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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Basics of Employee Management By Bob Spitz Management Success!

Bob Spitz
Snr VP Business Development
Management Success!

Dealing with employees can be one of the toughest challenges for a shop owner. By learning some basic strategies of employee management, an owner can reduce his stress level, minimize his personnel problems, and better ensure the success of the business. 

Define Your Goals

Employees are people you employ (hire) to work with you and assist you in achieving your business goals. An owner needs to have well-defined goals and he must be able to communicate them to his employees to get their support. Good employees want to know what you are trying to accomplish, how they fit into the picture, and how they can benefit by helping you succeed.

What do They Want?

To find and hire good people, you need to know what good people are looking for— what motivates them to get up in the morning and go to work. Of course people want money, but good people are also looking for a group to be part of, and they want to know that their work is contributing to something of importance. People always want to get compensated well for the work they do, don’t you?  But it’s not the only thing they want. Many people also want stability, a well-organized, high-morale working environment and growth potential. Some look for an employer who can communicate clearly and who stays relatively calm even during times of high stress.

Talk to Your People

Take the time to sit down with each member, or potential member, of your crew and find out what he wants in life, what his goals and ambitions are. Make sure he understands what you expect from him, the level of production you expect, and what his compensation will be if he achieves this level, and how this will help him get the things he wants out of life.

Compensation

Your employee pay plan should reward high levels of production. It can even be tailored for each individual. One technician might work extra hard for a cash bonus while another might prefer paid vacation days for a reward. Just make sure you don’t pay high wages or bonuses without also demanding high production. Many pay systems are based on hours on the job. These systems pay people who don’t produce a lot the same wages as those who do produce a lot. In companies with these systems, employees learn that if they just show up and look like they are working, they’ll get paid. It is up to the owner to demand high production and to reward it. Don’t reward the underachiever.

Monitor Production

Make sure you have a system for tracking and monitoring production and let each employee know where they stand. Your best employees will feel acknowledged and, hopefully, the worst will feel the need to improve. Each employee should be responsible for at least one statistic that measures the main thing he is producing on his job. Employees need to know that their employment and pay is based on their level of production and its value to the company, and not on who they know or their personality or other arbitrary factors. An employer who does not enforce this kind of accountability from his employees is likely to make personnel decisions based on guesswork rather than facts.

Where Does Their Pay Come From?

An interesting question to ask any employee is, “where does your pay check come from?” Many will respond, “my boss.”  Some are closer to the mark when they say “the customer.”  But the truth of the matter is that an employee’s pay comes from his own hard work, and his ability to produce quality products and services that the business can then sell to customers for income and support.

Creating a Team

The executive of a business must be able to organize the activities of the business and train his employees so that they will be able to produce valuable products. Most people want to achieve results they can be proud of and, to a great extent, it is up to the owner to make sure they can be proud of their products. It is an owner’s responsibility to make sure that each person who comes on board is given a clearly delineated job and is adequately trained so that he understands how to do this job. He also needs to be shown what his job means to the rest of the crew and he needs to know about the overall product the company produces. Unless every employee is aware of how his job relates to the final product of the company, you will never really have an efficient team working together to achieve your goals.

Meetings are Important!

Mandatory weekly meetings with your crew will strengthen the concept of a team—that you are not just a bunch of individuals running around frantically trying to get something done—and will give you a chance, as a team, to review how the shop did during the previous week. It is vital to stay positive in these meetings, to accentuate and focus on the production and improvements that were made in the previous week and to set targets for the upcoming week. Stay upbeat and don’t let the meeting drag on. If a particular employee did something above and beyond the norm, acknowledge him or her in front of the group.  If there are any corrections or improvements you want to see, go over those, too.  However, NEVER single someone out for correction in front of the group. If you’re unhappy with someone, ALWAYS address this with him privately.

Make it a Three Win System

Help each of your employees to see the priorities of the business correctly: first, to make sure the customer wins because without customers there is no purpose for the shop, and second, to make sure the shop is winning (viable) because without the shop, there is no purpose (or paycheck) for the employees. Finally, the employees have to win, because if they can’t win, they won’t stay. Review these priorities at your team meetings and make sure they are understood by everyone.

