Ken Wright

All great advice. Let me add to make sure that a service writer understand the sales goals of the business and know when the shop is making money. Many shops base the writers pay and/or bonus on sales without knowing breakeven. We all know that gross sales and gross profit dollars are two different things. Gross profit dollars is what we need to focus on. For example, a service writer can sell a ton of tires in one week, so the gross sales look great on paper, but the GP dollars will be lower than if the same writer sold a ton of brake jobs, steering, suspension and preventive maintenance.

 

My advice is to carfully look at the numbers of the business, know when the shop is making money and base the pay/bonus on this number. When the writer has a target to shoot for, he or she is apt to hit it more often.

 

BTW: For me, breakeven is not just paying bills, it's a precentage above when all the bills are paid. That percentage above is determined by many internal and personal factors.

Joe, we pay hourly plus a small percentage of the NET profits. My thought process behind this is there will be no overselling, no back door deals to friends or family, they wiil take a keen intrest in my business and will have my back at all times. If they oversell or try and flush people to death those customers will go away and we will lose profits so this works for me, I just don't like a bonus based on sales, they will not care and kill your business by overselling. Just my 2 cents.