Around this time of the year, many of you are looking to finish strong on your numbers. You are usually shoring up your crew for the slower, colder months (for some of us) and looking at how it will all end. Are you going to be down in customers or sales from the year before? This is a concern for those with new competition in your markets. Are you looking to hit a few year-end goals to pad the bottom line for a positive year? Well, that's most of us! As you wind down your 2024 campaign, don’t forget to prepare for a strong start to 2025. Let’s review things to make it as successful as you want.
Know Your Numbers
One of the most important things to set yourself up for success is to set the proper metrics. If you’re in a spot where there's new competition and it’s affecting your sales and car counts, you need to compensate for that. Don’t set each month’s car counts higher than what you're doing right now. A good way to deal with that, regardless of competition, is to set yourself to comp numbers. If you did it last year, do it again. It’s a simple way to gauge the impact on your business. In most cases, car counts are not positive trending, so being able to match what you did puts you on a positive. A second thing to look at is your price. Are you comparable to your competitors or are you lower? Raising your price a few dollars could compensate for lost car counts. These are two things you could consider going into a new year. If you’re a manager or an operator, we all know that most people will try to give you what you ask for.
Get the Right People in Place
So, you have achievable metrics. They may not be what you were hoping for, but sometimes it's better to set yourself up for reality without reaching. Do you have the right people to make this happen? With the slower months here, now is a good time to identify your core team and work on the roles. Do you have a customer service advisor who can generate the sales you're seeking? If not, this can be an opportunity to take a performing advisor and allow them to train some of the newer ones. Check Indeed or another hiring site for salespeople. It's not that you want to sell to your customers, but to acquire a skill set. The gift of gab is not in your everyday technician, so look to put yourself in the best position. You can do this within all your positions. You want to provide quick service. Set up some position classes with your best people. This allows you to improve the bay teams without having to be in multiple locations at once. Think smarter, not harder. If you don’t have the right team members, work on finding and training replacements now rather than going into a new year at a disadvantage.
Be Business Ready
Are your stores ready for business? Can you add a new service or a new machine/lift to increase your sales? Look at the return on investment with a new drive-over lift, for example. If it's $5,000 for a lift, and you offer them at $25.00 a piece, that is only two hundred rotations. If you can increase the number you can do by adding a second or third lift to avoid moving cars around, you can easily see a return in a few months. Do you want to improve comfort in your lobby areas? Change your seating or add an amenity to make it more enjoyable. Remember: An oil change is a negative purchase. It’s not something people wake up excited to get and spend money on. If we can do something as simple as offering coffee or a bottle of water to put a smile on someone’s face, then it is worth the effort.
You can do all these things or none of them. These are ideas and suggestions for things you can do to improve your operations. If you are a manager of a location, you can take some of these ideas and do them yourself, especially training. What stops you from getting your best hood tech to work with the others to improve their skills? What if you’re the customer service manager, what stops you from training your second and third in the shop to be as good as you are? What you don’t want to do is nothing. That can be the definition of insanity.
