94 - Maximizing Productivity Strategies For Independent Auto Repair Shops

94 - Maximizing Productivity Strategies For Independent Auto Repair Shops

March 18th, 2024 - 01:08:24

 

Show Summary:

Cecil Bullard joins AutoLeap to discuss practical strategies for increasing shop productivity, emphasizing that inefficiencies are often tied to management, not technicians. Cecil shared how productivity impacts profitability, why proper labor pricing is critical, and how to implement multipliers to reflect real work. He stressed the importance of clear technician estimates, assigning all work early in the day, and building systems that minimize downtime. Owners were encouraged to set boundaries, stop answering every question, and spend more time solving internal process issues. The session wrapped with insights on bonus structures, team accountability, and creating a shop culture that rewards excellence.

 

Host(s):

Amber Wright, AutoLeap

 

Guest(s):

Cecil Bullard, Founder & CEO, The Institute

 

Episode Highlights:

[00:04:01] - Most shops average around 72% productivity, which increases the true cost of labor and eats into profitability.

[00:05:10] - Low productivity is typically not the technician’s fault - it usually stems from poor management or shop processes.

[00:06:14] - Using a 1.2 to 1.3 multiplier on labor guide times ensures you’re charging for actual time invested, not just what the book says.

[00:08:23] - Shops need to stop undercharging out of guilt or fear; customers must cover the full cost of doing business, including overhead and downtime.

[00:11:22] - Productivity improves when shop owners set clear goals, track them consistently, and hold people accountable with real numbers.

[00:17:15] - Techs should provide detailed estimates including what the car needs, why it needs it, a parts list, and how much time they need to do it.

[00:28:38] - Every tech should have more than one job assigned by 9 AM so they can switch tasks immediately when delayed, reducing wasted time.

[00:34:30] - Owners who allow constant interruptions from staff create their own inefficiencies by failing to set boundaries and delegate decision-making.

[00:41:57] - Posting daily productivity stats in a visible place motivates techs to improve and gives managers insight into performance gaps.

[00:57:42] - Bonus plans should reward not just productivity but also quality, training, and professionalism to build a well-rounded, high-performing team.

 

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Amber Wright: Good afternoon, everybody. Happy Monday. I am so glad you are joining with us. I'm going to give it a few minutes as we have attendees joining in. And I look forward to kind of introducing the session and our speaker today, who many of you have seen on an auto leap webinar before and at our Amplify 2024.

Amber Wright: But for this call today, I want to start by doing some housekeeping notes. We are recording this. If you do have to drop, obviously, we would love for you to stick around as long as possible, we realize some of you are hands on in the shop. If you do have to drop, however, we will be sending out the recording sometime this week, probably Wednesday at the latest.

Amber Wright: I love that you are already in the chat. Craig, thank you so much, we would love to hear how you guys are doing, where you're coming from. At the end of the session, we will have Cecil smile. We called you out. At the end of the session, we will have a survey that is circulated. It will pop up after the session is concluded.

Amber Wright: We really do want to get your feedback, guys. We use that for sessions in the future, whether that's the topic or the speakers that we host. Although we've had a resounding request for Cecil to be on, on our session. So we bring him back for more and more because you guys want to hear from him. So thank you for that.

Amber Wright: We do give out Amazon gift cards. I want to make it very clear the Amazon gift card guys. Is for your feedback. So I really do need live actual feedback. I will make a I will kind of cut you guys off if you are not giving us feedback. Just FYI. We're not going to just give out Amazon gift cards.

Amber Wright: So, I am super excited to have you guys here as we continue through the session. Please ask us questions. I will be posing them to Cecil as he goes along. Obviously today's session is on maximizing productivity strategies that will help you guys as independent auto repair shops and even your multi location shops.

Amber Wright: And so there are a lot of shops Cecil that you talk to that are struggling to maximize productivity. So. Today you're going to help us really gain some practical insights give us some five to six critical elements that can help propel productivity this year. So things like streamlining operations, reduced turnaround times, and boosting overall performance.

Amber Wright: This is what this is really tailored to. And I heard you had a really engaging hands on session. No slides today. So, guys, we would love to hear what you want to hear as Cecil is walking through this. Ask questions and we will get those answered to the best of our ability. Awesome. Cecil, welcome and thank you so much.

Amber Wright: And for those of you who do not know Cecil, he is the founder and president of the Institute for Business Excellent. So a coaching company in the industry who we work very closely with and Cecil, we always appreciate what you're doing for the industry continued thought leadership and help that you're guiding, not only Autoliv customers, but the industry in general.

Amber Wright: So thank you for being here. 

Cecil Bullard: I love doing it. So thank you for having me. 

Amber Wright: You're welcome. Welcome. All right. The screen is yours. 

Cecil Bullard: All right. Let's talk productivity. As Amber said we like to have questions during it. If you have questions to ask the questions and we'll do our best to get to them. I don't have a PowerPoint for you.

