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Joe Marconi discusses the importance of team collaboration, efficiency, and continuous training in the automotive industry. He highlights the need for effective leadership, a positive company culture, and sound systems and procedures to guide technicians and improve productivity. The conversation also covers the significance of accurate estimating and effective labor rates, the rising costs in various industries, and the importance of a positive and growth mindset in business. Joe Marconi, Executive Council Member, Elite Worldwide. Auto Shop Owner. Joe’s Episodes HERE. Show Notes: The importance of teamwork (00:03:31) Discussion on the complexity of cars and the need for a team effort in improving technician production and shop efficiency. The role of leadership and company culture (00:05:13) Emphasis on the importance of leadership and creating the right company culture to promote technician productivity and efficiency. The significance of training and procedures (00:06:12) Highlighting the value of both external and in-house training, as well as the need for clear procedures and policies to enhance shop production and technician efficiency. The importance of team meetings (00:09:03) Discussing the value of team meetings and how they can improve shop production and encourage innovative ideas. Empowering employees to make decisions (00:11:01) Highlighting the importance of allowing employees to think on their own and make decisions, and the benefits it brings to the growth of the company. Assigning work based on technician strengths (00:12:21) Exploring the strategy of assigning jobs to technicians based on their strengths and expertise, and the impact it has on efficiency and productivity. Labor Rates and Effective Labor Rate (00:15:55) Discussion on the increase in labor rates and the importance of calculating the effective labor rate. Raising Rates and Cost of Fast Food (00:17:05) Conversation about raising rates and the comparison of fast food prices to labor rates. Culture, Leadership, and Productivity (00:19:22) Exploration of the impact of culture, leadership, and workplace satisfaction on productivity and efficiency. Continuous improvement in business (00:24:24) Emphasizing the importance of making incremental improvements in business every day, with the analogy of a lifelong commitment and the absence of a destination in business growth. Thanks to our Partner, Dorman Training. Training technicians today for the challenges of tomorrow! https://www.dormantraininglive.com/ Connect with the Podcast: -Follow on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/RemarkableResultsRadioPodcast/ -Subscribe on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/carmcapriotto -Follow on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/carmcapriotto/ -Follow on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/remarkableresultsradiopodcast/ -Follow on Twitter: https://twitter.com/RResultsBiz -Visit the Website: https://remarkableresults.biz/ -Join our Insider List: https://remarkableresults.biz/insider -All books mentioned on our podcasts: https://remarkableresults.biz/books -Our Classroom page for personal or team learning: https://remarkableresults.biz/classroom -Buy Me a Coffee: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/carm -The Aftermarket Radio Network: https://aftermarketradionetwork.com -Special episode collections: https://remarkableresults.biz/collections Click to go to the Podcast on Remarkable Results Radio

Got your attention? Good! Before I start, let’s get something out of the way. Does technician aptitude or attitude affect the productivity of your shop? Absolutely. But this is the exception, not the rule. If your overall production levels are low, that is the sole responsibility of management. Let’s look at a few reasons for low production levels. The first area I want to address is billing. Many hours of labor go unbilled due to not understanding how to charge. This area is most prevalent with testing and inspecting. If your technicians are handed a work order, with no direction and not a clear process of what to do, or when to stop and ask for labor testing fees, there will be a ton of wasted labor hours, never to be recovered again. Next is training. Service advisor and technical training is a key component to high production levels. But let’s not forget in-house training. All policies and procedures must be reviewed often and refined if needed. Your team must follow a process. With no road map, labor dollars are lost. By the way, if you don’t have procedures in place, you need to make this top priority. Every successful organization has a detailed set of workflow guidelines. Let’s look at shop layout. How organized is your shop? Are shop tools and equipment readily accessible? Or do techs tend to wander around looking for the shop scanner or TPMS reset tool. Are stock items such as wiper blades and oil filters fully stocked and cataloged properly? Do technicians have separate access to technical information? Or are techs waiting to use the same computer station? Again, all these things kill labor production, which kills labor dollars. Next up is scheduling. There should be a structured approach to scheduling where the day is balanced with enough opportunity to make profitable sales. Have a process where vehicle history is reviewed before the customer arrives. Any previous service recommendations or notes is any opportunity to make a sale. But the key ingredient is in preparation. A customer that’s scheduled for an oil change may have forgotten that he or she received a recommendation for tires. Informing the customer at the time of scheduling and preparing for the work ahead of time, greatly improves productivity and overall efficiency. Another problem area is with service advisors and their workload. The service advisor, in many situations, handles the front counter, the phone, scheduling, helps with dispatch, part procurement and sales. All these tasks are critical to the daily operations. However, nothing happens in the shop until a sale is made. You need to look at your service staff. Are estimates getting processed quickly and upsells getting back to the technicians in a timely manner? If not, this is another area where production suffers. Carefully analyze your staff and run the numbers. More estimates processed means more sales and higher profits. Adding a service advisor or an assistant may be the missing link in a shop’s production problem. Knowing your numbers is another key component to attaining high production levels. I will refrain from giving you benchmark numbers, since all businesses models are different. With that said, you need to determine your breakeven and establish your labor goal for the week. Then knowing your labor goal, you need to calculate how many labor hours you need per technician. Then, you need to communicate this number to each technician. Having clear expectations and knowing the goals of one’s position is essential for hitting production goals. With regard to the technician’s responsibility, let’s remember one important fact; the technician has control over his or her efficiency. That’s it. If you dispatch a four-hour ticket to a tech, the ability of the tech to meet or beat that time depends on the technician’s skill, experience and training. There are a lot of other factors that influence production, such as the right pay plan and hiring the right people. But perhaps the most important influence is leadership. The shop owner or manager must study and look at the entire operations of the shop. Productivity goals must be established and then a system of monitoring production must be put into place. This includes sales goals, as well. Service advisors and technicians must get continuous feedback on their progress. Improvements in sales and in production, no matter how small, must be celebrated. The bottom line is this: If you’re not happy with your production level, you need to look at every aspect of your company that influences production. Improvements in key areas put technicians in a position to win. When they win, so do you. This story was originally published by Joe Marconi in Ratchet+Wrench on March 1st, 2019 View full article

