Business

The “Sellability Score” has become an integral tool in my business in assisting a potential aftermarket business seller in answering crucial questions such as: If you wanted to, could you sell your business today for a number that you’d be happy with? Is there anything that you could be doing each day to make your business more valuable?

The ability to create a brand is no longer under the control of a product or service provider, nor the ad agencies. In today’s world, brands are now created by one entity more than any other, and that entity is social media.

Equipment costs are unavoidable. Whether it’s the front of a shop, back office or in the bay, repair shop owners and tire dealers need a variety of tools to keep their businesses running. The debate for many business owners is if they should buy or lease this equipment. So when it comes time to make equipment acquisition decisions, it’s important for business owners to understand the pros and cons of buying and leasing.

Looking for new ways to address flat sales and low profitability? Try turning all your employees into salespeople. Regardless of an employee’s position or job description, there’s an opportunity for people at all levels to be salespeople. Here are eight ways to make sales part of every person’s job, adapted from Patricia Sigmon’s new book “Six Steps to Creating a Profit.”

While the fate of several business-related tax extenders such as Research & Development tax credits, bonus depreciation, and Section 179 expensing that expired at the end of 2014 is uncertain, there are still a number of end-of-year tax planning strategies businesses can use to reduce their tax burden for 2015.

As a shop owner contemplating the sale of your business, understanding the elements of bank financing is key to ensuring you will maximize the sales price and minimize the process time.

First published in 1990, Stephen Covey’s “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People” is one of the best-selling and most influential personal development books of all time. In this article, we’ll look at each of the habits and how they apply to maximizing success as a sales/customer service professional.

You may have noticed that your customers are starting to get younger. That’s because millennials – the generation born between 1980 and 2000 – have entered their prime spending years. Keep reading to see how to capture their business.

With all that a quality marketing program entails – advertising, social media, public relations and more – doing it right is a big commitment. Tire dealers and repair shops, large and small, must choose the best strategy to make sure all bases are covered. As we discovered when speaking with businesses for this article, sometimes the answer isn’t as simple as handling everything in-house versus hiring an outside agency.

We all know that vehicles are being built better, they are lasting longer, and the competition for auto repair customers is heating up. Accordingly, shop owners are constantly looking for ways to add value to their services in order to separate themselves from their competitors.

People love choices, so if you want to build a more profitable, successful auto repair business, you need to offer your customers options (like a repair with a longer warranty, for example) at every opportunity.

In today’s world, your customers have 24/7 access to the web. Whether it be on their home computer, work computer or their smartphone, no matter where they are they can be online within moments. This is just one of the many reasons today’s consumers are turning to the web for answers, and more and more shops are receiving requests for quotes over the web. This simple three-step guide has been developed to help you better handle those web leads in the most professional way, and turn them into customers at the same time.