There are many ways to invest in your community. Some of them come to you as opportunities to buy an ad in a high school year book. Some of them look like charitable donations to local non-profits.

The trick is to use these opportunities, or even create them for yourself, so you are able to give back to your community, while growing your business at the same time. As you grow your business, you will be able to give more back… you get the idea. This is similar to developing JV’s, except your community is the “business” you’re partnering with!

Let us help you find ways to give more and more away, and simultaneously grow your business.

There are hundreds of businesses out there that you aren’t in competition with. Those businesses have hundreds, or even thousands of customers that like them, and trust them.

Imagine the credibility it would lend to you, if they recommended their customers go see you. And, as a special gift just to their customers, they got 20% off their first bill, or dinner for two at a nice restaurant in town. Preferably one where you know the owner… another joint venture (JV) partner. The possibilities are endless.

Of course, you need to choose your JV’s carefully. You need to be able to trust those you work with, and they need to be able to trust you, but the potential payoff is unbelievable.

Let us help you find the businesses around you that already have as customers, the people who will become your most profitable customers.

Through social media you can maintain an unprecedented level of unobtrusive, permission based communication with not just your customers, but also their “friends.” You can target your advertising, promotions and offers to a granular level that before now has been impossible.

Using social media for current customers is part of the process of earning TOMA. Using social media for your customers to both actively and passively refer you is where the real potential lies.

With the right balance of creative engagement, and meaningful incentives, social media can become an unparalleled asset. Let us help you build you design your social media efforts so that they become a sustainable, investment that will pay off well into the future.

When your customers meet new neighbors and new coworkers, the first thing they should think is, “I need to tell them about my great mechanic!”

That’s called “Top of Mind Awareness,” or TOMA. When you’ve got TOMA, you’re golden!

Earning TOMA isn’t hard, but it is a lot of work and requires persistence, careful planning, and a strategic system. Try too hard, and your customers will be annoyed. Do too little, and you’ll only be one of a couple of auto repair shops they would recommend. It’s a fine line to walk, but we know how to walk it.

Contact us today, and we’ll help you put together a system to Earn TOMA, and much more!

It should be working around the clock….

• bringing in new customers
• preselling service and maintenance packages
• collecting contact information and automatically sending promotions
• collecting customer reviews and promoting the good ones
• answering customer questions
• providing customers with easy ways to tell their friends about your auto repair shop…
• etc.

What? Your website doesn’t do this? It just sits there with your hours of operation, your phone number, a contact form no one ever reads and an outdated picture of your mechanic shop?

What a waste of virtual real estate!

Contact us, and we’ll put your website to work for you!

People get their first impression of your auto repair shop in one of two ways: a phone call or a sales person.

Most people will call a repair shop before they come in. They usually price shop or try to schedule service ahead of time. What are you doing to make sure the people who are answering the phones, are getting those people in the door? How quickly do they have to answer the phone? What are they supposed to say when they answer the phone? What happens if no one is available to answer the phone? What happens when people call after hours? You’re spending how much money on an ad in the phone book, and the person answering the phone hasn’t even been trained on how to properly answer the phone?

You might think that once people are in your shop anyone can handle the sales job, and it might be true that anyone can get their estimate or work order wrote up, and the keys back to the guys in the shop. However, if that’s all your sales staff is doing, they’re not doing nearly enough.

You have paid good money to get people to call your shop, or come in to your waiting room, but you’ve most likely dropped the ball when it comes to getting the most out of each call or visit. Don’t keep wasting those first impressions! Contact us today, and we will help you make sure  you are maximizing every opportunity that comes your way!

Once someone has visited your shop, they should never even consider going somewhere else. That begins with a good experience that includes respectful, honest, and valuable service, but it goes way beyond that.

Everyone that comes in your shop ought to leave there your biggest fan, and your most valuable new customer. They should be armed with the know-how, and the incentive to send all of their friends your way. They should never want to go to another shop, because of the rewards they’ll miss by not coming to you.

A system that encourages loyalty and referrals is the cornerstone of your future success. Do you have one?

You’ve basically positioned your business so that you’re in a constant race to the bottom. You’ve got to keep prices so, so you have to keep costs low. Since you have to keep costs low, the skill and experience level of your employees is limited, the “perks” you can offer your customers are few, and the atmosphere of your waiting room lacks something to be desired. Also, since you’re the low cost leader, you tend to attract a certain type of customer that may not be willing, or able, to invest in the most profitable services or products you offer.

Do you see the problem?

What if you positioned yourself differently? What if you charged more, because the perceived value of what you offered was more? Don’t limit what you have to offer to just the services you perform in your shop. You can upgrade the entire experience of coming to your shop. It’s not hard.

Don’t get involved in a rat race to the bottom of the pricing scale. Let us help you position yourself so that your current customers, and your new ones, see your services as more valuable than your competitors’.

There are lots of options. You could be…

• the honest place
• the cheap place (never!)
• the place for men, or women, or families
• the place for foreign cars
• the quick place
• the convenient place
• …or maybe it’s you that makes your business unique

You get the idea. There are lots of options, some better than others, but you’ve got to figure out who you are. If you’re focused on being everything, you’re not going to be anything.

Once you figure out what makes your business different than the rest, make sure everybody knows it. Find a creative way to say it, and say it over and over. Make sure everyone who comes in knows what it is that makes your auto repair shop special. Put it on all your signs, invoices, shirts, floor mats, calendars, etc. Make people sick of hearing it.

Not sure what makes your auto repair shop unique? Need help narrowing down the options to the one that will result in the most profits? Contact us using the form below.

In business, you are probably doing lots of stuff, but how to you which stuff is paying off, and which stuff is a waste of your time and money.

Is paying your employees more, leading to better service? Is sponsoring a softball team resulting in new customers? How much money are you losing by not offering a specific new service?

You can’t know the answer to these questions unless you measure!

Some things are easy to measure.

When a new customer calls, or comes in, ask them how they found out about you, and then record it somewhere. Or, put a special phone number in your phone book ad to find out how many call it, and then compare that to the number of people who actually come in to your store, and spend money. You can even track how much they spend, to find out if that ad is attracting the kind of customers that you want!

So, are you measuring? What are you measuring? Are you learning anything? Are you getting the results you expect? Why not?

Contact us, and we will help you measure the important things, and find the profit leaks, that are holding your business back!