The Profitable Possibilities of Data in the Shop

What can an auto repair shop learn from the Moneyball method? It turns out a lot, actually. Join us to learn how Adam Bendzick of Pro Service Auto Repair uses the Business Control Panel (BCP) by AutoVitals to set goals, track profit-driving metrics, and motivate his staff in the bays and at the service counter. Here’s what you can learn:

– The revenue-driving metrics top shops use to measure success and the actions that drive them, like Billy Beane in the movie Moneyball

– How to set goals, track progress, and use data to motivate shop staff

– Ways you can use Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) to make decisions based on data, not emotions

– Why the motorist benefits from a data-driven shop

Here’s the link to the clip from Moneyball

Episode Transcript

*This transcript was generated using Artificial Intelligence. Errors may occur. If you notice an error, please contact [email protected].

Tom Dorsey (00:00:03):
Good morning and good afternoon. Welcome to this week’s edition of The Digital Shop Talk Radio. I’m Tom Dorsey, and today we’re going to be talking about data. We’re going to be talking about turning data into dollars, and so you want to sharpen a pencil. We’ve got the Duke of Data joining us today. Welcome back, Adam Bendzick from Pro Service Automotive. Fantastic to have you on because we know through the conference, through the show episodes that you’ve been on, most of our conversations are revolving around that business control panel and what you do with that data and how it has been a critical tool for you, Adam, right, to be able to make that transition from a paper-based traditional shop to the shop that you’ve built today, the digital shop that you’ve built today. And so we’re really excited to have you on. Welcome, Adam. Thank you very much.
(00:00:58):
I appreciate it. Glad to be back. Yeah, yeah, sure. And as you folks know, regular listeners, Adam’s always lurking in the chat anyway, always keeping us honest, always keeping us on our toes and always driving great conversations here in the show live, but also on the Facebook form. And so if you’re not registering the Facebook form, make sure you get over there. Just search for AutoVitals, partner form or digital shop, digital shop talk I should say, and register. It’s a closed group, but request to join, we will vet you a little bit. Make sure that you’re not from the Chinese Communist Party in here stealing our trade secrets, and we’ll get you in and make sure that you’re part of that conversation. And if there’s any questions or anything, maybe you didn’t get your questions answered today because make sure you chat ’em in.
(00:01:49):
You can use that questions, that q and a button there, and we’ll try to answer everything live on the air today, but if we don’t get to it or we don’t go deep enough, take that question to the Facebook form and let’s start that discussion there. So blah, blah, blah. Done. With that, let’s get right into the details. What we’re going to be talking today about is really an interesting, and it’s something we’ve talk about here internally a lot at AutoVitals, one of Uwe’s favorite movies and probably a lot of ours, if you’ve seen it and if you’ve not, we’re going to bring you up to speed pretty quick on it. But the movie Moneyball, right? The Moneyball with Brad Pitt, and they’re talking about how they kind of transform the as into a data-driven organization and started winning a lot of games. And that success formula is really what we build the business control panel around, what we build our digital shop concept around.
(00:02:45):
It’s about the data and what you do with the data and how you translate that into your customer service and your operation and your best practices in your business. So Uwe, why don’t you tell us a little bit how maybe Moneyball has influenced some of the things that we’ve done at AutoVitals. It’s always a recurring theme. When we have meetings and we’re talking about solutions and solving problems, we kind of always reference that movie quite a bit because it is so really succinct to I think what we’re trying, the dynamics of changing the old structure and moving it into a more dynamic and effective structure by embracing that data.
Uwe Kleinschmidt (00:03:29):
Yeah, thank you. First of all, I have to admit, I didn’t grow up with baseball. So my first baseball game, I was sitting there and thinking, there’s nothing going on down there, so why is everybody so excited and
Tom Dorsey (00:03:47):
Nobody has that.
Uwe Kleinschmidt (00:03:49):
Then I watched Moneyball and it was so interesting in so many aspects, brought me much closer to the game of baseball. But as you will see in the clip, it’s not just, okay, we have now data. Let’s use the data to make decisions. That sounds kind of simple, but we have habits developed over time, how we assess skills, how we make decisions, and they were all based on various objective criteria. And as you can see in the Moneyball clip, I mean the scouts made a living of their personal assessment of a situation, in this case the player’s skills, and now they feel threatened by somebody coming along as the guy says, Google boy, Google Boy comes along, has some data, and all of a sudden decades of experience are thrown out. And that is a little bit what we are doing over decades. A lot of assessment of skills is by watching people sharing opinions. And since the data is not available, that’s sometimes a very subjective game. And if you are the boss, you are the boss, so your opinion is ranking higher than other opinions and then all of a sudden you have a skewed culture potentially, and data can just neutralize this can raise the morale, but it requires a shift
Dustin Anaas (00:05:51):
Due to copyright laws. We can’t show the full clip here, click the link in the description to watch the clip from Moneyball,
Tom Dorsey (00:05:57):
Adapt or die. So like I said, that is, I mean, it couldn’t have been a better scene for what we run across all the time. I mean, Bill Connor can speak to this, right? I mean that’s one of the first things that we really have to address when we first bring on a new shop is to say, Hey, here’s how we do things and this is how it’s going to work. And a lot of times people go, whoa, I’ve been doing this 30 years. I’m just going to stare at you until you talk Uwe
Uwe Kleinschmidt (00:06:39):
Bill is talking. But I think Bill,
Tom Dorsey (00:06:41):
Oh, Bill was me. We were playing the blinking game right there, right. Bill, do we got audio? Good audio for you?
Uwe Kleinschmidt (00:06:55):
Doesn’t look like it.
Tom Dorsey (00:06:56):
Nope. Well, we’ll take it to Adam. So Adam kick us off, buddy, is that’s in a nutshell probably you came to that crossroads almost when you were first seeing some of the depth because it is about, yeah, sure. For folks, just for an understanding, we are not looking to replace the experience. The experience and the wisdom and the knowledge is critical to your success. What we’re saying is you get to enhance it through analyzing some data you probably never even thought of looking at before. It might be how many steps somebody’s taken to go to their works workstation and back to some supply rack, but the data that AutoVitals is looking at in the BCP or behavioral data that your technicians and your service advisors are using in the process to engage with that customer. And if we can analyze that and we can start to think who does things well, maybe we start to make decisions like Billy Bean did in that clip we just watched on. I don’t really care if he’s not so proficient here. If we focus him here on this, we’re going to get the results that we’re looking for.
Adam Bendzick (00:08:07):
Exactly. Yeah, that clip is perfect for the way auto repair shops maybe should be looking at things. I think the biggest thing that stood out to me in watching it, I’ve watched the movie several times but just not recently, is that the older gentleman that is there talking to Billy and he just is kind of dismissing what the younger guy is saying just because he doesn’t have the experience and he doesn’t have that wisdom so to speak, that’s been built up over the last 29 years. But the thing that the younger guy is going off of is he’s going straight off the data. He’s not going off a hunch or a gut reaction or anything like that. He’s looking at numbers consolidating, consolidating that down and saying on base percentage, although it’s not sexy if you will, as it is hitting a home run or hitting 300 plus average or anything like that, getting on base gets you those little wins that ultimately win the game for you and the things that we look at all the time is those numbers of how does motorist research time, how does edited pix for inspections, how does all these things impact the ARO?
(00:09:11):
And then you take the big things, a lot of people focus on a batting average kind of thing in home runs. It’s kind of like car count and it’s kind of like ARO and everything, but what contributes to getting to those high sale numbers is all of the other little components that nobody really focuses on unless you take the time to actually do it. So with that business control panel, whether you dive deep into it and you set up a bunch of stuff and you actually look at the spreadsheets or you just have your product advisor go through there and set up certain thresholds that you want to get emails about and alert you when things are out of place, no matter how deep you dive into it, it still can be beneficial to track the data.
Bill Connor (00:09:53):
So is my microphone working now?
Adam Bendzick (00:09:55):
Yeah, there you go.
