Episode Description
In our conversations with shop owners, it seems to ring true time and time again that pickup is one of the hardest steps in the process to master. In doing so, however, shop’s see a dramatic increase in retention and repeat business.
This week we welcome back Matt Fowler and our very own Bill Connor to check in on our case study on perfecting pickup. We will be talking about the challenges and joys that have come along with this new change in his shop and they are here to share with you their honest takes on how it’s been going.
If you are seeking perfection at pickup yourself, tune in and see what these guys have to say.
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. I’m Tom Dorsey. I’m in the mobile Digital Shop Talk Radio studio out in New Braunfels, Texas today. So if there’s a little wind action going on behind me, just ignore it. We’ll be fine. And we might even get attacked by a black panther today on the show we’ve got a follow up to our case study that we’re doing on becoming a pro at Pickup. So we’ve got Matt Fowler on and we’ve got our Intrepid digital shop trainer. Bill Connor joining us today. Welcome gentlemen.
Matt Fowler (00:37):
Thank you much.
Tom Dorsey (00:38):
And unfortunately we couldn’t get Jamie on today because he had some other engagements, but that won’t stop us from talking about ’em anyway.
Matt Fowler (00:48):
Very true.
Tom Dorsey (00:49):
So Bill, why don’t you kick us off, give us an update. What we got going on when we last talked to you guys, we were kind of getting, had all the challenges in a bucket and we were figuring out what the plan and the solution was. So did we get implementation and what’s it looking like?
Bill Connor (01:06):
So what I’ve done so far is I’ve met with Jamie, Tom, and now Doug, and we’ve outlined exactly the process to go ahead and use a pickup, what the conversation should sound like, the bullet points that have to be worked into the conversation to make things work smoothly. And I’ll let them Matt go head and explain a little bit more, but what we did is we went through how to go and manage the customer’s expectations that pick up so that we don’t have to deal with their unreasonable expectations later on. So I think we should be in good shape on that and all of them initially, they seem to go ahead and struggle first of all getting time because Matt is actually implementing Protractor at the same time that he’s doing this and Jamie’s off traveling all over the country, spending money and entertaining himself, and Doug had a little wound that he had to deal with before we could get on there. So a little typical shop life and we still, I think we’re getting it done and we’ve documented exactly how we’re going to measure initially by using the exit scheduling rate. And Matt’s got some numbers coming up on his already. Jamie’s numbers aren’t coming up because his staff didn’t follow his instructions explicitly, but we’ve got that fixed now and so we’re going to just keep moving forward and we’ve got the things in place to measure it.
Tom Dorsey (02:26):
Fantastic. Well, so preliminarily, what are we seeing, Matt? I mean is the process change difficult to implement? Are you getting pushback? I mean, are you finding that it’s not sticky enough or is it something that just makes total sense and it’s piece of cake?
Matt Fowler (02:46):
I mean, I had six objectives I wanted to use with this case study from a couple weeks ago to check in now. And then also wrapping up at the conference so far we’re doing really good. As Bill mentioned, we two and a half weeks ago went to Protractor kind of that first full week of November and we’ve been in that, so that’s been a process just with getting everything to work on that side of the house. But I also timed it with staffing and then process and getting stuff integrated. So as far as level of ease really, I was surprised how much was at my access already through the AutoVitals product. And it was just a matter of when to click where, when to pre-book. And again, I had pre-booking appointment confirmation reviews, referral cards, and kind of a tickler file. And half of that, two third quarters of that was already in AutoVitals and Bill kind of helped me section out how to set up my employees screens so that I can see that stuff. And then now like he said, we’re seeing on the backend the success of that. So it was just a matter of creating the habit, AutoVitals already had it and putting it in place so that those triggers were there for the staff to be utilizing them, especially on the pre-booking of appointments and things like that.
