Management Success Announces Award Winners at the 2016 Spring Convention

GLENDALE, CA. April 25, 2016 Semi-annually Management honors its clients who have made great strides in the auto repair industry.

The recipients of the 2016 Spring Convention Awards are: 

Master Elite 
Aaron Ledford - Aaron’s Semi Repair
Mark Probst – Probst Auto Body 

Masters 
Tobi Klunder-Edmonds – Edmonds Import Auto
TJ Cleveland - Durango Muffler & Brake
Greg & Stacy Conner - Equipment Experts, Inc.
Kristi & Wade Wright - Wright Way Collision Repair, Inc.
Brett Gioe - Zoom Tech 

Sustained Masters 
Jim & Terri Anderson - Anderson Automotive  

HOST Master 

Jim Anderson - Anderson Automotive 

Competent Shop Owner 
Eddie Lawrence – MTR
Terri Anderson - Anderson Automotive
Javier & Esteban Najera - Tres Amigos Auto Service, Inc.
Jesse Schillinger & Bola Schonoiki - Honest Accurate Auto Service West
Effective Shop Manager
Dean Thomas - Deano's Complete Automotive Svc & Repair 

HOST Award 
Dino DiGiulio - Body Best Collision
Joe Fenski - Fenski Automotive
Steve Ek - Ek Automotive
Mark Probst – Probst Auto Body 

Top Team of VMT Game 
The Innovators: Europro Autohaus, Knockout Collision, K-O Auto, Top Shop, Ultimate Truck 

Top Player of VMT Game 
2nd Place Jim Krell / K-O Auto Inc
1st Place Willie & Tess Contreras / Top Shop Automotive

ATTITUDE by Mike Lee Management Success!

Mike Lee
Co-Founder
Management Success

It is amazing how much your attitude affects the results you get in business. In an auto repair shop, the owner’s attitude directly affects sales, gets mirrored in the attitude of the employees, and attracts or repels customers. A good attitude can carry you over even the worst setbacks. But a bad attitude also tends to gain momentum. When business gets bad, it has a tendency to get worse if your attitude goes bad with it, which causes the business to get worse, which causes your attitude to get worse.

A few years ago I was called to consult with the owner of a transmission shop that wasn’t doing well. The owner was depressed. He blamed the economy for his troubles and believed that nobody had any money. He was doing about half the business that he had been doing a couple of years earlier. He didn’t know what to do to improve things.

I got right to work attacking his attitude. “With your lousy attitude, it’s no wonder business is so bad!”

I asked how much business he was currently doing each month. He said that he was doing about $20,000 a month. I asked him how many other transmission shops there were in his area. He told me that there were six other shops that did nothing but transmission work. After some rough calculations, we figured that there was about $200,000 a month in transmission work being done in his area, which was down from about $400,000 two years earlier.

Then I pointed out that his REAL problem was that he wasn’t getting enough of the business that was there.

I asked what his “break-even point” was. He said that if he made about $21,000 a month he’d be able to pay all the bills. I asked how much business it would take to really make money. He said about $27,000 a month. We figured out that all he needed was to get about two more big jobs a week to be really profitable.

Then I gave him my four-question Attitude Test:

1.  Do you come in to work later than you used to? Do you want to go home earlier because it is slow?
2.  Do you assume the customer is not going to buy or doesn’t have the money instead of taking the attitude that he is going to buy and you are not going to let him out of there until he does?
3.  Have you stopped doing a full road check on each car and stopped using a diagnostic road check form and a complete checkout on the rack because you know he doesn’t have any money?
4.  Do you set your daily target and weekly target and go after it?

He gave all the Bad Attitude answers (“Yes” on #1, #2 and #3, and “No” on #4) and, with a bad attitude, proceeded to tell me it was all impossible and nothing could be done about it. Then I broke the news to him.

I told him that it was easy to get two more jobs a week if he had the right attitude. I set a target for him to sell a certain dollar amount, enough to be profitable, for each day of the next week and gave him several other things that I wanted him to do.

The following week, he did about double the business of his average week. I asked him how much of the business was due to the difference in his attitude. He admitted that he got three jobs that he wouldn’t normally have gotten, ALL BECAUSE OF AN IMPROVED ATTITUDE! (By the way, he is currently averaging about $27,000 a month.)

But there is another, perhaps even more common way in which the owner’s attitude affects his income. Your attitude directly affects how your employees respond to you and the amount and quality of work they produce.

I used to start each morning in the shop by having a small meeting with the employees. I would go over what we had to accomplish for the day and what I expected. If we were busy, I’d tell them, “I don’t want anyone standing around–I expect things to happen!” If things were slow, I would say, “When everything is done and the shop is cleaned up, then you can relax.” If I needed extra effort from them that day, I would tell them this so they knew what I needed. If it was going to be a just a normal-flow day, I would take a few minutes to make them laugh and then tell them to get to work. No matter what, I made sure to set a positive tone for the day.

