There is often a belief that it is tough to make legitimate gains in ARO without lowering your car count. On today’s episode of Digital Shop Talk Radio, we have Nate and Ben Ramsey on the show to discuss how they have been able to increase the ARO in their shops while maintaining a robust car count through thorough and frequent inspection audits.
Tune in and see how to produce efficient inspections, how to have your techs and service team communicate more effectively, and hear a few stories from Digital Shop Conference 2020.
Episode Transcript
*This transcript was generated using Artificial Intelligence. Errors may occur. If you notice an error, please contact [email protected].
Tom Dorsey (00:01):
Good morning and good afternoon. Welcome to this week’s edition of the Digital Shop Talk Radio. My name’s Tom Dorsey. I got Ben and Nate Ramsay with me from Meineke in Pennsylvania. They are taking the Meineke organization by storm, and we got them on to talk about how to maintain a high ARO, grow that ARO while still maintaining their high car count. Welcome Ben and Nate.
Ben Ramsay (00:24):
What’s going on Tom? Thanks for having us, Tom.
Tom Dorsey (00:26):
Living the dream buddy. Now thanks for coming on guys. And before we get into it, I want to give a little bit of a context about these guys. Last time I saw ’em, we were out at digital shop conference. I mean, most of that stuff we can’t even talk about because it’s not even legal in this state on what we experience with these guys. But it’s funny when I talk to Meineke owners, right, they talk about you guys almost like it’s the thing of legend, right? They’re talking about, it’s like I feel like I’m sitting around the campfire talking, talking about myths and legends. And so let me give you the gist of what I know about you guys. You got your war fighter go home, money came home, bought a Meineke.
(01:09):
Meineke was doing I think 300 K ish, something like that. Within a year you’d basically quadrupled the revenue with the same folks on staff. Meineke said OMG, please buy more Meineke and started throwing locations at you. Now I think you guys own six locations, something like that, and I think you got some more coming in the hopper and really just, and then on top of that, your veteran craft stuff, brewery, distillery, I mean you guys are taking entrepreneurship to the next level. Couple of questions. Is the legend correct is my story? Can you verify that and if so, how the heck are you doing it?
Ben Ramsay (01:55):
Yeah, we got five currently, so we’re working on three more this year, maybe four. We’ll see how they go. Do a couple conversions. One’s a new location. 2012 we got our first center did $337,000. We did 1,000,502 in our first fiscal year. So that year we took over at the end of February we did 1,034,000. So we did $990,000. They had 44,000 in our first 10 months. And man, the principle’s simple. The industry kind of dictates that you always take care of your customer. We just said we’re going to take care of our people. You do a good job taking care of your people, your people are going to take care of your customers. There’s three of us, other brothers not here. Nate and Josh both did 10 years respectively in the army and when we started they were both in the army and we brought Josh in after a year. And then Nate came about a year and a half into it and we’ve just gone at it with a full head of steam. And we’ve had some really good mentors, whether they be some of the people at corporate or everybody knows Brian Brown if they’re in the Meineke system. And Greg Masewic,
Nate Ramsay (03:05):
The Leprechaun.
Ben Ramsay (03:06):
The leprechaun, yeah, up north who’s big into AutoVitals. We’ve done a good job of not trying to reinvent a bunch of wheels and just ask people how they’ve gotten successful and follow those footsteps.
Tom Dorsey (03:17):
Yeah, it’s pretty simple, straightforward, right? Take care of your customers, provide that awesome service, do what successful people do and you’ll be successful yourselves. But I mean, it’s incredible. Like I said, when I talk to folks in the mEq organization, when they talk about you, man, it’s like they’re talking about legends already and what a great position to be in, what a great credibility and respect that you get from corporate down and really being able to get front and center. I mean, you guys are just straight leaders in the organization and it’s great that we’re able to partner together with the digital shop concept, our digital inspection program, Paul and Greg and all those MDA guys in the beginning, really helping to get that awareness out and it’s having the results. Matter of fact, I was on with Meineke corporate in a meeting a little bit ago and we were talking about the guy in Ventura, I think first inspection that he got done full inspection, he got done $1,700 ticket, he’s running a $500 ARO now and high volume. And that’s really the critical thing is what we want to get to the audience and give them some food for thought here to help folks out is how are you able to still maintain that high car count so you can do those kind of numbers, but having to work in a digital inspection and make those process changes to make that effective.
