mmotley

I put a lot of the feather flags out when we moved into our new location. They definitely got a lot of attention. You can't just put 1 or 2 though. PM me and I'll send you the link for the best ones I found.

Definitely should at least claim your business. It's free and online presence doesn't hurt. And like mspec said, it's gonna depend on your demographic. In my area, yelp is probably 90% restaurant reviews, the rest is random. Not worth the investment for me

I can't get them to stop calling! Facebook and Google reviews seem to do just fine. I might start asking my customers to leave reviews, but I'm not about to pay yelp to advertise.

All good info and sounds right on track with what I have been told. I've looked at setting up a separate company too, but I haven't pulled the trigger on it yet. $1000 per car with 2M worth of liability is a steal!!! I need to speak with your agent! We've had to switch insurance companies this month and it has been nothing but a huge headache. Part of me wants to say 'screw it', sell the loaner cars, and just start going with enterprise. However, I cannot express how convenient it is to have a loaner car here for the customer who rolls in on Friday at five with a leaking water pump and is on his way to Houston (3 hour trip).

Curious if anyone has any experience with this company? I need to start tracking my guys since we can't seem to produce what I would call acceptable hours. Bolt on has stated that they are working on time clock software for the tablets, but I can't continue to wait. Or if anyone uses another time clock software that tracks productivity and efficiency, I would appreciate feedback.

Maybe I should have been more specific. We have them sign an agreement form that states they are responsible for gas, along with a whole bunch of other legal 'mumbo jumbo' "no smoking, insurance, liability, etc"... That being said, 90% of my customers bring back the cars with just as much gas or more than when they got the vehicle. The 10% who don't put gas back in the cars, it's usually only a couple of bucks. Gas is ~$2/gallon, I can swing a few gallons a week. To relate this to something else, credit card processing fees. I don't charge an extra 3% when a customer swipes their card, and I don't offer a discount for cash. I chalk up CC processing fees as an expense and make it fit my budget.

We ended up getting an Autel Maxisys Pro. In our county, we have about 14,000 Toyota/Lexus/Scion vehicles. Honda, Acura, Nissan, and Infiniti only total about 5,500. The cost of factory scan tools compared to potential customers just didn't make sense. Only 10% of the time do we need a scan tool, and many times a generic scanner would do just fine. With the Maxisys Pro, you get a J2534 box, so we can always download the honda/acura scan tool if needed and take care of programming. We'll sub out nissan/infiniti programming if ever necessary and keep the couple grand for more useful stuff.

Very good point! Farmingham, I'd highly recommend the service advisor training course through RLO and their GSM course too if you really want to get better at it. Send me a PM if you'd like and I can pass along their information

I'd be willing to bet to that your missing out on charging properly for diagnostics. When I first started paying attention to my numbers, my parts to labor ratio was about 1.3:1. This happened because one of the first things I changed when watching my numbers was properly marking up parts. When I was making the right margin on parts, my labor was too low, mainly because I was not charging appropriately for diagnostics. Now that I've been working on that, I'm down to about 1.13:1 I still struggle with it, but I'm improving and my goal is 1:1. As mspec stated, there are gonna be some jobs that are just parts heavy, and there is nothing you can do about it.

Not saying I disagree, but I just opened an automotive repair shop that is spray foam insulated, brand new bright epoxy coated floors, crazy bright lighting, air conditioned to 75 degrees, and specialize in high end Asian vehicles so the techs see the same cars over and over again and has very little learning curve. I mark up my labor guide 21% (except for maintenance), I pay for their first ASE test (regardless of if the pass or fail), give a $200 bonus if they pass, a guaranteed raise if they pass, provide diagnostic scan tools, provide uniforms and cleaning services, 5 paid holidays a year, paid training, paid sick time, multiple production incentives, and both techs working for me got paid what they were asking for on their applications. They get parts for their cars at cost, have an employee break room with a refrigerator and microwave, free sodas and coffee, provide work gloves, donuts/breakfast for our Wednesday morning meeting, and both have brought family up here to show off where they work. That being said, the applications that I see coming across my desk are pathetic. I've advertised on craigslist, told all my vendors I'm looking for another tech soon, and I'm getting ready to fund a raffle on the Snap-on tool truck for technician contact info. I've even offered a $1,000 finders fee if one of my vendors bring me a good tech. Still, the turn out is meh.