If it wasn’t too hectic, I would also make a point of going out into the shop once in the morning and once in the afternoon to talk to each guy and see how it was going, to make him laugh and to keep him pointed in the right direction. The effect that this creates is amazing. Some owners don’t realize how many employees are willing to work hard simply to get an “ATTA-BOY” from the boss.

When your attitude is good, you’ll remember to communicate with your employees and acknowledge the good work they do. When your attitude is bad and you only complain, it drags everyone and everything down.

Attitude is a big factor in success. If you’re tired of feeling bad or if you’re not accomplishing what you want to, maybe it’s just an attitude problem. If so, go ahead and give yourself an ATTITUDE ADJUSTMENT–a “check-up from the neck up.”

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The Home Of The Unknown Shop Owner by Mike Lee Management Success!

Mike Lee
Co-founder
Management Success

Unfortunately, there a many unknown shop owners in America.  There are several in your town.  Drive down the business section of town, or the industrial area or even on the main drag at night and you will see shop owners still working on cars. 

Most of the rest of working people in town have been at home.  They got there in time to have dinner with their wife and kids or maybe went out to a restaurant.  So have played baseball with their son or have helped their daughter with her school work.

But the unknown shop owner toils away trying to stay ahead of the bill collectors.  It is not unusual for the unknown shop owner to work 60 to 80 hours a week.  When they get home, their kids are in bed. 

They are tired and don’t have anything left for their families.

Vacation is for other people.  Some unknown shop owners have never taken any time off for their families. 

One of the benefits of working long hours at their shops is it makes them healthy.  Most unknown shop owners almost never get sick.  Of course, this is because they can’t afford to get sick.  So rain or shine, feeling good or not, they head every day for real home, their shops.

Unfortunately, the unknown shop owners have a very high divorce rate.  Women are so picky.  They get married and silly them, they expect you to go home once and a while.  So it usually takes 2 or 3 divorces before the unknown shop owners come up with a solution to this being married problem.  They talk their spouses into coming to work for them.  That way they get to spend all their time together at the their real home the shop.

One of the major attributes of the unknown shop owner is that he is persistent.   He has been working 60 to 80 hours a week for 5 to 15 years and things aren’t getting better, but he keeps on working.  Of course, his spouse begins to think that he is crazy because any sane person would have tried to fix it and do something else.  

Obviously, he is not on the road to success! He is on the road to burn out, depression, divorce, no money, no satisfaction of accomplishment and the worst punishment of all, not being able to spend time with his wife and kids.  You only have one chance to watch your kids grown up.  So who are the unknown shop owners.  They are the shop owners who spend most of their lives at their shops and who are not known by their families and kids.

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Marketing To Women: A Female Shop Owner’s Perspective By Nancy Knight Management Success!

Nancy Knight
co-owner of Knight’s Automotive
Ledgewood, NJ

As a wife, mother and major decision maker in my family when it comes to purchases of goods and services, I have lots of experience as a consumer.   My past experiences as a female consumer, both good and bad, have helped influence the way I market and manage my own auto repair business.  I make sure that our shop gives the same friendly service and high quality products that I expect from the people I do business with.    In particular, I pay special attention to meeting the needs of my female clients.  

Why do I have so much attention on female clients?  It turns out that I am not alone as the major decision maker on purchases for my family.   Even in what is perceived as a male domain, women request 65% of the service work done on cars (in our shop it’s closer to 75%)  Women spend over $200 billion on new cars and servicing of vehicles each year.  We buy more than half of the new cars in the US and influence up to 80% of all car purchases.  There is power in the female demographic indeed.  It pays to find out what your women customers want and need then deliver it.   To do this successfully you must first understand that men and women—for the most part—communicate and make decisions differently. 

Besides trust, which is important to both male and female consumers, women want a “relationship.”   We all know that being in a relationship requires a higher level of care and communication to nurture and sustain it in the long term.  Women want more information about what is being done to their vehicle and why.  They want you to listen to them, educate them and not talk down to them.   I call this the C.A.R.E. factor:  Completely And Respectfully Explain their car care needs to them in language they can understand.  We like to use visual aids at the counter and walk the customer out to the car when necessary. 

While men tend to communicate less and want a brief explanation of price and function of the repair or service, women want more details.  Female clients also prefer you to take a personal interest in them, their families, jobs and hobbies.  Ask a woman about her kids, her business accomplishments or her hobbies and watch her brighten up immediately.  This increased familiarity, sincere care and concern goes a long way in building long term relationships with your female customers.  Since, happy, long-time female customers are more inclined to refer business to your shop than male customers (in my experience); they are the best customers to have.