Managing employees is a primary responsibility of an owner. Your success at it will be a function of your attitude toward the business. You set the tempo and the pace for your crew. If your standards are high, and you demonstrate your commitment to meeting these standards, they will follow. If you show genuine care for your people, they will respond. Wishing you Success!

MANAGEMENT SUCCESS! Employee Questionnaire

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Management Success! April 2013 Management Workshops

A key part of the Management Training & Consulting Program is our workshops. Our goal is to give you the knowledge and the skills to DO IT YOURSELF. We will enable you to run your shop the way you want to, without being dependent on us to help you.

One of our Consultants, Ari Cohen, is teaching business management at the April 2013 Management Basics Workshop.

Wes Severi is teaching a workshop on management by statistics and shop flow, among many other things.

Shop owners sit with each other and do the exercises together so that they can help each other out as well.

The purpose of Management Success is to enhance the quality of life and improve the standard of living of shop owners throughout the automotive repair industry. We do this through our highly effective training, paired with consulting from a team of some of the top management consultants in the country with decades of experience. To view our extensive list of training and consulting services, click on the link below.

MANAGEMENT SUCCESS! Training & Consulting

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Can Your Shop do a Quality Job in 4 Seconds? By Bob Spitz Management Success!

Bob Spitz
VP Production
Management Success!

When Ayton Senna was still racing Formula 1 for McLaren the pit crew that serviced his cars was truly a marvel to watch.  During the Australian Grand Prix Ayrton raced unexpectedly into the pit because it needed new tires.  The crew was on the ball and serviced that car in under four seconds.

In the world of professional racing especially at the level of Grand Prix “comebacks” carry a fantastic cost (the race or more).  The job has got to be done right the first time and it has to be done efficiently. It’s an activity where errors are not tolerated by anyone on the team.  It’s a tightly organized group with a purpose.  They are trained within an inch of their lives by top notch coaches.  And the best crews have great leadership.

What’s the difference between a pit crew and your shop?

Is it fair to pit your people against a professional race car pit crew?

Someone might argue they are not the same thing.  The professional crew has many guys going over the wall to do the service.  Yes that’s true.  But this valuable comparison can be used, piece by piece, to improve your shop.

Let’s see what makes a professional pit crew tick.

#1 is their PURPOSE.  This is probably the single biggest factor that separates a professional crew from everyone else.  Those guys that jump over the wall live a hard life.  They’re on the road all the time working crazy hours getting paid peanuts.  So why do they do it weekend after weekend from February through November?  What drives them to do it and keep doing it?  The answer is PURPOSE.  What is purpose?  It is the stuff that real living is made of.  It is the reason you and I get out of bed in the morning and do the things we do.  Without purpose life would be extremely boring.  A shop is boring without a purpose.  And bored people don’t produce much and when they do finally produce something it’s low quality.

#2 is their TEAMWORK.  Those pits are a team.  And a great shop operates as a team.  In order to have a team everyone has to know how to play the game.  They have to agree with the rules of the game.  Then they will push (as a unit) along the right path.  The employees on a team share common goals with the owner.  They know what they have to do and how they fit in to the big picture.  It’s a nice feeling.

#3 is their ORANIZATION.  In order to get people to work as a team there has got to be a well-guided flow of organization in place.  This includes people, paper, cars, parts and cash money.  Note: money flows into the hands of a well organized shop owner and out of the hands of a poorly organized one.

#4 is their TRAINING.  In order for the team to be efficient and get the job done each person on the team must know what their position is, how to perform the task expected from that position and how to do it effectively and efficiently.  This requires training and drilling.  One of the first things I like to do when I help an owner to manage their shop is to get them training and drilling their team.  When the right things are drilled, wow what a difference!  And fast!

