Management Articles

By Tom Ham. Are the people at your front desk too technical? Does your shop have a good incentive pay plan? Do you have options available for your customers? Check out the latest Auto Shop Monthly Management Tips from the Automotive Management Network to get inside secrets on managing your shop and increasing your bottom line.

By Bob Cooper. Anyone who has been selling service for any length of time will agree that there are two kinds of customers. The first is the customer who has a history of making good decisions, not just with auto repair, but with most decisions. And then we have the other kind of customer: the kind of person who more often than not makes the wrong decisions. Let’s use maintenance service as an example.

By Tom Ham. Are new car dealers eating your lunch? Can you just take a quick look at it? You send oil change reminders to who? Check out the latest Auto Shop Monthly Management Tips from the Automotive Management Network to get inside secrets on managing your shop and increasing your bottom line.

By Tom Ham. Is there any rhyme or reason to your parking lot? No time for inspections with customers waiting? Are you utilizing the factory maintenance schedules? Check out the latest Auto Shop Monthly Management Tips from the Automotive Management Network to get inside secrets on managing your shop and increasing your bottom line.

By Bob Cooper. If you want to build a more profitable, successful business, here are five tips that work!

By Tom Ham. Is your dumpster an eyesore at your shop? Are you using email correspondence to its fullest potential? What does your Customer Area look like? Check out the latest Auto Shop Monthly Management Tips from the Automotive Management Network to get inside secrets on managing your shop and increasing your bottom line.

By George Witt. There is sure a lot of talk about this subject. I hope this helps give you a strategy to deal with “the competition”. I am surprised and disappointed that so few of us truly understand the business we are in and who our target market really is. I hope that none of you really believe that those people laying on their backs in the parts store parking lots all across this great country of ours are really any kind of prospect for our repair businesses. Good Heavens.

By Tom Ham. What have you done about lost customers? Have you looked extensively at your website lately? Do you have any plans for your sign? Check out the latest Auto Shop Monthly Management Tips from the Automotive Management Network to get inside secrets on managing your shop and increasing your bottom line.

If referrals are number one, then why do so few shop owners put much effort into getting more of them? Do you really want to know what your customers are […]

A little while back I wrote an article concerning key numbers for auto service shops. The numbers covered at that time included total spending, total gross profit, potential work found per car, number of oil changes, number of new customers and tech vs. non-tech ratio. I was recently asked to cover some additional key numbers, so here we go!

By Mitch Schneider. Intermittent automotive service problems are one of the few things capable of terrifying and paralyzing folks on both sides of the service counter.
Everyone is terrified of something. It’s a fact of life.
Probe deep enough, look hard enough and you will find a phobia that is if not paralyzing, then, at the least, debilitating.
If that fear isn’t enough to inhibit your ability to act, I’ll bet it is significant enough to ensure that at least some of your actions fall out of the realm of what most of us might consider “normal” — whatever normal means.

What would you say is the most valuable tool in your auto repair shop? If you did not answer your shop management system, then you could be missing out on many opportunities to streamline your business and maximize success.

By George Witt. I remember my first job as a Service Advisor in a dealership, before shop management computer systems.  The training was intensive— “Here’s your clip board, there’s your […]

By George Witt. It gets plenty cold in Nebraska and we have a saying that “the only thing between us and the North Pole is a barbed-wire fence”. The wind […]

By George Witt, AAM. There are some who will argue that there is a Great Division now forming in our Industry between the shops who don’t attend training, don’t buy […]

By George Witt. Occasionally, all shop owners have to deal with personnel problems of one sort or another. It may be keeping the shop clean, work quality, attendance or any […]

By Doug Fentiman.  When dealing with service failures (screw-ups) and angry customers you really need to think about the long term consequences of how you respond. Social Networking is all […]

Would A Woman Consider You A Good Salesman? If you really want to know what makes a good salesman, ask a woman. Holy mackerel! Ask that question of any woman who has shopped for anything and then had to depend on that company to do the work or repairs. You will learn volumes about making customers happy and the proper way to sell work and end up with the woman raving about how wonderful you are.

By George Witt. These are common consumer complaints and a frequent source of conflicts with customers. If you work on many older cars, fixing oil leaks can get you into […]

If we take a look at a shop that survives slow times and another shop that closes its doors we will find the difference is typically in several key numbers. And, contrary to what many believe, those numbers are primarily due to the choices and the decisions of the shop owner.

On a daily basis we hear the words “how can I afford training if I can barely afford payroll?” Although this year was predicted to be a good year for automotive repair shops, car counts are still low and you can hear a pin drop in many service bays across the country. There is an end in sight, however, as business has begun slowly picking up over the last couple of months for many repair shops that we do business with.

How you communicate, verbally and non-verbally, is very important in conveying a sense of importance and recognition to customers. They want to be understood, and be recognized as important to you and your business.

By George Witt. Yellow pages, direct mail, newspaper, coupon book or Newsletter? Many shop owners agonize over the best way to bring business to their shops. Heaven knows, a ton of money can be mowed through in a short period of time seeking the answer.

Fort Myers, FL – March 23, 2009 – As businesses struggle to stay afloat in this tough business climate, AVI has released a management training video series with AMI approved instructor George Witt, to help independent auto repair shops survive. The series How to Survive in Tough Times and Prosper consists of three DVD’s: Critical Components of the Front End, Eat Your Competition Alive, and Secrets of Running a Zoo.

I call it the “bonehead cycle” of the Independent Repair Shop. Workers in the average Independent Auto Repair Shop are sick of being treated like dirt, working in poorly lit and ill-equipped conditions on junk cars that “just need to be fixed so they can get by.” The boss constantly complains that the workers are making more than he is and they ain’t making much.

By Charlie Fewell. Face it; you have no control over the state of the economy or the potential loss of revenue and profits that may occur when times are tough. You do in fact have total control over your behaviors during any economic slowdown. Many companies pull back and reduce overall spending in an attempt to preserve the bottom line.

By Bill Haas. Remember the days when you could open the doors of your shop in the morning and customers would drop off the keys to broken cars all day long? It wasn’t that long ago, but a lot has changed in a short time. Vehicles are built better, last longer and require less maintenance, and more businesses are offering automotive solutions to vehicle owners. Specifically, automobile manufacturers and dealerships are attempting to be a significant influence on when and where vehicle owners have service performed.

We all know that look. We get it from customers from time to time.A guy drives up, parks out front and asks, “I’ve got a tail light out, can you put one in for me real quick?” You say, “Sure.” After it’s put in, you tell the guy, “All fixed and we checked all the other lights, too. Everything’s good. That’ll be $13.00.” The guy gives you the “Deer In the Headlights look” (DIH) and says…