From tornadoes, hurricanes and floods to fires, earthquakes and more, no one knows when or where a disaster might strike. Natural disasters can cripple cities and towns in their wake, leaving homeowners and businesses to clean up the mess for months – and sometimes – years to come.
A good employee handbook records the company’s rules and communicates them to your employees in an easy, understandable way. If a handbook is well drafted, it provides helpful information on what’s expected from employees and what they can expect from their employer. It can also provide the foundation for any employment decisions you need to make and – if the situation arises – form the backbone for the defense of many lawsuits brought against you by employees.
If you’ve ever seen a ‘buy local’ bumper sticker or stopped at the local farmers’ market on a Saturday morning, then you’ve seen the buy local movement at work. Through business alliances, local chambers of commerce and community events, the movement encourages consumers to support locally-owned, independent businesses because of the unique and rewarding benefits they have to offer.
Perhaps the worst time to look to hire a technician, is when we lose one. At that point we go into “Crisis Hire” mode. We most often settle for anyone, rather than taking our time to find the right person. We need to take a lesson from large organizations and sports teams. Their strategy? They continually recruit. I did not say continually hire, I said continually recruit.
What would one more visit per year from your best customers mean for your shop? Let’s say you have 100 current customers and the average customer comes in twice per year. If you can get each one to come in once more every year, you would grow your sales by 50% without spending a dime.
Imagine you could save your customers time, money and frustration all while earning their loyalty and adding to your shop’s bottom line. Instead of trying to convince a mistrusting customer that his or her vehicle needs important maintenance work based on a mileage estimate programmed into your CRM software, imagine knowing to the exact mile how much that vehicle has been driven and having proof that said maintenance is needed.
The Fair Labor Standards Act and State Wage and Hour laws regulate things such as overtime pay, minimum wage, record-keeping and more for virtually every employer, regardless of size or sector. Violations of federal and state Wage and Hour regulations can completely shut a business down, particularly a small business, because the costs associated with wage and hour claims are staggering.
Over the years our industry has seen many changes. For example, beyond the changes in styling and efficiencies, today’s vehicles are better built, they last longer, and they require less frequent servicing than they have in the past. But there is one emerging trend that will have a far greater impact on our industry than all the other changes combined. Consider this …
All great companies have one thing in common: They realize industries and consumers need change, so they follow their customers. Apple provides a great example. As we all know, when Apple started they were a computer company, but when that industry began to decline, Steve Jobs was able to see that his targeted customers were investing in music. This is why Apple Computers became Apple Inc., is why they reached a point a few years ago where their online music sales exceeded their computer sales, and is why today they are in the mobile device business.
As I teach all of my clients, effectively improving an organization’s sales and customer service effort should begin with an honest evaluation of the company’s current performance to establish a baseline from which improvements can be addressed and measured. One of the best ways to clearly gauge current performance is to perform a SWOT analysis.
