The Baker’s Dozen Attributes of a Highly Successful Automotive Business

It’s Your Business

Subject: Characteristics of the best automotive-repair businesses
Essential Reading: Shop Owner, Center Manager
Author: Terry Greenhut, Transmission Digest Business Editor

How do you succeed in the automotive aftermarket these days? It’s simple; just be the best at everything. Have the best-managed and most technically accomplished shop, and you’re in – or are you? If you don’t market your business and use terrific sales techniques you’re back out again. Today your success is based on your proficiency in all aspects of the business.

Of course, it wasn’t always this way. When there wasn’t a shop on every corner, all pretty much making the same offers to the motoring public and providing similar services, customers would seek out our specialties and sometimes even be OK with paying us a little bit extra for working our magic to repair their vehicles. Ah, those were the days! Alas, they’re gone. Now we compete for everything; not only for customers but also for the really great managers, service advisers and technicians we need to maintain the highest possible level of service.

If a truly great shop is one that has the following 13 attributes, then there are lots that just don’t fit the profile:

1) Creates conditions that allow for a high but steady volume of sales at very profitable prices by having a well-trained sales staff who really care about providing the best possible experience for the customer.
2) Has the same crew of 100% or better producers for many years, who attend training classes regularly with a turnover rate that’s almost non-existent.
3) Is kept antiseptically clean.
4) Is a friendly environment in which customers and employees are made to feel comfortable.
5) Is a place where you hear bursts of laughter several times each day coming from both the office/waiting room and the shop.
6) Is a business in which quality is so important that the shop employs a “quality-control technician” to make absolutely certain problems are diagnosed properly and repaired perfectly the first time. He signs off on the job or it doesn’t go.
7) Is one in which image is so important that repainting walls and floors and updating signage are ongoing everyday projects so nothing ever appears shabby.
8) Is a shop where customer follow-up isn’t done when a manager or secretary has nothing better to do but is performed every day for every customer to ensure that they are happy and prompted to return for additional recommended services and repairs.
9) Is one in which a great deal of advertising is a constant, not only for new customers but also to bring back existing ones.
10) Employs a full-time outside salesperson to continually go after new wholesale, corporate and fleet accounts while servicing those that already exist.
11) Has an owner who invites constructive criticism from customers, employees and sometimes outside experts, and isn’t too proud to learn new methods or take the time and invest the money necessary to relearn the old standbys of business that work so well.
12) Is a shop that runs so nicely that the owner knows he or she can go on vacation and the amount of revenue will be the same as if they were there.
13) Is a business that weathers any recession, because it has created and continues to grow such a large base of satisfied customers.

Some shops could be great with just a little tweaking; others would require a complete overhaul, including that of the owner’s attitude toward his or her business and the industry.

Unfortunately, the shops that range anywhere from mediocre to just plain horrible outnumber the truly great ones, but that is beginning to change because it has to. They won’t last too much longer in this very quickly changing and demanding environment.

The owners of shops that just squeak by all have some things in common. They all wonder where the good customers are and, as a result, where the money is that they need to be really successful. Many blame their troubles on the economy of the area in which they operate; others blame the competition or the fact that it’s so difficult to find and keep good technicians but hardly any ever blame themselves. Their troubles are always somebody else’s fault.

The super-successful shop owner doesn’t have the need or the time to blame anyone for anything. He or she is too busy generating business that will make money, which is precisely the owner’s obligation: to bring in as much new profitable business as possible.

I’m very lucky. I get to visit some of the best shops our industry has to offer. I’m winging my way home from one right now. It’s what inspired me to write this piece.

As I head toward the East Coast from a major city in Middle America, I can’t stop thinking about the wonderful experience I just had providing some consultation and training for this shop. It is a true “specialty” shop in the modern-day sense of the word. It specializes in making a really good profit by providing excellent service to very happy customers – customers, I might add, who pay top dollar for the opportunity to have their vehicles serviced and repaired so professionally and painlessly. Even watching the little butterflies scatter from their wallets when they pay their bills doesn’t seem to bother them.