Nate Ramsay (04:38):
So one of the ways that we do it is we actually slightly adjusted our scheduling concept and we actually bumped out our online scheduling to an hour and a half for an oil change. One that’s kind of setting up the customer for expectation, and then we also audit it and control it. So we’re making sure we’re keeping track of how long our guys are spending on their inspections, and then we’re also auditing the thoroughness of their inspections. So I mean can’t not how many cars you can get through your shop, it’s how many cars you can get through your shop and thoroughly check out in a timely manner so that you still have the opportunity to swing the bat with that customer.
Tom Dorsey (05:22):
And so let me ask you, what does that process look like? I mean, how often are you auditing inspections? Do you have notifications set up in the business control panel that says, Hey, we’re dropping below some inspection threshold, gives you a notification and then you dig down?
Nate Ramsay (05:36):
Yeah, absolutely. So I mean, to be completely honest, convention I picked up on customer research time. When I came back to my BCP, I immediately looked up where we were for that. We weren’t doing good on that at all, which I diagnosed as we weren’t doing a proper check-in and we weren’t forcefully training our customers on what they need to do when they come to our shop. And I trained my managers on that. I mean, I was averaging across the five centers like 64 seconds of research time and we’re a little over 200 now since January 13th. So it’s Instant man and I now have multiple centers over 400 ARO and a couple more over three, and I got one straggler still coming on up.
Tom Dorsey (06:31):
Wow, man, I mean that really is a secret sauce. I mean that’s what we’ve all boiled it down to is we identified that motorist research time because it’s a culmination of a lot of things. And for folks that are in that boat, you’re looking to increase your motorist research time or maybe it’s a brand new concept to you right now because you didn’t get the conference, you aren’t following us on the Facebook and best practices, your motorist research time and your business control panel. It really is the bellwether for you. Why? Because it tells you if you set expectations at the drop you set, and we call it the Amazon rule because how do you shop on Amazon? Somebody doesn’t call you from Amazon and tell you what to buy. You’re in your bunny slippers sipping the veteran craft bourbon right there, and you’re online in the middle of the night and you don’t want any intrusion.
(07:19):
You want to be able to look at information and compare and read reviews and make your mind up. And so we take that same concept into the approval process with the digital shop is we say, here’s this information you’re going to receive. We tell them this at the drop and we say to them, you’re going to look at all this stuff and once you’ve reviewed this, then you’re going to call me with some questions you might have. And when I tell you what, one of the biggest changes in habit to, especially for the old dogs that you have to overcome is, gosh, I’m super busy. They called me. I’ve got ’em on the phone. Which a lot of times that’s a victory in itself is just to get the folks on the phone. You don’t have to leave a message or wait for a call back.
(07:59):
So now I have to fight the urge to go ahead and just sell, oh, I look on my dashboard and I say, oh, they haven’t even looked at the inspection sheet yet, but whatever. I’m just going to tell ’em what they need. That is a hard thing to overcome when you do overcome that and what you do is you tell ’em straight up, you say, Hey, go ahead and take a look at your inspection, look at the pictures, look at the videos and the notes that the techs put in there for you and then call me back. You hang up on ’em. Hard to do. But when you do it, that’s exactly what happens. Motorist research time goes into that 242nd sweet spot and above ARO follows right behind it, and it stays consistent that way you can maintain that motorist research time. You’re maintaining your ARO, it’s just numb. It’s just a numbers game after that. And so that’s why we hammer that motorist research time best practices because then you get the results that these guys have gotten. And so tell us a little about what that was like from the service writer’s perspective because that’s a, that’s not an easy habit to change.
