Transmission Repair

I can really relate to this topic. Much earlier in my career, I was the type of shop owner other shop owners would be afraid of hiring your techs. Let me explain... In the late '90s, ATRA held their annual Powertrain Expo in Nashville. I printed up 500 recruiting brochures. I would put one in front of every seat in the room hoping a tech would bite. That lasted less than a day until ATRA caught wind of it. They emphatically told me what I was doing was unethical and for me to cease and desist what I was doing. They even threatened to revoke my ATRA membership. A hard lesson learned. I ended up throwing out over 300 brochures and never tried to recruit at seminars/trade shows ever again.

I received an Email soliciting Inc. magazine's entry into their "Most Innovative Companies". For a mere $1K you, too can be on the list. What a sham. Click on the Apply button and notice the $995 fee. Check this out: Be featured in Fast Company.pdf

I couldn't agree more. The biggest thing for me is when I quit doing technical training and started doing sales, management, and marketing training. At the time, it was a big transition for me. Here's a video I shot first thing this morning. You can tell I'm still sleepy... 7:06

The very first management book I ever purchased helped me immensely. It was Tom Peters' book, In Search of Excellence. Here's Tom's YouTube channel loaded with sage advice. https://www.youtube.com/c/TomPetersExcellenceNow/videos

While it's easy to hire techs away from dealerships due to the flat rate nature of payroll, they have limited knowledge/experience in only 1 or 2 car lines. Apprenticeship training will be needed.

3:37 Tom Peters' Leadership Thoughts: Listening

Reviews are especially important in the transmission repair industry due to the transactional nature of the business. Repeat business is usually either a warranty claim or somebody with very bad luck. The vast majority of our customers are first-time visitors and they put a lot of weight on reviews because they have nothing else to base their choice on. It's not like people have a lot of experience with transmission repairs. When we get a bad review, I simply call the customer up, recognize their concerns, apologize, and ask what I need to do to make it right. No matter what it takes to make it right, I simply do it. Only 1 time did I have to give a 100% refund although several times I had to make "price adjustments" to cover stuff like detailing their vehicle or paying to clean their driveway due to a leaker. We don't need a 5.0 Google rating; we simply just have to have a better Google rating than our competitors. We had a 4.4 average rating over a 7-year period at our location. Negative feedback is one of the best business teaching tools around.

Bob Cooper once produced a video on this very topic. If I remember correctly, one of the ideas he put forth was to have all your top techs in a profit sharing program. Few, if any shops do that. You did a 90-minute webinar a few days ago with Kevin that was well-covered on the subject of keeping employees. The title was "The 5 Best Kept Secrets to Keeping Your Employees". 1:25:10

40 years in business and I never had an OSHA inspection. Fire inspection, yes.

Other. Transmission and drivetrain repair

Just in... Lowes Home Improvement Centers are now shifting to a 4-day work week. 5:54

I just wanted to say that a shop owner can never go wrong hiring a shop consultant. Over the years I've had several and I don't regret a single one. My first was in the '80s with Terry Greenhut. (since retired). In the 90's, I had Bob Cooper and Elite. In the early 2000s, I went outside the industry and got marketing, advertising, and job leads from an outside source. In the late 2000s, I used Roy H. Williams, also outside the industry. For those of you hesitating, sitting on the fence, or otherwise procrastinating, get off your duff and just DO IT!

IMHO, "Pain in the neck" jobs pay really well. If they don't, then I feel I underpriced the job to begin with. I used two methods to control work load in our shop. One was price. The other was throttling Google PPC. If it got really busy, I would pause our Google PPC campaigns. If it got really slow, I would increase the radius of our PPC ads. Normally, we had a 5-mile radius around the shop If it got slow, I might increase it to 15 or 20 miles. I remember once I increased it to 100 miles and discovered Nevada and Wyoming don't have any transmission shops. I picked up multiple jobs from both states. TIP: Don't use Google PPC without having Call Tracking installed.

No, absolutely not. If a job comes in and we don't feel proficient at it, we price the job high. We use price as a filter. We never say "no" to anybody. We had a really old Porsche come in. We've never done one. We quoted $12K and the customer said "no". 3 months later he returned saying we were the only shop that didn't tell him "no". As it turned out, it wasn't the transmission at all causing no movement. It had the motor and flywheel in the front and the transmission in the back. The flywheel was a vulcanized rubber flywheel and the center had broken out of the flywheel. It ended up only costing him $6K.

Yes, we have in-house training for all employees on how to talk to customers. i.e. when going over a customer's transmission with the customer, nothing is "worn out". Everything is either "good" or "bad"; no in-between. Pricing is handled on the front counter, in writing. It's really easier than most people think.

We allow our techs to talk to customers as it promotes transparency. Transmission repair is somewhat of a hidden service and customers need some reassurance. We even had one customer want to watch his Honda transmission get rebuilt. I turned it into a promotional video opportunity. Open lines of communication is always the best policy. 4:32

We simply don't promote all makes, all models. We take in each job presented to us. Pricing is a great job filter. We never say "no" to any job. We simply quote a price and let the customer say "no". Highly effective.

A four day work week didn't really work for us. However, when business got slow, I would give the crew time off.

Three things motivated my crew. 1. Great working conditions, proper shop equipment, and a great wage.

We had evaporative coolers in our shop. In our area (Utah) the humidity often at 10% or less and they work really well. No complaints from anyone. If your shop is in a low humidity area, they are cheaper operate and the cooling was great! They don't work very well if the humidity is high.t

It's too early for EV chargers. Perhaps 5 years from now. It's all a matter of timing.

I've had employees moonlight before. It was a negative for me because transmission parts I stocked would come up missing. I then switched gears and didn't allow it for fear of parts coming up missing again. 😞

True. Investing in your shop's real estate won't take your time away from the shop. It will only enhance it.