Art Little, Author at Transmission Digest - Page 2 of 3
~
Telephone Skills Are Important, Too

I have to start with the telephone procedure. I know that might sound pretty elementary to some of you, but I have been in a lot of shops that do not have one, the smaller ones especially. They just shoot from the hip. That’s why they lose the game on the telephone. If you want a telephone procedure you can get one if you try. AAMCO wrote one 60 years ago, and every franchise and major independent shop since has copied it in one way or another with some small differences and changes over the years. If you can’t get a copy of one, you can come to my website. I am working on a new one and I will send it to you. The point to having a telephone procedure is that it gets you organized. Guys who shoot from the hip don’t know it, but it is much easier to sell off a telephone procedure.

Lead Experts Q & A’s

How do I get more leads? I remember the good old days when you just found a good location and advertised in the only phone book in town. The only other decision was how big to make your ad. Yes, those were the days. It was easy money. However, those days are long gone, and if you are not tuned in to where the leads are and how to get them, you could be losing leads to your competition. The shops that have the latest technology working for them are probably getting to your customers first.

Recruiting Is like a Blind Date

Like going on a blind date, you never know what you are going to end up with in recruiting. We are all going on more blind dates than we would like nowadays.

Unfortunately, recruiting is a game with no defined rules. A lot of promises are made and not kept in this game, and that leads to an unacceptable turnover rate that is hurting our industry. It is a stressful, frustrating and emotional roller-coaster ride that will eventually test every emotion you have. Let’s take a look at the situation and see whether we can do something to make things easier for the shop owner and the employees.

How Do You Spell Freedom?

How does a transmission-shop owner spell freedom ? T-E-C-H-N-O-L-O-G-Y. I don’t know about you, but I have spent more time in a transmission shop than i would like to admit. In my career, it was not uncommon for me to get to the shop at 7 a.m. and leave anywhere from 6:30 p.m. to midnight. I worked every Saturday until 5:30 p.m. and slept all day Sunday. I worked through my vacations and sometimes did not get a vacation for five years. When I was a professional manager I had to quit to get any down time.

Sound familiar? It does not have to be that way nowadays. Today’s shop owner has a variety of technology at his disposal that enables him to leave the shop and still be in control of his business. You just have to slow down and take the time to find out what is possible.

A Game of Winners and Losers

As a recruiter I am looking for three things: talent, attitude and a consistent work ethic. There are other attributes to consider, but that is what I am mainly interested in. That is what I think it takes to be a winner. As a recruiter for the shop, I know that If I can recruit people with those three qualities I will have done my job.

Keeping Customers Happy at the Heat Farm

A manager who worked for me got so wrapped up in the sale that he would say anything to close the sale. Everything would be ready tomorrow at noon with him. No matter what it was or when you asked him, he used the noon delivery time as a crutch to sell and as a stock answer to buy time after the sale. Needless to say, his shop was blown up all the time.

For most of my career, I have walked into shops that are heat farms, where you can cut the tension with a knife – mad customers, owners pointing fingers at the manager, managers pointing fingers at employees, employees pointing their fingers back at management, one ego clashing with another. My goal some days – for real – was to just get out of there without getting beat up by an employee or a customer.

Christmas Vacations

Every year you schedule vacations for your employees. You have to rest your horses, but do you have to rest them when the shop is busy? I have found that most employees would rather take their vacation time at Christmas instead of during the summer if given the choice. I know the kids are out of school in the summer, but they are out of school at Christmas too. Why not schedule some long weekends for your employees during the busy summer months and wait until business slows down at Christmas for long vacations? It may be best for everyone.

Is the Tail Wagging the Dog?

Do you know how many leads you got last week? How many were lost? How many were converted into a sale? How many units did your builder build last week? What was your average parts percentage on major repairs? If you cannot answer core questions like these, the tail is probably wagging the dog at your shop.

Controlling Parts Costs

“Are you out of your mind, Art? I’m not giving my checkbook to the builder!”

That is what I was told by an old-school owner when I was the general manager of his three transmissions shops back in the day. We were arguing back and forth trying to figure out how to get our parts costs in line, like many of you nowadays. His position was that it was, and always has been, the manager’s responsibility to control our parts costs. My position was that we should change that policy and make the rebuilder responsible for which parts we buy and make the manager responsible for selling the repair for enough to reach our parts-percentage goal. That policy change would make the manager accountable for the sales amount and the builder accountable for the parts amount. The installers worked for the builder, and all R&R parts were approved by the builder. The new policy, in effect, would have employees share accountability as a team in an effort to reach our parts-percentage goal.

The Bus to Profitville

The Bus to Profitville

A Little Help

Author: Art Little
Subject Matter: Management
Issue: Minimizing employee turnover

Good Production Strategy Keeps Cash Coming In

In this article, we take a look at cash flow, discussing what it takes to develop a good production strategy so that cash will steadily flow into the bank without delays caused by poor planning. There are two parts of the game. Lead flow deals with getting the vehicle into the shop. Work flow has to do with getting the vehicle out.

Work Status

When I was a young manager, I went to work for a shop that required me to manage work flow. At that time in my career that was unusual, because everywhere else I had worked they did not want me to even entertain the idea of managing work flow.