Nate Ramsay (09:04):
Ultimately, my sell to my service writers and managers was, look, we’re doing all the work. We were already at 85, 90% plus on inspection rate, so my sell to them was guys we’re doing all the work and we’re not benefiting from it because the customer isn’t actually looking at it. So we need to forcefully make the customer look at it. I did give them a little bit of an out on hanging up on customer. I said, if the customer overly objects to it, I said, you have to make them open it at that point and at least review it with you as a last resort.
(09:43):
And I emphasize that that should be the last resort. Another selling point I had with my managers was, look, a lot of our managers are single guy running a shop, so they get real busy. We don’t have a ton of people. I don’t have the Firestone set up where there’s 18 managers to five cars. And so I mean one of the sales for them was, look, when your customers calling and you’ve trained your customer to look over that inspection report, you’re going to spend less time having to sell to them because they’re already going to be mostly educated on what you’re going to be talking to ’em about. They might need some pointers and they’re still going to need some tips and stuff, but it’s going to be a lot smoother transition to when is it going to be done, not how much is it and it’s just going to save them time.
Tom Dorsey (10:35):
And that’s a money takeaway. Write that down because that’s exactly what you need to do is you need to train your customer, train your customer on your expectations. It’s a plan. People, the digital consumer loves the process. We love to know. Our phone tells us what’s going to happen next and the little notification comes and I do the stuff and I don’t even need to know what I’m doing. My phone’s telling me to do it, so I do it and then automatically out of my bank account, money flies into your bank account. That’s the trick. And if you follow that, it’s scalable and you can do it a lot and you can really build into those habits. And so what I would say that’s great. It’s first step and you get the guys and they got to get ’em on the phone, but what we want ’em to experience now is to say, I could be so much more efficient and productive if I can eliminate having to get ’em to open it and walk ’em through it again on the phone. And that’s setting the expectation at the drop and then reinforcing that, like you said, educating that customer through all the touch points right up until approval. No, that’s awesome, man. Is that the ability to just even get to that point, see the numbers because you see the shining spot on the hill and then let’s just run for it. Let’s charge.
Ben Ramsay (11:46):
If you explain to your people, if you get a new customer, you’re only getting a new customer from one of a couple things. Somebody moved in the area, which is the minority, somebody that they wanted to take care of fit ’em in, or somebody did ’em wrong in their opinion or in their eyes something went wrong
Tom Dorsey (12:04):
And they’re going to switch.
Ben Ramsay (12:05):
So if you have this tool where you can explain to people that they’re going to be able to see what’s going on with their car and you’re not taking advantage of that, the vast majority of people when they jump shops is because they think somebody did ’em wrong. It’s normally because they weren’t educated or they weren’t explaining something correctly. It’s not that everybody’s a crook, but that’s on the front of their mind. That’s why they left and started looking for somewhere else. So when you have them at your counter and you’re talking to them, that’s the point to put ’em at ease from the get go and they just know, okay, I don’t have to worry about it with these people. And like Nick said, we were doing all the work, we just weren’t giving ourself the reward because we weren’t making sure they clearly understood because we didn’t create those expectations and show ’em when you’re checking ’em in, man, flip that computer around and go, look, here’s what an AutoVitals looks like when you’re explaining it to ’em. Show ’em one. And they’re just going to be like, okay, well I’m going to get pictures of my brakes, I’m going to get pictures of my tires, my filters, and they’re just, they don’t have to worry then. So people say picture’s worth a thousand words. We say Good picture’s worth a thousand bucks, man.