#5 is their LEADERSHIP.  All good teams have a good leader.  So what makes someone a good leader?  Here are some of the basics:

• He or she has a clear vision of what they want.  They have a goal. 
• They have a great attitude toward the business and life.
• They can communicate their vision clearly.
• They can gain agreement from others.
• They know how to handle people.
• They can easily give and enforce orders.

When people see that what they do makes a difference, they get inspired.  It’s nice for someone to know that what they do is important.  And it’s great to feel that what they do adds up to something larger than what they could accomplish on their own.  A leader lets the team know how valuable they are, because it’s true, they are.
So how about McLaren’s Ayrton Senna 4 second pit stop?  It couldn’t have been done without these five:

1. Purpose
2. Teamwork
3. Organization
4. Training
5. Leadership

This is also the heart and soul of managing a shop.

Fortunately you do not have to have been born with these abilities to succeed; they can be learned!

MANAGEMENT SUCCESS! On-Line Auto Shop Analysis

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I'm Sure I'm Making Money, So Where Is It? By Mike Lee Management Success!

Mike Lee
Co-founder
Management Success!

One of the major problems facing shop owners is the fact that they spend everything they make. Even when the business is expanding and they are doing fairly well, they seem to have problems accumulating money.

One of the least understood areas of the business has to do with MONEY! Very few people know how to accumulate money and live within their means.

This is amazing, since one of the major benefits of going into business is to make more money. Yet a great many shop owners had more money to spend when they didn't own anything and worked for someone else.

Most of the money-related problems in the business come from not understanding how to handle and control money, both in the shop and at home.

No Matter How Much I Make, It Never Seems to Be Enough!

Over the years, I've observed an interesting phenomenon where the business grows and yet the owner is unable to take more money out of it. Eventually the owner quits expanding the business, because even though it has doubled its gross sales, the shop is making less and less money!
 
It is not unusual for businesses to be grossing over a million dollars a year in sales and not have enough to pay the bills!

The solution is to learn the correct way to accumulate money despite the bills and all the reasons why it can't or shouldn't be done. Otherwise, the business will spend every dime and have nothing left over.

My Accountant Says We Owe Lots of Taxes, So Where's the Cash?!

Most shop owners were trained as technicians, not as business people. So when it comes to understanding the financial statements given to them by their accountants, they haven't a clue. Unfortunately, a good many accountants don't either. There are tremendous confusions regarding balance sheets and profit and loss statements.

An example of this is a shop in the Midwest owned by two partners who were told by their banker that they were doing really well and should borrow the money to expand. After they borrowed $198,000 and then found that they weren't making any money, the banker wanted them to sell off their personal stuff (houses, etc.) to pay the note down.

After becoming a Management Success! client, they paid off $40,000 of the debt in 8 months, except now the banker says they're not showing any profit and should go buy inventory so that "the financial statement will look good."

He advised them to go back to the way they were doing it two years before. If they had followed this advice they would be out of business and have no homes!

Their accountant gave them similar information and said they were "not doing it right." (Oh! By the way...they have a new banker and new accountant!)

What shop owners don't understand about financial statements can result in them following bad advice and potentially going out of business. The solution here is to get trained on how to read and understand financial statements!

Sales Are Going Up, But Expenses Are Going Up Faster!

It is very common for shop owners to see their sales increase dramatically as a result of learning to do some marketing and advertising. However, in the course of expanding, their costs can go up just as fast. What is happening here is the owner tends to concentrate on the shop rather than the money.

Part of the process of changing from being a technician or service writer to an executive who runs the business is the realization that an executive must put his attention on THE MONEY! Often, the owner of the shop doesn't know exactly where the business is at in terms of financial matters, and doesn't have the ability to get key data necessary to make good business decisions.

Most owners are shooting from the hip when it comes to the financial numbers. Too often, they leave this area for others to handle. As a result, they are never sure what is really happening, because in the owner's mind, it ain't his job!

NEWS FLASH!!! One of the primary jobs of a business executive is to control the money!

We Make Just About What We Need!

Another common problem is shops that are doing "okay" but never seem to get the full potential out of their business. Often this is because when the business starts to do well, the owner tends to relax.