Bill Connor (00:09:56):
Alright. So kind of when I’m working with shops, I tell ’em, I said, look, I said whether you can believe you can manage with data or whether you believe you can’t, you’re a hundred percent right. I said. So let’s go ahead and use the data to start you out on the right path and measure every time, every week, identify a couple things to work on and then set up where you actually measure and use that data to keep your shot moving forward. Again, for so many years in the industry myself, everything was done by either memory or seat of your pants, but when you get to where you can use the data where nothing’s personal, you’re just saying This is what it is, this is what we need to do and we need it done by this date and could see you’re trending in the right direction. It’s a beautiful thing.
Tom Dorsey (00:10:41):
Yeah, definitely. And Uwe, when we started to introduce the quick wins concept, and that’s getting on base, right? The selling the cabin air filter and focus on cabin air filter sales or lineman that might not be the big home run and the crowds get up and cheer and your A tech walks around strutting because he’s going to do this big ticket job, whatever it is, it’s getting a run, it’s getting on first, right? You keep loading the bases that way and that’s how you score the runs. And so what I would say to folks, if the quick wins is a new vocabulary to you, if you haven’t heard it coming from your AutoVitals trainer or ran across it in the Facebook form and helped AutoVitals.com, raise your hand, right? Make sure you bring it up in your next check-in with your AutoVitals advisor, talk about it on the Facebook form, ask some questions because it really is the basics. It’s the easiest path to making that transition away from seat of the pants. Like Bill said to Billy Data-driven Adam Bendzick. I’m going to say Adam is Billy Bean, his data-driven shop performance that, I mean, y’all have seen Adam on the podcast. I don’t need to brag about his numbers. It’s been a pretty incredible growth story for him. And it wasn’t luck. I’ll say that it wasn’t luck, it’s commitment in making that commitment to operating from the data perspective in a smart way, right? Work harder or work smarter. Data helps you work smarter.
Adam Bendzick (00:12:20):
Yep. One thing that’s helped us too in that transition that maybe if you’ve ever watched the full movie is Nick and the rest of the guys that are here, it was they were more receptive to the data and they grasp it a lot easier where in the movie the head coach is resistant to it, all those scouts are resistant to it and it made it much more difficult and it seemed like Billy was the bad guy for trying to do it this way. What we’ve been fortunate with is that, to the best of my knowledge anyway, none of the guys at our shop view me as the bad guy. They’re like, Hey, no, he’s spending a lot of time putting the other numbers, but then they’re also contributing to those numbers and they’re making ’em work. So it’s been really nice to have the staff that we have that really care about it as much as I do.
(00:13:05):
I mean without that it’s hard. All those players that come in that movie, David Justice, Scott Hattiesburg, all those things, they even questioned, okay, why do you want to have me sign my knees are weak and my bat speed slow down and this and that, but then Billy almost instills confidence in them by saying, no, even though you don’t produce the home runs and the big batting average and all those things anymore, you can still contribute to our team in these certain ways and you’re an asset to us. And it almost brings this newfound confidence to them. In doing so,
Uwe Kleinschmidt (00:13:42):
You don’t want to brag, but I think we should name the numbers and Bill’s numbers and Adam’s numbers. So Bill’s numbers at the end of the movie, right? When he gets invited to the Red Sox to become the general manager and declines, the owner says, the Yankees have won as many victories as you have and they spend 1.5 million on every single one you spend 264,000. That puts it in perspective. Adam increased the revenue per employee by a hundred thousand dollars in three years. Just imagine that. What business is capable of doing that? And so there is real amazing outcome possible if you stick to your guns and make the data work. I just want to mention that this is huge. This is not just us having fun here on the podcast and we don’t have anything else to talk about. This is
Adam Bendzick (00:14:53):
Life changing really. It is.
Bill Connor (00:14:55):
So when you have an employee that’s digitally resistant, they’re going to be assimilated into the digital world at some point or another, and that’s where the quick wins come into play. If you can go ahead and show them exactly by doing certain things where they generate revenue or more hours for themselves very easily by following a process, and you’re doing that only on one or two topics, and then after they get that dialed in, add some more to it. So again, everybody’s going to be digital at some point. There’s no point in kind of spreading it out over a long period of time. Create them quick wins for ’em, choose a few topics and get them started right from day one. Don’t wait six months into it and then say, Hey, now we can show you how to get some quick wins. Quick wins should go ahead and start right from the first month or two when you start getting integrated.
Adam Bendzick (00:15:45):
Absolutely.
Tom Dorsey (00:15:46):
Yes, exactly. It’s much harder to learn something or it’s much easier to learn something new than to change a habit. Maybe that made sense. You get my gist, but I want to get back to what Adam was talking about is because it changed the culture on that team and saying, Hey, I’ve analyzed where you are able to understand your contribution and your biggest value and then actually take advantage of that so that every day you strap your boots on, you’re going to work to add value and be a critical component of a team. Man that changes your attitude. Boy does it change your performance. You start getting more done and you’re making less mistakes and you’re more focused and you’re better adjusted and happy and getting along better with your teammates. And all of those folks start to have that same influence, that rising tide floated all boats. And so Adam, how did that, I mean, was it something noticeable? I mean I know you’re already running a great team, but how have you kind of visualized or experienced that culture shift as you went more away from hair on fire, seat of the pants to plans, right? Having a plan.
Adam Bendzick (00:17:15):
Yeah, some people are going to grasp it, some people aren’t. For the most part, our team has and said they’re going to buy into the concept and everything. Some are more, it’s interesting, I’m not going to bring up the names of our guys in the back right now, but Nick and I are bring up him because I was taught the conversation at a shop here is, we were talking about it yesterday where one of our technicians started with us, let’s say three years ago, and then another one started two years ago. The one that was started two years ago is more involved in doing a thorough inspection and detailed notes and everything like that. He is phenomenal when it comes down to taking good quality pictures and videos and everything. The interesting thing is you would think that the guy that was here for longer would be more of that role model, so to speak, where in the Moneyball clip, there’s these guys that have been with that organization for however many years, they have 30 years, but then what ended up happening throughout the movie is they saw that because of this younger guy Google Boy’s data that they started buying into it and were like, Hey, this guy knows this stuff.
(00:18:24):
Like this is proven to win, and the fan base starts to come out to the games more and then there’s a buzz around it and everything like that. So you might bring in one or two people in your organization that might not be the fastest at doing an inspection. They might not be the workhorse and billing out hours, but they do a quality job and then that rubs off on the other guys that are extremely fast and they are your workhorses. And it almost raises their bar, so to speak, in the quality work that they did or that they’re doing. And it’s not that they’re doing a bad job, it’s just, it just raises that level amongst everybody because they all, they see this guy doing a great job, they kind of want to jump on that bandwagon and it rubs off. It’s a cool culture to see that,
Tom Dorsey (00:19:11):
Yeah, winning’s good, people like to win. And when you have an opportunity and you see the path, hey, you’ll think about your own performance. You start to reflect on that and that’s when you really start to adapt and make changes to get with the team. And then after that, it’s just keeping it going through using this data in your shop meetings and making sure that your goals are clear and defined and as long as you have those clearly defined goals and you can measure them and show that information so people know where they stand and what they have to do, what’s expected. Or you can almost not lean back too far, but you can really start to lean back, not micromanage. And again, that just empowers folks to do more and more. And then here come the ideas right here comes the input from your team on how to improve and really take it to the next level and firing on all cylinders at that point.
Adam Bendzick (00:20:15):
Without a doubt. Yeah, I mean it’s definitely just like you said there of you make this change and then they start seeing that and adapt to it, and now they’re not as resistant, but then they also come up their own ideas. And for me, I’ve been able to focus more on the business side of thing. Obviously I’ve come on the show a lot more and everything like that and the Facebook forums and the different things, but it’s made video
Tom Dorsey (00:20:38):
Editing, making awesome tear jerk in videos.
Adam Bendzick (00:20:41):
Yeah, exactly. Exactly. But that’s stuff that I really enjoy and I do. It helps the shop to have that public presence, I guess you’d say, and the positive attitude and everything. But the way that I’ve been able to do those things was because the staff has bought into that and they value those things. And what I used to be, and I still am definitely still a control freak and looking at numbers and stuff, but letting guys do their jobs because they see through reports and emails and different things like that where they’re doing great or maybe where they need to improve upon and all those things. And a lot of times they’re bringing up numbers to me of data that they’re looking at that I haven’t even looked at for the week yet or the day yet or the month yet or whatever, because they’re in tune to those things going on and now they value it.