Source: Improve Your Repair Shop Production with the Power of Praise!

A Candid Analysis of Today's Workflow Management Tools Lets summarize the tools and processes available to the independent shop owner, service advisor and technician to manage workflow. the service advisor's ability to memorize what is going on the technician's ability to recall what the service advisor said 10 minutes ago or earlier the service advisor'a ability to decipher the tech's scribble The tech's ability to put clear explanations on a piece of paper (work order) the WIP screen in your point of sale software (POS) the printer printing work orders the paper rack holding printed paper sheets the bags keeping the key to the vehicle and the paperwork together the scheduler in your POS a white board or spreadsheet managing the vehicles going through the shop a time punching system or flag sheet The sad part: Not one of these 11 pieces can be skipped. Service advisors are super heros juggling 11 disjointed "management tools" at any time during the day. How do they do this? Super hero ability, you knew it already. Now the even sadder part: In order for the service advisor to juggle all this successfully, they often skip or at least minimize the engagement with the motorist. Lets repeat that with different words:"Service advisors skip advising service because they are too busy doing busy work because the tools available are inadequate." Do you agree, or am I smoking something here? Last but not least, the saddest part: You as owner can't measure behavior today, only results from the POS reports. What does that mean? you don't know what tech is pencil whipping or over recommending you don't know how many recs from the tech uncovered during the inspection make it to estimate (our research revealed 56% of all recommended actions from the tech are not sold. Fifty-six. Do you smell opportunity here as well?) you don't know why the vehicles are in the shop for way too long. Is it the waiting for parts or the service advisor or the dog ate the home work? you don't know why the tech efficiency of tech A is at 95% but of tech B at 53% you can't change behavior if you can't measure it How to we turn 11 disjointed tools into 3 integrated ones? You add a tablet(1) to the techs toolbox, replace the paper rack with a second screen(2) and download SmartFlow(3) to the tablet from the App Store or Google Play and add it to the browser bookmarks on the second screen. Then get rid of paper time punching system laptops in the back shop paper rack running back and forth (you might have to buy the service advisor a gym membership) white board spreadsheets bags flustered service advisors Done. Now your service advisor counter might look like this The photo credit goes to Matt Purselle, he turned a typical two screen setup into a four screen setup. One screen for the POS, one for SmartFlow, one for email, one for everything else. Two are enough for the beginning, some of our clients use only one and it works too, thanks to built-in alerts. Matt's counter looks like this seen with the eyes of the service advisor(s). How do the techs know what is going on? they clock in on the tablet, EVERYTHING is on the tablet now, Identifix, Alldata or Mitchell, work order, inspection sheet, any info they need. They stay at the vehicle and smart-chat with the service advisor and get alerted about new info and new assignments for them. Have you introduced a daily huddle with the techs? Great, do it like Matt and use a 55 inch screen with touch overlay to manage the day. How does that sound to you? Service Advisors are freed up, and can focus on the customer. All recommended actions by the tech are on the estimate now. You can measure and correct tech and service advisor behavior. Pencil whipping, over recommedning, time on the vehicle, tech efficiency and productivity, shop proficiency, anything you want really, since you are digital now. One of our franchise clients just send this over to me Sound to good to be true? Nah. Ask SmartFlow users in your area or us.