A common trait among business owners who are at the top of their game is that they don't relax. The key to really getting the most money out of the business is to keep the pressure on and do the right thing at the right time. I also recommend that you never let employees, service writers, or the production department know exactly how well you're doing, or they'll relax too.

The Secret to Getting the Most Money Out of the Business

The real secret to getting the most money out of the business starts with the shop owner and his ability to control the money! The difference in getting 20% out of the business vs. 35% is in the office, and in controlling the checkbook.

A shop owner should know where the business stands at all times, and be able to know everything about the money coming in and where it goes. The successful executive is at least a week ahead in planning, fully understands the purpose and the use of financial statements, and is able to guide the accountant instead of being totally confused by him or her.

Ultimately, the shop owner is responsible for making sure the company is solvent, making LOTS of money and putting LOTS of it away for emergencies, and having a plan to get everything paid off.

Take control of your business; learn what you need to know to guide the business into a strong financial position and personal prosperity, it is your job, but Hey, it's ONLY money ... YOURS!!

MANAGEMENT SUCCESS! Advanced Financial Control Course

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Help! Help! I Work At A Madhouse! By Mike Lee Management Success!

Mike Lee
Co-founder
Management Success!

When I used to do on-site consulting, one of the first things that stuck out in a real busy shop was how insane everyone was. The first time I saw this was in a very busy shop in Maryland. They had two Service Writers and they both needed space-age phone talker helmets. They had cars and customers all over the place and the phone was ringing off the hook. The owner was so busy helping out that he just waved to me because he just didn't have time to talk.

I watched them for a while and concluded that the two Service Writers had to be crazy to work under that much stress and the owner definitely shouldn't have been involved in the process.

Later, I noticed that time after time, I would go into a busy shop and would see everyone was running around like crazy. Occasionally, I would hear heated discussions or very upset people muttering to themselves. It was very obvious that nobody knew how to organize the place and they were killing themselves and not being very efficient at anything. The biggest problem was that they weren't even aware of how much money it was costing them to do things this way.

The Owner Promised Me It Would Be Done Today!

Nothing drives a Service Writer crazier than to find out from the customer that the owner had promised the customer that his car would be done today and not told the Service Writer.

Did the Part For the Buick Come In Yet?
Don't you just love it when you are busy trying to sell a job to a customer and a technician wants to interrupt you to handle some problem?

Is My Car Going To Be Done Today? I have seen Service Writers actually throw phones against the wall because one of their customers calls every five minutes to see if their car is going to be ready.

When Is My Car Going To Be Done? You Told Me the Same Thing Yesterday!
This is another version of the customer who calls constantly wanting updates on his vehicle. It is amazing how much time is wasted answering the phone and then checking on the status of the customer's cars.

Did You Get the Authorization To Work On the Ford Truck?
How many times a day does someone in your organization ask the Service Writer or you questions about the status of a car or when is a part going to arrive?

There Is No Change. It Is Still Doing the Same Thing It Was BEFORE You Worked on It.
Just Ducky! Just Marvelous! This is just what the Service Writer wanted to hear at the end of a super busy and crazy day. Sometimes, they want to kill the technician who did the work on the car.

I Thought You Ordered It.
This is another lovely piece of news to a Service Writer trying to handle a customer on the phone about when his car will be done. It turns out the part the car needed was never ordered and of course, it will take a week from today to get it. You're thinking, "Do I have to do everything myself?"

I Am Sorry, We Are All Booked Up! I Can Get To It In About a Week!
When I hear owners and Service Writers saying that to customers, I go NUTS! I want to grab the owner and the Service Writer and explain to them how much money they are costing themselves by not having the shop and the front organized.

I remember visiting a shop where the Service Writer told me that he was in overwhelm and it was a madhouse and he didn't know how he was going to get it all done. I looked at the parking lot and the bays and asked "Is this all of it?" He indicated that it was. I told him that it didn't look that busy and that he probably would be over the hump by 2:30, if he did it right.
He handed me the clipboard and said, "You do it then!" I took the clipboard and got all the data on every job and where it stood and when it was promised and who had what. By about 2:00 o'clock it was pretty much a piece of cake from there and he indicated he could handle it. After closing, I sat down with him and showed him how I did it.

