mspecperformance

Curious, what kind of margins are you getting and whats your volume look like?

awesome. Let us know how you like it! Any reason you didnt graduate into a 20 group?

I feel you guys I really do. I would caution to say that you have to expect this from a public forum. The forum operators are here to make this an open environment so that the members can share information freely which will in turn get some really good info from a lot of great members. The flip side to a public forum is you have a lot of people from different places in their career and differing levels of expertise. I do agree there are some completely jaded A-holes that need to be banned as they seemingly are covertly hostile or openly hostile. I do not believe the OP to be someone that is out sabotage any shop owner but rather wants to join the ranks! That should be applauded. If you guys are looking for more expert level advice and participation I urge you to join a 20 group or mastermind group. Yes it costs money, but if you can't afford it then maybe you aren't ready for that step and will have to deal with a free forum such as ASO.

All great points however my experience has been that you can rarely go into such an explanation and have a customer follow along. My best strategy is to change the conversation entirely. Sometimes we use elements of some of the point illustrated above. We have noticed that it is a rare occurrence that you can actually convert a hardcore price shopper when you throw your fast ball, curve ball, change up and they are still beating your door on price and "I can get it cheaper." To the OP's original question, I still believe that if you are having problems with client's questioning pricing after the fact then there was a problem with communicating and selling the value of your service. Sometimes they are just that type of person and you have to resell them on the value of what they purchased opposed to the nuts, bolts, fluids and parts. Lets remember no matter who Mr. Customer when you are talking about YOUR costs of doing business they are tuning most of that out. The only station Mr. Customer likes to listen to is WIIFM, WHATS IN IT FOR ME. Make the conversation about them and make them feel that what they purchased from you is of great value to their lives. It is true after all isn't it? We all believe that what we are selling to our client's is the absolute best service for them. I know that I do.

Can a moderator please deliver the Hammer of Ban?

Steve, respectfully do you own a shop? Do you really know the day to day struggles of a shop owner?

Awesome. I have a great relationship with Elite as well. Great organization.

Participate in the poll and if you care to share, what kind of management training do you participate in? Feedback? Positive? Negative?

Thanks! I think we have to have a basis for how my method works. Our whole sales process starts with taking the conversation away from auto repair and breaking it down bare bones with the customer. The customer has a problem and we are here to help them. Their problem is not a broke car but rather its I can't get to work, I need reliable transportation to take my kids to school, I have a hot date and I need my car for the week, we are taking a long road trip for the holidays and I don't want to get stuck, I am stressed I don't know who to trust with my car, etc. Our goal is to tackle their real problems through repairing their vehicle. Our conversations focus on how what we are going to do is to help them have trouble free driving for their road trip, get their kids to school, get them to work etc. When we have a customer that only focuses on price we put them through our process. Our goal is to turn their thinking away from auto repair being a commodity. If after this process they are still stuck mentally in the same place, we fire them as a customer. There are plenty of shops out there that need the headache... I mean business. They will not be my customer. In theory you want to fill your shop up with the best profile clients. In reality that means you will be picking and choosing the good ones and firing the bad ones. If you are having problems with customers questioning your prices and integrity most likely its either your sales process that is broken OR your customer acquisition strategy needs some help. This is just my humble opinion. SPG365, with all due respect I believe you may need to revisit how you are calculating your numbers. If you are properly calculating costs directly related to Labor you will find wages, payroll taxes, benefits, unemployment insurance, possibly business insurance. Your loaded costs should never be 100% of labor sales. Industry targets 30-35% loaded costs. If they are you are really upside down. Also beside that, breaking down the finer points on how you make your money will ALWAYS go right over the head of a customer. To business owners and entrepreneurs we love the word profit. To the regular consumer, profit is a dirty word and it is generally related to negative feelings of big business. It is human nature for people to not want you to have more than they have. What they see is a shop full of cars, a building they probably think you own, assets and equipment etc. You get the picture. In my experience it can go both ways. If you get an intelligent customer they may understand. Otherwise you will find people don't seem to understand why you need to make money on parts. Good job. Best way to stave off pissed off customers is to set time expectations during the check in process.

paradigm shift in the way you approach situations like this. Instead of TELLING and explaining your business model immediately try this... Ask yourself why are they questioning the price after the fact? What compelled them to be so emboldened to call you or ask you about charges after the fact? The obvious answer is that person at some point became skeptical of whether or not he was charged fairly. He then went and price compared which validated his fears. There was probably a little of anger and the feeling of injustice for him to contact you. The first thing I would do is to ACKNOWLEDGE their assumptions. Nothing in the world will get you to listen to them better than getting on their side. "Mr. Customer, I understand that you have found X part for a different price and that you feel you may have improperly charged." Next follow up with questions like, "Would you happen to know what type of warranty that part comes with?" "What happens when the part fails? Do they tow your vehicle and pay for the repair? Do they get you in a vehicle in the meantime? Do you know how long that whole process takes?" any time you get a objection, try an acknowledge what they are saying and ask questions questions questions. Let them think it out and understand your POV rather than you dictating it to them. People can be illogical and stubborn especially when there is a loss of trust.