(00:21:32):
So it’s definitely been great with that. The guys up front with Nick and John, they’re constantly looking at sales numbers, but then they’re also looking at the GP percentages and different things so they aren’t discounting too much and aren’t having too many warranty claims that are bringing down our GP and everything. When you at the top, if you start breeding that culture of, okay, here’s the things that I care about and here’s why, and then they can see the value in that. Now, even though they might not be as deep in a spreadsheet and everything, if you lay out an easy result for them to accumulate, like the business control panel or a dashboard on ProTrac or whatever, something that they can see on their own and click to it on their own, then they pay attention to it a lot more and they valid a lot more.
Uwe Kleinschmidt (00:22:16):
That’s advanced. Right. Can you take us back to when you started this? When did you make data part of your shop meeting or another kind of routine you developed where people got interested in data and saw the value? Hey, and
Tom Dorsey (00:22:35):
Real quick, Adam, sorry, but before you do that, I just wanted, this is a good opportunity. I don’t know if you guys saw Tom Seagraves question in the chat, but it dovetails so well with what you’re talking about is that you get a different perspective. And I think his question is really interesting is he’s asking, has anybody measured the effect of using OEM parts versus aftermarket on cycle time and touch time? And that is something that that’s a data question that you’re only going to get from somebody who is running that process on a daily basis. And you empower them to ask those types of questions, whether it’s a tech or the owner or the manager or the foreman, whoever it may be, they’re going to have a unique experience that they start to think through, how can I improve this step right here? And I just want to bring that out. And I don’t know, to be honest with you, Tom, I have no idea if anybody, I know we don’t have a metric like that, but I think it’s an interesting question. We’d like to open that up to anybody who might be doing that or thinking about doing some things like that and start that discussion. Thanks, I just wanted to get that in there. Thanks, Adam.
Adam Bendzick (00:23:42):
Yeah, absolutely. So going back to Uwe’s, do you want me to try to answer that question first? Probably. So as far as our data, we don’t have anything specific to dealership or anything. I’m sure, I don’t know through AutoVitals that we necessarily could, but through Protractor we definitely could pull up. Whenever we have a dealer part, we type in dealer in the manufacturer, and then it has a different parts marked matrix and everything. So I know I could pull up a report, buy a manufacturer, cycle out, that part of it. I definitely couldn’t tell you cycle times and this and that that maybe would make the jobs faster or more efficient or anything like that. But we could cycle it down to our, condense it down to how many warranty claims have we had when the dealer has been marked in the manufacturer code or whatever it might be. So that data we could pull down a little bit, but probably not as deep as what he seems to be talking about there.
(00:24:37):
And then going back to what Uwe was asking about when do we start tracking it is I first started with QuickBooks as our accounting software and we did all our invoices and stuff through there and then we changed to RO writer and then we went to Protractor. Now it’s been pretty much since day one. My background is in accounting degree, that’s when I went to school firm business management. So I’ve always had that desire to look at the numbers and crunch it down and looking at profit and loss sheets and everything. But the thing that progression would be is QuickBooks for maybe the first 10 years of our business, we’ve been in business for 18 years, so probably the first 10 years in QuickBooks and then the next six-ish in RO writer, and then the last two in protractor. And every step has been a little deeper into the data where QuickBooks was just seeing sales numbers and it was hard to really see any of the AROs and everything like that.
(00:25:31):
It was hard to really break that down. But then RO writer, you could, so I would print off reports and all those things throughout RO writer and I would look at that, but it was hard to share that data always with the team because it was more of a printed report and you would see this snapshot of data and you wouldn’t see Uwe’s big on trends. You wouldn’t see the trends you’d be looking at like, okay, in January we did this number in February we did this number, but I would be seeing it in numbers and it would make sense in my head, but I wouldn’t see it as like a bar graph or dots or a grid of any sort that somebody that just wants to see a picture could relate to. So when we went to Protractor, now with AutoVitals business control panel, it’s easier to communicate, okay, here’s these little victories and this incline of games that we’re doing in research time and ARO and everything is broken down a lot more over a trend, which is nice to see.
Tom Dorsey (00:26:28):
Yeah, because, sorry, real quick. Because if you see the improvement, then you just turn the throttle up, you do more of it. If you don’t see the improvement, well then you analyze what might influence that and affect that and work there. If you still don’t move the needle, hey, you know what, maybe that isn’t an area of focus that you need to focus on. And one thing just real quick also on that Facebook forum and the work that John Long, by the way, who’s having Greek appreciation day for lunch over there with lamb burgers and Greek salad and any Greeks in Texas, take your Carter shirt’s, automotive to get it repaired because it’s Greek depreciation day and probably got a little 10% bump off your tire rotation and balance. Shoot, I now forgot what I was going to say with my stupid jokes.
Bill Connor (00:27:16):
So in the past, I shop owner used to have the fear of going ahead and sharing too much information with their employees because they didn’t want them to go out and start their own business. And over time they found out that really it was a bad plan because what they did is they still went out and started their own business and then they went ahead and drove the prices down the market because they only thing they know how to sell by is price. Nobody ever educated him. So Adam, do you find that fear is gone by going ahead and helping your people understand and then they’re going to do one of two things, they’re either going to go out and be successful and not be a low price point in the marketplace, or they’re going to decide, Hey, that’s not for me. I don’t need to know that I’m going to stay here forever because I’m happy where I’m at.
Adam Bendzick (00:27:59):
That’s an interesting question actually. So to answer it, probably the best way is when our business is succeeding and doing higher numbers, it just makes it so much easier to offer the benefits to keep ’em to stay higher pay health insurance, retirement benefits, volunteer benefits like accident insurance and everything like that. All of those things that would cost them a lot of money if they went on their own or maybe they wouldn’t even have, we’re able to offer, but the only way we’re able to offer them is if we’re making good margins and all those things. So yeah, I mean that’s a great point of sharing. The information has obviously proven to raise the bar for what they’re expecting of themselves and the company and their contribution to it, which then almost, I don’t want to say locks ’em into because I don’t ever want to use that word though, where somebody’s almost like holding a gun to your head to work here.
(00:28:56):
We’d never want to have that culture, but in a lot of ways, their success within our shop and how they’ve raised the bar has enabled myself to be able to pay them more and offer more benefits to the point of why would they ever leave. We last year in August, we put in air conditioning in the back shop, and I know we aren’t in Texas, but that’s almost unheard of in the state of Minnesota where you have heat because you have these completely different seasons, but nobody really has around here air conditioning the shop. Well, that stuff all costs money. It’s not easy to always afford those things. It’s not always easy to contribute highly to a retirement account for your staff and everything, but by them being empowered to really look at the numbers and pay attention to ’em and value them, it’s given them the possibility of achieving a higher salary and better benefits for themself.
(00:29:48):
That I don’t know. I mean, I think to myself with how many years I have in business and everything, if I could rewind and go back to square one and spend all that time to get to this point and this and that would truthfully, I don’t know, but I’m glad to be where we’re at right now and I’m glad to have the staff that we have. And if I was in the position of a tech making the salaries that the guys can make and back and hopefully having a boss that actually cares about ’em, I don’t know that I’d ever even want to go on my own. Why would I want to take on those extra headaches if I’m happy where I’m at? So hopefully that answers that question.
Uwe Kleinschmidt (00:30:24):
I have to, sorry, I have to insist I have to go back because as we see in the movie, and as we know from our personal experience, the first steps are hard and uncomfortable when you change habits, you don’t know where it’s going and who you’re going to step on toes and so on and so forth. So I mean, you were obviously Google boy in your shop from the beginning, and so there was probably not a cultural change needed, but did you notice when you started sharing numbers that people especially called out? I remember Frank sharing on this show when he said, oh, my techs told me I inspected every single car, and the BCP said 46%. But when you confront it with the truth, so to speak, that it depends on how you do it, but there’s often a sense of being uncomfortable with the new way of how the conversation goes. How was it for your shop
Adam Bendzick (00:31:46):
For conversation of the buy-in part of it? Is that mean? Yes. Okay. So right now for instance, was it probably two or three months ago we were going through inspection sent percentage and different things, and over the course of the last several years as a business owner, I think it’s easy to think to yourself, I’m the only one that can do this. I’m the only one that can hit these numbers. I’m the only one that cares about this certain percentage or this ARO and this sales number and this and that. And if you have that in your head that you’re the only one that cares about it, maybe they’re not going to buy into it. But what I was not surprised by as happy with is that the guys did buy into it. So two or three months ago we had this conversation about inspection sent percentage, and what I found out was it wasn’t like a non care factor that was causing the percentage to be a little bit lower.