Acknowledging birthdays, anniversaries or writing personal thank you cards are successful marketing actions to consider in building relationships with your female client base as well as personal follow-up phone calls after service is performed. Some additional points to ponder when marketing your repair shop to women are:

• Make sure that your shop is clean and neat both on the inside and the outside. Do not confuse this with fancy. The reception area should be scrubbed and fresh smelling.  Include comfortable seating where possible. Female-friendly magazines, coffee, bottled water and fresh baked cookies are nice touches. 
• Pleasant music playing is preferred over a television blaring bad news.
• Insure that your bathroom is sparkling clean and smells good. 
• Just as your physical location should be scrubbed, so should your online reputation.  Women are more likely to engage in social networking sites such as Twitter and Facebook as well as check review sites such as Google, Yelp or Insiderpages before deciding who to do business with. Respond to your reviews and engage your customers on these sites.  Happy customers will share your information with their friends and family members online.
• Make certain that your website is fresh and attractive. Including personal information about yourself and your employees makes you real to potential customers. Pictures and education points are also helpful.
• Set up regular maintenance schedules and send reminders. Utilize all the current technologies such as text messaging and email as well as direct mail according to the individual preferences of your customers. 
• Leave your customer’s cars clean and smudge-free. Besides making a good first impression, making a good last impression is also important especially to the more discerning female customer. Use floor mats, seat covers or steering wheel covers to prevent any dirt or grease from damaging the interior. Do not change the radio station. Offering a complimentary car wash or interior vacuum for large jobs are also welcome treatments.
 
These are just a few female friendly ideas to get you started.  Of course the best way to find out what your female customers want and need is ask them!  Survey your female customers.  They will love that you care enough to ask their opinion.  This is another action which builds long term relationships. 

At the very least, ask your wife, mother, girlfriend or daughter her opinion of your shop.  They will tell you like it is, both the good and the bad.  Adjust accordingly.  It is helpful to ask yourself: how would I want my wife, mother, girlfriend or daughter to be treated? Go over this viewpoint with everyone at your shop from service writers, managers to technicians.

Though I have addressed the female customer base, many of these points are good practice when dealing with your male customers as well.   Make the women happy and the men will certainly follow.    It takes a little effort, but it will pay off in the long run, with repeat business, future referrals and an increased viable customer base.  That is a huge return for just “making Mama happy.”

I learned ALL this and so much more with Management Success’s amazing and knowledgeable staff. I very highly recommend that you attend the How To Increase Your Profits seminar—don’t wait! Let their staff show you just how successful your shop can be!

Get help with your marketing and other management tools—join us at a Seminar near you!

Visit www.managementsuccess.com

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Are You Suffering from the "Dad Syndrome" in Your Shop? - by Mike Lee, Management Success!

Mike Lee
Co-Founder
Management Success!

It is very common for auto shop owners to become overwhelmed. They try to do too many things at once; unfortunately, they do not get most of them done, or if they do, they are done poorly.

These owners are suffering from the "Dad syndrome." The reason they are unable to finish their tasks is because they are helping others or solving everyone else's problems. All of their employees treat them as a Dad.

All day long, whenever the employees have a problem, they come to the owner for answers or help with their problems. This leaves no time for the owner to finish what needs to get done.

"Dad! Can you help me with this problem?" "Dad! What do you want me to do with this?" "Dad! What should I do next?" Oftentimes, an owner leaves the shop for ten minutes and comes back to find three of the highest production people standing around waiting for him or her to solve their problems. The owner barely gets out of the car before they all start yelling, "Dad!"

It is like nobody can do anything or think for themselves. Dad has to make every decision and handle every problem. Is it any wonder that the shop owner goes home tired and overwhelmed?

The effects of the Dad syndrome are many. The biggest effect is it costs the shop lots of money. Because of the Dad syndrome, the shop grows to a certain volume level and quits growing. Dad can only handle so much.

It affects the ability of the shop to get into the profitable mode. It affects the ability of the employees to produce. It causes a great deal of confusion resulting in lost time, lost production, and lots of lost money.

So, what is the solution? The first step is to recognize that it is a problem in the shop.
Next, the owner must get employees to start doing their jobs without his or her help. Part of this is done by defining exactly what their job is and what is expected of them. Next, the owner should put the employees on an incentive program where they get paid based on the following: 

1) The volume of work they can do, and
2) The level of expertise they can handle. 

Owners must learn to train employees so they are just as prepared to solve problems they face. They should teach employees how to handle problems as they come up, and their pay should be based on this.

Eventually, owners should refuse to handle the employees' jobs, so the employees will learn not to constantly rely on the owners. At our company, the owner used to say, "Manage, Manager! I pay you to handle the problems, so handle them!"

The key to solving the Dad syndrome is for owners to recognize that they have to quit solving employees' problems and, instead, teach them how to do it.

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A Shop Owner’s Guide to the Basics of Success, by Robert Spitz, Management Success!

Robert Spitz
Snr VP Business Dev
Management Success!

A while back, I called a shop, knowing it was way past closing time, but betting I would get the owner. Sadly, I was right. It was 8:00 pm in his timezone, and he gave me the usual line, "I was just wrapping things up." He had missed his son’s ball game and was feeling a little low since this had become a pattern in his life: missed opportunities to spend time with his family.

George (the owner) told me he had spent a fair amount of time wondering how to juggle all of his business, family, and personal obligations and how to keep everyone, including himself, happy - all while maintaining his sanity. George was stuck in a rut and did not know how to get out. Everything seemed bleak. Having worked and helped hundreds of "Georges" in my time, I knew what was going on and that it was fixable. I just had to get George to agree to let me give him a hand. 

