mmotley

We use test strips. Honestly though, we don't find many that fail. Not that I want to sell something that's not needed, but I'd love to find more opportunities to sell it.

So as we get closer to Christmas time, I'm starting to think about how we can market ourselves through community involvement. I've seen business do 'adopt an angel' on Christmas trees and such. Curious if anyone has any ideas related to the holiday season.

*double post

😂 He will keep you on the phone longer than you really want to. But such a nice guy! You can tell he really cares about his clients and getting them the best deal. Night and day difference between him and some of the scum I've dealt with in the past.

Wow! That's slick, taking the charges before depositing the money. Surely he should have caught that as he was reconciling the bank statement though! I use Paul, as recommended by xrac. Great guy. He'll tell you more than you care to know. I'm consistently around 2% total, out the door, everything. The only thing I don't like is being under a contract, but given the fact that there are so many shady credit reps that will lie to get you to come on board with them, I can understand it. I'd highly recommend Paul.

This is why I say to make sure you're not signing a contract. Tell them if they keep their rates fair, you'll stay.

Did YOU personally call and verify you are not under contract? I had a rep come in and say he would call and make sure I wasn't under contract. He came back 2 days later and said 'I called your processor and they said you weren't under contract'. That's why I stress that YOU call and verify. Some reps are ruthless and will lie or say anything to get you to sign their contract. Agreed, that does sound too good to be true. I would make sure there is no contract. You'll literally have to read through the entire 10+ page agreement, but it's worth it. I'd be VERY suspicious.

I would advise that YOU personally call your current processor and make sure that you are not under contract. Sure, you can haggle with them on rates, but if your under contract, you better find out what it takes to get out. Also, do not fall for a new processor who claims no contract, or that they can make a special deal and negate the contract agreement. Most contracts state "no strike throughs" so your rep writing "no contract" on your contract is total b.s. Looks like you're paying about 2.3%, which is a little high, but not terrible. Find out when your contract is up first, then start shopping around.

For some reason I can't edit my last post, but anyway, I should have mentioned that you will meet some great people through BNI. We have an AMAZING CPA in our group. A great financial guy that is gonna set us up with something similar to a 401k (pretty much IRA accounts or something like that), a lawyer, etc, etc.

Truett, how's the new pay plan working out for you so far? You should have about 3 weeks worth of data. Any improvement? I've been working on my pay plan for techs and I'm implementing it slowly over time. We started out with an hourly pay, plus a bonus for each billed hour over 20, plus a team bonus for every hour over 45. 2 weeks ago I scrapped the team bonus and just divided it up among the two techs. Probably starting in December, I'm going to change to an either/or pay scale. Something as follows: They'll get there hourly guarantee, unless they flag more than 20 hours. 20-23 billed hours, they'll be making $24 an hour, 24-27 they'll be making $25 an hour, 28-31 they'll be making $26/hour, and so on. Numbers are strictly just for illustration purposes, but you get the idea. Again, it will be an either/or, so they either get their guarantee, or they'll essentially be flag rate once they break 20 hours. Again, all numbers are for illustration purposes, as I have not done the math yet to make sure I'm getting my necessary GP, but you get the point. I know simply changing their payscale, like others have said, likely won't be enough to get things where I want them, so I'll have 90 day reviews going forward to help move techs along. I'll show them where there at, decide where we want to get them, show them how it will increase their paychecks, and set a goal we can both agree on for the next 90 days. Rinse and repeat. Keeping my fingers crossed, as I feel I'm in the same boat as you. Two techs averaging 25-27 hours/week.

Jeez, I can't wait to get out of my contract based on what I'm seeing others pay on here. I paid 2.3% last month

So it only happens about 3 or so times a year, but every once in a while we get a bad check. Out of the 3 or 4 bad checks, 1 or 2 are an honest mistake and gets corrected immediately with cash or CC. How many shops out there are operating as a cash or CC only business? I've thought about it many of times, but it's hard to make that change when we have a lot of customers come in and write $1,000+ good checks.

Perfect, exactly what I was looking for. Thanks

Something that would be interesting is to have all this information correlated with shop revenue. IE, are there shops out there doing $1 million+/year that are doing their online marketing on their own?

BNI was cheap compared to everything else and has been great. I can pull up my revenue numbers from it, but I know without a doubt it has paid for itself. Downside is you have to attend weekly meetings for about 1.5 hours. So unless you can step away from your shop for that long, don't waste your money.

We use kukui for our webpage and listing. Not cheap, but they do a great job. As far as adwords, we spend about $400/month

If I remember correctly, on the old layout there was a way to see any topic that had new posts. I think it also would move the topic with the latest content to the top, regardless of how old the topic was. Is there a view that does this?

Have you shopped around? From what I can tell, most companies start out paying you, then say they can't pay anymore but will pick it up for free, then slowly start charging. At least from my experience.

I wonder if something similar can be done for Facebook reviews...

Saw this posted on bolt-ons facebook page today... I've got have a mind to get a professional plague made up or at least have it framed for our lobby 😂

Adam, have you tried calling Back Office about this? That's probably who you should talk to I think

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

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

So, I feel like most shops on this forum are performing some sort of multi-point inspection on just about every car that comes in. I know we do. I'm curious though what everyone's inspection consists of. Are you having techs pull every cabin filter and air filter? Test drive every vehicle? Are you pulling wheels to check and measure brakes? Also, are you paying your techs for these inspections on top of other services? If so, how much? Here is a copy of one of our digital inspections if anyone is curious. http://2un.me/yssm Personally, I've struggled with checking cabin and air filters for 2 reasons. 1.) It is a bummer to pull out those filters, take pictures, make the recommendation, and the customer decline, just to turn around and put them back in. 2.) Some filters a real pain in the ass to check. I really struggle justifying pulling out a glove box assembly to find a clean cabin filter, or to find a dirty filter and the customer decline replacing it. I've also struggled with with the following situation: We find a radiator leaking, build a quote, present to the customer, and they decline. I've toyed around with the idea of scrapping all component specific inspection points and simply informing the customer that we found a coolant leak on their vehicle and using that information to sell a '$49 cooling system inspection'... I haven't pulled the trigger on that yet. It would be cool to see what kind of inspections you guys are doing on every vehicle and how you are handling different aspects of it.

May was rough for me. June seems to be picking up though