Tom Dorsey (13:11):
Yes, each and every time, right? Minimum 10 pictures per inspection, right? Five recommendations per inspection. I mean, there’s a pretty simple formula that you can follow, right? It’s like a recipe for success. And because in the business control panel, you’re able to see those kind of behavioral metrics, not just the top line stuff. How many cars, what was our inspection percentage? All that’s good stuff, but literally how many wrecks was the tech making? What percentage of pictures got an edit? All of that information that leads up to exactly that user experience where the customer gets in there and sees the transparency, educates themselves through that process, right? Because the pictures tell, like you said, they tell a thousand words, it convert into a thousand dollars in the educational videos that you put in there. All of that time used to be spent on the phone trying to tell ’em, and here’s the worst thing with the invention of the internet is to say, oh, you need this timing belt and this timing belt’s going to be 850 for your vehicle.
(14:12):
And they go, well, okay, gosh, do I really need it? Yeah, you sure do. And lemme go, just Google that. Wait, it’s $75 rubber band. What do you mean 850? And it just puts that the walls come up right away. Now they’re on the defense, right? Because now everything you’re telling ’em they don’t need or they don’t get, and that’s exactly like what Ben was saying is, and then you’re going to start looking around and it’s up to you when you do get ’em in. Yeah, maybe they couldn’t get in on their regular guy. You got to wow them and come over the top and convert them to a regular for you. When they are new to town, you start ’em out. And then when they’re angry, when they’re coming in, because usually, you know what guys? It’s not about money. I don’t know if this is your experience, it’s about the value. It’s not really about what your shop rate is, right?
Ben Ramsay (14:59):
A hundred percent.
(15:02):
You hit the nail on the head. We used to spend most of our time answering the question of do I really need it? And people ask you questions trying to figure out is there a crack in what this guy is telling me? I’m coming to this guy because this guy, my last guy didn’t tell me the truth. And they felt they’re coming in with that mindset. When you’re sending them good pictures, you don’t have conversations anymore about do I need it? You have conversations about when can you do it? And those are the conversations we want to have,
Tom Dorsey (15:32):
And that’s the greatest thing about the digital inspection. You assume the sale, you assume the sale, it’s evident in the data and in the condition, and here’s your options. You do it today, you do it in three weeks. You can’t do it in six months because if you do, we’re going to be replacing all this other stuff along with it and it’s going to cost this much, so let’s put a plan in place. And that’s really where it becomes so critical for the delivery. That’s another thing I want to talk about is that just like you said, you put in all the work, you’re not getting the rewards and you know how many people fail to just hit that send button and they say, well, they were in the shop, right? I printed it out. No, you hit the send button. It doesn’t matter if they’re standing right in front of you, how many times have you sent out an inspection?
(16:16):
And they’re sitting in, it’s a waiter and they’re right there in the inspection sheet as they’re going through. And I could tell you a story after story of folks that come up to me and say, I sent out this ticket, this estimate sent out the inspection results. They had approved a piece of it. While they’re still in the shop, before the vehicle’s even up on the lift, they come back up and say, Hey, let’s go ahead and add this. Let’s add this. They’re upselling themselves sitting in the waiting room while they’re looking at the inspection sheet on their phone. That’s why you do it. And then they can revert back to that for their next, because then you get the exit schedule. When are you coming back to get this stuff done? It’s assume the sale and get that exit schedule 100% of the time should be the goal, right?
Nate Ramsay (17:00):
Absolutely.
Tom Dorsey (17:01):
So where are you guys at from that? I mean, how do you run your process to make sure that A, they’re coming back, there’s a plan in place and that you can fit ’em in because you guys got busy bays,
Nate Ramsay (17:14):
So we suck at exit scheduling next on my, that’s, that’s one of my next things. That was one of the things I got from convention that I said I’m going to fix. When I came back, my text opt-in rates were like 15%, and my customer research times were like 62 or something. So I said, let’s fix a couple things at once because you’re not going to eat the whole thing at once. So exit scheduling is one of our next things. Meineke does a pretty good job with CRM with sending stuff out for us. So our point of sale system does a pretty good job of sending them out reminders, which is not as good as exit scheduling, but it’s a bandaid for now. Meineke does a good job at driving us cars, but I mean overall, I mean we are exit scheduling is next on us, so I mean, as good as Meineke guys all want to talk to us about how great we are in legends and
Tom Dorsey (18:17):
They sure do buddy.