(00:32:45):
It was just understanding how the flow and the progression of everything went and what dictated that percentage. To me, some of those things seem like straightforward because I’m driven off of data and I look at the numbers to where somebody that isn’t driven off the data maybe doesn’t understand what is creating that percentage or what’s building that timeframe or what’s the ARO stuff is most people understand, but some people might not. The average build hours per ro what is cumulatively building those numbers. And some people won’t buy into it because they just don’t understand it. So you almost need to break it down in a way that says, here’s what we’re trying to track, why it’s important and here’s how it works. And then by doing that and breaking it down, it seemed to be that they bought to it more, but when I was focusing on it myself and maybe not sharing as much information, how would they know what’s going on or why it was valuable because I was almost keeping it concealed to myself.
Bill Connor (00:33:51):
So Adam, one of the things that you do is you have a lot of data that you look at and obviously maybe even your race car background plays into understanding more about it than others, but you find that getting your staff only two or three things to focus on at a time and how to measure it is more important than to go ahead and have them see the overall picture of everything that Adam looks at.
Adam Bendzick (00:34:17):
Yeah, for sure. So different things like breaking it down into if we want to improve on a cluster of stuff, there’s no way you can have daily meetings and focus on that cluster every single time or even weekly meetings or maybe monthly meetings right now, I’ll be the first one to say we don’t have a regular meeting process where we meet every single morning and we talk quite a bit throughout the day of what’s going on for the day. But what I’ve been trying to get in the habit of is biweekly when the guys got paid and everything like that, have a lot more data. And then from that data pick maybe two or three things I to focus on and let’s improve on these two or three things. And once we get to the certain thresholds or if you will of stuff that we want to hit as far as the parameters that we want to be within, once we achieve that, then we focus on other things.
(00:35:09):
But if we’re half-assing it a little bit and getting partway to our goal, it’s hard to then focus and bring another thing in and then think that you’re going to improve upon it. So it’s a very valid point to focus on two or three things maybe sometimes two or three things might be too much to focus on. It might be one thing for this particular week or two week timeframe, but that one thing is a really big thing that you want to focus on. And then sometimes all of the other numbers kind of follow suit because you’re focusing on your inspection sent percentage, but then in doing that, your motorist research time comes back up. So it’s like one stat might influence all of the other stats as well. So it’s just a matter of tinkering with what ones are the most important and then what you think your staff is going to buy into and really be able to focus on.
Bill Connor (00:36:00):
So one of the things I always work on with shops is rapid continuous improvement in the way that I’ve worked with them is I basically say, look, these are two or three things that you focus on and I want you to go and prepare for and conduct a five minute meeting every morning to go and report to your guys, Hey, you’ve done good here. What can I help you do to get these other ones up? And I’ve found by going ahead and having that five minute run through in the morning preparing and keeping that in focus, they can get that knocked out pretty damn quick and then move on to the next ones. So that’s why I was asking that question, how are you focusing? And then the next step from there is to go ahead and identify a couple things for each employee, document them differently because each employee is going to be on a different place in the journey. They’re not all superstars and they’re not all dragging at the back of the pack. And then they can have individual KPIs that an employee’s working on. So a lot of techs, they don’t like marking the jobs complete on a tablet that may be that guy’s KPI to work on. And if you focus on it and report to ’em or let them see for themself on a daily basis where they’re at, it kind of knocks it out really quick.
Adam Bendzick (00:37:08):
So with respect to that, I absolutely agree, but I think every shop is going to have to look at their individual ability to, and why I say that is when we started with a TI, whatever that was eight or nine years ago, there were certain gains that we had right away in charging shop supplies and creating a parts matrix and different things like that that were relatively easy for me to implement and change and all those things. And then there was other parts that I wanted to change, but I as a business owner got overwhelmed. I’m like, oh my God, I’m responding back to this coach weekly and I’m have to put all this data numbers in and everything so you can quickly overwhelm yourself with trying to change those things and trying to monitor too many things. So within reason, not that I disagree with meeting every for five minutes every single day, but in some ways it’s hard to bring that on the staff to constantly be reminded of things that they can improve on and not allowing them time to react to it.
(00:38:13):
And I’m not saying that that’s what you’re suggesting or not, but there’s a certain level of giving ’em adequate time to improve to see those numbers change. For instance, if you met every single day and you were trying to look at your inspection set percentage as a service advisor and your goal like ours, I’m just looking up here, is between 90 to a hundred and we’re generally that range, but then there’ll be periods of time where we do drop below that. If I looked at that on every single day basis, I guarantee there would be days where I see 75, 80 and then days where you see 95 and so on and so forth. And if I met every single day and I was trying to manage that every single day and I got upset with the guys because they had a poor day in that percentage and I was reminding ’em from day to day to day, that would get pretty annoying for them.
(00:39:01):
That as being so hypercritical to that particular stat to break it down to a day that might be influenced by a technician that had a carry in tire that they were doing a mountain balance on and the technician mistakenly clicked warning light topic and marked it green on the inspection where that carry and tire doesn’t need an inspection. But nonetheless, the stats are skewed on a count of just that one tire. So I feel like if we don’t have a lengthy enough amount of data, sometimes you might be almost micromanaging too far and potentially giving them incorrect information and being like, Hey, we need to improve here when you really don’t because you need a bigger cluster of data.
Uwe Kleinschmidt (00:39:47):
Oh, there’s no doubt about it. If the resolution is too high, you’re just measuring the noise and then you conclude the wrong conclusion. But I think there’s another element what Bill said, and that is, I don’t want to sound too theoretical, but there is a clear way how you learn stuff. There are the four phases of learning. The first phase is you don’t know that you have a need for learning. The second phase is you know what you’re doing wrong. The third phase is you’re trying hard to do the right thing in the fourth phase is you do it unconsciously, right? My favorite example is when we all were kids and had to learn how to eat with fork and knife or how to tie our shoe laces when they were still around.
(00:40:37):
It’s really hard to learn this stuff and you can not do anything else in parallel. Today we carry a conversation at dinner and eat with fork and knife because it, yeah, not at dinner. So the point I’m trying to make is builds proposal to do a regular meeting helps build muscle memory and then it’s just built into your normal behavior consistently and you don’t need to think about it. And I want to share some data shops have picked up car count in June based on our stats dramatically, and we see for some shops inspection rate drop. So obviously the muscle memory has not been built there. It’s seen as a luxury now to do the inspection because the car count is so high. And so there is a certain actually question for you, how would you avoid that from happening? How do you build muscle memory? So it’s like everyday stuff, don’t think about it anymore.
Adam Bendzick (00:41:51):
Yep, yep. Yeah, I think there’s a certain level of having somebody that’s looking at the data consistently and monitoring it and then also setting up your intervals of when you’re being alerted. Because the thing is for me is if I was looking at those individual sheets every single time and reloading ’em with different dates and everything like that, it gets to be a lot to manage. I mean, it can be a full-time job managing data, literally. It might even be where you need two people to do it. So setting up certain alerts and everything that goes out to the entire staff when looking right now we have an ARO lower threshold of four 50, an upper threshold of five 50 and it’s monitored every seven days and there’s alert every 30 days no matter what happens. Having those things set up correctly is sometimes some of the data that I don’t need to even bring to their attention through a meeting, they get the alerts the same as I do in sharing that data.
(00:42:50):
In a lot of ways, that helps to just basically get the information out there and then yes, when we meet about it, Hey, do you remember Tuesday this alert came through for inspection sent percentage or whatever, it was a bit lower. I want address that. Here’s what I think why, but we rebounded Wednesday, Thursday, Friday. So great job in doing that. So I think we address the ups and downs of the days and the weeks and everything like that within our meetings. We just don’t maybe do ’em every single day. And that’s not because I don’t value it, it’s just what works for our particular situation. But that’s also too is as much as that, I’m almost using an excuse for myself in doing that because right now with lifestyle and the kids and everything like that, I don’t have time to do every single daily meeting like that.