Some Basics

If you ever want to watch a really organized operation, be on an aircraft carrier doing flight operations during wartime. It is an amazing thing to watch. They have lots of people doing dangerous activities at a breakneck speed and have occasional unplanned disasters happen, but they handle it all with incredible speed and efficiency. The key is they are trained. They are organized. They have procedures. They all know how to do their jobs.
Of course, if you don't want to join the Navy to learn how to speed up your organization and handle a lot more cars with half of the effort and stress, you and your Service Writer should come to our three-day Controlling The Front Workshop.

At the workshop you will learn how to handle the basics of organizing and controlling the front part of your operation. You will learn how to handle more work in less time and under less stress. You will gain new insight on how to turn your front operation into a lean, mean, money-making machine. It's only money! Yours!

MANAGEMENT SUCCESS! Training and Consulting

FIND THE BLACK HOLE IN YOUR SHOP! TAKE THE TEST!

I am Too Busy to do the Controlling the Front Workshop By Mike Lee Management Success!

Mike Lee
Co-founder
Management Success!

There are 3 ways to increase the bottom line in a shop.

1. Increase your prices.
2. Cut your expenses.
3. Increase the volume of work being done by the shop.

One of the fastest ways to make money, when a shop tends to be very busy, is to organize the front of the operation so it can handle more work effectively.

Boom and Bust!

Without organization and training, one of the things that can happen to a really busy shop is the Boom or Bust phenomenon.

This is especially true with clients who have entered a period where the shop is really busy. Just like a race car, a shop will peak out at a certain level of efficiency. When they go beyond that level of work that they can handle effectively, a lot of negative things start to happen.

The Service Writer starts to become overwhelmed. He starts to make little mistakes and then sometimes bigger mistakes due to the lack of control and organization. When this happens, the shop starts to become less efficient.

He then starts to spread his overwhelm to the production people. Technicians start making silly and costly mistakes. Things are forgotten. The small mistakes creates comebacks and this adds to the confusion and the overwhelm and spreads back to the already overwhelmed Service Writer.

How to Lose Customers

When a Service Writer gets into overwhelm and things start to get chaotic, most Service Writers will begin to stop the flow of business. They begin to not push to get customers into the shop as soon as possible. They start pushing work away. They tell the customer that they are super busy and can't handle it for a couple of days or next week or occasionally for a week or two.

When this happens, they don't realize that they are killing their future and losing good customers. The difference between being super busy and slow is not that much on a per day basis. It only takes about 2 or 3 more cars a day to make a shop super busy. So it doesn't take much of pushing work into the future to start to slow a shop down.

The other missing piece on this is when you put a good customer off for 3 or 4 days or a week. Occasionally, they will decide to take it somewhere else to get it fixed because your shop is too busy. Sometimes, those customers will like the new shop better and you have lost a good customer and you don't even know it.

Normally, within about 2 to 3 weeks, things have slowed down. The shop doesn't realize that it is partly responsible for creating this problem. They are not aware of what is happening, so they continue to let things slide until the shop is dead slow. At that point, the owner now is screaming for more business.

So the shop starts another cycle of boom or bust.

Too Busy or Too Slow!

At Management Success! we have watched this happen repeatedly to our clients. One of our Service Advisors will call a shop about doing the Controlling The Front Workshop and the owner of the shop will say "Man, we are swamped and can't do it now. Call me in a month."

The Service Advisor will call again in about a month and the owner of the shop will say, "It has quieted down and I want to think about it. Call me in another month." The Service Advisor calls in another month and the owner says that they have no business and they want our help with marketing, because they need customers.

Organizing the Front Office Improves the Bottom Line

The owner of the shop doesn't realize that one of the fastest ways to improve the bottom line is by organizing the front part of the operation. When the owner and the Service Writer are trained on the basics of controlling the front operation, it means big numbers on the bottom line.

