WHAT'S Working
Let’s Bake
by Dennis Madden and Rodger Bland
www.atra.com
a Cake
We learned the local economy isn’t always a deciding factor for a
shop’s success. There are plenty of shops that are doing really well,
even though they’re located in depressed areas.
O
ver the past four years, ATRA Despite one of the worst local of variables that have the greatest cor-
has examined both consum- economies in the country, Express relation to business success; these were
ers and transmission shop Transmissions owner Mario Jauregui the X’s in our formula.
owners to find answers to two critical has seen terrific growth in his business Putting math aside, think of it like
questions: (scoring a Success Metric of 16 in our baking a cake. The ingredients may
1. What are customers looking study and over $1 Million in sales for include flour, eggs, milk, etc. But then
for when they need automo- 2009). you have to do something with those
tive repairs? Also during our What’s Working ingredients, and you have to use them
2. What are successful shops studies, we learned that the outcome of in the right quantities. You have to mix
doing to get their business? a process — in this case the success of items in the right order and use the
your business — is determined by the right mixing method. You have to bake
In the course of this research, we components that go into it and what your cake in the right dish, at the right
also learned what doesn’t matter and you do with those components. We temperature, and for the right amount
what is ineffective. For example, we use a formula to illustrate it,: y = f(x) of time. Any variation in any one of
discovered that most conventional and we covered it in detail in the July these conditions can have a dramatic
advertising didn’t perform nearly as 2007 issue of GEARS Magazine in the effect on your cake; how it looks, how
well as community-based advertising, Making It Work column. it tastes, and so forth.
or more accurately, community involve- This formula states that the out- It’s not enough to know the basic
ment. come y is equal to the process f and activities of successful shops. We also
We learned the local economy what you put into the process x. In need to know how they implemented
isn’t always a deciding factor for a our study, the outcome was shown as the activities. We need to know how
shop’s success. There are plenty of a Success Metric and ranged in score they baked their cake! To do that, we
shops that are doing really well, even from zero to 20; 20 being the highest. need to go into the field to see exactly
though they’re located in depressed We then looked at the variables of a how they’re doing it.
areas. One of the absolute standouts in shop’s business model, such as what One of the more interesting things
our study was Express Transmissions in kind of advertising it used, the shop’s we’ve discovered is that successful
Stockton, California. In 2009, Stockton location and size, the population and shop owners themselves often don’t
was ranked as the “Most Miserable income of the city, the shop’s commu- know what they’re doing that makes
Town in the United States” by Forbes nity involvement, and so on. them successful. They just do what
Magazine.
1
We put all of that information into they do, like a natural athlete or artist.
the hopper (statistical analysis software) But that doesn’t mean there’s no way
and ran the numbers. This gave us a list to duplicate their successes. We need
1- The link is contained in the on-line version
of this article at
www.Gearsmagazine.com
30 GEARS January/February 2010
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