WHAT'S WORKING
Putting People Before Profits P
eople Before Profits. No, this isn’t part of a campaign slogan
or a fancy catchphrase; it’s a simple way of stating what we learned in the initial study of successful shops back in 2006 and how we’re seeing more and more shops benefit from its implementation. Let’s go back for a
moment and rediscover what we learned back then. Then we’ll consider a few other ideas we’ve discussed over the years to really add clarity to some of the challenges shop owners face today. One of the first things we discov-
ered was that shop owners who were customer centric scored higher (were more profitable) than those who were profit centric. It may seem obvious, but, as the survey revealed, not everyone had the customer as the primary reason for being in business. Focusing on the customer does
more than simply help manage your attitude if something goes wrong: It helps to define why you’re in business in the first place. And more importantly, it helps explain why certain business models work for some people and not others.
Here’s what I mean: A common
discussion on ATRA’s What’s Working forum is whether to include general repair as part of a shop’s service model. Or, the subject might be whether to use remans. It doesn’t really matter what the specific topic is, because invariably we wind up with two camps: those in agreement and those opposed to it. So the question becomes… why? I mean, if using remans is the way to
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go then why would some people be opposed to it? And if including gen- eral repairs was the salvation for one person’s business, how can other shop owners discredit that decision and not consider it for their businesses? I suggest the reason has largely
to do with your business model; more specifically, whether you operate in Generation II or Generation III. We’ve discussed Gen II and Gen III many times in GEARS: Simply put, it char- acterizes what we learned back in 2006 with regard to putting profits vs. people first.
Let’s use some examples to illus-
trate this: Let’s say there’s a nation- al transmission chain called Maarco Transmissions. They have 800 fran- chise shops in the USA and Canada and have a national advertising campaign. They’re pretty much known by every- one with a car. They use a detailed script for
the sales staff at each center and it’s designed for two main purposes: to get customers to bring their car in, and to
by Dennis Madden
members.atra.com www.atra.com
if including general repairs was the salvation
for one person’s business, how can other shop own- ers discredit that decision and not consider it for their businesses?
sell an average of $650 worth of service to each customer that does come in. The key to this model is that, when
consumers have transmission problems, their first thought is Maarco, and they make the call. From there the script takes over. The customer makes the appointment and comes in based on how well the salesperson follows the script.
This is the essence of what we’ve
characterized as the Generation II model. It’s the art of making sales by
GEARS March 2012
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