Nate Ramsay (18:18):
we have so much low hanging fruit. It’s unbelievable. I’ll use an example. I just audited last year, mean number seven store in the country for Meineke, had 5,000 cars and did 27 thermostats, so we’re going to work on that.
Tom Dorsey (18:36):
Wow. Yeah. Yeah. I mean you got to see the forest through the trees, right? Yep. Well, let me ask you this then. So in the CRM, are you able to customize that and put a link to the inspection sheet? How do you keep the inspection sheet top of mind once they’re out of the shop? Because that’s really critical for their return I think.
Ben Ramsay (18:57):
Yeah, they have the links. We do callbacks, so we do a lot of manual callbacks with our customers. So after three days and seven days and when they’re due to come in for an oil change, we pick a lot of that stuff up whenever we’re calling back and doing the check-in. Like Nate said, that exit scheduling is absolutely something that is on our minds about doing Meineke. Hass got a new point of sale system that’s right around the corner too, and we’ve got a lot more stuff that’s going to get baked in over the next couple months. So we’re kind of picking some of the things that we’re not going to create some new processes with our people to turn around and have ’em change in two months. We’ve got enough low, we have enough low hanging fruit, as much stuff as we do well and do, right. We’ve got no shortage of low hanging fruit. There’s still a lot of money left there.
Tom Dorsey (19:41):
Yeah, yeah. No, that’s fantastic. And it is though, it’s really critical to long-term retention and making sure just getting loyal customers and making, because then they start to tell their friends and you start to pick up the referrals and stuff like that from ’em. And so you always want to give one to show, one to go. And so I always recommend you hit the text and email version. You print a copy out for ’em. Are you guys doing that? Are you sending them home with one in their hand?
Nate Ramsay (20:10):
We’re not sending ’em home. We are making sure that the link, the hyperlink is on the invoice. Oh,
Tom Dorsey (20:17):
Good. Yeah. Oh,
Nate Ramsay (20:17):
That’s awesome. And then it’s texting as well. And going back just a hair here, one thing that I really drove home again convention item was the text opt-in rate. Man, we were so bad. We were so bad. We’re working on it, but it’s such an amazing difference and making sure that the managers understand the value of the text versus the email as well was huge for
Tom Dorsey (20:46):
Us. And being able to send them,
Ben Ramsay (20:47):
Lot of the invoices show all the, I mean, they don’t show the pictures and obviously the pictures are what tie to it. And again, some of the stuff that we need to do and where we need to make adjustments on how we’re doing, there’s a lot of stuff that’s getting baked into the point of sale system that what we’re going to do.
Tom Dorsey (21:05):
And once that comes out, we will adjust around that as far as process goes and how you keep ’em in the loop. But I mean there’s some fundamental stuff, there’s some basic stuff that we want to make sure that kind of well, and they get determined by success of other shops, so we kind of find out that, hey, when folks do this, good stuff happens. Let’s do more of that. And it’s just one of those kind of things where you want to encourage folks to go out and show their friends, show their family, and make it real simple for them to share their inspection results because boy, I tell you what, the referrals and the appointments start pouring in. It’s nothing better when you get somebody who’s in a big office building or something and you can get that inspection result to ’em while they’re at work and then they just start showing their coworkers and then pretty soon all of a sudden you got five, six appointments picked up from this one place just like that. Because people, like you said, especially if they’re coming and they’ve had a bad experience and they feel like they’ve been getting treated shady, when you’re able to show ’em that it’s like mind blown. They can’t even believe the amount of transparency and they want to share that stuff and then everybody else wants to get the same experience and come in and at least get the initial inspection done and then you guys got to hook them.
Ben Ramsay (22:22):
Absolutely.