(00:43:43):
So for some shops that may work where they can just have that quick five minute meeting and create some data from the day before or the week before and bring it up. So it’s not that I don’t value it whatsoever, it’s just right now with our business and our growth and different things like that, there’s other areas that are requiring so much of my time that I haven’t been able to focus on those smaller or not smaller things. I don’t want to disregard it. But those things that are a lot of busy work, I guess you’d say in preparing
Uwe Kleinschmidt (00:44:15):
And you are pretty advanced. So you focus on what is the next step in your development as a shop and as a team.
Bill Connor (00:44:26):
So one of the thing Adam’s run up against is every shop owner implementer that I talk to is it’s not your job to do everything yourself. It’s your job to educate somebody else and then delegate to them and then measure and make sure they carry out your plan. Otherwise you can’t grow, you can’t take a day off, you can’t go on vacation and you can’t go ahead and grow multiple businesses. So education and delegation is the key to an owner implementer long-term success.
Adam Bendzick (00:44:52):
Absolutely. And although I’ve never had Bill as my trainer or product advisor or anything like that, I mean you obviously know your information without a doubt. I mean, you’ve worked in shops and you’re a big part of AutoVitals and everything today, and I’m sure there’s tons of shops that are benefiting highly from you. When I was going through a TI, we had different coaches throughout that entire experience and there was periods of time where I wasn’t giving them all of my attention and wasn’t buying into it and wasn’t always listening and this and that, and it just took me a longer time to get there. So when you have guys like Bill is your product advisor, I’m sure Bill is for some of your clients, not speaking for them, but you’re probably hammering information to them about you should be tracking this, you should be paying attention to this.
(00:45:39):
Here’s why this is important. And in some ways they might get overwhelmed by it, but just know that Bill is trying to help in any way possible and it’s because he has a lot of years experience and he’s looking at the data. So that’s a big thing from the Moneyball thing is ultimately if you can have Google Boy that’s looking at the numbers, but he doesn’t have the experience, and then you got these other guys that have the experience, but if you can merge that into one particular person, I mean that’s phenomenal. So having guys Bill who have that experience and care about the data as well and have the data to prove it, that’s a huge tool to be our resource to be using. So to Bill’s credit, I mean I don’t ever want to come across as I’m arguing with five minute meetings every single day, but literally it’s like he’s monitoring the data and looking at it and seeing why it’s valuable. So anybody that you’re a product advisor for should be very appreciative to that.
Tom Dorsey (00:46:39):
And actually, and Bill all shops benefit really from Bill because Bill helps us to train other people internally to give better insights and solution to their shop accounts.
Adam Bendzick (00:46:55):
What are the biggest things that you look at Bill? If you’re onboarding a shop that has a lot of experience and everything where I’m looking at the data, what is what you come across from your new shops that you’re onboarding, one of the key components that maybe they’re missing out on are not paying quite as much attention to that is your first focal point. Is there any consistency in that?
Bill Connor (00:47:20):
The most consistent thing is to make them understand that motorist research time is a high level KPI to monitor. And that when good, a lot of other things have went well, they’ve done the inspection, they’ve edited it, it’s went out to the customer. And so if the motorist research time is good, then everything’s good. And then to see if they’re doing a good inspection, number of recommended actions. If the technician isn’t recommending anything, if they’re not writing a prescription, then nobody else can go ahead and fill it or do anything else with it. So there’s a whole list of things that I work with the shop on, but I go ahead and start from the first level is you got to do inspections, you got to make recommendations, you got to take pictures, edit them and send them. And from there we can start auditing the quality inspections and moving them forward. And now with TVPX coming up where we can go ahead and use a guided inspection sheet where all the proper elements are on the inspection sheet where they belong right from day one, it’s actually made my job a lot easier. So the time we spent developing that tool and that inspection sheet and that process is really going to go and help shops out that follow the process, use the tools are not digitally resistant and move forward.
Uwe Kleinschmidt (00:48:38):
Absolutely, for sure.
Tom Dorsey (00:48:41):
We got about seven minutes to the top if we can put up that, oh yeah, this infographic, because we’ve talked a lot about our concepts, but somebody who’s sitting out there saying, well, okay, you guys got me ready to take the next step, but what do I do? This is where we really want to kind of talk in the last remaining time. If we could gentlemen, kind of the nuts and bolts, what do we start out with? To Adam’s point from earlier is there’s some high level KPIs that you want to focus on and not get into the minutia unless you have to. If that top level number isn’t being achieved, then you kind of go into those influential metrics underneath that top level kind of thing that you might monitor on a daily basis and look into what’s going wrong. So you can fix that. Do you want to introduce us into the infographic if you could, and just walk us through on a step-by-step basis for somebody keeping in mind somebody who’s new to this and wants to implement this and is just drank and say, what do you do?
Uwe Kleinschmidt (00:49:47):
Happy to. Thank you. So let’s start with shop culture. Introduce metrics, which are important in the phase you are in. I mean, Bill just mentioned motorist research time. That’s kind of the ultimate holy grail when all the processes are established and everybody knows what they’re doing, then motorist research time is what you drive, but to get there, you have to start small. And so you start setting up your inspection sheet. And what’s important is make it easy for the tech. They’re not becoming all of a sudden spending most of their time on inspections. There’s still work to be done. So create pre-loaded notes, which then show up so that tech doesn’t need to type anything from scratch. She might edit something if the notes were not spot on. Hook up can jobs and then measure inspection rate and inspection center per appointments that measures both sales advisors and techs.
(00:51:00):
And if you get two more than 60% go to the next set of rates. We talked about focus on not more than three KPIs. So getting ARO up in the first week is a lofty goal. It’s probably not achievable because you have to do a few other steps before it becomes a consistent one. And so once inspection sheet is done, can jobs configured and you measure inspection rate and inspection, sent rate, review it with a team, and you are satisfied and the team is satisfied. And you see through quick wins we talk about later, your first results go to the next edit rate picture edit rate in particular motorist research time. And that takes care of the ao, right? Those are all influential KPIs, just how often you get on base before you win the game is the analogy. And if you have mastered that, then you can go to weekly revenue pro service advisor, which you should see climbing dramatically. You should see it climbing dramatically because the a o increases. But there’s also the element of the workflow management. If you can process more costs during the same time and the ARO is up, you have an exponential increase. Yes. Right? So it’s not just the ARO by itself, but it’s also the ability to process more vehicles during the same time by the same staff. That is so impressive with Adam’s numbers, right? Yes. That,
Adam Bendzick (00:52:53):
Yeah. We break this down a little further in that we look at not only the service Pfizer and their weekly revenue, but we also look at the service advisor working with what particular tech and then that average return order and weekly revenue and everything. So just breaking it down a little further to see where you can get those gains and losses. We even go through there and say, what’s our estimate of dollars per work order and see conversion percentages. And a lot of that you can find in the quality inspection that they’re doing, how much that raises the estimate that you’re building. And then hopefully you sell the same percentage or maybe your percentage goes down, but then you estimate it so many more dollars. We talked about that in a prior show too.
Tom Dorsey (00:53:36):
And that’s kind of just like how you find the guy who gets on base all the time, right?
Adam Bendzick (00:53:40):
Yep. Right.
Tom Dorsey (00:53:42):
Bill, if you could, for folks that are writing this stuff down, if you could kind of just give ’em some goal, what should the initial inspection rate and inspection cent rate goal be for their techs and service riders and then iterate, and ultimately, what should a good motorist research time goal be for somebody in this stage?
Bill Connor (00:54:02):
Well, the minimum inspection rate and cent rate we want them to have is 40%, but that’s really, really low numbers. Basically, we hear lots of excuses why they don’t, their edit rates should be over 30% of the pictures they take. And the pictures really, we don’t really count the pictures so much as far as what they do with them. And so we want to make sure that the number of recommended actions on a repair order is something you want to look at. So for most shops, if they’re an all make and all model shop, they’re going to see somewhere between five and seven on average for the most part. And then if you’re talking about pictures, they should go ahead and be a minimum of the number of recommendations plus their other required for walk around pictures and pictures are going to take and document pictures with a measurement. So normally 12 to 15 is where they’re at with a 30% or higher edit rate.