The first thing I had him do was sit back, take a deep breath, and answer a few questions:

1. What is your goal here? 
2. Who are you doing all this for?
3. What are you really trying to accomplish?

Once he started thinking about this, he realized there is no single answer. As we get older, our priorities change. Things that were vitally important to us when we were in our 20s are not all that important now. I had him ask himself, "What is important to me, and how do I get there?"

Your business has more than one purpose. It has a purpose for you, your customers, your employees, and your family. By identifying these purposes, you can align your goals and priorities more easily. Take a moment to sit back, relax, and imagine what your business and your life would be like if everything was ideal.

If you can imagine what it could be like, then you are well on your way to setting goals that you can work toward achieving. The ability to imagine is extremely important for a business owner. Once you have a vision of your ideal business, how do you get from where you are now to where you wish to be? 

The answer is simple: you need a plan. It cannot be the old “work harder and longer” plan. Most shop owners have tried that, and it has just made them more tired, not more successful. Still keep in mind that, while any plan is better than no plan, your plan must be something you are willing and able to do. What good is a 50-page detailed plan if you are unwilling to do it?


To create a better plan, first ask yourself if you merely need a “tune-up” or if a “major overhaul” is in order. Also, look at what is right about the business. What do you want to change? What are your strengths and weaknesses? Make some lists.

Management Skills
The top item on the list of things that you need to improve should be your own knowledge of business. Many owners are highly skilled and trained in the area of repair, but woefully lack in the area of business management. It is the business management skill that will take you from where you are to where you want to be. What if you were as skilled and confident in your ability to run your business as you are in diagnosing and correctly repairing a vehicle? Most likely, your business would be in a very different place.

Once an owner is no longer just a technician, he or she needs to have a new and different set of skills. To the degree you do not have them, the business will suffer. For an owner, technical skills are not enough. Here is a list of the areas in which a successful business owner must have confidence and expertise. It can give you an idea of where to begin improving your ability to run your business.

• Planning
• Marketing
• Sales
• Organizing
• Employee management
• Finance
• Training
• Public relations

Planning
The problem with planning is if you do not know where you are going, you cannot come up with a plan. It is like jumping into your car and starting to drive with no destination in mind. If your goal is to wander around until you run out of gas, that might be fine. Otherwise, you are just wasting your time and energy! To come up with a good plan, you have to figure out your goals and be certain of what you are trying to accomplish.

Marketing and Sales
Have you ever heard the old expression, Build a better mousetrap, and the world will beat a path to your door? This is not entirely true because if you fail to tell anyone about this new whiz-bang mousetrap, no one will ever know about it! You have to market your business. You have to let people know you are there and show them what you can do for them.

Marketing gets the phone to ring and gets new and old customers to show up. You also have to make sure you have someone who can sell them the needed services once they are on the phone or at your door. I have seen some great marketing completely wasted by an inability to sell once the prospect inquired. Your service writer should be able to convert 70% of all inquiries into appointments.

Organization
Your shop only grows to the extent that you can handle confusion. Once things get too confusing, you stop selling, which severely limits your profits and growth. A common solution to confusion is hiring more people for the front; on the downside, this hurts your bottom line and may not even solve the problem. The correct course of action is to look for ways to streamline the operation and to figure out how you can be more efficient. You have to organize the various activities of the shop into a workable sequence.

Employee Management
Employee management is a tough area for a lot of shop owners, but it does not have to be.  Establish your goals, and communicate these goals to your crew. Then, make sure the shop is well-organized and everyone knows how to get their job done. Set up a bonus plan or a production-based incentive program. Track each employee’s production, and evaluate only on that basis. You will quickly see who is on your team and who is not.

Finance
Finance, which includes pricing your goods and services, has to be very well-understood by a shop owner. Knowing how to set up your finances for your own benefit - and not for the benefit of the bookkeeper or accountant - is a must.

Training
Ongoing training programs that keep everyone in the shop sharp are critical. The shop owner must provide them, and the employees must be willing to participate. Watch out for employees who are not interested in receiving training.

Public Relations
Shop owners must have some knowledge of public relations, especially as their shops grow and become successful. Not everyone you deal with is a sweetheart! You do not have to hire a PR firm, but make sure you get your good work well-known in your community so the shop is held in high regard.

I called George at the shop the other day. It was 3:30 pm his time, and his service writer informed me he was gone for the day. I smiled, thanked him, and said I would call him tomorrow morning.

Before another day passes, take the time to envision your ideal scene and establish your goals. Then, make sure you have the business knowledge you need to carry out the plans that will help you reach your goals. Good luck on your road to success!

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A Bad Week, by Robert Spitz, Management Success!

Robert Spitz
Snr VP of Business Dev
Management Success!

Recently, a shop owner was venting to me about the “bad week” he was having. He was not really interested in running his shop anymore. He just wanted to coast along until he could sell it, so he could do what he really wanted with the rest of his life.