Tom Dorsey (22:24):
That
Ben Ramsay (22:24):
Tool, there isn’t any technician, there isn’t any counter person, there isn’t any anybody. That tool doesn’t make them better. And no matter how high up you get, we keep talking about the low hanging fruit, but there’s a handful of things that we know we got to get in and do. And we’re doing also a believer of you can’t have more than three priorities if you’ve got your water down. So we picked the three things coming out of California and Nate’s been hammering that the stores and we can instantly see the stuff and how it’s doing and how it’s doing better. So the thing that I think we’ve really learned and we really do is we rely on metrics. So often we get emotionally attached to stuff, especially when you’re involved in a center and you look at how you operated and how the week went, and you really got to be able to take a step back, go to their dashboards, we get other dashboard information, stuff on call counts and conversion rates and all kinds of stuff with Meineke, but you’ve got to look at the numbers and you don’t get emotionally attached to the numbers and they are what they are.
(23:29):
You don’t necessarily get wound up about it. You just pick like, here’s the three things I’m going to do. But you live by the numbers, technicians, managers, everybody, they’re all creatures of habit. And you get in on that dashboard, you figure out real quickly, this guy does 80% of an inspection, which is a different 80% than this guy does, which is a different 80% than this guy does. And you just pin ’em together and be like, Hey, why don’t you tell him why you get so many more transmission flushes and you tell him why you get so many more timing bells. And the answer is, it’s just what they’re looking at. It’s not something that they actually don’t know how to do, but man, they will get in the habit. And when you use your metrics, you find out when they get off that beaten path so much sooner when you do it on a reoccurring basis and you don’t let that money slip through your hands.
Tom Dorsey (24:17):
No, it’s amazing, right? I was doing a workshop, I mean, gosh, probably four years ago, and we had a client come in and they had the cameras on the phone and they were looking at their shops out in Kansas and they were watching all the techs and everything, and we had an epiphany is that they all looked busy on that camera, but you can’t hide from the data. The data tells you more than a security camera ever will, and the security camera makes somebody feel, I mean, I’m being watched and whatever, the data’s empowering. It takes all the emotions, like you said, it takes all the emotion out of the conversation. It’s not that you’re not doing your job or wrong, or maybe you are, but it’s that here’s your current performance and here’s where we need you to be and here’s the plan to get there. We can step that up. Maybe it’s number of recommendations per inspection, maybe it’s at the counter picture, edit rate, whatever opt-in rate, and then, okay, here’s what I’m doing. Then it becomes, then you break it down to the audit. Well, here’s the process that I’m using. Okay, well let’s do this. Let’s tweak this. Let’s test this and then move the needle in the right way and then just make that part of your protocol and do more of it.
(25:40):
And so when you’re kind hashing that type of process out, and that’s the other thing that folks need to take away, is that your brain just can’t juggle more than those three kind of top line priorities. Matter of fact, that’s why we set the BCP up on the summary view with the three, you can set your three main KPIs and then all the rest is the ancillary stuff. What are you guys looking at from your top three KPIs to identify when you need to make some changes or take some action?
Nate Ramsay (26:14):
Well, my multi shop view, I, I believe it’s four across and I’m looking at ARO, I’m looking at inspection, percentage inspection sent, and then I’m looking at customer edited pictures and customer research time
Tom Dorsey (26:32):
Motors, research time.
Nate Ramsay (26:33):
So those are my five across that I’m monitoring right now. I mean, honestly, I could almost take down the inspection percentage rate. I can check that on a weekly because achieved that now we’re 88 or better percent on everybody, so we’re inspecting the proper amount of cars, the inspection scent rate. I still have some stragglers down in the sixties. I’m kind of a believer that we should be hitting 99% on that really a hundred. I’ll give it that 100 and 4-year-old customer that doesn’t have a cell phone or email once a quarter. So we got some stragglers on that. But I mean that’s my main focus right now is the edited picture percentage and then the customer research time, because that tells me that the service writer is looking at the inspection before he sends it. If he’s editing pictures, he’s looking at it. So we’re sending them a good quality product as well as are they doing a proper check-in and coaching their customer on looking at it so that we are getting dividends off of our hard work of filling out those AutoVitals.