Tom Dorsey (04:11):
And so Bill had mentioned, I mean it starts at the drop, right setting the expectations at the dropoff. So how’s that working out for you? I mean, do you find yourself, is it becoming a habit preparing them that there’s going to be that discussion and follow up at pickup or is it We’re still working on developing the muscle memory
Matt Fowler (04:37):
On the front end. We’re solid there and we’ve been solid on the back end. We have our TVP set up in a way that when the vehicle is approved and getting the work done, the next step in that is it goes into what we call a vehicle detail. We wash every car that we have, so I set the expectation when I’m selling the job and so does the staff that we’re doing the work, and the next notification you’ll get is that your car is going into detail at that point it’s about a half hour out and then you can come pick it up so that expectation is set and then that final piece when they do come to pick up, that’s where again, we’ve created these additional steps for the pre-booking of the next appointment. And Bill again has helped me understand what the customer side of that is and then how to just do that simultaneously and allow that to be kind of a clean break and then getting about three or four things that we need to get in. Again, the big focus has been the pre-booking of the appointments and then also creating internal reminders if the customer didn’t buy all the work to get us prompted in a week, two weeks, 45 days to have AutoVitals alert us that we need to check up on that and try to get that car back in.
Tom Dorsey (05:51):
Okay, so tell us then, so what’s the difference, what specifically is different the pickup than what you were doing before?
Matt Fowler (06:01):
For us, it was when that vehicle tile was in the final section, which is basically the customers waiting to come pick up that we were utilizing that next appointment button at the bottom of that tile to bring that screen up to then let the system tell us the five month, 5,000 mile interval if it’s a regular maintenance, and then doing the booking and just clicking all the things and making sure the customer gets the prompting for the appointment. And now we’re feeding into that whole process of the customer’s phone is now telling them what to do. I really had an aha moment when we talked about that a few weeks ago that it’s so true and we just need to put it in front of him. And I mean it’s really cool. I mean it works and I’m starting to see the results. My phone said, you already pre-booked my next appointment, even if I forgot to mention it. It’s like, you’re right, we did. And it’s just like bang, it comes together.
Tom Dorsey (06:57):
That’s amazing because it’s the trick, right? It’s that you get conditioned that this thing leads your life, tells you what to do. So if you make it tell them to come to the shop, they will or call the shop or follow up for the next step. And it’s just making sure that they understand what those next steps are before they leave. Correct. And so Bill, what are we seeing from a numbers perspective? What’s the ROI
Bill Connor (07:25):
Or not Jamie, but Matt right now. Last time I looked he was sitting about 19 or 20% of the repair orders that come through the shop being exit scheduled. I would say that number’s going to go up exponentially between now and the conference. This is the first number that we measure to go ahead and make sure that they’re doing the first step properly and then I call it stacking the deck in their favor, kind of like going to Vegas and know what card’s going to turn up because basically you’ve already got them there and alls they have to do is either go ahead and confirm it when the time comes or go ahead and reschedule it and the service writer’s going to see it anyway. So there really isn’t any downside. The biggest thing seems to be as we do this, the shops getting the service writer to overcome the fear of taking control of the conversation or actually managing the expectations just for some reason they don’t get it. Same thing with three and five day callbacks. Matt has a different philosophy from Jamie. Jamie for instance, he says that I want my service writers to call back every customer after three or four days that has spent over $50. He doesn’t want to call back state inspections and things like that. Matt has a different philosophy and Doug does, but again, define your process for your stop shop, stick to it and measure it.
Tom Dorsey (08:37):
Yeah,
Matt Fowler (08:39):
Two things I want to comment on that. So about that 20% success with the pre-booking, that is with the total ROS and the ones that we are scheduling for the maintenance stuff. So just like regular oil changes, now I don’t have the data on how much oil change to non-oil change tickets we write, but that already reduces that number because the non-oil changes and the pre bookings, I don’t quite have that systematized because it’s not like I can set a 3000 mile interval on a break job. And so that’s where some of that I’m still working through how we pre-schedule an appointment on someone that is not doing a regular maintenance. Now if they say, well, I got the brakes done today but I can’t do the transmission fluid flush, that’s where internally I’m setting that reminder for that service rider to pick up the phone in 30 days or 45 days or wherever that vibe was from that customer to when we can capitalize on that sale. That’s where I’m using the other side of it that’s not really a prebook, but a reminder for us internally
Tom Dorsey (09:45):
To take action.