This isn’t the first time I’ve performed these services for this shop. The owner brings me in two to three times a year to either train an up-and-coming service adviser or refresh the skills of those I’ve already had the pleasure of training. I call it a pleasure because it is. This owner hires only people who fit in with his philosophy of running a business, which just happens to be mine as well. He hires people with dynamite personalities and can-do attitudes. I’ve often said I can teach anybody to do just about anything if they have the right attitude.

You might say he models his business after the Walt Disney philosophy. First, he wants his shop to be a happy place, maybe not the happiest place on earth like Disney World, but one where employees enjoy coming to work and customers actually smile when they pick up their cars and pay their bills. And trust me, they’re not smiling because the prices are low, because they aren’t. They’re high, probably the highest in the area and definitely higher than in most of our other major cities. No, customers smile because they feel the love, the warmth and the caring shown them by every employee.

The shop specializes in transmission, four-wheel-drive and all related services on trucks of all sizes, with general repair on passenger cars being a recent addition. It’s in one of the cities suffering from the over-building of houses and a high foreclosure rate, yet its parking lot is constantly packed with fresh jobs while many of its lower-priced competitors go begging for work. When you drive by this shop or call it on the telephone you instantly know why. The look of the facility and the genuine interest in helping customers instantly make you feel like doing business with them. I got so excited I almost let them service my rental car.

Managers and service advisers at this shop are consistently happy to help customers. They don’t just put on an act to get customers in the first time. They make every visit the same wonderful experience, which I guess is why even though customers are paying for something no one wants to buy, they do it with hardly any objection.

In the rare case of a comeback customers are treated even better (if that’s possible) than they were when the job first was done. A ride or a loaner car is always offered and the complaint is given top priority. An apology is offered along with some kind of a free service to make certain the customer will continue to come in.

In the case of a job that fails after the warranty is over they ask the customer how much he or she thinks they should have to pay. If the job isn’t too far out of warranty and the customer says, “I don’t think I should have to pay anything,” many times they will agree and say, “I don’t think you should have to pay anything, either.” The act of going into agreement with the customer in such a situation solidifies the relationship for the long term, not to mention the great referrals the shop will get from it.

If the job is well out of warranty and the customer knows it, he or she might put a higher price on it than the service adviser would have. Then he just says, “You’re probably right, but I’m not going to charge you that much. I’ll just do it for $____.” That makes the customer feel really special.

The owner of this facility – we’ll call him “Big Daddy,” because that’s what his friends call him and everyone is his friend, among other things – is a clean freak. I’ve never before seen a shop that can operate at such a high volume and rate of efficiency yet look as if no one has worked on a car in it. He loves to take new customers on the tour because he knows how impressed they will be. All the technicians are in very sharp uniforms and are told to change clothes if they get involved in a job that gets them dirty. They are inspected by someone in authority before they are allowed to run an errand or meet a customer.

Although all the technicians are paid on a flat-rate hourly basis and are constantly hustling to break the 100% efficiency standard so they can make really good paychecks, they keep their work areas spotless. Each vehicle is protected from dirt or damage as another show of respect for the customer’s property.

Big Daddy wants every customer to know exactly what they are paying for and why, so service advisers take extra time with customers to make sure they understand everything. New customers’ vehicles are always put through a complete front-to-back and top-to-bottom inspection while the customers are being asked the qualifying questions that indicate what they might object to when eventually quoted the price.

Although some shops offer good, better and best service, this one makes only the initial offer of its best service. Only if all attempts fail because of the customer’s financial situation will other alternatives be considered. As a result of this steadfast commitment to top-quality service, the shop sells far more of its best services than its competitors do.

You might say that Big Daddy is a very demanding boss, and he is. He demands the best for his friends and customers (who are, of course, the same people). By doing so he also creates an atmosphere in which employees and customers can thrive. As a result, ticket averages are high, the frequency of customers turning down services offered is very low, and employees stick around a long time – a winning combination.

Although this shop may not be the “happiest place on earth” by Walt Disney’s definition, it is one of the happiest automotive facilities I’ve ever had the pleasure to visit.

Visit www.TerryGreenhut.com.