When I say he was “venting,” it was worse - he was furious! Earlier that week, his lead tech had been into a Ford block and had managed to sheer off the head of a bolt. So, the tech got a bolt remover and sheered the bolt remover as well! That is when the tech ran out of ideas and gave up. The owner, who is an excellent tech, stepped in. He removed it, re-threaded it, and finished the job - bang, bang! Boy, was he ticked off about all this. This incident was not the only thing that had gone wrong during the week, but it was the one that drove him over the edge.

Here is the truth. The entire incident was a direct assault on what he was trying to accomplish. He hired a tech that he thought - in other words, hoped and wished - could do good work. He wanted to slide along as an owner. He definitely did not want to be there, but he had to be there; otherwise, everything would fall apart. Like a ball and chain, he felt he not only had to be at the shop, but he had to have his head under the hood. In his eyes, several things crashed in at once - a very bad week.

This shop owner is a super individual, definitely worthy of the best possible life. So, after I heard this I cut straight to the heart of it all and asked him what he really wanted to do with the years to come. He first apologized for venting and then eloquently outlined some excellent dreams.

He said his time spent thinking about visions of a better future was the only thing helping him get by with a work situation he sometimes hated. But there was an unworkable fantasy in the middle of all this, and I knew it would block his dreams if he did not tackle it. He was sick of sheered bolt removers, but he was even more tired of employees who sheered off bolt removers! He still had a shop and he still had employees, but in his mind, he was done with all of it - and there he sat.

Quite frankly, this adds up to more than a bad week. 

I could not help him with his week, but I could certainly help him with his future.

He needed to learn how to get others to do a good job. An owner’s primary duty is to get others to get the work done. This is easy to say, but it takes tremendous skill. That, alone, would change his life in a big way. Yes, he could do an excellent job himself. That is an exceptional starting point in any activity. If you cannot deliver the goods, then what matters? 

Here’s the bottom line – many shop owners are great techs. They will say (and they are often dead-right about this) that they are the best tech they know. However, they need to be able to say “I make the best techs I know." When they can truthfully say that, from that point forward, their life will change fast. Many things will not change for a repair shop owner until they can make that one thing happen.


It is not the end of all bad weeks, but it is the beginning of a bright new future. Now, here is my question to you: Can you make the best techs you know?

At Management Success! we can show you how. Then, the new game can begin.

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Management Success! Experts Panel May 2013

We have a packed "Experts Panel". Our experts this month are Dave & Debbie Jennerjohn, Aldo Amirgholi and Steve Knowlton for being an inspiration to others!

In Search of a Good Technician By Bob Spitz Management Success!



Bob Spitz
Snr VP Business Dev
Management Success 

Let me tell you a story about a shop in Anytown, USA.  Anytown is an expanding upcoming prosperous suburb of a major city.  The town has four dealerships and twenty independent service facilities.  Pat’s Family Service Center is one of them.  Nice shop, good customer base, plenty of work.  In fact too much work as far as Pat (the owner) was concerned.  Pat was frustrated and worn out from the long hours that come with not having qualified help.  He fired one of his three techs that day and ended up back turning wrenches to get the cars done.  He knew tomorrow was already stacked up and he would be turning away new work, which he knew was a really bad idea. So that night sitting in his office with his hand on his head he was thinking,

“Where do you find good help?
There are no good techs in my town.
I ran an ad for a month, but the only guy who showed up was the one I fired two years ago!”

Pat was disgusted and thinking maybe he should close the doors and do something else. He tried everything he knew how to do and it was not working.  His kids were growing up without him and he and his wife had not had a vacation in years.

Although this is just a story this is one of the most common problems in any industry that requires skilled labor.  It is not just the automotive repair industry.  If you are suffering from this problem let us take a look at some things before you throw in the towel, hop in your truck and head off into the sunset.

Do You Really Need Another Technician?

In some shops, the solution will turn out to be getting more production out of the technicians you already have. In other shops the problem can actually be too many people on board. There is a guideline you can use to sort this out. Take your gross sales (minus sales tax) and divide by the number of production people you have. The resulting figure should be at least $17,500 per production person per month. Most shops should be in the $17,500-$20,000 range. If you are a specialist, your numbers should be in the $20,000-plus range. If your number is a lot lower, you’re not getting enough production out of the guys you already have.

All too often, an owner’s solution to low production is to hire more people. However, if the shop is not properly organized for production, more employees will only add to the confusion and adversely affect your income.

You Really Do Need Some Techs!

But sometimes you really do need additional help or a replacement. While you may have had some frustrating “adventures” trying to find a new technician, rest assured that there are good employees out there. You just have to maintain a good attitude and persist in your search. If you believe that “there are no good techs”, or “nobody wants to work,” you probably will prove yourself right and you won’t find anyone! So that is the first step; decide that it is possible to find someone. Once you’ve done that, you’re ready for the next step.

Working the Grapevine

In every community there is an informal communication system called the grapevine. Good technicians don't usually have to look in the paper for a job; they just use the grapevine to find out which shops in town are good to work for. Here are some people who can help you get your message out on the grapevine.

Tool-man
Tell him what you need and want in a tech; give him your business card. Keep mentioning it to him WEEKLY.