(00:55:00):
There’s no excuse that I can think of. Not to go ahead and send every inspection you do to the customer. So we would want that number to be extremely high. And then as they get going, we want to go and have motorist research time. We talk about being a minimum of 240 seconds, but I really kind of like number recommendations times 60 seconds. And then that would be the number that I would shoot for in a shop that’s firing on all cylinders. So we know in the shop, on average, if you’re going to point to it on the car, tell ’em what it is, what needs to be done and why, that’s 60 seconds per recommendation. There’s no excuse not for the digital number, not to go in and match in the same realm. So does that answer your questions?
Adam Bendzick (00:55:44):
Can I share my screen on here? I just want to make sure. I think as brought in later, I think we were kind of talking about the business control panel and I just want people to see what we currently monitor and how it’s set up. Is that okay? Yeah, just keep it. So let’s make sure I go to the right thing.
Tom Dorsey (00:56:04):
The kid show.
Adam Bendzick (00:56:06):
Yeah.
(00:56:08):
All right. So I think everybody should be seeing that and we’ll take it one step further. So basically to get to it, go through and click on the three dropdowns on the side, and then it’ll open up another window. And as I’m doing that, it’ll basically, you’ll see a spot for shop meeting. And then shop meeting brings you the business control panel, the things that we are monitoring. And your product advisor should be able to help you set this up the first time around at least. And I think they get emails monitoring the same data as well. So our product advisor, honey, she’ll get an email and if there continues to be this trend of information that isn’t fitting the parameters that we want to hit, she’ll be alerted as well. And she is that extra person, making sure that I’m doing my job and managing the data.
(00:57:00):
But we look at ARO, we have a lower threshold of four 50, upper threshold of five 50. We can change these numbers to whatever you want. So if we’re regularly hitting certain goals, I might end up making it 500 on the low number and 600 on the high number and then there’s monitoring intervals and then alert intervals, and correct me I’m wrong, but the monitoring interval says, alright, over a period of seven days, are we within these thresholds? If not, it’s going to send an alert to me, which is an email format, actually get in text as well that says basically you’re out of this range over that period of time. And then the alert interval, no matter what within this range of that 30 days, is going to send you an alert no matter what, whether you’re within the thresholds or not, just to keep you up to date as to what you’ve been doing. Is that correct? Uwe and bill and such?
Uwe Kleinschmidt (00:57:52):
Actually the alert, the monitoring interval is correct. The alert in the role is the exact other way around. To avoid that, you get an alert every time your threshold is either you’re out of the range you defined, right? You just say how many alerts you want to get in a particular period of time. So if you’re monitoring in the wall is seven days or let’s say 30 days and your alert on the wall is seven days, you get maximum one alert per week and not five per day saying the same thing. Right? So that’s the difference.
Adam Bendzick (00:58:37):
Absolutely. Yeah. So basically the things that I look at is we have average bill of hours per ARO and in my head I’m trying to shoot for two and a half, so our midpoint 2.25 to 2.75. I tend to get this alert that we’re below that lower threshold, but then
Tom Dorsey (00:58:55):
Stop you real quick because I don’t know, you guys checked me, but I think we’re looking at your BCP, but I think you’re showing us your notification setup screen.
Adam Bendzick (00:59:03):
Yes.
Tom Dorsey (00:59:04):
Yeah. And so what we see the BCPI don’t, do you guys see the BCP or are you seeing
Bill Connor (00:59:08):
The We’re seeing insights not the thresholds.
Adam Bendzick (00:59:11):
Oh, I’m sorry. Okay. I think I’m the wrong number. So the setup of it is what I was trying to talk, is that screen up there now?
Bill Connor (00:59:18):
Nope. Just tap on your menu where it says settings
Adam Bendzick (00:59:22):
Many where it says settings.
Tom Dorsey (00:59:25):
No, I think he might have it on a different screen.
Adam Bendzick (00:59:28):
That’s what I’m trying to drag it to the right screen.
Tom Dorsey (00:59:30):
Yeah, wherever the green frame from Zoom is, you got to get that green frame on the notifications monitor, if that makes any sense.
Adam Bendzick (00:59:39):
Gotcha. I’m a rookie,
Bill Connor (00:59:45):
But we can certainly take a screenshot of that and bring it over to the Facebook forum for further discussion too. There you go. There
Tom Dorsey (00:59:54):
We go. There we go.
Adam Bendzick (00:59:55):
Perfect. So basically these are the different things underneath the settings that we’re trying to adjust and monitor. So I agree with that. Motorist research time is huge as I’ve been told, 300 is an astounding number or a great number to hit. We had it at 180 to 300. We regularly get notifications and emails and text messages that goes to our entire staff to say that we’re above that upper threshold. So it’s a nice thing that kind of says, Hey, you’re doing a great job with that. And then we use Hangouts messages and different things amongst our staff and I’ll say, Hey, you guys see the email, great work. That’s obviously proven that you’re doing great edits and sending out the inspections properly and everything to be able to get those numbers. We tend to not struggle with inspection sent percentage because when I look at the raw data, which you can pull up on, I believe the insights part of it, when you look at the raw data of it, you can see what ones didn’t get sent.
(01:00:56):
And the ones that we don’t get sent are the random, somebody stopped in for a tire repair and a guy clicked on something to take a picture of the tire and instead of putting it on the work order, he put it on the tire line to then show that to the customer and our advisor might forget to send that one note on the inspection. So that impacts our numbers a little bit, but in general we’re in that 90 to a hundred percent range. It just, for whatever reason, it’s down a little bit here. But nonetheless, when you can set up these things and literally get text messages and emails about it, somebody doing work for you in the background where you’re not having to continually go to our writer and pull up a report that has a snapshot of data, you get to see the information in real time and trends and those things. And a lot of it, I don’t have to sit here and pull up the data myself because I’m getting the data sent to me in an email or a text message. So it’s been huge for us with that part of it. The insights part of it is then breaking down and seeing some of those different trends so to speak. And if I only had one complaint is sometimes the spinning wheel takes a little time,
(01:02:16):
But it’s a lot of data that’s accumulating. It’s not overwhelming that it takes way too long, but if you were to try to pull up and report a report, a report and then change dates and everything, sometimes it just takes a bit to get to it. But that’s why we have those monitoring intervals where I’m getting emails and text messages to say, Hey, here’s when something’s out of range. Then I pull up this chart and then see certain things of trends of why it’s happening. And you can definitely break down the numbers and look at this one’s workflow moves, but nonetheless se efficiency, there’s a pile of data. The only way I really learned about it was yes through my product advisor, but just messing around with it, changing time windows, asking questions to people that deal with this stuff way more than I do, and then setting the monitoring interval so I don’t have to continue to always look at these sets of data. So hopefully this stuff and showing it is helpful to anybody that hasn’t dived into it a little bit.
Tom Dorsey (01:03:19):
Oh, that’s great, man, I really appreciate that because that’s exactly what a lot of people need is what is that formula and what do you do with it? So yeah, you don’t have to be in there digging around and they all day every day is if you set up those notifications, then you get in and take a look and the first thing you want to do is visualize it over a period of time and then you see are you making higher highs and higher lows or are you making some higher highs? But then lower lows, meaning you’re getting even more kind of bigger swings so that you’re saying, Hey, we’re struggling with consistency. Then you can drill down by individual service advisor, individual technician and start to look at how their individual performances, are they causing those swings or are they tightening and creating those higher highs and higher lows in their ranges in the data? And maybe then that’s the guy getting on base and you say, Hey, you show these guys how you’re doing it and get them to follow the same best practices. And it really, that’s how you get a quick influence, a quick win and analyze the data, determine the solution and where you need to focus the action and then focus that action and then measure it, make sure that it’s having the desired effect. If not, you got to dig a little deeper
Bill Connor (01:04:44):
And we want to really develop the mindset of being the evil referee too. So every time somebody passes the goal line, we want to move that goal just a little bit, get ’em to run farther and faster. And what your job is is to go ahead and find the peak level of performance for your unique shop employees, customer base equipment and so on. So again, I like to go ahead and be that evil referee and just keep pushing them goals a little bit until you find your maximum level of peak performance
Tom Dorsey (01:05:11):
Just like Billy Bean.
