Car cut off limit. How far do you go?

Hire additional help and increase your advertising

Hire additional help and increase your advertising

Shop is too small for that. Two bay. I advertise alot, But I push the in and out work.

I run a two man shop also.  (Although the shop itself has 8 bays we are still fairly new and still expanding which is why we currently only have two techs...but having the extra bays allows us to keep long term jobs around)

We do not turn away heavy line work during these uncertain times. In my mind another wave of COVID lockdowns could come at any time, so I'm taking in anything I can while I can.

The only things we turn away are things we truly can't do because we don't have the equipment and/or training: (Body Work such as dents and paint, Exhaust Welding Work, transmission rebuilds, and tires)

Even then we don't truly turn anything away. We sublet it out. I have a tire shop, transmission shop, exhaust shop, and body shop that all give me wholesale pricing on their services so I can charge the customers basically the same they would have paid at the other shop and make a small profit while the customer doesn't have to go anywhere else.  (In return I give these other shops wholesale pricing on alignments or other services they can't/prefer not to do themselves) 

Anyway....
The key to these big jobs, is properly setting expectations. And good communication and status updates while the car is in your shop.

I tell the customer right up front that this is a two man shop, and we can't devote more than a couple of hours a day to any one job and properly service our other customers. 

I also find that if I touch base with them every day or two to give them a quick status update they are satisfied that we haven't forgotten about them or shoved them completely to the back burner and generally speaking are pretty patient.

Last month, I had a customer come in with an Acura TL that had a blown head gasket. He wanted us to also just go ahead and replace the timing belt and water pump while we were already in there. 

I told the customer up front that the job is bigger than what a two man shop would normally want to tackle, but we'd be willing to do it IF he could leave the car with us for several weeks. 

He was fine with that (nobody else wanted to do it at all, and some of the other shops were booked out 2-3 weeks anyway).

When we got the heads off, we noticed it wasn't just the head gasket but he also had some burnt valves (He towed it in, so we didn't see the blue smoke to diagnose this in advance)

So, I also sold him a valve grind job. We have a great machine shop we work with that can turn these around in just a couple of days. 

All in all, we got him completely taken care of in under two weeks and he was pleased as punch, and we didn't have to piss off any other customers because we only worked on his when we had time to do so.

During the same two weeks we also had a pickup truck come in with a loud tappet tick. We diagnosed it as a blown head gasket (allowing water into that cylinder causing the hydraulic lifter to collapse), but once we got the heads to the machine shop and they pressure tested them we realized he actually had cracked heads as opposed to a simple gasket leak. 

Sold the customer new heads, new set of lifters and lifter trays. 

We got both of these jobs done in the same two week period without ticking off any of our customers who had smaller jobs, simply through good communication and made a couple thousand dollars in GP combined that we would not have gotten if we turned them away.




 

I also have a two man shop.  From the very beginning, I knew that I had to focus on the jobs that I could do better than most of my competitors.  I am a BMW/Mercedes shop, but end up taking many other makes and models in as a result of my reputation for quality work.  I'm not the cheapest, not the fastest, but honest and thorough.  I turn away many types of jobs because either we don't have the tools to do it, or the job is not one that I am well enough educated/experienced on.  We take on many larger jobs, dealing with a dozen or so cars at a time.  My car count is lower than some shops, but the ARO is a hell of a lot higher than most other shops as a result.  You have to play to your strengths, and do the best you can at what you're the best at.  Trust your gut and do your research. You will be fine! Good luck!

I always add at least an extra day to big jobs, often bill at a higher rate. I also include options, for example used engine, I will have an extra optional job called re seal. 6 hours to re do all gaskets on the used engine. This way the client understands if he declines that job, we are not going to cover his oil leak 6 months from now. If they walk because the price is too high I am pleased as punch. If they decide to move forward I am still profitable that week.