The number one need for any automotive repair shop is always customers. How else would you make money? There are many ways to increase your gross sales, but most automotive repair shop owners will agree that the most common way to increase sales is to increase your car count. But how do you get started?
What to Measure at Your Auto Repair Shop
Car count needs to be assessed with other KPIs, such as average repair order, gross profit margin, net operating profit, and overall productivity and efficiency. Tracking these KPIs along with car count everyday will help you to find your shop’s “sweet spot” for profitability.
The first step is identifying the right car count benchmarks that your shop should be hitting consistently. Ask yourself:
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What is your current car count?
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What are your current gross sales?
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What are your gross profit margins?
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What is your net operating profit?
When you have all these numbers together and understand what they represent, you should be able to see if they’re matching up or not.
Using Effective Auto Shop Marketing & Beyond to Increase Car Count
Once you have all your benchmarks outlined, you can start to work on how you’re going to increase your repair shop’s car count. There are some factors to consider that will help you bring in more customers.
1. Know Your Market
The most successful shops know their market. They know the types of customers they serve and who is willing to pay for what service. Knowing this will help you market your shop better. Promoting your business through effective and personalized auto shop marketing will result in more customers.
2. Physical Space
Increasing your car count is great, but only if your shop can handle the influx in new customers. You need to acknowledge the actual physical limitations of your shop.
3. Increase Productivity
The more efficient your shop is in it's day-to-day activities, the more responsibility your shop can take on. It is vital that all team members are in the appropriate positions to do their job well and process are continuously being refined. With the help of technology like digital vehicle inspections, you are able to automate tasks and share information instantaneously allowing your shop to move to move cars in and out of the bays quicker.
4. Optimize Your Schedule
Proper scheduling is huge for car count. If you can get customers to schedule their next appointment while they’re already in your shop, you’ll be able to better forecast your workload.
5. Technicians Relative to Car Count
You’ve increased your car count, but you don’t have the manpower to service all these new customers efficiently. You need to honestly weigh the capabilities of your techs. An overworked tech is an unhappy and under-productive tech. In addition to the proper number of techs, you also need an equal ratio of service writers to keep things running smoothly.
6. Leverage Your Repeat Business
It's important to keep track of service records so you can recommend appropriate services to repeat customers. You're probably familiar with customers who get the minimum service at each visit. By keeping well-organized service records you can continue to recommend needed services upon each visit.
By following these easy tips to increase your car count, you’ll soon see not only an increase in your car count, but you’ll soon see an increase in you other bench-marked KPIs as well. Just being aware of basic metrics can help improve your automotive repair shop’s bottom line.
