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the importance of marketing to new customers


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This week I lost 7 good customers. Not due to anything under my control, one guy had a stroke and can't drive, six professors/university faculty members moved out of state to greener pastures. The loss of these seven families probably means $15,000 a year I'm going to miss just in maintenance, maybe twice that amount. Another ten customers bought brand new cars in the last couple months with at least 3/36 warranties.

 

What I'm getting at is no matter how good your shop is doing you need to keep recruiting new customers or life's going to be tough for you.

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Reduce Your Business Debt By Up To 80%

Ouch. That's a lot of hits in one week.

 

We're in the same boat. Downtown, urban environment = extremely transient population.

 

We keep our online reviews and presence strong, so the new transients moving in can find us.

 

There are also two major apartment complexes getting built within a half mile of us. We will be putting some postcards in their new resident welcome bags.

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Were in a college town, sad story is adjunct professors or temps are the new norm. 2 year positions mean my best customers don't stick around too long. Because I'm a newcomer to our rural area (I've only been here 11 years lol) the locals don't really come to me, they go to joes garage whom they graduated high school with in 1971. I almost cried the other day when the guy who had a stroke came in, he said "Eddie, I know your name because its on your shirt, but I don't remember you. My wife said I should stop by" this guy used to come in every week and visit mostly, we fixed his car but I think we were more friends really. Hes got to be in his 70's, I can't imagine the impact on his personal life. Enjoy life folks.

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  • Have you checked out Joe's Latest Blog?

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      Auto shop owners are always looking for ways to improve production levels. They focus their attention on their technicians and require certain expectations of performance in billable labor hours. While technicians must know what is expected of them, they have a limited amount of control over production levels. When all factors are considered, the only thing a well-trained technician has control over is his or her actual efficiency.
      As a review, technician efficiency is the amount of labor time it takes a technician to complete a job compared to the labor time being billed to the customer. Productivity is the time the technician is billing labor hours compared to the time the technician is physically at the shop. The reality is that a technician can be very efficient, but not productive if the technician has a lot of downtime waiting for parts, waiting too long between jobs, or poor workflow systems.
      But let’s go deeper into what affects production in the typical auto repair shop. As a business coach, one of the biggest reasons for low shop production is not charging the correct labor time. Labor for extensive jobs is often not being billed accurately. Rust, seized bolts, and wrong published labor times are just a few reasons for lost labor dollars.
      Another common problem is not understanding how to bill for jobs that require extensive diagnostic testing, and complicated procedures to arrive at the root cause for an onboard computer problem, electrical issue, or drivability issue. These jobs usually take time to analyze, using sophisticated tools, and by the shop’s top technician. Typically, these jobs are billed at a standard menu labor charge, instead of at a higher labor rate. This results in less billed labor hours than the actual labor time spent. The amount of lost labor hours here can cripple a shop’s overall profit.
      Many shop owners do a great job at calculating their labor rate but may not understand what their true effective labor is, which is their labor sales divided by the total labor hours sold. In many cases, I have seen a shop that has a shop labor rate of over $150.00 per hour, but the actual effective labor rate is around $100. Not good.
      Lastly, technician production can suffer when the service advisors are too busy or not motivated to build relationships with customers, which results in a low sales closing ratio. And let’s not forget that to be productive, a shop needs to have the right systems, the right tools and equipment, an extensive information system, and of course, great leadership.
      The bottom line is this; many factors need to be considered when looking to increase production levels. While it does start with the technician, it doesn’t end there. Consider all the factors above when looking for ways to improve your shop’s labor production.
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