Example: Shop A: The owner and the Service Writer are not trained and the shop tends to max out at about $10,000 a week in volume. After doing the Controlling the Front Workshop, Shop A can easily handle $15,000 week and seem slow. Also, Shop A will not tend to have this constant pattern of boom or bust.

Time to Change!

So are you tired of this boom or bust pattern? Are you tired of chasing the business? Are you tired of going through periods of craziness followed by periods of boredom? If you get into a condition where the shop is so busy that you can't handle it, that shop needs to have both the owner and the Service Writer do the Controlling the Front Workshop. But it is only money, yours!

MANAGEMENT SUCCESS! Controlling the Front Workshop

FIND THE BLACK HOLE IN YOUR SHOP! TAKE THE TEST!

How Much PROFIT are You Leaving On the Front Counter? By Bob Spitz Management Success!

Bob Spitz
VP Production
Management Success!

I was talking with a distressed shop owner the other day, who was worried sick about his car count.   He told me all the money he had spent recently on marketing efforts, trying to resolve the problem.  “I’ve got mailers going out, my website is new, I don’t know what else I could be doing!” he lamented. 

After asking him some basic questions regarding his marketing and advertising efforts, I asked him the following:  “Do you track how many calls or walk-ins you get per week?”  This made him pause, so I continued.  “When someone calls your shop or comes in asking about your services, that is called a reach.   What happens with that reach can mean the difference between eating well and starving.  Marketing materials get the phone to ring, get customers and potential customers to visit your website or to stop by the shop.  Once that person reaches it is up to sales to close the deal.  These are two distinctly different areas of a business and they must be watched and kept track of carefully. 

“Who is answering the phone in your shop and do they like sales or do they think of sales as a necessary evil?”  That got his attention, because he did not know.   “Can you help me with this?” he asked.  I offered to set up some “mystery shoppers” to call and come in to his business to test the waters.  I would get back with him once I had the results.

I set up a team to do a series of mystery shopper phone calls and had a friend of mine drop by the shop and pose as a potential customer.  The end result was very revealing.  This is what we found:

• The phone was not answered promptly and sometimes went to voice mail.
• One three different occasions when the phone was answered the person answering did not announce who they were and sounded rushed and impatient.
• When asked for a price on a repair we were put on hold and waited longer than a customer would normally wait.  When the person came back on they quoted a price and then were not asked to set an appointment to bring the car in for an inspection.  The person on the phone seemed bored with the whole process.
• On one occasion when calling to ask for a price on a repair we were immediately given a discount.
• We were left on hold and forgotten about.
• On one call we were asked to bring the car in, and when we politely declined the person on the phone called our caller a jerk as he hung up.
• The on-site mystery shopper stood at the front counter and was not acknowledged by anyone in the shop until he begged for help from someone walking by the front desk.

We then surveyed the people working on the front and found neither of the two had any professional training in the area of sales, and one of them did not like selling or having to deal with customers!

I went over the findings with the shop owner. He was shocked and a bit embarrassed.  I told him to stop beating himself up, this wasn’t uncommon.   Often a shop owner can be the last to know the true condition of the front once he stops actively running the day-to-day operation of the business.

Then I told him this key concept.  “A shop can have a great advertising campaign, a very good looking, professional website and it will be all for naught and waste a ton of money if the shop has the wrong or untrained people on the front counter.  THE PEOPLE ON THE FRONT WILL EITHER MAKE OR BREAK A BUSINESS!”

We went over a list of attributes that his front people needed to be successful and checked to see how they stacked up.

Attributes of a Good Front Person

• They have to like people
• They have to enjoy the game of sales
• They have to be highly skilled at communication
• They have to know how to sell and close the deal
• They have to really care about the customers and the shop
• They have to enjoy responsibility
• The have to be organized
• They need to have good computer skills

Measuring his front people against this list, we came up with a solid plan to get his ship righted and went to work. We started monitoring his reaches and sales on a weekly basis, and started getting his guys grooved in on the “Good Attributes” and got them really selling!