Cecil Bullard: However, Amber, I will get you a productivity class, a workbook to send out. Just after this, I forgot to send it to you. So we'll get there. 

Amber Wright: Wonderful. 

Cecil Bullard: I want to talk about productivity and I want to make a couple of statements from the beginning. Productivity in our industry runs about 72%. It's been that way for a long time, and 72 percent drives up our cost dramatically.

Cecil Bullard: So I may think I'm paying a technician 30 an hour, but then I have a load. If I could a few to workers comp makes me 39. And then if they're about 70 percent productive, I'm not paying 39 for that hour anymore. I'm paying I think it's somewhere between about 54. So I, my, my profits go down dramatically because of lack of productivity.

Cecil Bullard: I will also want to make a statement that productivity is usually not the fault of the technician. I was talking to one of the shops that we work with. And they have a really pretty healthy pay plan in place where their technician earns, I think, 36. dollars an hour for just working in the shop, just normal every hour.

Cecil Bullard: But if the technician is productive, it can go up as high as 47 an hour. And they're not productive. Their technicians are probably closer to, you know, 70 or 65 percent productive in that shop. And so I mentioned to the owner. I said, we have a management problem. So, productivity starts with the pen.

Cecil Bullard: You can make more money with the pen than you can with anything else. And I think one of the problems we have in our industry is because we are primarily mechanics or technicians that have become owners. In many cases, we don't value what we do or what the customer should pay for that. So we think, well, this is really easy for me to do this job.

Cecil Bullard: I've done this job, I don't know, 57 times. And the book is three hours and that, man, that seems like a lot. And in a lot of places, we're actually reducing book time or we're only using book time. So one of the first things you can do in a shop, if you want to increase productivity, it has nothing to do with technicians.

Cecil Bullard: is you use a multiplier on book time. There's two suggestions that I would have. Number one, most of the shops that I'm working with are using a 1. 2 to a 1. 3 multiplier on book time. So the technician comes to us and says, this is a three hour job. We're adding somewhere between 20 and 30 percent additional time to that job.

Cecil Bullard: And I usually give that credit. to the technician. Now, why are we doing that? Well, book time was, was never meant to include all of the things that a technician has to do. So starting out God, my mind, I'm, I'm ADHD. So in any of you that have seen my webinars, to jump around a little bit, but starting out book time is figured.

Cecil Bullard: They bring a car into a bay. It's a new car. They have the part there, they have all the tools lined out and then they have the technician do that job and they time it and they do that multiple times. And so that's how they figure out book time. They average multiple times. So you have a new car in a clean bay.

Cecil Bullard: All the tools are laid out. All the parts are there. It doesn't account for paperwork time. It doesn't account for test drive time. It doesn't count for cleanup time. And I was having a discussion the other day with one of my clients. And I said you know, who pays for what I call brown bananas. Grocery store is going to buy 3000 bananas.

Cecil Bullard: They're not going to sell 3000. I don't know. They'll only sell 2, 800 because 200 will go brown. People won't buy them or someone will steal them and eat them while they're walking around the store. So they just don't get paid for them. And I said, who pays for the brown bananas, the bananas that don't get to get eaten.

Cecil Bullard: And the client I had said, well, the shop does, the business does. And I'm like, no, customers have to pay for everything in your business. When you understand that you need to build in time that your technician is going to spend. If you're going to pay the technician to do the work. Then you need to build in the time all the time necessary.

Cecil Bullard: So most of the shops that I have are using this matrix on their labor of 20 to 30%. And that's the makeup for the time that the technician is going to do paperwork and other things. And then, you know, I think my gosh, our clients are going to compare us to 15 other shops, and they're going to find out that we're a little more expensive on this particular job.

Cecil Bullard: And I don't find that to be true. I've never found that to be true in the industry for the majority of the clients or the clients that I want to have in my business. So number one, you can make more money with the pen than you can, and you can have more productivity with the pen than you can with any other tools in the shop.

Cecil Bullard: Number two. It's not the technician's fault in most cases that they are not productive. And if you want to figure out why your people are not productive, the best thing to do is ask them look at the, the processes for flow. So, you know, what's the first happens. How do we schedule? Dispatch. How do we write up the ticket?

Cecil Bullard: So if you look at the tickets and you do a ticket review on your repair orders and you say to yourself, okay, that technician came in, that customer came in, I complain actually 140 for us to diagnose that or is 100. So what, what happened is when the customer showed up, there 

Amber Wright: Hey Cecil 

Cecil Bullard: You want anything else?

Cecil Bullard: Is there anything else that I can do? 

Amber Wright: Hey, Cecil, you're breaking in and out. I don't know if there's an audio issue but it's coming in and out. 

Cecil Bullard: Excuse me one second. We don't want to be breaking in and out. 

Amber Wright: Yes. 

Cecil Bullard: Give me a second here, we get it. 

Amber Wright: It's okay. And then I do have a few questions from the audience.

Amber Wright: Once we get your audio back up and running. Thanks guys for hanging tight. We're going to get the audio really quickly updated. Maybe some new batteries in there.