Adam Bendzick (01:05:13):
Exactly. And obviously I don’t want to call out any certain or anything like that, but average number of pictures taken per appointment. I think nine over nine is great. We don’t do the four corner pictures yet anyway. We haven’t had an issue with liability wise or anything like that. I understand the value in it for sure, but this is just true. And inspection pictures, some good stuff, some stuff that’s not so good. But as far as going through it, you can see each one, Andy’s at 9.62 and then Ronnie’s at 10.97 and so on and so forth. So you can break it down by each individual tech to see it. Sometimes I miss the inspection metrics thing report and I have talked about, but this is a good fill in for a lot of the data you just have to now figure out instead of looking at that report that you’re used to, it’s kind of evolving into looking at it as a trending graph as opposed to a just one number over a period of time. So it’s taken me just a little bit to adapt to it. There’s some information that’s not quite here yet, but I know we’ve been talking a ton about adding some of that data back to it, and I think we probably will get there at some point. This we seems like it’s constantly evolving and there’s more and more data that’s being put on it every day, every week, every month.
Bill Connor (01:06:37):
And really there’s an Easter egg that’s built into the multi shop business panel control panel by Uwe that most people don’t understand or use for whatever reason. It’s called the Sesame Street program, where you can look at your employees stacked over the top of each other and start identifying which one of these things aren’t like the other. So looking at things really quickly to make a good quick assessment, the multi shop business control panel to be able to see all your employees rank from high to low, look for discrepancies between one and the other, and then just start asking Uwe’s favorite question, which is why and proceed from there.
Adam Bendzick (01:07:15):
Yeah, for sure. And Bill ended up through some of the Facebook conversation, talked about the multi shop, this particular page you can take and put several different shops of what might fit in the category of what you’re looking for, our shop here, but then reference it to another shop that’s maybe doing well within the program that has three to six techs or you might have one to three or might have six plus and look at all the different numbers of how your shop is doing in comparison to theirs. If you’re kind of curious as to how you are in comparison to ours, I believe the three to six techs, actually I shouldn’t say believe, I know the three to six techs actually is our shop. So you can look at the motorist research time and inspection sent percentage and pictures taken and different things like that.
(01:08:07):
And not that you mirror yourself off of what we’re doing, but I do that to the other shops that are the examples on here, okay, the six plus tech shops, what are they doing for revenue? What’s their ARO? Different things like that. Oh, their motorist research time is 400 seconds and I thought 300 was good. Gosh, how can I maybe up it to that 400 mark? So by trying to compare yourself, it’s almost like that how I referenced before one of our three-year-old tech to one of our two-year-old techs and raising that bar because you brought in this another person that’s really going out of his way on these inspections and everything and how it’s raised the level of everybody else. When you compare yourself to another shop, it’s like, gosh, you think you’re doing great in so many different areas, but then you find a couple here or there that you need to improve upon yourself where you didn’t even think you needed to improve upon or that you could. So it’s nice to have those references.
Bill Connor (01:09:03):
And by the way, your motorist research time is 50 seconds, 50.6 seconds per recommendation in case you’re wondering. So you’re getting pretty close to that 62nd mark per recommendation.
Adam Bendzick (01:09:14):
You just had to knock me down, didn’t you?
Bill Connor (01:09:17):
Well, you’re not good enough just yet. Or let’s go ahead and say this way. Your customers say you’re not good enough yet.
(01:09:29):
So actually I tracked that with literally hundreds of shops that I work with and it’s pretty good that if they’re getting recommendations done and they got a good inspection sheet, 60 seconds per seems to be, and if you’re on a European shop then normally or a diesel shop, then normally it’s going to be 90 seconds or 120, but you’ll find your sweet spot and then when your recommendations go up or down, you can use that as a kind of a mindset to set your goal. So it’s always interesting to go and take numbers apart and understand how they work in unison
Tom Dorsey (01:10:00):
For sure,
Adam Bendzick (01:10:02):
And sending your inspections to how Bill did that inspection challenge or whatever, getting that feedback where, gosh, you think you’re doing a great job and then you’d point out this, this and this, and it’s like, yeah, we’re doing good. I don’t ever want to be knocked down to say, okay, you’re not doing a good job. We are. But there’s definitely areas improve upon in making it better and that might be the difference of 51 seconds to 60 seconds. Hopefully sometime in the near future shows I’m like, show up
Bill Connor (01:10:31):
And that one show up
Adam Bendzick (01:10:32):
Their Bill because now I’m at 70
Bill Connor (01:10:35):
And see that one recommendation might be on average might be for an hour job and an hour job’s a hundred dollars plus a hundred dollars in parts, so boom, you’re right up where you need to be. So sometimes understanding how everything works together is a good thing.
Tom Dorsey (01:10:50):
Yeah, and then eventually, like Bill was saying earlier, keep moving that goalpost so that drives that increase in the performance. Pretty soon you become the reference shop example in there, like John Long believes 99% sure that he is six plus text reference shop E, is he or is he not unison?
Adam Bendzick (01:11:11):
I think I was the one that pointed that out to him. He maybe should get on the board with using that BCP. Yeah, so no, it’s a good tool. There’s a lot of information out there. There’s a lot of dashboards within Protractor that we use, but I can say without a doubt, we use the business control panel and it’s great to be able to see the inspection data and how AutoVitals tracks that information and then how it impacts everything amongst the shop. So I don’t think you can ever have too much data. It can sometimes be overwhelming, but the more things you track and then the more things you have that automatedly track each themself and kind of send you those alerts to make it easier to track so much data is huge.
Tom Dorsey (01:12:04):
Well, fantastic. So I mean I know we’re over. I really appreciate everybody. We had a lot of people stayed over because hey, it was some really great information and we can’t thank you enough, Adam for showing, sharing some of those direct insights like that with us and with the folks in the audience and really giving them an idea on how to get started and how to, I mean, it’s a lot of information. You only want to focus in on that what’s important to move the needle and then just move the needle faster and continuously and just keep that, it’s like that pushing the stone down the hill. It takes a lot of effort to get it rolling, but once it gets rolling, get out of the way because here we come and boy, and just the discussion around shop culture, I think so critical in Uwe to your point too is just it’s really the number one step is the number one step is the buy-in and the clarity and the transparency on what’s the goal and how we’re going to do it.
(01:12:56):
And so we all pull the rope together, opening up the door to that insight so that everybody’s kind of experience is considered and their feedback is welcome and considered and it helps to empower them. I mean, I couldn’t have said it any better than what Adam was talking about, the effects that it has in the ways that you can really empower them to contribute and to see their value individually in your operation. And then it’s just so synergistic is that you? And it is like, I don’t know if anybody saw, was it Van Bogar? We got a review the other day and it was a funny response. Somebody was like, Hey, I’m thinking about doing this thing. What’s going to happen guy’s? Like you’re going to make more money than you don’t even know what to do with. And that can really be that effect is you don’t expect it.
(01:13:52):
And now hey, all those possibilities open up incentivizing and helping to grow your technicians and helping there from an education perspective, growing your operation, multi-locations, whatever those dreams and desires are, keeping mama happy, going on trips, getting out in that bass boat that you’re making payments on, but it’s sitting there collecting dust, whatever it might be. That starts right there at the shop culture. Using that data, have a plan using that data to think outside of the box like Billy Bean did to create those victories, those quick wins. Get on base, keep getting on base, and you score runs, right? And guess what? Ultimately your market responds. Your customers see success. People are attracted to success. We’re like moths to the flame. It benefits you in more ways than you can even fathom until you’re knee deep in it. You hear those stories here on this podcast all the time and read about ’em in that Facebook form. They can be you. These guys aren’t, they don’t have, Adam didn’t go to Hogwarts. He’s a guy who rolled up some sleeves and opened up his mind and did the work. Uwe might’ve went to Hogwarts. And just for verification, just to set the record straight from my perception, Adam is Billy Bean and your Google boy,
Adam Bendzick (01:15:12):
That’s fair.
Tom Dorsey (01:15:13):
It’s about me.
Adam Bendzick (01:15:14):
Totally good to that.
Uwe Kleinschmidt (01:15:17):
I’m no offended.