Parts Vendors
Talk to the salesmen you deal with, and even the parts delivery people that go into most of the shops in your area. Again, give them a business card or two that they can pass on to prospects. Some parts houses have a bulletin board on which you can post a small ad.

Customers
This is probably the most ignored communication line available to you, your loyal customer base. Put up signs in your sales and waiting areas. If your zoning codes allow it, put a similar message on your marquee or on a signboard in front of the shop. Your customers might have a friend, a relative or a neighbor who is a technician looking for a job.

Local Trade Association
Many local trade association chapters actively help members find technicians. They run ads in the paper (paid for with membership fees), they contact tech schools, interview applicants and sometimes will even build a pool of prospects and resumes that their members can utilize. Usually the pool includes guys with all levels of skill and experience. 

Churches and Synagogues
Talk to your minister, your priest or your rabbi. Let him know you want someone to join your family of employees. Give him a business card, a 3x5 ad for a bulletin board, or run an ad in the Church Bulletin. Or do all three.

Local Business People
Spread the word via everyone you do business with in town, from the person you see every week at the grocery store, to the guy at the printing shop. Give them all business cards and let them know what you need and want.

Vo-tech Schools
Contact anyone you know at the local Vo-Tech, or call one of the teachers and ask for the names of the best graduating students. You might even end up hiring one of the teachers! One note of caution: some Vo-Tech schools are magnets for addicts and criminals who choose tech training to stay out of jail or the army. Make sure the school has high standards for its applicants.

Military Placement Agencies
A local military base will sometimes have a placement service for guys leaving the service. Call and see if they have one of these offices.

 If so, mail or fax them a description of what you need and want in an employee. Guys with motor-pool experience and military discipline usually make good employees.
By now you’ve gotten the idea that you cannot ignore any possible avenue of communication for your search. The more you tell people what you need and want, the better your chances are that you will find what you need and want.

Place an Advertisement

If, in spite of your efforts, the grapevine does not provide enough prospects, do some advertising. There are some very good web-sites for placing help wanted ads. Not only are they less expensive, but you are likely to get higher quality prospects responding to your ads in them.

Your ads should be worded so that they will attract people with good attitudes and some experience. It is better to hire someone with less experience who wants to be part of the team and is willing to work, than to hire some “Super-Tech” with a giant chip on his shoulder. An employee with a bad attitude will affect everyone’s production and drive you crazy.  I have personally heard from many clients how well the  ads they got from Management Success work.

It is also better to hire two or three guys at the same time because one might not show up for work, one might not be able to produce and only one might be a “keeper.”  Rarely will you run into the problem of having too many good technicians on board.

Your positive attitude can create a good, secure atmosphere that will attract and keep good employees. On the other hand, a negative disposition can repel the best guys. Good people don't want to work for a grouch, and sane people don't want to work in a chaotic, insane environment.  Similarly, employees that have a lot of baggage, such as drug or alcohol abuse problems they bring into the workplace, will contribute to an “unsafe atmosphere” that will drive the good prospects away.

Sloppily run, unprofessional shops that have no basic systems or policies in place will attract non-productive, unmotivated technicians who cost you more money than they make you. On the bright side, a tightly run, efficient shop in which everyone is making decent money and which has policies that limit personal baggage will be most likely to attract good technician prospects.

The bottom line is that, in spite of any difficulties you might encounter in the adventure of finding technicians, over 80% of the people out there are decent and willing to help you achieve your goals. Positively decide you are going to find the right one of them for your team. And good luck in the hunt!

“Hi Honey, I leaving the shop early, things are under control.  Why don’t I pick up the kids from school?”

Management Success! "How to Increase Your Profits" Seminar

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Spring 2013 Management Success! Beach Getaway Convention

Management Success! 2013 spring convention offered excellent opportunities for networking with other like–minded shop owners, many of whom run some of the top automotive shops in the US and Canada, exclusive convention workshops tailored for auto shop owners to bring their shop to the next level of expansion and fun with the many planned outdoor activities.

Building a Winning Team! Getting Everyone on the Same Page - Bob Spitz Management Success!

Bob Spitz
Snr VP Business Development
Management Success!

I was talking with a shop owner the other day and he said to me, “I am having a hard time getting my crew, especially my service writer to understand what I want.  I go blue in the face explaining over and over how I what things done and yet he always seems to be on a different page.  He’s a good guy and sells well but honestly he’s driving me crazy.  How do I get employees to be on the same page as me?”

Wow!  That is what I call a quick question that does not have a quick answer.  I told him I do not like to do off-the-cuff consultations especially on the subject of employees, but let me see if I can help you here.  Before you pop a cork sit back take a deep breath and relax for a moment.  Employee management is the trickiest part of a business.  The reason most employees go off on a different direction from the owner is a lack of understanding what you the owner is trying to accomplish.  There is no agreement.  Telling people what you want done and how to do things only works when the understanding is already established.  In other words when the employee twigs on how their job related to the overall plan. 