Cecil Bullard: How is that? 

Amber Wright: Sounds better. Keep talking for just a second. 

Cecil Bullard: Yeah, I will keep talking. I'll talk. 

Amber Wright: You will. While we paused you. Do you want to go ahead and answer a few questions that came in at the beginning? Wonderful. Is there a prioritization of productivity tasks? Like, is it the same for the type of shop you are is the prioritization of productivity tasks the same regardless of the shop you are?

Cecil Bullard: So, I would say no, there isn't. It's if, if you're a. General repair shop. The issues with productivity that you have are probably the same issues as a specialty shop, tire shop big truck shop, diesel shop. You're really dealing with the same issues over and over and over again. So, priority number one set goals with your staff.

Cecil Bullard: What's the productivity I want? measure and manage staff. If you have a management problem it, there are, there are two types of productivity issues. There are it's funny. I'll say Institute issues. Let's say I ran a shop. It was called the Institute. And we had a low productivity. There are two types of, of problems we have.

Cecil Bullard: We have Institute issues. What is the Institute in control of? What does You know, dispatch how we write up tickets how we price ourselves whether or not we have all the tools we need the arrangement in the shop. Where's I was in a shop in Sacramento area. The bay they did the oil changes in was right next to the office, the bay, they kept the oil filters and the oil and the other stuff for the service work.

Cecil Bullard: Was five days down. So every time that technician had to walk down there to get the tools or walk down there to get the oil filter, they've made four or five trips across the shop every time they did an oil change. That's not an employee problem. That's an institute problem. Okay. And so when you think about productivity, you look at everything you do, you say to yourself, Okay, first of all, yeah what do I believe the text can do?

Cecil Bullard: How am I pricing myself? How do I, how do I set that up? So in my shop 1. 2 times is what we did on literally every job, except for what I would call a canned job. So. Our minor service, which was our oil change with a complete inspection of the vehicle and a written documented report pre DVI was not only was it 165, but I paid my technician eight tenths for that.

Cecil Bullard: Excuse me. Did I, did I charge enough? Did I pay enough? That's an Institute problem. That's my problem, right? Whether or not the technician can do the job in the time allotted in the eight tenths may be a technician problem. It might be, say, if Bob is my technician, it might be a Bob problem. But if I don't have a goal and a target and what I believe to be true, how do I manage that person?

Cecil Bullard: So we, we need to set goals. And in my shop, by the way, just so everyone knows I ran a shop, last shop I personally ran, I ran for about six years. We had 119 percent productivity out of our technicians over the six year period, meaning that my technicians delivered 9. 55 hours a day worth of work that I could bill out in an eight hour day.

Cecil Bullard: And the reason they can do that is because of efficiencies that are created both with the technician skill set and within our processes, how the shop runs. And, and so when you walk into a shop and you have 60 percent productivity, the first thing that I look at is what are the goals and targets for the employee and what does the owner or the manager believe about productivity in the business?

Cecil Bullard: Because if you don't believe that your techs can be a hundred percent, You'll never get 100%. Okay. I don't know if that answers that particular question. Probably does. And then some, did you have other questions, Amber, that you wanted to ask me right now? 

Amber Wright: Did I, if you're open to me asking?

Cecil Bullard: I kind of planned it.

Cecil Bullard: So 

Amber Wright: what type of jobs would get 1. 2 versus 1. 3 on the multiplier? So going back. 

Cecil Bullard: Your, on your typical stuff, that would be easier. I might go 1. 2 on harder stuff or stuff that's like if I'm working on an older vehicle, let's say it's say eight years or, or more. And I happen to be, you know, north of the Mason Dixon line.

Cecil Bullard: I'm probably dealing with rust and, and other issues. And so I might do 1. 3 on an older car and I might do 1. 2 on everything else except for. My minor service, my diag for starting we had a starting and charging system diag. We didn't multiply that. We had our our level one, level two, level three diagnostic.

Cecil Bullard: We didn't use a multiplier there, but we also were not charging an hour. We were charging an hour and a half because there's no parts. And some of your efficiencies you create by charging properly. In other words, again, it's an institute problem. How am I charging for my people's time as opposed? So in a lot of shops.

Cecil Bullard: You're paying your tech three tenths and you're eating the five, the DVI. So you got five tenths, half an hour, and you're not paying, you're not, you're paying your tech, but you're not charging your customer. And so that would be something that, if I made that decision, I certainly need to be, say, 1.

Cecil Bullard: 3 on everything else so I can make up for that 5 tenths of an hour that I'm giving away every time I look at a car. So you, it's about, as much about management as it is about employees, okay? It's as much internal as it is anything else. You should have multiple labor rates. You should have frankly, multiple multipliers.

Cecil Bullard: Depending on the situation, etc. And in my shop, the technicians gave the service advisors. So technician estimating is very important. How does a technician estimate because. If the technician estimates easily and well, and we follow what the technician is telling us, we trust our technicians, then the service advisor estimates faster, and there's less wasted time.

