mspecperformance

8 minutes ago, 3PuttFever said:

Just had a car in here from a new customer. Complaint was grinding noise. We assume brakes and look the car over. He's got high mileage, two broken springs and blown struts, a bad RF wheel bearing. Manager asks me what to do. He's thinking we just lead with the wheel bearing. I tell him to let the customer know all that it needs because that's what we're here for and broken springs may result in other issues that if we don't tell him and something happens how is that not on us? I follow MAP standard of communication - a broken or failed part is a 'required' fix and other worn parts are a 'suggested' fix. On this case - the RF wheel bearing and two springs/struts are a required fix and the other two springs/struts are suggested since both broken springs were on the driver side. Customer declined all repairs. My Manager is upset we let the wheel bearing walk out the door. We didn't let him walk out the door unless we purposely omit the other issues on the car to simply get a $275 wheel bearing ticket. The customer applied for financing, was declined, and didn't do anything with us. My Manager thinks someone else will get the bearing work and we lost a sale. I like he's fighting for the business but if a customer has multiple things that need attention now and they pass with us because they can only afford one thing so be it. I can live with that rejection knowing I did what was right. Customer may go to another shop, ask for a bearing R&R, and that shop may take his money and then mention the things I hope they find. Any thoughts on how we could have done better? A little off topic but in the vein of inspecting cars and presenting findings...

No offense but it sounds like your manager needs a lesson on ethics. Will someone get that wheel bearing job? Probably. Some hack shop. If the customer couldn't afford to properly repair their vehicle and you exhausted all of your options to help them then there is nothing you could do.

Richard,

Depending on how much your techs make now (actual dollars) you may have a really hard time implementing a new pay plan and getting them to buy in. I am assuming they are coasting by making really good money at 7% a ticket (if its 7% of gross sale). Even at 7% of gross profit they still might doing pretty damn good. I have heard of these pay plans mainly from tire dealers and franchise stores like STS. With margins getting squeezed everyday its going to be hard to keep up with those pay plans. From my experience when you take away something from an employee and they will definitely feel that you are you'll have a really big break in morale. Plan B is to start recruiting.

AMEN!!!!! 

I am still in dispute with them over 8 months they charged me for QB integrator for $39 per month. These A-holes even say, "OH... I see that you did cancel but I don't know why you are continuing to be charged..." I am making it my life's mission to convert any shop friends from them. Protractor has been awesome so far at one of our other stores. I can't wait to convert my original store over. I'm going to give these idiots an earful at the RW Conference thats for sure. 

On 8/29/2017 at 8:47 PM, [email protected] said:

 

Question 1: I need to know should I be looking for a master tech or maybe a mid level tech who knows their way around??? I dont really want to take on an apprentice because I don't have time to train them and babysit them. I want someone who can hit the ground running. It would be nice to turn them loose and not have to worry about the repairs they are doing. I want to make an employee handbook and agreement for shop procedures, cleaning, showing up on time, policies, etc. so they will know up front what is expected. 

I think you should be open to a master tech or a solid mid level or B guy. This will broaden your search. Also don't be shy to interviewing someone with less experience that has the aptitude to learn. I have a lot of industry friends that have done very well taking the delivery boy and bringing them up to the level of a master tech! 

On 8/29/2017 at 8:47 PM, [email protected] said:

Question 2: What should I expect to pay them? Salary, flat rate, bonus, a combonation of any of these? Starting pay vs normal pay? 

This will really determine on how strongly you have a grasp on your business financials. What I mean by that is, you won't be able to begin to figure out compensation until you know what they are costing your business as a COG. Generally speaking my advice is to start a culture of some sort of meritocracy. Make sure that a compensation plan is based upon performance. You will have to fine tune it to make sure that a tech won't just try to milk the system so the bonus will probably have to include comebacks, overall shop goals, etc. 

On 8/29/2017 at 8:47 PM, [email protected] said:

Question 3: How did you go from a one man army to having employees and bigger successes?

 

This is the tricky part. It sounds like you are working really hard (long hours) but you aren't "killing" it financially yet. I am going to assume you are making money but not the kind of money where you could easily pay a tech to replace you and have a lot of room to learn the other side of the business. This is where I would say make sure you are looking at what you are actually charging for your services. What is your Gross Profit % on labor, on parts, what is your Average Repair Order, how many hours are you billing per ticket, daily/weekly/monthly car count. I think if you start by implementing some positive moves on your front end you will have more a financial cushion all the while putting out ads and such to find that first hire.

As far as how we grew well I have a partner that is the "tech" and I was the front end guy. The drawback is we had to share the business 50/50 however we had each other to lean on and we had complementary skills. How I personally grew was getting education, reading (a lot), listening to podcasts and watching videos, going to conferences and in person training events, learning how to be a better business person. I would highly recommend self study as hat's where I found a lot of "power".

Just now, mmotley said:

I would love to hear your feedback on protractor once you get it up and running. I've heard good things about it

Hard program to learn but literally everything you ever wanted (psssstttt.... INTEGRATED TIME CLOCK)

1 hour ago, mmotley said:

I hear a lot of complaints and I agree that Mitchell has room to improve, but is there any alternative software that anyone recommends?