Bill Connor (09:46):
So that brings up a good discussion because in Protractors shops and some of the other ones that use can jobs and service package efficiently, we need to start having a discussion with them on how to configure their inspection sheet so that way if a customer is not doing all their maintenance today, when the customer comes in, the service writer can have that discussion and try and capture that customer and convert them into a customer for all their services, not just breakdowns. And that’s a discussion for another day, but again, it’s a tool that we have available can job scheduler using service package and so on. So we’ll get to that as we go on and that’s probably a topic for another show for sure. Yeah.
Matt Fowler (10:26):
I also, one thing he mentioned that Jamie has a little different philosophy with the follow-up calls. That is a part probably in all of my objectives with this whole effort that I haven’t focused as much on. I too want to be in that three to five window to call back and just check in with the customer, make sure all is well. I’ve learned that sometimes no news is bad news and so we want to just kind of touch and make sure all is well, you were happy with the way we cleaned the car and the way it smelled inside, just the little things just to check in. But with everything going on, and not to make an excuse, but my head is spinning with quite a bit with all this other stuff, that is one of the six points that I know is I’m the softest on because it’s the least that I’ve really been putting any teeth into as far as what we’re trying to do in this time.
Tom Dorsey (11:21):
And it’s really critical because you don’t want to find out from a review, like you said, no news bad, and then you catch the review and then you’re doing a lot of damage control.
Matt Fowler (11:29):
Correct. Get
Tom Dorsey (11:29):
That three day touch just to double check and then it’s a great time to reinforce the review. Oh no, everything’s great. You guys were awesome. Hey by the way. And then you can go ahead and just reinforce the request for review, talk about ways that they can communicate with you and then also reinforce the schedule for the appointment reminders and things like that and what next steps are. And it’s just a one two punch really comes from leveraging the digital aspects, and it is to some degree too because you set your reminder for your service writer to make the phone call in the system and then follow up with that personal touch and you should be able to convert a high level. So what’s the goal bill? What are we looking at from a goals perspective as far as exit scheduling percentage wise?
Bill Connor (12:20):
So to me it would seem like we should be doing just like a doctor and a dentist, if somebody comes in today, we want to stack the deck in our favor. If they come in today, we want to see them a certain period down the road. So that way if we got a new customer come in, we schedule ’em, we should be able to get them back. And then as we add new customers, continue to grow and expand. So the goal for me would be in the 70, 80% exit scheduled and then from there we should go ahead and see the retention rate go ahead and go up exponentially. And we can measure that several months down the road because most of these vehicles, they’d be cycling back in three or four months. So we have the ability to go and see that. And one of the things that we haven’t touched on yet that I think is real important, and Matt can go ahead and maybe tell you what he feels about this also, is we set up a today’s vehicle page preset form for what we call incoming appointments where we have today’s appointments and then we can see another two days.
(13:18):
And to be able to watch that and see for the green check mark are these things actually confirmed a couple days out to make sure that they’re not going to be a no-show and blow a hole in our schedule. So the visibility there for a service writer to see is kind of a huge tool that we really didn’t have all in one place before.
Tom Dorsey (13:38):
And that seems like a really great indicator to make sure that the messaging is being followed also right, and that the motorist knows what to do, what’s expected of them, and that the service writer or the folks at the front counter are actually communicating that expectation because it’ll show up right there in the, is it confirmed? Did they show up?
Matt Fowler (13:58):
Yeah, so what Bill helped me with was creating a tab that comes up every natural opening of the day to where I’ve got my main TVP, I’ve got the technician workflow, a technician view, and then I have this appointment view. And so those three tabs are now coming up every morning. And again, Bill helped me build it so that it’s just strictly the appointments that are coming in, the appointments that have been missed. And then also it shows the two ahead, excuse me, the next two days ahead and that’s where we’re getting proactive that if we don’t have the green check, we’re proactively calling and confirming. And then if we are confirming, then we’re Bill show me how to systematically confirm it so that we’re not double dipping. Like if my service writer calls and then I call and yeah, you guys already called me. Leave me alone. I’m coming. We’re heading that off. But that was one of my objectives in this too, and with how Bill helped me build that tab. It’s now front and center every morning. We all know who we got to be touching base with and who we can for sure expect are coming or not. So it doesn’t blow up the schedule like you said.
