xrac

We are doing transmission flushes and fuel services. The transmission service is the easiest sell and produces the most sales. The fuel service is very effective but people aren't informed about the need so one has to educate and sell.

To me this program is a way to lose money. Just my opinion.

Staffing levels are always a concern. I can't stand to have guys standing around but then I cut back and we get busy and can't handle the volume. Too bad this business is not steady as she goes. Lately our business has been a real roller coaster although we are ahead of last year on the month.

This is true. I have a menu board that shows services we provide. I use to have pricing on which said starting at. For example it would say pricing for a tuneup starting at $39.95 or a muffler starting at $29.95. I took the pricing off because the dumbings coming in couldn't understand pricing STARTING AT and wanted a tuneup on a V-8 for $39.95 or the muffler for a Mercedes for the $29.95.

What's risk? It is the potential cost to the individual customer if he/she makes a mistake. It's not just the money, although that is part of it. It is also the social, psychological and emotional cost that your customer will pay if your choice isn't the best one. The lower the risk of the decision, the more likely your customer will say "yes" to you - regardless of the price. Become comfortable with this concept of risk first, and then use it in your sales efforts. In order to really understand risk, you must first see this issue from your customers' perspective. Try to put yourself in their shoes, and calculate the amount of risk that you expect your customers to take when you offer them an opportunity to say "yes" to you. Make sure they know and understand that all your work is 12 months - 12,000 miles (or whatever your warranty is)!

These are all good points. There are little things that I have learned that seem to work well. Often a new customer is very guarded. They are afraid of being overcharged or sold something they don't need. They don't know you and your business. Whether on the phone or in person for the first time I will joke with them in some light silly way. Sometimes when they ask what do you charge for brakes I will say "all we can get" and then I laugh and say I am just kidding. They will laugh too because I have touched on something they are nervous about. It helps relax the conversation and shows them that I am a real person who isn't hard to deal with and who enjoys life and people. I have also found that the greater interest I show in their problem and them the more likely they are to either come into the shop and/ or be a satisfied customer when they leave. Sometimes if someone asks about a tuneup and they don't know how long it has been I will suggest why don't they bring it in and let us remove a spark plug and see if we think they need one or not. This isn't possible on all cars but it is on some. Customers love it because it shows we are interested in providing service, to truly help them, but not ready to sell them everything that we can. Sometimes little things mean a lot.

This type of headline is never good news for any of us: California accuses 22 Midas shops in 'massive' bait and switch scheme http://www.walletpop.com/blog/2009/06/30/c...t-and-switch-s/

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hj01Sqi0zic

Did the local coupon books not work for you? They seem to be inexpensive and fairly effective for us. What do you think about this marketing campaign? http://www.mobilemarketer.com/cms/news/dat...e-crm/3566.html

Joe, how much do you tend to spend on advertising if you don't mind sharing. Concerning telephone books we have cut back on our advertising but we use a lot of print media (Advoc, Reach, etc.). The Car-x chain is recommending that to everyone. They are moving to internet based marketing.

Good post and points. Can you outline any specific things you are doing or how you are advertising.

I personally belong to Facebook. It is the hottest social network going. Car-x corporate has a facebook site. http://www.facebook.com/pages/Schaumburg-I...ewas=1406931130 I don't know how effective the social networks are for our type of business. The market for our businesses is a fairly small geographic area. Car-x says 3-5 miles is the majority of our business. I could see a large time committment with little in the way of results due to that factor. I think the social networks can be effective for certain products (mail order) or services (insurance) but I don't know about our repair businesses.

You have that pegged correctly. In many cases the former local dealer has just became the newest independent repair shop in town. However, in many cases the overhead will be too great for that model to fly for long. Also will the technicians in those shops be as effective without the dealer tools at their disposal and the need to work on all makes and models.

We too are taking more walk in stuff: oil changes, flat repairs, tire rotations. The only time we are saying no is if we don't have a bay free and then we try to schedule it ASAP. This is also helping our car count.

One local shop (also a franchise) has added detailing. Dealers are adding tires. Here ar our shop we are selling more and more tires. We have also taken on on being and installer for National Interlock who is a provider of court ordered interlock devices for DUI cases. We though this would generate a little more revenue plus be a source of new customers. It has worked that way somewhat. We have picked up a few new customers but some of the interlock work is too time consuming based upon what we are paid. We will drop it when our contract expires in December.

Joe is right. The best way to guarantee your success is to let the performance specialty be a business within the business. Over time you may be able to grown the performance side enough to concentrate on it.

If gas goes higher it will hurt. Above $3.00 per gallon and it seems to hurt everything.

Our June sales are running slightly ahead of last year. We have been experiencing some extremely hot weather the past two weeks which is helping AC sales.

We are $30.00 cheaper in a coupon we are running.

It also encourages debt which is some of the reason we are where we are at.

I detest doing cheap oil changes because of the type of traffic they generate. If you run a $17.95 oil change you generate about 75% who will not even consider fixing anything else on their cars. Some even tell you they don't want anything else looked at on their cars. We are trying to run value added offers that attract people interested in maintaining their vehicles. These are like a free tire rotation with oil change, summer vacation special with oil change, tire rotation, new wiper blades, and vehicle inspection, etc. We are also working on developing some new commercial accounts.

Thanks for the information. I didn't realize that there was another thread on this forum discussing Identifix.

Our car count is trending flat to slightly down. The biggest thing we are seeing right now is a yo, yo on car counts. Gang buster weeks are being followed by very soft ones.

In my opinion the two key factors in starting an auto repair business are (1)location and (2)people. A location can make or break you especially if you haven't already been in the business and developed a clientele and following. The guy who is a hands on technician and has a following may be able to go to some back alley low rent location but it will impede growth. If you have no following you had better be on a main drag. We are a Car-X franchise and Car-x says we need to be in a high traffic (think 30,000 cars per day) destination type location. Our shop is located about 1/4 mile from Walmart and we are surrounded by restaraunts and businesses. They are building a VA hospital behind us. The only problem we have now is our lot and building are too small but it was all we could afford ten years ago. If we had started in an out of the way location we would not have made it. The second thing is people. The article is right, help needs to be screened as carefully as possible. The problem I had coming into this business is that it is pretty easy to be fooled without having worked around this business. I am much better now at judging potential employees having ran a shop for ten years. We hired a service manager and our sales have grown from $560,000 tp $900,000 in three years. That's how much difference the right employee can make. The service manager who we had before thought this business was in declined and that we had topped out when we reached $605,000 in sales. Location and people are the most important factors in my mind and of the two good people are the hardest to find.