Auto Repair Shop Owners Focus on Grow It Mode

Hi, my name is Rick white with 180Biz and I just want to talk about one thing for today and that is modes.

You see, in your business there are only two modes. There's DO IT mode and GROW IT mode and the problem that I see all the time with auto repair shops is the fact that they are in do it mode 98 or better percent of the time.  They are so much more comfortable with the DO IT part of their business versus the GROW IT part of their business. Now the first thing I want to share with you about this is the fact that you have to be intentional about creating time where you are in GROW IT mode. If you don't have that time set aside, then what ends up happening is you end up with the cycle of being really, really busy and then nothing and then really, really busy and then nothing. So you've got to have time for GROW IT mode. Now when I say GROW IT mode, most shops think I've got to advertise more, I need more customers and that's not the case. There are three ways to grow your business and only three ways. Number one, you can increase the number of customers. So yes, you can advertise and get more people in so you can increase the number of customers, increase the number of tickets you write per month. That is one way to grow your business. The other two ways to grow your business, is look at how you can increase the average ticket.

What if you could add half hour or an hour of labor to every ticket you're working on right now? What would that do if you're averaging 1.5 , 1.6 hours per ticket and you add half hour to an hour to it, that's almost doubling your sales.

So what can you do to get more aligned with your customer? What can you do to present better? What can you improve so that you're presenting better to your customer? What can you do to find more work needed on a consistent, regular basis? These are the things make all the difference in the world. What can you do to get your customer to say yes to more? Because the reality is you've never made a sale in your life. I don't understand that not making a sale because ultimately, it's not your decision. It's somebody else's. You're not making a sale. Your customer's making a buying decision. How can you get better at getting them to say, yes, that's a great way to grow your business? Or how can you get your customers to come in more frequently? How can you get them in instead of coming in once a year?

How can you get them in twice? If you had everybody in your, in your business, all your customers are only coming in once a year. If you can get them to come in twice a year, you just doubled your business. These are the things that you can look at. It's not necessarily going after and chasing new customers, although that is part of it. How well do you network? How well do you get out there and let people get to know, like and trust you? These are things that really make a difference. But Rick, I'm not comfortable doing that. I understand. You know, there I've done things that in the beginning I wasn't comfortable with getting in front of a camera and talking to somebody like this. Used to like to scare the pants off of me. That's why you only see like a neck shot. You'll never know.

So it's about, it's about pushing through that uncomfortable because the reality is everything you want in your life is on the other side that comfortable. And if you could realize that and see that uncomfortable feeling as a mile marker showing you where to go, not what not to do. So let me review real quick. There's three ways to get into grow it. Mode number one, increase the number of tickets you write, get more customers. Number two is to increase the average ticket. Do a better job of getting in connection and sync with your customer. Do a better job of finding the work and do a better job of presenting. It's gonna make all the difference in the world. And then the last thing is how do you increase the frequency? How do you get people to understand that they are vehicle needs more attention? So grow it mode or do it mode, which are you in and what are you going to do about it? So this is Rick White. Let's take a look. Well, look at that. I still got three minutes and 47 seconds.

This is Rick White, and this is Just One Thing.