Tom Dorsey (15:02):
No, that’s awesome. So Bill, folks in the audience, AutoVitals, users out there that want to have something similar, how can they reach out to you or to their advisor or did you post something and help out AutoVitals to help people to set up those intake tabs?
Bill Connor (15:22):
Their trainer can certainly go ahead and help them with that. Any questions on this? We highly encourage them to ask ’em on the Facebook forum so that way when they’re asked and answered, they not only help that one or two people, but they help everybody else that follows. We’re going to be going over a lot of great stuff at the digital shop conference. It’s going to be a great place to come out there and network with people like Matt, Jamie, Doug, and so on this particular topic. I mean there’s would be hundreds of discussions that happened on all kinds of topics at the different breakouts and in between. So that’d be a great place to come out there and ask some questions and as Fred would say, it’s a one-stop shop for anything automotive related.
Tom Dorsey (16:06):
So Bill, I got to tell you, that was an amazing segue. So what Bill’s saying is that if you want to get those tabs set up, come to the digital shop conference and then we’ll show you how to do it.
(16:17):
I like it, but no seriously digital shop conference because this is what we’re going to be giving kind of the culmination of this case study is we’re going to have these guys up on the stage and then we’re going to be going over all the metrics and what the results were with this change of process for pickup and how we’re targeting that exit scheduling. And so this is where you’re really going to see the meat on the bone so to speak. So you want to make sure you get those tickets. I think we still got a few spots open, but you can just get on search for digital shop conference on Google and you’ll find that tab. Oops, sorry about that. That’s
Dustin Anaas (16:56):
AutoVitals.com/conference, Tom.
Tom Dorsey (16:59):
Oh yeah, thanks. That’s what I meant to say.
Bill Connor (17:01):
So most of the coaching companies across the country have been begging and pleading with their shops that they work with for years to go ahead and exit their customers. So this is obviously a topic that’s near and dear to their heart and our heart and everybody else is to go ahead and capture that return customer. So I know when I start working with shops, I always work on weekly revenue and ARO first of all, and then when I got it solid, I started working on retention to get ’em coming back. So exit scheduling is right in there and then you can make a decent calculation on how many customers you need for replacement or growth. So it’s an overall full well-rounded process, but you can’t just stop at one level. It’s like the merry ground. You decide where you get off or you can go ahead and rinse and repeat and keep using the tools over and over again.
Tom Dorsey (17:47):
No, that’s a great point. That going to tell you a lot of stuff, customers you actually want to be doing business with and keeping and the ones that yank your chain a little bit and really be able to analyze customer behavior as well so that you can make some sense out of how you spend your marketing dollars and kind of where you’re putting the value in your database. Let’s talk about this because I guarantee you there’s people sitting out there right now that says, you know what? That all might work great for Matt Fowler because he’s in a special different shop than mine in a whole different area. My customers are completely different and they don’t like to be pressured or pushed or it’s spammy or it’s too salesy. What do you say to those folks?
Matt Fowler (18:36):
Me or Bill?
Tom Dorsey (18:37):
Either one actually I’ll go with Matt.
Matt Fowler (18:40):
Yeah, I mean boy, what do I say to those folks? I say that I totally get it and this product is not a hard selling product. It’s a product that basically takes some shops out there. I worked at a shop that had the theology of you bring every customer into the back of the shop, you show ’em the leaking axle boot, you show ’em the coolant drip and all that kind of stuff. In today’s day and age, that’s just not realistic with your average motorist. Now you still got some people that come down and they just want to drink coffee and hang out and that’s cool, but the majority of the people that are dropping cash right now have busy lives. And so for me that’s the most basic simplified way I could say that the product bridges that and that quite frankly is just the starting line.