What is the goal of the shop?  What are you trying to get done?  Have you put this in writing for yourself and your employees?  You need to do this as a first step.  If you are clear on where you want to go and what you want to accomplish and how you want to get there then it is easy to communicate those concepts to others.

You do this in the form of policy and staff meetings.  You should have a meeting at least once a week to reiterate the purpose of the shop and what it is you want to get done.  The next step is getting an employee to understand his/her job, the purpose of his job and how it all fits in with the overall big picture of the business.  With a service writer you have to break it all down, how many jobs or hats is he/she really wearing?  In most independent shops the service writer wears a multitude of hats: Reception, sales, parts, dispatching, quality control (checking the vehicle before the customer picks it up)  etc.  Each one of these has to be broken down into their actual components or functions and then taught on how the job is to be done according to company policy.  Just telling people does not really work in most cases. You need to hold training sessions where the employee practices the new procedure or technique.  But be careful here, you do not want a group of clones, you have got to leave room for initiative and creation on the position, other wise you end up with robots who can not think.

One of your biggest barriers to training people is if the person you are attempting to train feels there is nothing to learn; they already know it all.  You have got to know how to handle this kind of person and better yet know how to spot this kind of person before you even hire them.  You also need to know how to motive people to attend training.  There are many ways of doing this, but beware of the person who you can not motivate, there are other problems in this case.

People learn in gradients; step-by-step.  It is so easy to overwhelm a new employee by piling on too much too quickly.  Owners tend to forget how much they know especially about their own business.  Too many owners have trouble communicating want they want and how they want it done. To them it is too simple and too obvious.  How could this new employee not get it?  Well I am going to tell you to a new employee neither of these is necessarily true.  It is not necessarily simple, or obvious.

 You have got to break it all down.  Remember, the only thing you ever have in an employee is willingness.  
In the case of a service writer, break down all the hats they are wearing as I mentioned above and take one hat and work out step-by-step what you want them to know and do regarding the functions of that position.

There are many tools you must have and know how to use when you attempt to train people.  But attitude is critical.  If you do not have a high tolerance for stupidity you should not attempt to train anyone!  You have to be willing to go over points time and again.  Most people learn through repetition. 

By the end of our talk this particular shop owner agreed that he had not spent enough time training his service writer and agreed to take some of the tools I gave him and would take a half hour a day to work with his service writer one thing at a time! I heard from him about a month later and he told me that things were starting to improve, and his service writer was not stupid after all!

Management Success is the leader in quality management training.  As an owner you must have strong organization and communication skills, and a big part of organizing is training for yourself and your team. 

Get trained and learn how to train others.  Your life and the life of your employees will greatly improve. It is the only long term solution.  Wishing you success!

Management Success! Employee Questionnaire

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Is Your Front Working For You or Against You? - by Lisa Shomo, Management Success!

We spoke with three different shop owners to find out the troubles they were having in the front of their shop before they attended the How to Increase Your Profits seminar. Here’s what they told us:

Q: How was the front of your shop doing with sales and customer service before the How to Increase Your Profits seminar?

Mark Probst - Probst Auto Body
Deterich, IL:
Before I went to the seminar, our front office consisted of just me and my sister who had started with me part-time. She was doing some bookkeeping, paying bills, answering phones, and basically greeting customers.

I was doing everything else, including writing estimates. I thought the key to making the front work was simply treating everyone nice. I thought it was working for us. I didn’t think I was doing anything wrong.

Then, when I went to the seminar, I realized there were a lot of things that I wasn’t doing in the front. And I was losing sales left and right.

When I handled the estimates at the front counter, this is how it would go: a customer would walk in and ask for an estimate. I would write the estimate and give it to the customer and that was the end of my sale. The extent of my closing was that I would hope they would get their car fixed with us! I wasn’t aggressive with my closing. There wasn’t a whole lot of communication between me and the customers; I didn’t know what they really wanted. I would write the estimate and would hope they wanted me to fix it. That was my sale!

What I realized at the seminar is that we had no real system in place to handle customers and sell to customers at the front. I hadn’t even really trained my sister and just let her figure things out by herself. We handled stuff as it came at us and flew by the seat of our pants. Actually, we were constantly “putting out fires.”

I realized I wasn’t really being a salesperson at all. I needed to close the job and if it didn’t close, I needed to follow up with them the next day and really communicate with the customer.

Now, the front is doing awesome! We have a full system in place in the front to handle customers from the beginning of the estimate to the end. We’re closing anywhere from 80-90% of our estimates that we write! Going to the seminar really turned it around for my shop.

Steve Hixson - Art’s Automotive
Longview, WA:
In my case, before the seminar, we actually had a pretty fair sales group up front. We’ve got very large shops and we’ve been around a long time. However, at that point I couldn’t do better than I was doing. I was simply out of ideas on how to get to the next level.

The biggest thing I got from the seminar was learning about statistics. That was the first time I ever came across anything like that. I learned how to get all my weekly shop numbers down on paper and how to map them out over a period of time to really see the trends in the statistics for the shop. Then I actually had the ability to do something about the amount of sales I was getting in the front. I could come up with ideas and solutions on how to make those stats go up, and of course that’s what we’re all trying to do.

