Business is Slowing Up, but my Car Counts are still high!

[Joe Marconi]

As a business coach, I get to talk to a lot of shop owners, and many are complaining that while sales are down, their car counts are still high. 

Here are a few things why this is happening:

• Complacency:  For the past few years, customers just said yes, now they are a lot more conservative with spending. 
• Inflation: While inflation has eased, we are still left withe higher prices in so many areas- food, entertainment, housing etc. This affects the consumer purchasing power. 
• Not Understanding your business model: Too many shops are trying to be everything to everyone, and this leads to doing many unprofitable jobs. Focus on your business model, focus on your ideal customer.

There are many more reasons for a decrease in sales. What are your thoughts? 

[Transmission Repair]

I find this topic very thought-provoking.  I feel my shop's experience may not be the norm because we were a transmission repair specialty shop, not a General Repair shop.  Here goes...

I personally handled all our shop's advertising and marketing efforts.  My favorite was Google AdWords because it allowed me to accurately measure my effectiveness, in real time.  By default, Google AdWords would only come up in the SERP (Search Engine Results Page) within a 5-mile radius of our location.  However, I learned I could change that with only a few mouse clicks.  If business was slow, I could increase the radius to whatever I felt was appropriate.  Conversely, if we got really busy, I would either pick a smaller radius, or I would pause all AdWords advertising, depending on how far we were backed up.

The key to any advertising effort is the use of Call Tracking, which is a subject unto itself.  The last time I checked, the cost for a Call Tracking number was only $3 a month.  The most I ever spent on Call Tracking was about $250/mo. for 100 Call Tracking numbers.  That is way too many phone numbers for the average single-location shop.  The 100 Call Tracking numbers were divided among 5 transmission shops.  I will go in greater depth of Call Tracking in another post, for another time.  Meanwhile, here's my call tracking data for only one day.  (Make sure you scroll to the right to gain a perspective of how many fields are included.)