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Service Writer pay for independent garage


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We are hiring for a service writer and was wondering what pay plans are working and easy to maintain. I am currently with the ATI program and they are giving me a run around on this. We currently do 15,500 weekly. Was wondering what they should make on this and how to figure it out. I don't feel salary is good nor hourly. Just want to make it worth it for the writer and not break my pocket. Let me know if you guys have any suggestions. Thanks.

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One rule of thumb I found was to pay 8% of gross on a good service advisor. (once all salary/hourly + bonuses are factored in)

There are practically unlimited ways to incentivize their work, and simply based off gross generally isn't the best (they can get into a needless upsell mentality)

 

Remember, a good service advisor should MAKE you money, not COST you money, same goes for good techs.

You should have a plan in place to track how much is being sold now (presumably by you doing the SA duties) and track how much is sold by your new SA.

A good well trained SA should be able to sell more then you as the owner since you also have to do other owner stuff on top of advising amongst other reasons.

 

http://www.motor.com/article.asp?article_ID=438

http://www.shopownermag.com/service-adviser-pay-program-tips-work/

http://www.nmeda.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/pbt-11-2013-Effective-Pay-Plans.pdf

Edited by bstewart
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Who do you have as a coach? I never had a problem getting a pay plan made up by my coach. ATI teaches 7% goes to your sales team (be it one person, two, three, etc) Offer a base salary plus incentives for holding profit margin (parts margin, etc) This will discourage from discounting.

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rule of thumb 7-8% of gross sale works well if you are holding proper margins (most would say 60% profit is a good number).

 

Now that I have a service advisor, what I find challenging is what happens when I have 2 service advisors? Right now he is on his trainee pay or what I like to call his "rookie contract" lol. After he is off I plan on paying a % of profit dollars apposed to gross sale. My challenge really will be when I am ready to add a second service advisor and how exactly will that pan out in terms of pay split. The worst thing I could do is create animosity and conflict over who's sales belong to who.

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Mspec, take a look at that 3rd link I posted (the pdf document).

Towards the end, it shows you a few pay plans for service advisors, including one similar to the one you're referring to.

It also says that your SAs should have team incentives along with individual incentives (just like your techs should) to foster a team mentality.

It also shows a good method to calculate your "nut" aka your breakeven point to pay for profit rather then gross.

**One small mistake in the document, the SA bonus values should be doubled or the math doesn't add up - $200/400/600 instead of $100/200/300. You'll see what I mean**

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  • 1 month later...

Who do you have as a coach? I never had a problem getting a pay plan made up by my coach. ATI teaches 7% goes to your sales team (be it one person, two, three, etc) Offer a base salary plus incentives for holding profit margin (parts margin, etc) This will discourage from discounting.

I currently use Kevin Meyers. I Told him what my current service writer pay plan is and he keeps saying he will get back with me, baffles me with bs, or keeps sending paper work on technician pay plans saying that's all he has. Its been 3 months and making me upset. The experience with them hasn't been great. This website is more useful then the information i get from them sometimes. Thanks for the input.

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  • 2 months later...

Stay away from my coach. He's evil and you wouldn't like him and No I won't tell you who he is. :) If you've given your coach a fair chance to perform and you've done your part, and you're not satisfied, call Brian Stasch and give him a chance to fix the problem. If I tell my coach I want help, he immediately provides tools and ideas and dogs me until I get a potential solution in place. They have access to a wealth of tools and tried and proven techniques. I don't know why they wouldn't give you quick proposals to help you solve your problem. Our coach helped us develop a matrix that covers SAs, techs of all grades and it pretty much insures good margins if you're doing all the right stuff. It's nice because we don't have to sit around fretting about what we should pay - we just figure out where a new prospect falls on the matrix based on skill level. It rewards them for different aspects of performance and it keeps us out of trouble on tech overtime.

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  • 1 month later...

My coach is Brian Hunnicutt. Call ATI and ask to be switched. He got me a pay plan in about 3 days, and he is very demanding, but that's what you want. You're paying like heck for it.

I wish I would had a better coach with ATI, my experience wasn't the greatest. Brian H is who I would've preferred.

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  • Have you checked out Joe's Latest Blog?

         5 comments
      I recently spoke with a friend of mine who owns a large general repair shop in the Midwest. His father founded the business in 1975. He was telling me that although he’s busy, he’s also very frustrated. When I probed him more about his frustrations, he said that it’s hard to find qualified technicians. My friend employs four technicians and is looking to hire two more. I then asked him, “How long does a technician last working for you.” He looked puzzled and replied, “I never really thought about that, but I can tell that except for one tech, most technicians don’t last working for me longer than a few years.”
      Judging from personal experience as a shop owner and from what I know about the auto repair industry, I can tell you that other than a few exceptions, the turnover rate for technicians in our industry is too high. This makes me think, do we have a technician shortage or a retention problem? Have we done the best we can over the decades to provide great pay plans, benefits packages, great work environments, and the right culture to ensure that the techs we have stay with us?
      Finding and hiring qualified automotive technicians is not a new phenomenon. This problem has been around for as long as I can remember. While we do need to attract people to our industry and provide the necessary training and mentorship, we also need to focus on retention. Having a revolving door and needing to hire techs every few years or so costs your company money. Big money! And that revolving door may be a sign of an even bigger issue: poor leadership, and poor employee management skills.
      Here’s one more thing to consider, for the most part, technicians don’t leave one job to start a new career, they leave one shop as a technician to become a technician at another shop. The reasons why they leave can be debated, but there is one fact that we cannot deny, people don’t quit the company they work for, they usually leave because of the boss or manager they work for.
      Put yourselves in the shoes of your employees. Do you have a workplace that communicates, “We appreciate you and want you to stay!”
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