I'll be using Protractor for the new shops and will convert the original store after I have a good familiarity with the program. Its awesome. 

In general don't by Chinese crap. Just like bantar said, its cultural. They are unscrupulous capitalists and care nothing about the product or the end user just as long as they can make money. I can make these comments because they are my people.

Some stuff is OK to use but you have to be very particular. I would also not recommend Chinese lifts. They may work fine but service and replacement parts can be problematic. 

If you want to be an advanced user the program is absolutely horrible. There are definitely highlights to it however there are so many holes. But regardless of functionality the company itself are a bunch of crooks. I can't wait til the R+W Conference because whoever is repping Mitchell is going to get a piece of my mind.

I would ask for a lengthy rent concession if you go with it. Consider time for construction and explain to the landlord that you are LONG TERM but the space you are taking over is not for direct profit generation but rather indirect (location, marketing, waiting room). Crunch the numbers and make an educated decision. Fortune favors the bold!

I absolutely can't stand that company. They are the leader in the market (auto repair shop management software) and arguably the biggest company however move at a snail's pace when it comes to making any sort of productivity or efficiency changes. They know they have a lock on their subscribers so they are just milking the cows for all they are worth. Even through that annoyance the most annoying thing is their billing department. I have heard horror stories from others but from my experience they are absolutely garbage. I had a QB integrator on the account that I had tried to cancel multiple times. I kept on getting billed for it even though it showed in their records that I had cancelled months prior. 

I can't wait to move on from these turds.

/end rant

get the chains and such for insurance purposes but you don't have to use them.

In regards to customers being customers, you just have to politely discourage that behavior. Train the technicians to answer questions with, "Hello sir, you are looking for the front reception area" and point to the door. They arent there to answer questions, thats what your writers are for. When someone walks into the shop, "I'm sorry sir, due to insurance restrictions all clients can't be in the work area" point or show them to the office. Yes its nice to have techs walk all the customer to the office but at least train them to SMILE, be polite and point. Please and thank you go a long way. 

20 minutes ago, 5 Star Auto Spa said:

Bolt On does not integrate well with All Data Manage.  We had All Data Manage as our SMS when we initially started with Bolt On and a lot of the funcitionality was missing that was available for Mitchell ManagerSE.  We ended up switching our SMS software to Mitchel ManagerSE and it works much better.  

 

mspec, why did you choose to go with Autoserve1 intead of staying with Bolt On?

We are still using bolt on at our original store.

The idea to move to Protractor is due to multi location functionality, cloud based SMS, and a SLEW of functionality and features Protractor has over Mitchell. Mitchell has its Pros but it falls shorts in A LOT of areas. Much like the Bolt On and Mitchell partnership, Autoserve1 does the same with Protractor. Eventually my goal is to move all my stores on to Protractor. 

If the question is "Do digital inspections increase your ARO" then the answer is a broad "YES". It obviously depends on what kind of system you are currently employing. Some folks have a fantastic paper inspection that already nets them a lot of sales. I would probably say that moving over to digital will still help see an increase in sales HOWEVER the cons are that you have to train how to use them, they do take a bit longer to perform and the consult portion also takes a bit longer.

As far as Bolt On goes, its a pretty good system and works really well with Mitchell if you have ManagerSE as your SMS. I am unsure of how well it integrates with other programs. I believe they work only with android tablets. I used samsung galaxy tabs which are expensive. I am sure that you can find some cheap alternative tablets but I can't vouch of you will run into problems. We are going to try out Autoserve1 with one of our new shops with Protractor integration. I don't think you can go wrong with any digital inspection platform as the result will be the same. Some may have different features which you might like better.  

I would say first you need to set expectations for jobs and such. For instance if you know an oil change and a thorough inspection shouldnt take more than 30 minutes from rack to rack you need to have that set as a goal. Do that for most everything else. Secondly you need some way of timing your team so that you can measure and correct. Don't make it arbitrary. 

I'd also ask your coach if he has any tips.

starting protractor for the new general repair shop we are opening. Being a total "C" on the DISC profile at times I research the crap out of stuff including SMS. I have yet to really put the software in action however I have gone through hours of training and self study and wow what a great program. The drawbacks are there is a steep learning curve and the interface isn't that "pretty" but then again most every SMS is pretty ugly. Also it really requires you to use the software exactly how it was intended since there is integrated accounting within the system as well. It has A LOT of features which I was missing out on mitchell. Linear matrix, robust and custom reports, integrated accounting, etc etc.

The Ratchet & Wrench Conference is fast approaching (Chicago September 24-26). I attended last year and it was a GREAT event. I am hoping for an even better one this year.

Since we talk about how we should have an ASO meet up some day I thought it would be great to get a thread going on who is going to attend. I'd love to meet some of you guys and even if I don't really like you or your posts I promise I'll smile and shake your hand LOL j/k

I think its too late to make pins up or something like that to identify ASO members. Nerd out a bit haha.

