have to fine tune it to make sure that a tech won't just try to milk the system so the bonus will probably have to include comebacks, overall shop goals, etc. This is the tricky part. It sounds like you are working really hard (long hours) but you aren't "killing" it financially yet. I am going to assume you are making money but not the kind of money where you could easily pay a tech to replace you and have a lot of room to learn the other side of the business. This is where I would say make sure you are looking at what you are actually charging for your services. What is your Gross Profit % on labor, on parts, what is your Average Repair Order, how many hours are you billing per ticket, daily/weekly/monthly car count. I think if you start by implementing some positive moves on your front end you will have more a financial cushion all the while putting out ads and such to find that first hire. As far as how we grew well I have a partner that is the "tech" and I was the front end guy. The drawback is we had to share the business 50/50 however we had each other to lean on and we had complementary skills. How I personally grew was getting education, reading (a lot), listening to podcasts and watching videos, going to conferences and in person training events, learning how to be a better business person. I would highly recommend self study as hat's where I found a lot of "power".

Hard program to learn but literally everything you ever wanted (psssstttt.... INTEGRATED TIME CLOCK)

I'll be using Protractor for the new shops and will convert the original store after I have a good familiarity with the program. Its awesome.

In general don't by Chinese crap. Just like bantar said, its cultural. They are unscrupulous capitalists and care nothing about the product or the end user just as long as they can make money. I can make these comments because they are my people. Some stuff is OK to use but you have to be very particular. I would also not recommend Chinese lifts. They may work fine but service and replacement parts can be problematic.

If you want to be an advanced user the program is absolutely horrible. There are definitely highlights to it however there are so many holes. But regardless of functionality the company itself are a bunch of crooks. I can't wait til the R+W Conference because whoever is repping Mitchell is going to get a piece of my mind.

I would ask for a lengthy rent concession if you go with it. Consider time for construction and explain to the landlord that you are LONG TERM but the space you are taking over is not for direct profit generation but rather indirect (location, marketing, waiting room). Crunch the numbers and make an educated decision. Fortune favors the bold!

I absolutely can't stand that company. They are the leader in the market (auto repair shop management software) and arguably the biggest company however move at a snail's pace when it comes to making any sort of productivity or efficiency changes. They know they have a lock on their subscribers so they are just milking the cows for all they are worth. Even through that annoyance the most annoying thing is their billing department. I have heard horror stories from others but from my experience they are absolutely garbage. I had a QB integrator on the account that I had tried to cancel multiple times. I kept on getting billed for it even though it showed in their records that I had cancelled months prior. I can't wait to move on from these turds. /end rant

get the chains and such for insurance purposes but you don't have to use them. In regards to customers being customers, you just have to politely discourage that behavior. Train the technicians to answer questions with, "Hello sir, you are looking for the front reception area" and point to the door. They arent there to answer questions, thats what your writers are for. When someone walks into the shop, "I'm sorry sir, due to insurance restrictions all clients can't be in the work area" point or show them to the office. Yes its nice to have techs walk all the customer to the office but at least train them to SMILE, be polite and point. Please and thank you go a long way.

We are still using bolt on at our original store. The idea to move to Protractor is due to multi location functionality, cloud based SMS, and a SLEW of functionality and features Protractor has over Mitchell. Mitchell has its Pros but it falls shorts in A LOT of areas. Much like the Bolt On and Mitchell partnership, Autoserve1 does the same with Protractor. Eventually my goal is to move all my stores on to Protractor.

If the question is "Do digital inspections increase your ARO" then the answer is a broad "YES". It obviously depends on what kind of system you are currently employing. Some folks have a fantastic paper inspection that already nets them a lot of sales. I would probably say that moving over to digital will still help see an increase in sales HOWEVER the cons are that you have to train how to use them, they do take a bit longer to perform and the consult portion also takes a bit longer. As far as Bolt On goes, its a pretty good system and works really well with Mitchell if you have ManagerSE as your SMS. I am unsure of how well it integrates with other programs. I believe they work only with android tablets. I used samsung galaxy tabs which are expensive. I am sure that you can find some cheap alternative tablets but I can't vouch of you will run into problems. We are going to try out Autoserve1 with one of our new shops with Protractor integration. I don't think you can go wrong with any digital inspection platform as the result will be the same. Some may have different features which you might like better.