Bob Cooper

The most common reason shop owners are reluctant to fire someone is they feel the employee is either irreplaceable, or it will take a long time to find the right replacement. First of all, everyone is replaceable, and as I have often said to clients, the graveyards are filled with irreplaceable people.

When you start to see a pattern in behavioral issues, such as a tech, manager or service advisor coming in late, here are three things you need to consider.

If there is one thing most shop owners have in common, it’s that they have big hearts. They typically start their careers as technicians, and, as soon as they have their own shops, they want to help as many people as they can. To achieve this goal, they network through their family and friends and do everything in their power to get the word out into their communities about their shop. And then the inevitable happens: they wake up one morning and decide it’s finally time to advertise.

For an industry that was once dominated by males, I’m pleased to have watched us evolve to a point where today we have female technicians, service advisers, managers and shop owners who are superstars in every regard. Without question, there are many powerful ladies throughout our industry who are role models for all of us.

There is no question; if you plan on being successful in the auto repair business, you have to buy high-quality parts. Substandard parts will drive up your repair time, they’ll drive up your warranty claims and they’ll erode your customer base.

If there is one thing our industry has done since the very beginning, it has put technicians into the role of service advisors. The rationale is that they have a good understanding of automobiles, which will enable them to be competent advisors. Unfortunately, that’s the furthest from the truth.

As is true with the top techs, the top service advisors in America need a number of tools in order to succeed. Here’s a list of important tools you can provide to your advisors that will help them maximize sales, customer satisfaction and your shop’s profits.

I am sure we can all agree that our industry, and society, has been going through quite a transformation. One of the changes that’s had an extraordinary impact, and will have an even bigger impact in the coming years, is transparency. Not only do today’s consumers have an expectation of transparency, but they have access to pricing information that was beyond our wildest dreams just a few short years ago.

When it comes to customer complaints, most shop owners are aware that there’s some economic price they’ll ultimately have to pay for the complaint, but will typically have no idea how much each complaint actually costs. This article will aim to bring some clarity to this long-disputed issue.

From the time your advisors first pick up the phone, all the way through your service recommendations, there is one thing that is happening over and over again: The sales process.

If the customer doesn’t feel comfortable with you, it will be a challenge to sell repairs and services. You should always sell yourself first. After the customer is sold on you, you then need to sell them on the technician who is working on their vehicle.

Over the years, I have seen hundreds, if not thousands, of shop owners do irreparable damage to their businesses. This damage occurs when they are mesmerized by the management trainers or consultants who tell them that they can solve all of their problems by raising their prices. Before you listen to the pied pipers who tell you that you can solve all of your problems by jacking up your prices, I wanted to share a different strategy with you.