Cecil Bullard: So, for instance, if if I'm a te a service advisor, and I get an estimate that's unclear and let's say it's one of those jobs that the book is just completely off. And the tech knows it. You know, the book is telling us two hours. The tech is telling us it's six or not telling us at all. Then it gets sent in and it gets estimated by a service advisor that doesn't have all the knowledge.

Cecil Bullard: In other words, the tech knows it's a six hour job, but if he never tells the service advisor, The service advisor uses book time. Okay. And, and even if they're using a multiplier, they have a two hour job by the book. Maybe they charge 2. 5 or even 2. 6, but they don't charge six. There are many jobs in the book that are incorrect, or there might be extenuating circumstances that the technician would find.

Cecil Bullard: So for instance one of my techs was doing valve covers on a five liter Ford pickup F one 50. And the job was like 2. 6 hours by the book. And my technician wanted six, I think it was six or 6. 8 or something like that. There was no explanation. So, as a service advisor, I had to go out to the shop, call, or call the technician in, and have a conversation with the tech.

Cecil Bullard: Which, by the way, what happens, when I'm talking to the tech, what are they not doing? They're not working on cars. So, I want to have really good tech estimating that gets the right information. And, and, a lot of shops, they don't, they've never thought of that. They never said, hey, if I really cleaned up my tech estimating, got all the best information to my service advisor.

Cecil Bullard: It would speed up throughput, meaning that the service advisor would spend less time out in the shop talking to the tech, the tech would be more efficient because they would have more time to work on the car, even though they spent maybe five minutes to write the estimate out. Okay, now I'm not having that five to ten minute conversation once or twice on the car as a service advisor.

Cecil Bullard: Then that makes the service advisor's time more valuable, but valuable, and then the service advisor can actually spend, you know, get that estimate out faster. So the technician will have more work to do in a more timely fashion. A lot of times you walk into a shop, you look at their estimating process, and it takes two, two and a half, three hours to get a car through estimation and get the work sold or not sold.

Cecil Bullard: And you, in the meantime, you have a technician standing around. If you look at your processes and you say to yourself, well, wait a minute, we have a process of a bad process of tech estimating, the service advisor not getting information, which is causing probably three things. Number one I want from my technician four items.

Cecil Bullard: I want to know what the car needs, why it needs it in as few words as possible. I want a comprehensive parts list from the technician and, and you'll have people come here jumping in going, Oh my God, I'm going to have my technician, you know, look up all the parts. No, not necessarily, but I want a part. I want to know from the technician what's required on this job.

Cecil Bullard: And I also want the technician to give me a time. I want the technician to say, yeah, the book's right. This is a two hour time or know the books off. It's a six hour job or it is right. It's two hours, but I want three. I'm going to work with the technician. And we had a rule in my shop that within 25 percent of the book time, if we, if the technician's time was within 25 percent of the book time, the service advisor had to sell it for that time, no taking off.

Cecil Bullard: Okay. So you're looking at your, your processes and you're saying to yourself, do I have. Institute problems, or do I have Bob problem? Okay. So, all right, that's that question. You have it sounded like you had more than one. We 

Cecil Bullard: have a ton of questions. So hopefully this, and I, I hope you're okay with this.

Cecil Bullard: I'm trying to answer them in the way that you're speaking. What are key factors to considering when implement implementing different labor rates? What are the key factors? 

Cecil Bullard: I think you decide what. I think you decide what legitimately you think that job that you need to be successful in profitable on that job.

Cecil Bullard: I think that's factor number one. Factor number two is, is that going to create productivity or take away from productivity? In other words, are, and, and I don't want to cheat customers. So that's a factor in this. Maybe it's factor number three. I don't want to charge customers, you know, 12 hours on a three hour job.

Cecil Bullard: I don't, I don't believe that to be fair to my client, but I don't have a problem charging four hours on a three hour job to a customer because it's, I'm taking into account things that the technician is doing that the original book time never took into account and that's what I need. To be profitable to 20 percent net.

Cecil Bullard: So to me, I'm going to start there. I'm going to set a goal for each tech and don't set a crappy goal. I mean, if, if your tech's giving you four hours right now, you know, I have this little saying goes in my head. How many, how many tires could a tire buster bust? If a tire buster could bust tires. And it would go for an oil changer, a GSM, whatever.

Cecil Bullard: If I had a good tech, a say B level a level master level tech in my shop, and they had everything they needed to be successful, meaning tools, jobs authorizations, parts on time. How many hours could that person or should that person produce in a eight hour day? And, and so we also should clarify productivity.

Cecil Bullard: When I talk about productivity, I'm not talking about proficiency or efficiency. Productivity is I'm here for eight hours. I'm on the clock for eight hours. How many hours did I produce during that time? And if I'm using a 20 or a 30 percent multiplier, and if I have a good technician that has done the job more than once now.