Agree with Mspec, finding and hiring the right people is the biggest challenge. I also agree that electric vehicles are going to cause a massive shift in how things operate for us on the repair side of things. Staying ahead of the curve abd up to date on training are going to be the only way to stay in business

+1 for synchrony. It's called 'Car Care One' here. It's helped make a few sales customers may not have been able to approve at the time without it. Downside is they take a small percentage. 3% I think

I do similar. Nothing set in stone, but this is the general rule I follow. An exception was last week we had a car that had been sitting for 2 years dropped off at the shop. They were planning on selling it to their nephew. They agreed they would pay for all new fluids, but the nephew called on Friday to get prices for timing belt, water pump, plugs, wires, v/c gaskets, etc and said he would call back Monday to let me know if he wanted to do anything. I held it open and he called today and approved it all.

I filed my first labor claim with them a few weeks ago. I'm supposed to get expedited claims since I joined their program... Nothing yet so far :/

You should charge yourself with 0% markup on your parts and labor for 2 reasons. 1) You charge yourself so taxes can be applied and paid. You don't want to get audited and the IRS find you buying parts for your cars and not paying taxes on them. Also labor, if your state taxes labor. 2) Your final invoice reflects the true cost to repair the vehicle in parts and labor. This should be filed away like a receipt for any other expense so it shows up on your P&L report. I pay a little less than $1,000/year per loaner. I've had a customer have an accident in one car and her insurance company did cover the damages (she did not have full coverage). To shield yourself from liability, yes, you should have them in a separate company, but loaner vs rental is a big deal when talking to insurance companies. Nothing a good agent can't navigate, but be aware that it will affect insurance rates.

For the past 3 years, my shop has been an exclusive Toyota/Lexus/Scion shop. Over the last 6 months, I've added Honda/Acura branding to our website and our signage and have slowly started to inform customers that have honda/acura vehicles that we now service them also. I'm getting ready to send out mailers to Honda/Acura owners and I'm toying around with adding Nissan/Infiniti. My question is, as I really start to attract more of these vehicles, does anyone have a suggestion for a scan tool? We have the factory Toyota/Lexus scan tool right now and a generic matco scanner. Does anyone have any insight on factory honda or nissan scanners? Or maybe a generic scanner that focuses more on these makes/models?

You have never seen an episode of "Monsters Inside Me" have you? Edit: mind if I use the picture on our Facebook page?

Agree, I have 1 customer who I let charge a balance and it's been an ongoing nightmare. Luckily his car broke down last week and he towed it to me. I explained to him that we could not do any work until his balanced was paid in full. It's probably gonna be 2 months before he has me paid off, but it's the last time I'll let someone charge a balance with me, including dealerships.

Agreed. I disagree with the the charging for gas, however. I have 3 loaners. I tell customers we operate on the honor system for gas. I fill up the cars every weekend if I have them and chalk it up as operating expenses.

Hire additional help and increase your advertising

Agreed, spend time on the mitchell forum. There is an icon along the top row in Mitchell. Create an account and don't be afraid to ask questions. Also, the search function is handy in cases like yours where you have state specific stuff. Someone has probably already asked what your talking about and there is probably 1 or 2 solutions

Similar to how I explain it to my customers, just much more polite. The customers tend to think the scanner tells us what's wrong. I educate them that it really only gives us a code. That code tells us what series of tests and diagnostic procedures to perform on the vehicle to make sure we replace only what is necessary to fix the car.

I don't think anyone that has participated in this thread so far would ever consider treating a customer like they are beneath them, even if it was a cheap customer or someone on a budget. Some businesses focus on high car count/low margins, others focus on high margins/low car count. Neither is right or wrong.

My next mailer won't have any coupons or discounts. This week will be the last week I have coupons on my website, too. I run too nice of an operation and my customer satisfaction is too high to be giving away money or attracting bottom feeders or giving money away. Here lately, a majority of my new customers say they hear so many great things about the way we do business. None have said they heard how cheap our prices were or anything about specials :/

I do. I used instant checkmate.