Tom Dorsey (27:51):
Yeah, a hundred percent man. A hundred percent right, because yeah, it’s not going to work if you don’t send it. And like I said, set those expectations. So what about from an inspection side? Because there’s a lot of guys out there right now listening to this or will be listening to it that are saying, yeah, okay, that’s all great, but my shop is different. We hear that all the time and I know you guys run high numbers across all your locations. How do you give some tips for guys that need to get over the excuse and get on the caboose? And so are you running a cursory type inspection initially? Do you go out with a porter and do a quick walk around? What is your process from the techs perspective, from checkin to kind of dispatch look like?
Ben Ramsay (28:42):
So ours is, I think stricter than what you guys say. We do 17 pictures minimum. We want to flood that inspection with good pictures. So this industry is notorious for sending people AutoVitals or making phone calls and calling and going, Hey, your car’s a turd. Look at all this stuff that’s bad. We want to make sure we have enough good stuff on there that we’re telling ’em there’s value in fixing their car. And the biggest thing is once you start teaching them that there can be exceptions to the rules and they’re going to make their own rules up, there ain’t no way around it. So it’s the same process, 17 pictures. We have a picture policy we go through. We do the same things every time, and if you have it’s 17 pictures, regardless of whether or not there’s a recommendation, any recommendation has to come with a picture and there’s no budging on it. Once you start budging it, it’s just it. You’re done. The car’s got 22,000 miles on it, 17 pictures we’re teaching that customer from the first time that they’re in, this is what you expect when you come in here. So they’re comfortable when they come back to get those breaks.
Tom Dorsey (29:46):
Yeah, no, that’s awesome.
Nate Ramsay (29:47):
Yeah, I mean it also creates consistency. Our picture average is mid to upper twenties is what it actually comes out to, which means my edited percentage is a little lower because to get to 30%, we’d be editing 12 pictures, but we’re getting there. We’re up around 15 now, which we were three and 4% before convention. So it really creates a consistency aspect for the customer as well. They know they’re going to get a picture of their air and cabin filter every single time. They know they’re going to get a picture of all their fluids every single time, because then this is something I always teach my service managers again, is it’s not Nate telling the customer that is power steering, fluid security anymore. It’s the picture telling you, and that picture’s worth a thousand dollars every time. It’s
Tom Dorsey (30:41):
Freaking magic. And seriously, that’s what the internet did to us. Amazon led. The way there is that you see it and you get the reviews and you see all the comparisons and
Nate Ramsay (30:51):
You go, oh,
Tom Dorsey (30:52):
Okay. I take all of that out and just make my decision to buy.
Nate Ramsay (30:56):
And as far as I don’t have time, I mean, we just set our customer’s expectation when they’re coming in, when they’re coming in. I mean, I still have customers that go, what do you mean my oil change is going to take an hour? And it is setting that expectation. It is what it is. I always tell my guys, when I’m running one of my shops, I always tell my guys, guess what? We’re Meineke man. We run 1995 oil changes. I have to bless off on that car leaving my shop before I’m going to lose money. What a 1995 oil changes a loss leader. And that’s the biggest thing. So you can find all the excuses you want in the world to not do an inspection. You’re finding excuses not to make money is what you’re doing,
Tom Dorsey (31:41):
And you’re lucky to get a hundred dollars ARO, right? When we onboard, there’s a lot of centers like that that are running. They’re lucky. They’re May at one hour 0.75hours per ARO and pretty low sometimes sub hundred dollars. And man, I’ll tell you what, when they get on the plan and if they commit and follow to it, it’s amazing to see how quickly they can double and triple those numbers. And the same thing when it comes to the text. So we’d love to be able to have you guys back on maybe towards the summer or something like that, give a couple months of metrics to come under the belt and talk about the improvements there and how you drove that because I know you will. I know you’re going to win because I’m going to kind of in your blood, I’m guessing when you Ramsay boys,
Nate Ramsay (32:28):
When I get my focus on something, it happens.