(19:31):
There’s so much stuff that can be done with this product to improve a business from big to small, from high car count to low ARO and vice versa. I mean it caters to a lot of that and you can customize a lot of it. I’m starting to trick my spreadsheet out pretty cool where I’ve got these links for the financing that I just learned about on the Facebook forum this week that Fred is doing. Oh man, that’s like gold and I just put it on there yesterday and I’m trying to now beat up my finance companies to give me a good solid web link and I mean the sky’s the limit with this product and just little tricks like that where you can see people that have been doing this for God knows how long and now you’re learning about it and you’re like, why wasn’t I doing this? Just those little things that can really take the product to the next level for your business.
Tom Dorsey (20:25):
Go ahead Billy.
Bill Connor (20:26):
So back to what you were asking just a little bit earlier about the customer and what does the customer think about it? And I could tell you a hundred percent for sure that if you go and do something that the customer doesn’t know about in advance, it’s going to happen. Then they get offended. But if you go ahead and say that I will be sending you a reminder or an appointment reminder and then it’s going to come to you two weeks beforehand and again the day before and so on, if you go and tell them what’s going to happen and they agree to it, they don’t have an objection, right? Then you’ve actually got a slam dunk. So it is kind of like if you had surgery and the doctor didn’t tell you it’s going to hurt like hell afterwards, you’d probably call ’em up and we’re going to be offended. But it is kind of the same mindset here. Let ’em know what’s going to happen and then follow through and make it happen.
Tom Dorsey (21:14):
Yeah, that’s the whole trick. It becomes salesy if you drop something on somebody, they don’t have an expectation for it, but like what Matt said is the system is designed to be transparent through the whole process from actually from search and educate from where they see that you’re a digital shop and you can display what your process looks like online as somebody’s making a decision on what shop to go visit and really differentiate yourself from your competition that way. Then when they come in, you set that expectation at the drop and then after that it’s not salesy. I didn’t break this thing, I’m just letting you know it’s broken and that here’s your options and I’m not even telling you you need to do it now unless it’s a safety issue and I’m not going to let you leave my shop with that safety condition on the vehicle, but that’s a whole nother matter.
(21:56):
And so I think from that perspective, once you establish that understanding and set that expectation, it becomes, it’s the opposite. And from the folks I’ve talked to, it’s the exact opposite, right? Is because it’s not seen as a sales or push, it’s actually seen as value. You’re telling me what’s going on with this. You’re giving me the options that I have to make a decision. I might drive it off a cliff or light it on fire and call my insurance company or something, right? And get a new car. But you know what, that person, they probably got other cars, they probably got family members with cars. That cars that they go by is going to run off of warranty soon enough and they’ll be coming to you forever because you’re the one who gives them that confidence and that credibility and trust through your transparency.
Bill Connor (22:40):
If we Go ahead, I was going to say go ahead. So if we position ourself in the marketplace so that our job is to make the customer’s vehicle as safe, comfortable, and dependable as possible, and all the tools that we’re using are specifically for them, then we’ve got a home run for the customer. So everything we do at AutoVitals is actually customer centric, which means the end user customer, the motorist itself, and then the shop actually reaps the benefits from taking care of that customer using the tools.
Matt Fowler (23:14):
The other point I was going to make, Tom, is we’re talking about how AutoVitals helps the business externally. There’s a whole nother internal piece as well. And what I mean by that is when you’re on a digital platform here, the expectation is the service writer takes a photo of every corner of that vehicle before it even crosses the threshold. So now I can have photos and documentation that indicate how that vehicle looked before it even stepped tire into my shop to where if there’s something that comes up in the customer world like, oh, that scratch wasn’t there, I’m now protected. Or say you’ve got an issue where a technician was that check engine light on before or after, well, I don’t know. Okay, well let’s play the video back of the startup before you even touch the car. Well, that light was not there, so now we need to know that we need to minimize that problem and head that off before it goes back to the customer or even further, I’m trying to identify this leak, but I took this photo of this leak on the engine oil and it’s this sensor here that’s leaking Well now afterward, oh, now we got a leak over here.