The turn-around for this shop was not something that happened overnight, but is also did not take forever either, and the results where nothing short of miraculous.

I called the shop the other day and was greeted promptly and professionally by a cheerful individual who was a joy to speak with.  The results of a follow-up round of mystery shopping showed a 180 degree turn in the front, and the statistics prove it.   Sales were up 26% and the owner is breathing a lot easier these days!

MANAGEMENT SUCCESS! Training and Consulting

FIND THE BLACK HOLE IN YOUR SHOP! TAKE THE TEST!

Organization By Lisa Shomo Management Success!

When I walked into Steve McNamara’s general repair shop in Huntington Beach, CA, I got a sense of order and organization. It is clean, the staff knows what they are doing, no one is frantically searching for parts or paperwork, the manager is clearly in charge and has control of both the front and the back. The staff is very happy and eager to get their job’s done. Steve (pictured right) can leave his shop every night knowing they’ve done a good day’s work. He can return home unburdened with the problems that often happen in an unorganized shop.

Having a bad day at the shop can lead to a miserable night on the home front. Situations such as a problem customer, bad debts, or financial losses can end up bringing everybody in your life outside of work down a few notches.

If a husband and wife work together in the business, they’re likely taking their arguments to the dinner table, sharing the stress with the rest of the family or hashing it out in front of the customers.

Or are you a shop owner who gets home late in the evening, doesn’t get to sit in the bleachers for his kid’s game, or is just plain tired all the time?

Perhaps your thoughts are constantly back at the shop—thinking about all the things that you left undone, or need to do when you open up the next morning.

There is relief for the stressed-out, tired, overworked shop owner—organization.

Organization for your shop means owning a shop that is well-run and profitable. A shop that is completely organized will continue to stay organized the next day, and the day after that. Worry will never follow you home from the shop. Your family and home life stay happy; your shop stays organized and profitable.

Getting organized can require some motivation. Here’s an example. Years ago, you asked that special person out on a date. And they said yes! Before the date, you washed the car, pressed your favorite shirt or bought a new one, found out what food they liked and made reservations at the best restaurant and left early enough to pick them up on time. You planned it out and organized enough of the details so the night would go perfectly.

In your shop, suppose you have an investor or important financial source coming in for a visit. You might get your shop super clean and tidy with everything put away in its place. You would also ensure your staff looks presentable with new uniform shirts and everyone has their best foot forward.

Organized businesses are valuable and worth more money. It’s true in lots of little ways. A crisp operation inspires trust and respect. Customers always notice when a shop is running efficiently. When everything is designed to flow smoothly, work becomes easier, things get done quicker and you have more free time. This can spill over into your home life. Money spills over too! Having a truckload of cash doesn’t necessarily make a happy home, but it can sure help. A well-managed, tightly organized shop makes a lot more money than one that is not. You can bank on that.

MANAGEMENT SUCCESS! Auto Shop Analysis

 FIND THE BLACK HOLE IN YOUR SHOP! TAKE THE TEST!

What Does it Really Take to Make a Shop Profitable? - by Robert Spitz, Management Success!

Bob Spitz
VP Production
Management Success!

Ten years ago an independent repair shop owner could make a pretty good profit. Today, for many, it’s much tougher. Why? Did the industry really change that much in ten years?

Yes it has.

Many things about running a shop have changed, making it more difficult to make a profit. So, ten years later there are shop owners working impossible hours and literally going broke doing so.

But there are some shops that do make big money—even in the face of these huge industry changes. How is that possible, you ask?

Small to Mid-Size Shops

In most small shops that are doing up to $25K in sales a month, the owners have come from the technical side of the business.  Their time is primarily spent fixing cars.

Other small to mid-size shops have pushed their monthly sales to around $45K.  The owner is usually also the service writer and oversees the rest of the business.  Their technicians fix most of the cars. Sometimes, owners bring in their wives or girlfriends to help.

What these shops have in common is that their business grew to a certain level of monthly sales and then ran into a barrier that stopped the business from growing.