No matter how much experience someone has what I look for is attitude, aptitude and ethics. I look for someone that can be a team player and is willing to LEARN. Prima Donnas need not apply.

You need an outside sales guy. Either ownership or a new hire. You have to go out and get fleet accounts, they will not come to you unless there is a severe need for it in your market.

Whatever smoke machine you get I would suggest you charge a separate fee for that test alone or package it together with a series of tests. For instance we package a smoke test into our level 1 diag which comes out to $150 before tax and fees. We used to charge $99-119 alone for a smoke test but we have since developed a tiered system for our diag process which makes us more profitable, streamlines the process, and has much more detailed explanation of all the tests and procedures we are doing which equates to value for our clients. We have both an OTC smoke machine (which I'd like to upgrade) for our regular smoke tests and also a high PSI smoke machine by redline for boost leaks.

Jeff, I could see where that is a concern of yours where you aren't getting paid on a claim while other shops will. I am not sure of what the costs of the program are but being the devil's advocate so to speak, I am going to assume that the costs go into a program that allows you to offer a nationwide warranty outside of your shop which you could not do otherwise. If a parts supplier is going to give you warranty dollars, they should be doing so with or without you participating in paid into warranty program and rather off the merit of your parts purchasing relationship. In this case I would most certainly go with the best parts supplier first and foremost and weigh them based upon what they are doing for your business. I certainly would rather have a parts supplier that does not compete with my business or have a negative influence on it than to just save myself a few dollars on warranty claims. I try and look at the ROI beyond just clear cut dollars and cents.

We have all dealt with a person coming from an advanced or autozone with a problem that you had to fix. I think it is very 1 dimensional to think now you have turned that person into an educated customer or for better words, a customer on your side. Taking your example, you can also say now you have given that customer the idea that he can still go get his own parts and attempt to do things himself or have another inept person work on his car and you are going to clean up the mess. I have had this happen both ways where we have turned people into returning customers (rare) or they think its ok to call us to fix their mess (wrong). I'll even go as far as to say we are expecting people to be rational and learn from these types of experiences that you get what you pay for. I can cite numerous examples where that is a complete fallacy. A large majority of people will continue to put a square into a round hole. Part of the reason why we don't have too many returning customers is we do cater to a slightly different demographic. Our target customer is someone who really would never step foot into an advanced to borrow tools or get free services. It does not however mean they are not influenced by the marketing and advertising of FREE FREE FREE that Advanced and the like are putting out there. The psychological influence of big box store marketing affects us all.

If providing a nationwide warranty is your concern then there are a lot of options and a lot of banner programs that you can buy into. I forget who bosch uses however you can buy into the program for a few dollars a month to offer a 12/12, 24/24 or 36/36. Otherwise as I understand it there is very little on going monthly commitment to be apart of a banner program to get some of the perks. I guess it depends on the banner program but the point is there are options.

What I don't think shop owners take seriously enough is how much psychology plays a role in our business life especially in the customer's mind. A customer that would never ever ever ever step foot into an Advanced Auto for any type of FREE work is still bombarded with the idea that testing starters and alternators has no value along with whatever else they give away for free. I would even go as far as to say you look like a complete hypocrite in front of your customers at times. Lets look at this example... You have a customer that comes in that has a charging system problem. You offer to check his charging system for $29.99 (or whatever you charge). He looks perplexed and says Advanced does it for free as per the signage he sees and the marketing they blast everywhere. You do your very best to not throw Advanced under the bus by saying they are amateurs but lets be honest, that's exactly what you want to say and something along with your pitch will sound like that. Customer agrees to do the test and then after agrees to do the job of an alternator replacement with you. At some point a nice delivery car pulls up with Advanced Auto all over it and a gentleman steps out and is wearing a Advanced Auto uniform delivers Advanced Auto branded parts. What do you think is going through the mind of the customer?

Try Hogan Tire and Auto, I met the owner at a meeting.

I can't even imagine not being full service. I haven't seen any only under car shops in my area in a long time. Everyone has shifted to full service or has closed their doors.

You must have a lot of really nice roads and weather conditions where you are at. Every car we see is a disaster minus the cars that are <3 years old and low mileage.

do you mean shops that specialize in suspension/steering/alignments/tires???

All valid points except that the reason why anyone's ARO can be increased dramatically is virtually every car older than 4 years need a lot more work than what is their immediate concern.

Doesn't sound like a well ran shop if the son was allowed to take all the money.

cloud based SMS would be very helpful. Since the SMS market for our industry runs at a snails pace I wonder when more companies will adopt this. I would rather not worry about my database being wiped out by a cup of coffee.

Very Good idea!