Six months after the seminar, it was like night and day. We actually were able to put in a plan to improve the statistics. Everyone in the front had their own task list to get done to achieve this. Because we now tracked the stats each week, we knew right away the things that were working and the things that weren’t. We kept what worked and got rid of what didn’t work!

Our close rate now is nearly 100%. Very rarely do we get an estimate that is not sold. After the seminar we knew how to improve the front and close more sales, schedule appointments, and get the workflow really going!

Dave Bloom - Pine Aire Truck Svc
Bay Shore, NY:
Before the How to Increase Your Profits seminar, I did most of the sales myself, and closing the sales wasn’t really a problem for me. But while I was up there making and closing those sales, I was losing other opportunities to move the business forward and expand. So, what the seminar made me see is that there are other people that are capable of closing sales the way that I was able to close sales. With the proper training, you can have another person do it which will allows you to be the owner, which makes the business move in the direction that’s more profitable for you. That’s the most important thing that I learned.

I found I was missing out on actually running my business. If you’re working in the business as a service writer, but you’re not running your business the way an owner should be running a business, you’re severely limiting the amount of growth that you’re capable of having in your shop.

The seminar showed me what holes I had in my business and where my inefficiencies were. I realized I wasn’t capable of being an owner and a service writer at the same time really well. Obviously, you can do customer service and service writing, but in order to make your company grow to where you want it to be, you have to hire the right person and properly train them to do that job up in the front for you.

And that’s where the Management Success! seminar comes in. These are the tools you can learn and use to expand your business like I did!

Management Success! How to Increase Your Profits Seminar

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Is There a Tiger in Your Shop? By Bob Spitz Management Success!

Bob Spitz
Snr VP Business Development
Management Success!

Several years ago a shop owner from New York, a personal friend of mine, called me and began telling me about some tough employee issues, poor production, and stagnant sales.  He was working some crazy hours, said he could not take time away from the shop fearing that all would go wrong if he left.  I asked him why he felt that way.  He said the last time he took a week off the shop sales plummeted and he found himself putting out fires the first days back from his vacation.  He had gotten to the point that if he was to take another vacation he would just close down for the week and give all his employees a paid vacation.  From the way things were going it would cost him less and he would not have to deal with the aggravation. 

I told him not to make any drastic changes because I was already planning to come to New York and I would pay him a visit. 

I did not tell him when the visit was going to be so that I would get a truer picture of what was really going on.  The day I arrived I stood outside of the shop and just observed for a while; my friend did not know I was there.  Within a short period of time one of the employees stood out.  His actions were about as far away as you could get from being called “good for the business”.

I walked up to the counter where my friend was working – he was writing his own service at the time – and I asked him to introduce me to his techs.  The first two guys where personable and social.  The third one (the one I had observed) was a tiger.  I had my friend turn the shop over to his lead tech, the tiger for a while so we could go up to his house and talk.  We sat down and I rattled off a list of things this guy was doing and how he was behaving in the business.  When I was done my friend looked at me as said, “that is exactly what this guy (the tiger) is like, how did you get that out of a handshake?!”  I told my friend that even though I had never met this guy his personality traits are not new to me.  I’ve seen them in other shops I’ve worked with.  I asked him if he wanted some help straightening out this problem.  Since it seemed insurmountable to him he eagerly agreed.
It took a couple of weeks to work out a careful plan to remove this tiger from his shop because my friend was convinced he needed this guy!  The day my friend let him go he called me sounding like a schoolboy who finally got his first date.  “HE’S GONE, HE’S GONE!  I feel 10 years younger and I feel like 100 lbs has been lifted off my head!  The lights actually look brighter in the shop and the other techs are smiling and having a great time throwing out all of his junk!” The very next month the shop did more production with just two techs than it had ever done with three.

I have always found it amazing how one person in a business can hold down the whole shop.  And it always seems to be that key guy the owner feels he must have!  He’s the guy who knows his stuff, he can tackle the hard jobs, the ones that other techs shy away from, but he does it at a price. This is the guy that puts owners between a rock and a hard place.

One of the responsibilities of an owner is to create a safe and friendly work space.  People need to get along with each other and they usually do.  But you have no chance of creating a good team if you have a tiger in the mix.

Another problem with a guy like this is it makes it hard to recruit new team members.  Word gets around and techs know who is working where.  A shop also loses good, hard-working, personable guys with a tiger around.  No one wants to work with him except maybe other tigers --- Great!  Now you have two of them.

Long ago I worked in a dealership and we had two of these characters.  They tore up the production lines and made everyone’s life miserable.  The service manager did not know how to handle them and the owner ignored the problem.  Ultimately they drove off all the other good techs and then left together leaving the service department woefully undermanned.

Knowing how to read people and hire the right people the first time is a skill owners must have.  It is just too painful and costly not to know.  Having trouble in the production area?  Too many upsets and noise?  Look for the tiger—he’s the one in the bushes with fangs and claws ready to pounce on the next unsuspecting victim.

MANAGEMENT SUCCESS! How to Increase Your Profits Seminar

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