If you'll be attending sound off below!

What are toying around with is having a parts manager. Got the idea from my mastermind group where some of the shops are doing this with great success. The parts manager can have less or more responsibilities but the gist is that they estimate parts (sometimes the whole ticket), order parts, perform returns and credits, warranties, help to dispatch work, dispatch parts, inventory, procurement of parts, handles vendor issues etc. It leaves the service advisors time to do what you want them to do which is SELL and CUSTOMER SERVICE. I think its an amazing idea because most of what my service advisors get frustrated with is their gigantic job description where they are responsible for everything front end. It can also open up opportunities to find amazing sales people that don't like backend work and also a parts manager that is not necessarily a people person. Its an option. 

Do you currently use a CRM company to send stuff out like e-mail or text reminders?

There are a slew of companies that perform mailer marketing to your database and also new customer direct mail marketing. 

I am currently working with a company called Full Throttle. I have yet to send out a mailer however I am friends with one of the owners and also in his Mastermind group. He owns Aspen Auto Clinic in Colorado Springs, Colorado which is a 5 store operation. 

If you are interested in their contact information msg me. 

On 6/17/2017 at 8:38 PM, nge said:

For those of you who have a second location, when did you decide it was time to open another shop?  Was your 1st shop at capacity?  

In my area there are very limited auto spaces for lease and even less (close to 0) which are on a main thoroughfare.  We currently lease our location but we are on a month to month lease with the landlord not open to signing a longer term lease.  We have been operating like this for probably at least the last 15+ years but with the area growing and continuing to change I always have the lingering thought in my mind that we could "be gone tomorrow."  I know this could also be the case if we had a lease, the property could still be sold but you walk away with a little more but the location is a prime spot, our customer based is well established (the business has been here for 40+ years and we are located accross the street from an nice community where a larger amount of our customers can walk home when they leave their car.  We are also infront of the license plate office which helps drive our 170+ state inspections per month. 

We have a customer who owns a vacant shop about 10 min away.  The shop has been empty for several years and prior to that was a rent a bay location so there hasn't been an operating shop there for well over a decade.  She has been asking us to consider leasing from her and is open to various lease options.  Including free rent for x months, fractional lease and % of sales until we decide, try out option with no strings attached etc.

She has not been publicly advertising the space is for lease and I always considered that as a backup option if something happened with my current location however; last week she was in and told me she was going to start advertising it and may even be open to selling it in the future.  If I had a "guarantee" on my current location for some period of time I don't think I would open a second location however; with the lack of certainty I have considered opening it primarily so I can still keep it as an backup plan.  

The location is on a very busy street and according to her traffic data is >120k cars per day.  It would take some updating to get it to the value my current location offers.  Some of my other issues with the property is the difficulty to get out of the parking lot (4 lane road with 120k cars per day), and a dated less than perfect cement slab for minimum parking in the front and a grass lot behind the shop as a backup which I would have gravled but I have heard that there is data supporting less customers with a gravel lot.  

My overall question is what thoughts do you all have about this and how would you handle a similar situation?

More specifically, for those of you who have a second location:

1. How did you pick your location?

2. Did you initially fully staff and fully equip the second location?  Considering the proximity of the 2 shops I thought about only purchasing the essentials and letting the shops share the resources until I was certain the second location could self sustain.

3. How did you staff the location?  Did you hire all new people or did you roll out some of your employees from the first location?  And similarly how did you maintain your culture between the 2 locations?  My current location is staffed with people I completely trust and who have been with me for years but when they started new I had veterans there who I could rely on the keep me informed and up to date if I wasn't there.

 

Hi NGE,

This is a bit off on a tangent but I would be concerned with trying to open a second shop while your first location is in "limbo." I know 15 years without a lease doesn't seem like limbo but there are no legal guarantees of staying there. If you pursue a second location and in the middle of building getting that started and you have trouble with your original location I would be very worried. 

Also food for thought, do you have a staff member who could pick up the reigns as the manager at a second location? Or would you consider  yourself the manager of both? 

Anderson, are you apart of the turnaroundtour group?

"And no longer are you" 😄

Joe you are a gem hahaha

On 6/18/2017 at 0:23 PM, PherBag said:

My daily goal is $1000/tech and $500/lube or GS tech. This doesn't include tires because that will mess up the profit numbers. The auto techs have no issues reaching goal, but the lube tech does. The lube tech is hourly and helps keep the shop clean and various other things.


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$1000 in profit or gross sale?

Those people aren't "awake". 

Pricing is a hot topic as always. Food for thought though, when was  the last time someone scrutinized what your hourly labor charge was? More often than not if a customer has a problem with pricing its either a comparable from another shop's estimate or its a blanket statement of, "Thats expensive" or "Thats too high" or something along those lines. I live by the rule of thumb that if you are providing high enough matching value then the RIGHT customers won't complain (the majority of the time). The rare cases you may have a bottom feeder customer that won't be happy unless you take a few dollars out of your own wallet to fix their car. Otherwise I have never had a problem with labor rate increases. I've done probably 5-6 in the last 5 years.