(24:17):
Well, that’s not in that photo. So what were you saying? So you can iron out a ton of crap internally with the product because of how it creates the transparency from front to back as well.
Tom Dorsey (24:28):
Yeah, no, that’s a brilliant point and we’ve actually been given a lot of the thought about that intake process at AutoVitals lately is because it’s funny, I was thinking about that this morning in the shower actually is like,
Matt Fowler (24:41):
No, not God. Stand down, stand down,
Tom Dorsey (24:47):
Pump the brakes,
(24:50):
Pull the eject lever. Oh gosh, shut up This morning. I was having some thoughts as I was waking up, but I actually spend most of my day thinking about how to make other folks with a lot of money, and if I was a small business operator, I mean what a valuable thing that would be to have an army of people out there thinking about how to make my bank account grow. And one of those things is exactly that. And so we’ve been kicking around because to your point Matt, is if I can get a guy, a porter even out and greet you in the parking lot and I’m snapping some photos and I’m giving service and I’m documenting some stuff right now, you know what happens is they go, and I’m not saying people are, they’re out there, but if they had any idea that they were going to come in and say, oh, that scratch wasn’t there or something, that’s wood that’s right out of their mind because they actually see you come out and start documenting as soon as that tire, they stepped foot with that tire in the parking lot, right?
Matt Fowler (25:50):
And I mean, I hate to say it, but I’ve been burned on that on the other side of the equation without any documentation and we’re here to provide solutions to problems and when you’ve got an out of left field problem that you have no way to be able to say whose responsibility it is, at the end of the day, you’re the business man. You’re the one who has to be accountable to stuff that you may not even have anything to do with, especially in this industry. You got to self-protect, and that’s something that this product gives you
Tom Dorsey (26:19):
And then you are protected as long as you follow that process. If you establish a process from intake through your service to the pickup and then follow up where you’re taking, and really it’s putting the customers and what Bill said, our job is to provide the best service in the safest vehicle when this, and if I take that as my mantra and I follow a process, I develop a process and I follow it consistently each and every time. Guess what happens is you’re covered. You’re almost indemnified through the process because everything’s documented, timestamped, and even better, the customer has been notified. So there is no question that they didn’t know or didn’t get the information because you can fire that off through an automated notification to their cell phone by text as soon as the tech is done and it’s got a timestamp.
Bill Connor (27:08):
Yep. It’s kind of interesting also when you put yourself in a position where you were talking about safe, comfortable, and dependable. If that is your mantra that you’re using, you’re going to attract a whole different type of customer also, which is the type of customer that everybody else would really love to have. So you just build them, that’s your avatar customer and you keep adding more and more like them because they socialize with people just like themselves.
Tom Dorsey (27:34):
Yep, yep. No, exactly. Well, so that’s great. So what’s the next steps? So we’ve got the process established. Now we’re just tracking results.
Bill Connor (27:46):
So right now we’re tracking results. The initial number that we’re going to see change is going to be the exit schedule for those of them that are actually doing the customer callback. We can go ahead and look in there and make sure the customer callback list isn’t growing on a daily basis. We can go and see are the service riders actually following through during the callback, and then we can go ahead in a few months from now when appointments start coming in, we can start seeing the percentage of appointments made based on service and repair reminders. So there’s a couple different ways to measure each of the steps that they’re working on.
Tom Dorsey (28:19):
That makes sense. And so that’s what we’ll be showing at digital shop conference.
Bill Connor (28:23):
As long as we produce the numbers, we’ll definitely put ’em up there. Good or bad.
Tom Dorsey (28:27):
Final results, I was thinking Bill right now is we should probably get you out there, maybe interview a couple of customers on camera and we could show that at conference too. A couple of the motorists over at Matt’s shop ain’t getting it.
Bill Connor (28:44):
That’s a whole different state here. This is half a world away,
Tom Dorsey (28:49):
Right?