Tom Dorsey (32:31):
Yeah, man, you don’t know what losing means. That’s awesome. So because yeah, that’s one of the critical, it was funny when we first started going around Meineke locations, when I first got together with Meineke and I was listening to people and I’d be out in these meetings and they’d be like, oh, we can’t ask ’em for their cell phone. They’d have zero opt in. And then I’d say, well print this thing out, laminate. Tell ’em, well, okay, I can’t text you this then bur 90% opt in next week.
Nate Ramsay (32:57):
Well, you know what, and you know what I’m going to give a little bit of shout out to my last class at convention was Bill. Bill Connor, the BCP master. I’ll tell you what, one of the shop owners that was in there gave me the golden nugget of convention. That was the assumed close on the tech opt-in, and you will be looking at my inspection report and then giving me a call. I mean, we inform our customers everything else. Why aren’t we just telling them what they need to do when they come to our shop? And that’s,
Tom Dorsey (33:32):
It’s funny because on the same side of it, think about it, you love to get the text little notification that Domino’s is on the way with your pizza. You love to go look at reviews of the other people or leave reviews for people. It’s so ingrained. There is no intrusion there. It’s expected. You just say, Hey, leave me a review. We’re
Nate Ramsay (33:53):
All going to have using
Tom Dorsey (33:53):
Cell phone so I can do this next step with you. It’s automatic.
Nate Ramsay (33:57):
We’re all going to have an assumed sale on grinding brakes. It’s the right thing for the customer. So we need to have an assumed sale for the customer opening that thing up and looking at it because it’s what the customer needs and it’s what’s best for the customer and for us.
Tom Dorsey (34:12):
Yeah, no, it’s 2020, man. It’s 1972. You got a phone, give me your number. That’s the way it works nowadays. Where you, been.
Nate Ramsay (34:21):
Exactly, Who doesn’t have cell phones?
Tom Dorsey (34:23):
It’s awesome having you guys on. I got to tell you, man, I know you got to run. You probably got to go buy a whole bunch more shops or something like that, go have a whole bunch more success. Shit, it must be about noon for you guys. So you got a whole half day of winning left to do. So I’ll follow up with Dustin. Like I said, we’d love to have you back on a couple months, follow up on that and just see the results because I’ll tell you what, man, there’s a lot of guys out there that look up to you. The legends are true, and what you’re doing on here is going to help a lot of folks. Just give them the confidence, give them the direction. If you want to get ahold of these guys, Google on the Facebook form as well.
(35:06):
So get up on the Facebook forum and we can always get the message over to Ben and Nate. They’re busy guys, but I’m sure they’re altruistic buddy. They’re going to help you and just ask. And we’re all one big happy family helping each other be successful. So if you guys want to give a shout out maybe and how folks can get ahold of you if they’d like to, and just maybe some follow up questions and stuff like that, that’d be great. If you want to plug your brewery in Distillery, I’d love for you to do that as well.
Nate Ramsay (35:35):
Tattered flag,
Tom Dorsey (35:36):
Tattered flag, Google it.
Nate Ramsay (35:40):
Best way to get ahold of me is one of my goals. That is the number eight, the word digit [email protected]. I’ll respond to any emails I get there. So any questions anybody has, I’d also like to make a shout out to the leprechaun who’s going to be on this show here in the next few weeks, I believe. Yes, he is. Tom Brady ain’t leaving.
Tom Dorsey (36:04):
That’s what he said. You guys, thanks for having us, man. I can’t wait to have you back on. Like I said, I’ll twist the, I’ll twist the leprechauns nippy there a little bit for you when I get ’em on and look forward to his comeback for you.
Nate Ramsay (36:22):
Alright, sounds good man. Appreciate you.
Tom Dorsey (36:24):
Yeah, buddy. Same right back at you. Thanks Dustin. Bye.
