Do You Come to Play or to Win?

It’s Your Business

Subject: Developing a winning attitude
Essential Reading: Shop Owner, Center Manager
Author: Terry Greenhut, Transmission Digest Management Editor

As many of you know I am an avid golfer among other things. I meet lots of people when I golf. Many of them are out there to play the game. They want to drive the cart or walk around in the sun and just be happy that they are out there away from the responsibilities of life for five hours.

They do what they think is the best they can, but the effort they put into the game is lackluster at best. Most don’t spend any time on the practice tee loosening up and grooving their swing before they start or on the putting green testing their speed and stroke, either. They come out completely cold and unprepared, then wonder why their first tee shot of the round goes directly into the woods.

Of course, at that point they curse their fate while they try to blame the worker on the lawn mower for making too much noise while they were hitting. Then they call themselves names that if anyone else would ever call them they would punch that person square in the face. And oh, yes, their brand-new $3 Titleist ball is gone forever.

I guess a good question would be, “Why would you come out cold and hit a brand-new, expensive ball off the first tee?” And the answer is, “Hope springs eternal.” Every golfer would like to think he or she can get out there and hit the ball like Tiger Woods or Annika Sorenstam, and why not? Without the hope of greatness what would they have to play for?

The problem most golfers have is that they come out to play, not to win. Although many of them get really upset with their bad shots, they never have much of a plan for hitting good ones consistently. They don’t put a lot of effort into learning and practicing, yet they expect superior results. I’ve often said that I believe the difference between an amateur and a professional or very-low-handicap golfer is that when the amateur hits a good shot he’s surprised, and when a pro hits a bad shot he’s surprised. It’s all about expectations. The amateur doesn’t expect a very good result because he knows he hasn’t put much effort into learning the craft, but the pro expects the best outcome to compensate him for his hard work.

I’ve never watched a professional golf tournament in which any participant wasn’t trying to win. They don’t say, “I just want to play well enough to make a paycheck.” That might happen, and does much more often than winning, but it isn’t what they come out for. Every one of them thinks he or she can win, and why shouldn’t they? The difference between the best and worst golfers on the pro tours is only a few strokes, yet still the cream always seems to rise to the top. The players who hit hundreds of balls a day and have instructors and coaches on retainer, who continually look for a better swing and more-advanced equipment, and who won’t accept defeat are the winners. As the old saying goes, “Show me a good loser, and I’ll show you a loser.”

I watched Tiger Woods win his fifth tournament in a row yesterday. That may not sound too spectacular to you, but when you realize that 125 guys who are all just about as good were trying as hard as they could to beat him, it’s amazing. Vijay Singh, who came in second, was three strokes ahead of Tiger going into the final round after shooting a 10-under-par 61 the day before to tie the course record. Tiger, who came to win, made up those three strokes in the first few holes of the last round and then went three more up and never looked back.

Enough about golf; let’s talk about fishing. I attended a lecture recently at which the guest speaker told an interesting story about himself on a fishing trip in Florida. He started out by telling us that he did not consider himself a fisherman because a fisherman is someone who is interested in the sport of fishing. It’s a person who wants to know what kind of bait the fish will eat and when, what kind of equipment is best in what situation and how conditions such as weather and currents will affect the fish’s behavior. That didn’t describe him. The only thing he wanted to know from the captain of the charter boat was, “Will we catch a lot of fish?” You see, he wasn’t interested in fishing; he was interested in catching fish. He wasn’t coming to play, he was coming to win.

As you can see there is a big difference between playing golf and winning at golf, fishing and catching fish, and showing up for work every day and making a success of it.

Winners expect to win. What do you say to yourself when you look in the mirror every morning? Do you say, “OK, Joe, time to go to work again,” or do you say “Hey, Joe, time to go break that record we set last month”?

Although the desire to win is a major factor, the knowledge of how to win is just as important, because if you keep trying but don’t know how, after a while you give up, thinking that you just aren’t good enough to be any better than you are today. So once you’ve decided that you are in this game to win, not just to play, the next thing you need to do is to figure out what you want there to be at the end of the rainbow and how you’re going to get it. It’s about setting unshakable, cast-in-concrete goals that you will achieve (not might achieve, but will achieve). You see, if you go into only it half-heartedly, it won’t work. You’ll allow the first obstacle you hit to derail your effort.

Set achievable goals with incremental levels between so that every day there is something to win. You want to be able to go home each night with the feeling that you have moved closer to your goal.

Let’s say your business does $500,000 a year in sales right now and you set a goal to bring it to $600,000 by this time next year. That means you will have to increase sales by $100,000.

Breaking that number down to one that makes much more sense to people like us, who tend to gauge our progress on what we do each week, an increase of $2,000 a week would be necessary. Since a transmission overhaul runs around $2,000 these days, one job a week – just one measly job – is all you would have to sell additionally to reach your goal. Now, how hard can that be? Well, it might be hard if you don’t have good, solid sales skills, or a decent advertising program, or if you think outside sales is something the other guy should be doing but it’s beneath you to go around knocking on corporate doors looking for business. It isn’t very difficult at all, though, if you’re as up to date with your management skills as you are with your technical ones.

Think about it this way: What would I have to do to get one more major a week into this place? Then analyze your systems to see on which ones you can improve.

• Does my advertising work? Does it appeal to the right demographic group? How do I know? Do I ask each caller how they heard of us and why they chose to call us?

• Am I doing a good-enough job of talking the callers into the shop without resorting to take-it-or-leave it pricing that’s just making them hang up on me? If you aren’t closing at least 80% of those callers for an appointment, you need work on your techniques.

• Am I retaining a high-enough percentage of customers who do make a visit to the shop? Not every customer who comes in will actually have a problem, but of the ones who do, your retention rate should be almost 100%. Of the ones who don’t have a problem, a high percentage should be sold preventive-maintenance services and put on the list of future contacts for service reminders, newsletters and coupons.

• Do I get the price I ask a high percentage of the time? If you charge the amount you know you need on the basis of your cost of doing business and the profit you want to make, it will give you confidence that your asking price should be your selling price. That will make you stick to it, and if you do it will force you to learn to do a better job of handling price objections. In fact, you should take the attitude that there is no other price than the one you are quoting. There is no negotiating. Who knows? You might not need an increase in volume, just an increase in price. An increase of $200 for each major repair will give you an additional $2,000 a week on 10 jobs. A little boost in the labor rate and the parts markup could easily handle it.

• Is my shop set up for maximum productivity? Are my technicians well trained? Do I have the right equipment? Do I remove the bottlenecks by having the parts I need on time and assigning the right job to the right technician?

To sum up, it’s like this: To be a winner you have to think and act like one. You have to have the attitude, that little bit of cockiness coupled with confidence, that shows the world you are nobody to be messed with, that everybody needs to get out of your way because you’re going somewhere. You have to do what winners do: study and work hard at your trade, and believe in what you do so that customers and employees will help you achieve your goals.