Cecil Bullard: I I know the tech knows the job well, and I believe the tech should be beating book time, I don't know, 60 70 percent of the time because they know how to do the job. But talk about the scars on my hands. I have I don't know, whatever it is now, 153, 154 scars. And those scars are from working on cars.

Cecil Bullard: And I, so I earned that extra hour on that job, just because the book says it's 2. 5, we're going to charge three and I can do it in 1. 5. I earned that. It's because I'm a great master at what I do. There's a a story, joke, whatever. There's a squeaky floor in this beautiful concert hall.

Cecil Bullard: And they, they hire multiple different people to fix it, and nobody can fix the squeak in the hall. And so they hire a master carpenter, and he walks in. And he walks up and down the floor for a bit. And then he says, okay, I can fix it. And it's going to cost 2, 000. And so they're like, okay, great. We can't have this squeak in this beautiful concert hall.

Cecil Bullard: And so what he does is he takes one nail out of his bag and he puts the nail in a very specific place, hammers it in, squeak goes away. And all of a sudden the, the concert hall manager's like, well, I'm not paying two grand for that for you just to drive one nail. And what we think is that we're nail drivers in this business.

Cecil Bullard: That guy is a master. He knew where to put the nail. They're not paying, you know, two grand for him to drive one nail. They're paying two grand for him to know where to drive the nail. And so, we, we, I think as owners, we, and even service advisors, we, we give into the temptation to make the customer feel great.

Cecil Bullard: Oh my gosh, you guys are less than other people. Oh my gosh, this was less than we thought. And that's fine. When, when I can do that legitimately. And still protect my family. And I mean, I do mean my wife and kids at home or grandkids and, and, and kids that aren't at home anymore, but I also mean the employees that work for me.

Cecil Bullard: Am I protecting my technician when I'm taking five tenths off the job? We see just, you know, on every like Facebook, every group, every, we see texts complaining that they're not getting paid enough. And we have owners and service advisors that are giving their work away when we have masters that deserve 2, 000 for knowing where to drive the name.

Cecil Bullard: Right. And so we have to think of ourselves in a different way. And, and, and you're right. I'm, I'm, I'm crazy. I have this vision of this industry of, of professionals who get paid for their knowledge and their experience and all of that. And maybe that's crazy, but I'm going to go, I'm going to die with that very same vision, create goals first, right?

Cecil Bullard: Understand realistically, I've been in classes where I had. 200 people in the class. And I said, how many of you actually believe that a technician can only do six hours a day and half the class will raise their, their arms. And so if you only believe a tech can do six hours a day, then you're not finding where the Institute problems are and where the Bob problems are.

Cecil Bullard: Okay. And so that's a management issue when I have bought Institute problems. The manager or the owner has to fix those and estimating might be one of those areas. You know, I, I wish there was a, a, a manual that taught us all, well, exactly how should I price myself? What's what exact rate? And there kind of is.

Cecil Bullard: Certainly I can teach you all of that, but it's not as simple if I'm in a certain part. If I'm in Georgia in, you know, rural areas, I'm probably not charging as much as if I'm in Los Angeles. But but also my cost of living there is less than it is in L. A. You have to make decisions about your business and what you believe should be able to do.

Cecil Bullard: And I think one of the great things about being who I am is that I've worked with, I don't know, probably 3, 000 shops over the years. And I have seen shops with 120 percent productivity, and I've also seen shops with 40 percent productivity. And the difference is, do we believe it? Do we have goals for it?

Cecil Bullard: Are we managing? So if I'm going to set goals for my tech of eight hours a day or 9. 6, as in my shop, I'm going to let the tech know what that is. I'm going to help them understand why that goal is set. So they believe that it's possible. And then I'm gonna start working on where are the problems. The management should constantly, if I don't have 100 percent productivity out of my techs, I should say, what problems, institute problems do we have?

Cecil Bullard: What Bob problems do we have? How do we solve those problems? So again, a great estimating I would say form, but I online, how, what is the tech going to give my service advisor will increase? The service advisors efficiency and the text productivity. If that information is passed, well, dispatch you know, a lot of shops will dispatch one car to attack and they'll hold on to all the other tickets.

Cecil Bullard: It's kind of in a pile on the service advisors desk. And when the technician gets done with that car and the technician comes up and say, Hey, I'm done. And the service advisor has time, which might be 25 minutes, 30 minutes later. Now, all of a sudden the tech gets a second job. Well, what if the tech gets held up for a part?

Cecil Bullard: Because we don't have the right authorization or there's something else or something, you know, and, and, and they don't have anything else to do. What's the natural tendency of a tech that doesn't have a second job that they know they're supposed to get done? There's, there's, there's easy things to do, like, adding a matrix.

Cecil Bullard: And then there's harder things to do, which are, you know, changing just the way we dispatch. Changing the way we schedule. Holy smokes. We still have shops scheduling waiters where customers can come in throughout the day and wait for 30 minutes for their car. And we're pulling texts off of a 3, 000 job to do a, I don't know, 59 waiter.

