Service Writer pay for independent garage

[Andygales]

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.

[bstewart]

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 July 14, 2015 by bstewart

[ATSAutomotive]

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.

[mspecperformance]

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.

[bstewart]

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**

[Andygales]

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.

[ATSAutomotive]

You may want to ask for a different coach.

[Bob K]

You can switch coaches. I called and got a new one within a day.

[andybizub]

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.

[Charlie]

We pay a Hybrid program that is based on 20 years of experience. Each of our shops has two service writers, gross revenue per shop is between 80 and 120 thousand. Each shop has a manager and a writer (basically they are both writers but one has more authority). We pay a base pay of 700 to 800 weekly with a 4 point monthly bonus. Both writers will get paid 1% of their gross for having 52% of total revenue in labor, 1% of their gross for having a 50% GPM, 1% of their gross for having an average ticket of $275 or above. The second in command also gets 1% of total company GP to ensure teamwork while the manager get's a healthy bump based on total gross revenue tiered by GPM.

It sounds more complicated than it really is, what it does very well is train the guys to focus on the metrics that matter while rewarding for success. A service writer should make between 47,500 and 55,000 while the manager should make about 70,000. This plan puts our expense above the much talked about 8% but my goal is to have quality people in place that allows the business to operate well in my absence.

I think where you are in the country can make all the difference and every shop is different. I'll be glad to spend extra time with whomever if you would like further descriptions.

[FROGFINDER]

If he/she is good they will get you to $25K week within 6 months.

Pay he or she enough not to leave.

[flacvabeach]

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.

[Chuy Reyna]

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.