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How has your marketing changed with the economy?


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I'm curious how everyone's marketing has changed because of this economy. Have you started to throttle back, move forward, trying something new?

 

It's difficult to get people to spend money these days. I heard on the radio, a car dealer is giving away a free pt cruiser with a $40,000 car purchase, to get people in...

 

Not that I want the car dealers to do well, just wondering as an independent repair shop, what strategies are you taking?

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We have set our 2009 budget as increaseing 5% over last year . We have taken our budget and changed from full page ad's in each media we do and downsized to half page ad's. We have increased media avenues with the cost savings.

The reason we are increaseing into diffrent media is to have something hitting each week . What tends to happen you send out a big event /sale you are busy first week it hits and last week if you put an expiration date for urgency.

What I have done this year we have 2 media's hitting pepole each week , direct mail , news paper ad's , letter's , e- newsletter's , reminder card's .

Remember thier are inexpensive marketing can do without creating budget cut's . We do B2 B flyer's and go to neighbor hood business personnally and offer thier staff and them discount . Share an ad with a neighbor hood business . flyers hanging on poster boards at grociers stores , banks in thier lobby's.

 

We just done one where our local pharmacy - we put our advertising on ther prescription bags, 25,000 bag's we split with 4 other business cost $700.00 fourth job in spent $1,700.00 these will run approx 10 months

 

We do what everyone want's cheap ofl - like an seminar this week - Todd Hayes said AN O F L IS LIKE A FIRST DATE YOU ARE LUCKY TO GET A KISS - SO WITH THAT SAID BE PREPAPRED AND BE READY FOR THE SECOND DATE WITH YOU CLIENT.

 

THANKS DAN REICHOW DAN R'S AUTOMOTIVE www.danrsauto.com

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  • Have you checked out Joe's Latest Blog?

         0 comments
      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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