Cecil Bullard: Who's not in the right place to make the best decision about their automotive service and repair. Cause all their thinking is all the things they have to do today. And, and we wonder why the tech's not efficient when you pull somebody off of a complicated job. At least for me, when I come back, I need to spend 10, 15 minutes figuring out where I was making sure I didn't miss anything, kind of rechecking some of the stuff, some of the steps to make sure that I don't screw something up.

Cecil Bullard: I'm talking to one of my clients. They had a an Audi in for timing chain and the technician did it and put it all together and was off a tooth. Because probably because they got interrupted in the middle of when they were setting it all up and they didn't double check and make sure. So the car wouldn't run or wouldn't run correctly.

Cecil Bullard: So they had to tear it all down again. And then when they put it back together, it was off a tooth. Had to do the job three times, but we only got paid one time that costs that particular shop, probably not just the, the, I don't know, nine hours for each, each time you had to pull it back apart. So 18 hours, but it also costs them the 18 hours of time that he wasn't able to bill out on other cars.

Cecil Bullard: So you have to think about this in a more. Big picture kind of, way. And you have to drill it down to, again, do I have an institute problem? Is there a problem with my dispatch? Is there a problem with me interrupting technicians in the middle of jobs? Is there a problem that I've got, you know, 15 waiters coming in today and I'm pulling texts off of other jobs and I still want them to be efficient.

Cecil Bullard: Is, is that problem in the institute problem or is that a Bob problem? Right. And then I have to fix the institute problems and maybe some, I decide not to, maybe I, I say to myself, well, Cecil's full of crap. We're going to have waiters. I'm not going to fix that one, but what other things can I fix? What other institute problems can I fix?

Cecil Bullard: Right. And then I want Bob to recognize the problems that Bob has. So we don't. We don't often recognize our own issues. We need someone to bring attention to them. And so that's what a manager does. A manager says, Hey, you're supposed to do eight hours. You only did six. And you're only doing, I don't know, 30 a week and you're supposed to do 40.

Cecil Bullard: So what do you think's wrong? And if the employee says, well, I, the way I get dispatched is not okay. I only have one car and sometimes I have to wait for my second car. Frankly, in my shop, we scheduled every job to come in, in the morning. I didn't have any waiters whatsoever. We didn't do any cheap oil changes.

Cecil Bullard: We kept the car for at least the day we dispatched every car by nine o'clock in the morning, all the cars we had in the day, 13, 14 cars for four employees, four techs were all dispatched. And then throughout the day, the manager, whoever was in charge, service advisor, service manager, manager, whatever you want to call it, would say, Oh, wait a minute.

Cecil Bullard: We just sold for Tom. We just sold 25 hours worth of work and he still has two cars that diagnosed today. And so the manager would then go to Tom and say, you're booked, you're busy. I'm going to take these two cars and redispatch them to someone else. But again, if we're, if our. Techs don't have work, or if they don't know I have another weird saying and, and that is you know, a tech will, will make, a tech will, if, if only given the job, a tech will take the amount of time that the job requires.

Cecil Bullard: So if I give a tech four hours worth of work in an eight hour day, that will take them eight hours. If I give a tech 10 hours worth of work in an eight hour day, my experience, if the systems and processes are run well. And I have a manager that's actually managing that tech will do 10 hours in a 10 hour day if they have 10 hours worth of legitimate time to do.

Cecil Bullard: And so my guys by 9 o'clock pretty much knew what they were at least starting with. And when they got held up on one job, they had another job they knew to go to. They didn't stand around. They didn't talk on the cell phone. You know, they went to work because that, in part, is how they got paid. And you want to have pay systems that support that.

Cecil Bullard: You want to have a base pay based on the hourly, and then you want to have a performance part of your pay plan based on additional productivity, knowledge, skill set, etc. Okay other questions? 

Amber Wright: You knocked a few birds out, so you, you did good. So, the next question, I think this is more on, I'm going to say this is on an Institute.

Amber Wright: Let's just say company issues. Let me see if I'm right. What are your thoughts on how to protect an owner, operator from the technician, service advisors, etc , from just coming into his office and inundating him with questions when he is trying to focus on whatever he needs? 

Cecil Bullard: That's an owner problem.

Cecil Bullard: Okay. That is not a service advisor problem or a technician problem. We have made ourselves the, I don't know, the shell answer man. Some of you I'm dating myself will remember the shell answer man, big commercials about that. He had all the answers to everything. I see shop owners that have become the shell answer man in their business.

Cecil Bullard: And I'll talk about electricity because a lot of the guys in here are going to be technical. We're And so electricity follows a rule. And the rule is it always goes to the quickest path, the ground, what's the easiest route. So if I put electricity through a series of wires, it will go to the first ground and not to the last ground.

Cecil Bullard: It'll go to the thing that's easiest for it. So if you've become easy for your people, if you're, if they're, if they're electricity and you're the first ground, they will come to you all the time and owners. And managers, even service advisor have to stop being that person. I don't know. I don't want, I hate to condemn any generation and I don't think it's a demonic of one generation or another, but we want the easy answer.

