Have you ever heard yourself say “I miss the good old days”? Well, our auto service industry certainly has changed over the last 10 years and we need to make sure we are prepared to handle the changes in order to stay in business and make money.
In the past, 80% of the cars we saw were broke cars and 20% of the cars where oil change / PMI cars. Unfortunately, time has changed so that we now see 70% oil change / PMI cars and only 30% broke cars. Many of us either do not realize this shift has occurred or maybe we do not want to believe the “good old days” are gone.
The question that remains is “How do we effectively manage our business and make money in this new era in our industry”? We need to move our “A” team service managers and “A” team technicians over to cover the oil change / PMI cars. In the past, we had our “A” team handling the 80% broke cars and the “B” team was working the oil change / PMI cars. When the shift in our industry occurred, many of us kept our “A” team on the broke cars, but now they are only seeing 30% of the cars that are coming into our shops. That meant our “B” team was seeing 70% of the cars (oil change / PMI cars) that came in to our shops and our financial future was in their hands.
We need to make the change. We need to have a system in place to effectively handle the 70% of our cars that are coming in with oil changes / PMI’s. We need to get our best sales people and best technicians working on the 70% of the cars that are oil change / PMI cars that are coming into our shops. When we make this change, we have our “A” team handling most of the cars that come through our shops, thus we have a greater chance to make each transaction more profitable.
When we execute at the front counter with our best people, we have made the shift in our business to handle the new way people shop in our industry.