Bill Connor (28:51):
I could do it remotely though. I can certainly do that.
Tom Dorsey (28:53):
Yeah, you could. That’s for sure.
Matt Fowler (28:55):
So a couple of things for the conference for me, kind of like Bill said, I’m trying to iron out some wrinkles with my point of sale system, but when I come to California, I’m checking two bags. One has my underwear and my toothbrush. The other one has all kinds of issues that I have with my retention stuff because I’ve now got three vehicles that I can run my retention and customer. I’ve got AutoVitals, I’ve got KaKui, and now I have Protractor. And so I’m just kind of waiting to get some numbers, but when I come out there, I now am coming to the conference with issues of my own to be like, okay, what are you guys doing? Who’s doing it this way and that way, and what knobs do you turn? And so I can start to get that part together. Got tons of options. The technology is there, how do I do it? So don’t a big concern, but then how do I do it with what some of these other cats have already walked through and I can just now use their wisdom to just get after it right away.
Tom Dorsey (29:53):
Yep. Plug and play.
Bill Connor (29:55):
So he already knows what he’s shopping for. He’s got a shopping list just like Fred said, get a shopping list, bring it with you.
Matt Fowler (30:00):
No, 10 folks.
Tom Dorsey (30:01):
That’s great. For sure. That’s genius. And that goes for everybody out there, right? Is when you’re coming to the shop conference come prepared, right? Come with just like Matt said, a list of your concerns, a list goals, and then just go out and just like a hunter, identify the guys that you want to emulate or that are up there, say bragging about all their success and pin ’em down and download it right out of their brain into your database and take it back and implement it. And then you know what? Here’s the deal. If it doesn’t work out, then you got to hold them accountable. Don’t call Bill.
Bill Connor (30:33):
Oh, they can call me. I can take it.
Tom Dorsey (30:35):
Yeah.
Bill Connor (30:36):
My policy is we put something in place, we measure it. If it doesn’t work, we don’t give up and just send a car down the road to another shop, so to say. We go at it a different way until we get the result we want. Period. Failure is not an option, period.
Tom Dorsey (30:53):
Bill’s like an investigator. You should have a Sherlock Holmes hat on over there. What he does, he digs in and finds a solution.
Bill Connor (31:00):
I got a detective hat, but I didn’t want to go and steal Matt’s deal because he kind of showed up with multiple hats before.
Matt Fowler (31:05):
That was a while ago.
Tom Dorsey (31:07):
Yeah, that was cool. That was awesome. Well maybe we’ll see if we can recreate that at the shop conference.
Matt Fowler (31:14):
You never know. Like I said, I’m bringing two bags so I got plenty of room.
Tom Dorsey (31:18):
Plenty of room for props in there.
Matt Fowler (31:19):
That’s right. Props and problems. I’m coming with some problems.
Tom Dorsey (31:23):
Well perfect. Hey, really appreciate your time, Matt. Looking forward to, we probably won’t see you again until we see you in Marina del Rey at the conference. And so if you folks are looking to see how it works out for Matt from improving that pickup process, digital shop conference, get your tickets, get out there. We’ll also be having Jamie joining them, Doug bracket, and we will get the whole scope of how it worked across all the shops and really give you an opportunity to get out there and meet these guys and talk to ’em directly and pick their brain and find out what to do and what not to do and just help you to get out there and be a better shop operator.
(32:06):
Next week we’re going to be doing a family Thanksgiving show. We’re going to be, and this is Dustin’s title by the way. It takes a Village and we’re going to be talking with Ryan Flattum from RMF Auto Service and we’ll just be talking about culture and about how to create that big Thanksgiving family out there because yeah, you’d be surprised at what a really strong culture and motivated team will do for your business. And so tune in next Wednesday, 10:00 AM Pacific, 1:00 PM Eastern or noon. I found out central and like I am today, and let’s talk culture. Let’s talk developing that big, strong culture and motivated team environment in your shop next week. Until then, get out there and make some money. We’ll talk to you next week. Have a great day. Thanks Tom.