Tom Dorsey (01:15:19):
Okay, good.
Adam Bendzick (01:15:19):
When I need something, can I just point,
Tom Dorsey (01:15:25):
That’s the way it works, isn’t it?
Bill Connor (01:15:27):
I’m always pleased to be left out of Tom’s analogies
Tom Dorsey (01:15:30):
Hashtag Bill. I’m so sorry. I’ll make it up to you double next week.
Bill Connor (01:15:35):
Damnit.
Adam Bendzick (01:15:37):
Yeah, I mean that’s great stuff Tom for sure. Whether it be buying boats or this and that and just being happier for me, I feel a lot less stressed getting the business to this point, even though we’re doing so much more and there’s so many more cars coming through the shop and everything. But getting the business to this point has helped grow me as a person in terms of just being happier, having more time for family stuff and all those things, and empowering our staff to be able to do their job and do it well has taken a lot of load off my shoulders. So it starts with the data, looking at those little things on base percentages, get some walks, this and that is the same thing as selling a cabinet or filter and looking at a report here and there. So without a doubt, although it brings you sales revenue and dollars and everything like that, but ultimately it might be that you’re just trying to not work so damn much and be able to afford that high quality staff that’s going to take the burden off your shoulders to have it be all on you.
(01:16:45):
And that’s the biggest thing that’s been great for me in this whole process is that it’s afforded me the opportunity to have the staff that we do and how good they are and how much our customers love them to where I don’t even have to be here every single day. I love being here. The staff is so great and they’re fun to work with, but nonetheless, it’s like they can almost do it without me. And that’s been really cool to see
Tom Dorsey (01:17:11):
And that’s a great place to be in, right? Because then you realize the dream when you and the wife sat down and said, Hey, should we do this thing? He said, well, yeah, the goal is to have sleepless nights and ulcers and go premature balding. Nobody ever said that the goal was to make money, have a good life, travel, have success, raise your kids, well, give ’em opportunities that you didn’t have. Those were the goals. And then once you get into it, you’re like, ah, can’t see the forest through the trees. You’re just always in a hair on fire mode. Well, that ends when you adopt that data, when you become a Moneyball shop, right? When you use that BCP and you have that plan and you follow the lead of Adam, John, Frank Scando and all the shops that we bring in you here and see the success that they’ve had.
(01:17:58):
Again, they’re not better than you. They’re not special. They just worked the plan and you can too. And it starts right there at the shop culture point. It starts getting on board with that digital shop operating process. And everybody, all the help you need is right there in the Facebook form. It’s right here in these podcasts we’ve been doing for a year and a half now. It’s right there in help.AutoVitals. It’s right there. Phone call away from your advisor or a peer shop. There’s a lot of folks in there and they’re looking to help and Adam and John and all of these other shop owners that get together and really, they’re kind of like a brain trust. They sit and think and help each other out. And it’s almost like its 20 group. It’s just sharing shop owners, helping shop owners, be better shop owners, and you want to get some, so don’t be shy. And hey, give us ideas on the show, things that you would like to hear us talking about and bring on people who have solved challenges that you may be experiencing or bring yourself on the show and tell us all about it. Get up there in the co-host chair and help other shops by listening to your success. Okay, Dustin, why don’t you roll us out, buddy? What are we doing next week?
Dustin Anaas (01:19:18):
Sorry, I had to find the mute button there. We are going to be talking with Mike Holmes about the task manager. Yeah, that’s right. Yeah, yeah. We’re going to be talking about the task manager next week and he’s been using it as a proficient user of the task manager, a new TVPX. So talking about that, the impact that’s made on his shop and really the pain points that that’s been able to alleviate for him and making it a very smooth workflow process.
Tom Dorsey (01:19:39):
Oh yeah, I’m excited. Mike’s an awesome guy. Oh yeah, he’s
Dustin Anaas (01:19:43):
Great. He’s great.
Tom Dorsey (01:19:44):
Really good insights. He’s funny too, boy. And yeah, so it’s a great insight, right? Because TVPX is coming out, you’re all going to transition to it at some point. Get in here next week, next Wednesday at 10:00 AM Pacific at 1:00 PM Eastern, same time, same place. If you’re not registered, get registered. Just click that sign up that way. We give you the reminders, we send you out the collateral, the infographic and the recording will go out to you and you don’t have to hunt for it. And you remember to get in here because you want to attend as live as much as possible because it gives you the opportunity to ask questions and kind of help steer us the conversation a little bit and be selfish. That’s what we’re here to do, is to help individuals and we could talk all about Adam’s success or so and so-and-so’s success, but we want to hear about yours, we want to hear about the challenges you’re having to help you to solve them so that we can bring you on and you can talk about it, how you worked it out. So same time, same place, going to be a great show. Appreciate everybody. Adam, thanks a lot. I can’t thank you enough, man. I know it was kind of last minute, but man, it was brilliant. I know you hooked a lot of people today, bill and Uwe, as always, your insights and your work is just invaluable. Continue being Google boy, because we count on you. What
Uwe Kleinschmidt (01:21:01):
Number do you want to know, Adam?
Adam Bendzick (01:21:03):
What number do I want to know?
Uwe Kleinschmidt (01:21:05):
Yes, right now,
Adam Bendzick (01:21:07):
Right now,
Tom Dorsey (01:21:09):
Math.
Adam Bendzick (01:21:10):
Normally
Bill Connor (01:21:11):
He’d want to know who’s number one, but that’s just Adam.
Adam Bendzick (01:21:15):
Exactly, exactly. Do you want me to just give you a random multiple multiplication number and see if you can do it real quick? The information that I want to know is a little bit of that metrics page brought back to the BCP. We’ve touched base on that
Uwe Kleinschmidt (01:21:33):
A bit. Yeah, we touched base on,
Adam Bendzick (01:21:36):
And I think we’ll get there just a matter of some of that data that I’ve gotten comments on from other shops and some of the product advisors have mentioned as well, but keep on evolving what we maybe lost in TVPX back to the BCP and making it better because on the metrics page, it was great solid data that was just a static point, whereas the BCP is just so much more dynamic for sure. So in the long run, I think we’ll all be better off that it’s within the BCP. It’s just a matter of some of that stuff that we lost in the process. Bringing that back,
Uwe Kleinschmidt (01:22:14):
No, I think if we can bring back the kind of spreadsheet format, but use little arrows as trend icons because that’s what a spreadsheet doesn’t show, right? Doesn’t just a snapshot and you conclude the wrong conclusions, right?
Adam Bendzick (01:22:31):
Yeah. I like
Uwe Kleinschmidt (01:22:32):
Seeing potentially
Adam Bendzick (01:22:34):
How many recommended actions a technician had in a cluster of a count of 300. And then I like to see that the service advisor and production managers have estimated 275 of ’em or whatever it might be. And that trend that we had on the metrics page, being able to see that stuff on the BCP would be great. Yep.
Uwe Kleinschmidt (01:22:54):
Working on it.
Adam Bendzick (01:22:57):
That’s all I got. Other than that 1000 times four 50 divided by 32, real quick go. You can use Google for it
Tom Dorsey (01:23:13):
And the answer is yeah.
Adam Bendzick (01:23:20):
Thanks Adam. It was great. Absolutely. Thank you guys again, lemme know when you need any more help.
Tom Dorsey (01:23:25):
Yeah, man, we will. Thanks for everybody tuning in, hopefully.
Dustin Anaas (01:23:29):
Yeah, actually, to that note, I think we’re going to be seeing Adam and John Long on August 12th talking about some Protractor stuff with Scott Thorley, Protractor, Scott Thorley, so we’ll see Adam again on August 12th talking about that, and John’s going to join us as well. So yeah, stay tuned for that. Good
Adam Bendzick (01:23:46):
One. Anybody that’s a Protractor user, Scott is phenomenal. So I mean, without a doubt you want to be on live. If you have any questions, he’s really, really good.
Tom Dorsey (01:23:56):
Or should be a Protractor user, you tune in too.
Adam Bendzick (01:23:58):
Yeah, absolutely. That too.
Tom Dorsey (01:24:02):
All right, gentlemen, thank you, man. We went over, it was a great show. I think you stayed engaged, so really appreciate everything. We’ll see you next week.