mspecperformance

cant fix stupid. I wish I could herd all these retards into a fiery pit and be done with them but alas... we live in a civilized world ;P But seriously, we have to be careful and protect ourselves from idiots. People these days have wayyyyyy to much power to ruin a business's reputation.

bump

I had a very wise shop owner who has far more knowledge and experience than I as well as makes great money and has AMAZING looking shops ask me a question once. He asked me, "do you want customers waiting around for their cars?" My answer was, "No absolutely not. I'd rather them get to where they want to be and out of our hair. Do you?" His response was, "Of course not!" I then asked him why he has these gorgeous amenities???? He just smiled at me and I said, "marketing..." and he said "Yes!"

Doesn't surprise me. Cops are people. A lot of them are rotten and nasty just just anyone else.

Sounds like your book keeper does a lot of the job duties that a service adviser does and some admin that a manager would take on.

That's horrible especially for an industry unofficial lay regulated by the insurance companies.

I am. If you are general repair, NAPA would be wayyyyyyyy better.

try 99designs.com I just used them its easy and you get a lot of different designers bidding on your project with samples. Its great.

You have to work with what you got. If you feel that the appearance is a real draw back then putting big money into reno is probably a solid idea. Otherwise marketing and building the right reputation is how you get business. Having a really visible and easily accessible location would probably pay dividends as well. I don't have first hand knowledge of that, I am off the beaten path.

Do your service writers also pay and enter in expenses? Mine don't and I would never add that to their job description.

Nice story. Lots of customers are bone heads. If you have a SA that can deal with those types more power to you.

I did have one customer recently that because he had to perform oil changes (apparently he never knew) that he wanted to get rid of the car. When explained that every car needs maintenance and the most basic of which are oil changes he almost had a mental breakdown

Yeah thats what I already do on Yelp. We have a 55 reviews with an overall 5 star rating and its enough stress dealing with that and making sure it stays 5*. I respond to the odd ball negative review which is using a BS customer with a BS complaint. I certainly don't need another one. We have 223 posted reviews on our website, all 5* as well. Any less than 5* reviews I can deal with at my leisure because they do not get posted.

RepairPal is such a scam. I can't stand that company and the people who created it. They can take their fair price estimator and throw it in the trash.

All CRM companys do that, Kukui filters them through your website so you get to pick and choose which ones get posted. Besides that they act as new content for your website which google likes and it helps rank your website better. I have a huge problem with not being able to filter reviews. We already deal with this across all these other sites such as google+ and yelp. Why would I want to pay for another?

I believe getting on the radio is very expensive where I am. Maybe a podcast or a vlog of some sort. Not sure how distribution would be handled though. Getting people involved would be a challenge

I just spoke to Mitchell about their SocialCRM just for shnitz and giggles. One thing I do not like is their review process using surecritic.com. Essentially this is forcing our hand as business owners to be at the mercy again of customers and reviews. These sites act exactly like other review sites where you have absolutely no power on what is put out about your business. This alone was a huge deal breaker.

For those of you members that have multi locations or have thought of opening other stores I'd like to open up a discussion on a proper marketing plan. Getting a new location off the ground can be challenging and it can also be what makes or breaks you. Here are some of my thoughts. To preface, these ideas are for opening an additional location under the same brand/banner. 1. Website. Piggy backing off your current website would be ideal. Make sure your SEO is top notch. 2. Direct Mail. Sending out campaigns 3 months prior to opening the doors. This can be expensive however exposure to greatest number of people in the short period of time is important. 3. Sending out an e-mail blast your current customers. It is in my opinion it is always a good idea to show customers how prosperous you are. By opening a second location it is a clear cut message that you are here to stay. Depending on how far your additional location is, you can offer some sort of special offer to new customers exclusive to your current customers. Also some sort of incentive to spread the news. 4. Signage and banners. Depending on how busy your location is in regards to foot and car traffic, it may make sense to hang a sign and/or banner to indicate you are coming to the neighborhood. 5. Get involved in community events early. Making your presence known in the immediate community can pay dividends for your brand awareness. Feel free to expand or add new ideas!

Often times we have to go through BS to learn a lesson. Clear lesson is don't quote over the phone. If you do quote over the phone and you get a nasty customer, FIRE HIM! DO it nicely so he walks out feeling like he won. This way Mr. Nasty doesn't bother you anymore. Next time he needs your services, you tell him you are completely booked in the nicest way possible. BYE!

This forum has led me to the education I needed to change my life and my business. Can't thank you enough Joe for creating this awesome forum !

So funny because this is something I was just thinking about. We were a bit light on appointments going into the end of this week and our next week looks a bit thin on appointments. "Slow Days" should most certainly be a procedure that is strategic and ready to be implemented. Morale can most certainly be affected when cars are not coming through the doors. Along with what Joe had mentioned on his list, it is also a great time to knock out the things that you haven't gotten around to doing. Cleaning, maintenance of equipment, painting, team meetings, filing paper work, putting together marketing plans, going over your budget and see where you can cut the fat, training, etc. The list goes on and on. I am going to personally put together a Slow Days list and also a Slow days procedure that is written on paper. I urge you guys to do the same!

If new customer acquisition is what you are looking for then you have to focus a lot on how your website ranks on searches (SEO), reputation management (reviews), and google adwords campaign. These are the 3 main areas where you will attain new customers with kukui. I would highly suggest getting as involved as possible as you will want to tweak pages, build landing pages, keep track of where your leads are coming from, and track all of your ad campaigns through their tracking #s.

Goal setting is important! Set realistic goals that challenge you every day but are not too far out of reach. You need achievable goals that will make you work your ass off to hit but don't make them so hard that you won't achieve them. I have been setting sales goals for my service adviser team and we review them daily (multiple times a day), weekly and at the end of the month. It has really helped us out a lot.

too many regional references, what is Perkins? haha!

I did like most of the webinar, I would say a good 80% of it was useful and techniques that work. The problem I have with it is the use of the fair pricing tool that repairpal provides. I understand it is a webinar sponsored by repairpal so it makes sense for them to plug a feature of their service. Repairpal puts us all in a box and using their fair pricing tool makes all of us play by their rules which I disagree with 100%. I just wanted to make mention of this since I do see there is value with this webinar but be careful of taking it at face value.