Cecil Bullard: So if I can go to the owner, when I get questions, you know, oh my gosh, I've. I've I've got a code. I traced it to the problem that the, that the computer told me. And that's not it. I don't know what to do. I'm going to go to the owner. And of course the owner wants the tech to be efficient because he's already not efficient.

Cecil Bullard: So the owner says, Oh, just go do this. Right. Except the owner learned how to do that. By struggling through that repair the first time or maybe even the second time before they figured it out And and so we are answering far too many questions for our people If we have system and process in our business, that answers 50 percent of the questions, what's the process, what's the system, you know, when, when people come to me and they say, well, should we do that?

Cecil Bullard: We have our mission statement. We have our core values. We have five core values in the company. And my, my question to them is, does it fit within our core values? Yes or no? That's it, right? And if the answer is it fits within our core values, then you know what you should, the choice you should make.

Cecil Bullard: I don't have to make it for you. So if we have a repair process that we've talked about, if we have a, what do I do when I get in trouble process? I mean, we have so many resources today for working on cars that we didn't have 20 years ago, 25 years ago. Why is the owner or the manager or the service advisor the first place that the tech goes?

Cecil Bullard: Right? Because it's easy. Stop being easy. Start telling your people, I'm not going to answer those questions for you. Because you want people that can make good decisions and know how to make the right decisions and they never will if they're always relying on you to make the decision. And one of the funniest things Amber, I find you'll have an owner that will be out or even a master, like their, their, their shop foreman will be out for a week.

Cecil Bullard: And you know what? The shop does. Okay. Without the form in there or the owner there. And, and so the owner wasn't even there to get asked questions. The reason that so many questions are coming their way is they haven't created boundaries, any boundaries at all. And they don't know how to tell their people no.

Cecil Bullard: Because the priority is Get that car out today and get that money in the bank instead of what's the system and process that will get that car out quickly so that we can always put money in the bank. 

Amber Wright: Yeah. 

Cecil Bullard: Right. 

Amber Wright: I think we're also afraid to fail, right? And the way that I can relate this, I don't own a shop, right?

Amber Wright: I'm not a business owner, but when my son climbs a tree and then asks me to get him down, what lesson is that teaching him, right? Yes, as a mother, I want to get him down so he doesn't break a bone. But again, if he does break a bone and he does it himself, that's the lesson he teaches himself, right? And so it's so important for our employees even ourselves to be less accessible.

Amber Wright: And I think you mentioned it generational. I think it's just society, right? We all have our iPhones. We have, you know, chat GPT , and all of these things that we can just look up. But, but you are right. There is a generation where they are so used to not actually looking it up and just going to somebody. So I think that's a really good pivot.

Cecil Bullard: I think, I think we've created that within our businesses a lot in this particular industry, probably true of a lot of industries, but I think what I asked my clients to start doing is. When that's when someone comes, you can ask the question. First of all, you should be asked for answering maybe 20 percent of their questions.

Cecil Bullard: The other 80%, you probably shouldn't answer. I asked them to stop and think, is this a question I should answer before they answer it? If the answer is no, you tell the employee, that's something you need to figure out. You know, I, I'm not a tech anymore. I, when I was a service advisor, when I became a service advisor, I would have texts come to me and say, what's the fix for this, I'd be like, I'm not the tech, I'm the service advisor.

Cecil Bullard: I have different responsibilities. That's your job to figure it out. It also creates accountability because if the owner's always the one. When the problem, when it doesn't solve the problem, the owner then becomes accountable for the not having it solved. Not my fault. That's what the owner told me to do.

Cecil Bullard: And so I think all of us, we'd like to reduce our accountability. And not take the consequence for that. And part of that is asking too many questions of other people. So we can say no, no, that was so and so that told me to do that. All right, go ahead. Next, 

Amber Wright: What are some effective production tracking applications that a shop can utilize when the estimating platform is not enough?

Cecil Bullard: Unfortunately there aren't really great tools in the industry to track production. I built a piece of software 25 years ago. It never took traction, but it was literally productivity tracking, hours tracking. And it gave real time data to the employees and the owners about what the productivity was, what the sales were, and it actually projected based on current productivity, where we're going to end up at the end of the period, and that didn't take off.

Cecil Bullard: And that piece of that those patents were just sold to another company who hopefully will, will take it and run with it. But currently in, in most of our point of sales, I'm not seeing what I'd like to see. So what I need to understand, and I can run this report in, in auto auto leap. And that is at the end of the day, how many hours did my guy actually produce that we were able to get paid for?

Cecil Bullard: That are done. And so I can create my own daily report that looks at everyone's productivity and you should and you should post it on the wall so that they know if if I'm an employee who's supposed to do eight hours a day and my productivity today was six, do you want me going home feeling good about it?

Cecil Bullard: Because I don't know, or do you want me to know that tomorrow I have to act a little differently and work a little harder? Which one is it? Once you set goals, you should have a display, whether it's a whiteboard or you know, some kind of you know, computer display that will show what the productivity was for each person and what the overall productivity for the business is.