Common Barriers for Small to Mid-Size Shops

• Problems finding good help.
• Not enough customers.
• Working too many hours.
• Not making enough money.
• Owner being overwhelmed.  (“My shop is so unorganized!”)
• Owner has to check on everything or else nothing gets done right.

The barriers become unsolvable.  Owners try everything they can think of to come up with a solution.  When you talk to shops that have been in business for 5 to 30 years and are still struggling with the above problems, you find that most of the owners have given up.

Unfortunately, they often decide to close or sell the shop, turn the shop over to a family member, just hope it will get better or simply keep on doing the same thing until they retire or die. They get to the point where they won’t believe anyone that tells them there might be a solution to their problem.

Bigger Mid-Size & Large Operations

The number of shop owners who have taken their business to the next level is much smaller.  These are shops doing between $50K - $90K in monthly sales.  They will occasionally help the service writer or help in the back, but normally they are not working in the operation on a day to day basis.  But these shops run into barriers, too.

Common Barriers for Bigger Mid-Size & Large Shops

• Getting someone to manage with the same care factor as the owner.
• Getting someone to manage the way that the owner wants it to be done.
• Running into problems when a key person, either the manager or a good technician, is lost.

Here you have owners who can run the shop themselves, but are unable to get the job fully turned over to someone else.

There is another group of owners who have pushed their operations above $90K to over $200K in sales a month.  They can come and go as they please.  Most don’t open their shops in the morning.  They have a service writer or manager who runs the day-to-day operation. Here the owner has successfully turned over the job of running the shop to someone else.

They will tell you that they have no real problems and they are not really interested in taking their shop to the next level.  Eventually, they will start to tell you about the barriers that they have run into and why they have decided not to expand further.

Expanded to the Next Level Then Fell Back

Some owners in this group got the business to the next level then something happened to pull them back down.  Sometimes they lost a good manager or a key technician. Other times, they started to get alarming reports from their good customers along with a drop in business.  When they investigated they found the manager was creating problems and decided to go back to running the shop themselves.

Multiple Shop Locations

Finally, there are shop owners who open multiple locations.  They also eventually have problems.  They expand to a level just beyond the ability of the staff to effectively control and run the business.

The owners are not involved with the operation, they’re doing something else.  They hire a general manager to run shop operations.

During the growth they can make money like mad. They start just opening stores and putting people in place very fast.  But eventually the organization starts to have trouble.  The owner gets frustrated because he tells the management what to do and while some changes are made, most of it doesn’t get done.

Common Barriers for Multiple Shop Locations

• Expansion happens too quickly to put real systems in place.
• Owner can not get management to run the locations the way he wants them to be run.
• Owner can not implement changes in the way things are run.
• Training staff doesn’t always help.

If he starts going into his shops and inspecting, he will likely find all kinds of things that he has strict policy against.  They are not doing it his way and he can’t seem to be able to implement the changes he wants.  He has all kinds of training programs, some of which help while others don’t.  The operation starts to flounder.

The Real Problem

There are three things that you need in order to be a really successful multi-location operation.  Having a system for production and getting it implemented is one of the missing basics.  Another is the right organizational structure. The last is the ability to find and train the right people to do the job.

The trick is having a successful model in one shop, then be able to duplicate that model in multiple locations. Most owners expand too quickly to control the operation.

The Real Solution

At every one of these levels, there are common barriers that must be handled in order to expand and be more profitable.  The owner’s inability to handle a problem is solely based on his lack of knowledge of how to handle that problem.  The more you grow, the more management knowledge and skills you need.  It is the key. Otherwise, growth stops and profits plummet.

At Management Success! we have helped shop owners to solve each of these problems.  Isn’t it time that you quit being frustrated or just hoping things will get better?  Isn’t it time that you learned how to solve the problem that is preventing you from taking your business to the next level? Isn’t it time you started making the profits your shop should really be making? It is. Now is the time.

MANAGEMENT SUCCESS! "How to Increase Your Profits" Seminar Description

FIND THE BLACK HOLE IN YOUR SHOP! TAKE THE TEST!