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What one thing do you want to improve?


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What is the single one stand out thing you want to improve at your shop? Is it ARO, car count, G.P. %, Branding your company, Hiring better people, or what?

Whats the most important thing you want to accomplish this year?

Whats is you action plan to make it happen?

Just curious what's on the collective ASO mind!

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Thanks mspecperformance. I see the loaded question thing your getting at. Every goal, like car count has a process to get it done. What appears to be a fairly simple goal has quite a few steps involved. In my experience I must have a written plan with sub-steps to get it done.

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A new location. My current location is at the end of a little strip mall surrounded by Mini storage. Unless you walk thru the door you would never know what we do.I also manage the mini storage for a portion of my rent. But the time doing so takes me away from my business.

I talked to a guy about 3 years ago that has a perfect building for me. I need retail space as well for the aftermarket stuff we do. It was vacant for a long time and I approached him. It is tied up in a trust with 14 family members. At the time he wanted a 2 year lease and a Million dollar buy out at the end of 2 years. Worth about $350,000. So it sat vacant another 6 months till another shop opened in there. 3 years later the other guy is folding but the family is also being reasonable now. Just waiting to hear when he is pulling out to start negotiations.

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I agree! As may have read I am serious looking into getting a full line of hunter equipment. My current tire and alignment sales are abysmal however with my clientele I do see a market opportunity. For me to pull the trigger I must have a plan in place with the right sales strategy to increase my tire and alignment sales tremendously. I guess you can say that is another BIG goal of mine.

 

As for car count, my shop operates on a high ARO low car count basis while keeping correct margins. If I keep my ARO high and increase my car count I will be sitting pretty.

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A new location. My current location is at the end of a little strip mall surrounded by Mini storage. Unless you walk thru the door you would never know what we do.I also manage the mini storage for a portion of my rent. But the time doing so takes me away from my business.

 

I talked to a guy about 3 years ago that has a perfect building for me. I need retail space as well for the aftermarket stuff we do. It was vacant for a long time and I approached him. It is tied up in a trust with 14 family members. At the time he wanted a 2 year lease and a Million dollar buy out at the end of 2 years. Worth about $350,000. So it sat vacant another 6 months till another shop opened in there. 3 years later the other guy is folding but the family is also being reasonable now. Just waiting to hear when he is pulling out to start negotiations.

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We have a shop that employs 2 techs. Used to be 3 when i worked in the shop. I want to identify why our younger techs never seem to stay more than one year.I always hire them part time while they are in trade school and they are always are happy to come on full time after graduation. Our latest tech who we have mentored for about 2 years has made significant strides in his hands on abilities. He has helped us with great ideas to streamline our processes that make his and other jobs easier and other nice contributions. I have been flexible in giving vacation time earlier than i have in the past, and every other saturday off..I have purchased new work boots of his choice as needed as i do for our other employees, paid for time off to attend ASE testing to help with his professional development. I feel i pay him well for an entry level tech with 2 years trade school and only 8 month's full time experience since graduation. Typical pay 6 to 7 gross per week. Plus Monthly incentive bonuses for team goals if met. Also 250 Xmas bonus. We have upgraded many pieces of equipment this year as a shop should as they grow making our work more enjoyable.I always make the effort to thank our employees for their hard work at the end of the day. I'm doi ng my best to be a good employer and just wish i could identify why this position is not held for long by these younger techs. They cant expect top pay at such a young age. This tech has told me he is taking a flat rate position with a chain store at .50 c per hour over his current pay with us with a a 30 hour guarantee. I took the time to show him samples over several weeks where he averages only about 20 hours in a 40 hour week. We did the math together and he will be losing about 200 per week going there. He has been given inflated expectations of turning 60 plus hours per week. I would appreciate any feedback from this group. Thank you Bob Keene

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Bob,

We usually have someone from either the local High School or Vo-tech working here. I just plan on them moving on after they finish the program. They don't know what they don't know, and the lure of 60 to 80 flat rate hours a week is very strong at that point in their life. Once they have experienced the reality of flat rate they are often looking to move to another shop. We see many of these National and Regional chains churning and burning these young techs. You did what you could by going over his production with him. If you would be willing to have him back, let him know that the door is open to return when he sees the grass is not greener over there.

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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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