Cecil Bullard: That's what you, you need. And, and there's some simple reports. I have a weekly report that will pop out most of that. Also, if you understand your financials your hour is worth. One ti your effective labor times one plus parts over labor. Not a complicated formula, but it is algebra. Basically, if you say I'm $120 an hour, most shops, parts and labor are very close to 50%.

Cecil Bullard: Shouldn't be 50 50, but it, but they are. And so if I'm $120 an hour effectively, then I'm 200, let's say $230 an hour. For parts and labor for my tech, this is rough math and Cecil's brain. So if I've got someone that that's eight hours a day, that's going to be 1, 840 that they should have produced that I should have sold that I should have in the bank today.

Cecil Bullard: So if we brought in 1, 840 for each guy then we hit a hundred percent productivity. So if you understand your numbers and you understand what each hour is worth, You can kind of look at your sales and your, and, and it will tell you what your production was. So how much did Bob do? How much did Tom do?

Cecil Bullard: How much did, you know, Bailey do? And I want to know that if I'm a manager, I absolutely want to know that every day. So that anyone that's lagging behind, that's falling behind. I can get with them to identify is it a Institute problem or is it a Bob problem? Right? And that's kind of one of the really key things is do I have someone working on that and solving the institute problems?

Cecil Bullard: And helping Bob understand what his problems are and how to solve those.

Amber Wright: Appreciate that. The next one. So you didn't mention earlier, and I just want to make sure everybody that's still on. Thank you guys for everybody who's staying. We will give it another 15 minutes. If you have questions, please do.

Amber Wright: Craig asked, Is there productivity checklist form or tracking in an Excel sheet? I think you mentioned you had a tool for them. But do you have anything 

Cecil Bullard: Productivity checklist for tracking in an Excel sheet? 

Amber Wright: I Just any type of resources for productivity.

Cecil Bullard: I have a, I have a weekly report that I have my people fill out that shows productivity. I have a monthly report that I have my people fill out.

Cecil Bullard: I won't pass out the monthly report because it's very complicated and it's also very proprietary. I will, however, give you a weekly report and I have some projection tools that I will send to you, Amber, that you can get out to the people that attended. that will help me understand if I, if I'm this much, if, if I'm this much an hour, then how many hours you know, how many, how many dollars should I be bringing in, in that time period?

Amber Wright: So 

Amber Wright: projection tools and the weekly product. 

Cecil Bullard: Yeah. And you're going to 

Cecil Bullard: send me an email right after this that says, Hey, Cecil, you promised. 

Amber Wright: Absolutely. You guys got it. Wonderful. I Anthony mentioned the one minute manager going back to that question earlier about people coming into your office. That is a really good resource for you guys to read taking the emotion out of it, making it about business, giving it back to employees is a really good book.

Amber Wright: And then another question. I think that everybody is also wanting to get this. How do I get well, how can I get a well trained professional or how can I train them to be a professional? 

Cecil Bullard: Well, I think you have to have, first of all, a good interview process. And it's like if you want crappy customers, there's certain marketing that you're going to do.

Cecil Bullard: Same thing for employees. You need to have a good ad. You need to have a good management and you need to have a good interview process when people come in. And if you're, if you want a professional, there are questions that you can ask that will help you understand that that person is more of a professional or less of a professional.

Cecil Bullard: So you need to get good at interviewing. And then I think like in my shop, everyone that came in my shop, whether you were a 25 year veteran of the industry or a five year veteran, or you just started, Had a mentor assigned to them and we had a list of things that they were going to be trained on that we knew, you know, their mentor was going to work through for them.

Cecil Bullard: And so you're, you're starting it in your ad. You're continuing, continuing it in your interview process. And then you're also reinforcing it in your systems and process in the way you run your business. So you, you need to be congruent kind of throughout as an example, like you're advertising. I see shops that will run the you know, they, they're, they're really good looking shops.

Cecil Bullard: They're marble, you know, countertops and tile floors and all this, and they'll run a, you know, a $10 off if you spend 25 and $50 off if you spend, you know, 500 and a hundred dollars off if you spend a thousand. And so you have this ad that looks like. You're kind of a discount shop, but you're really not.

Cecil Bullard: Okay. And so when the customer sees that ad, the discount customer walks in your door and gets confused. All right. They look around, they go, well, wait a minute. This isn't a discount shop, but I thought it was based on its advertising. That very same thing is true of the way we market for technicians. And even through our, throughout our interview process I think in general, most technicians are not necessarily great interviewers.

Cecil Bullard: Even because they start asking technical questions and what we really need to know first are character questions and, you know, kind of who you are deep down, and then I can ask you technical questions later. Once I understand what your character is and whether or not you fit in my culture, which also, if you create a culture of productivity in your business, then you're likely to get productivity.

Cecil Bullard: So if you're measuring it, if you're managing it, if you're talking about it in your interview process. If you're using mentors to help them understand that we, and then if your pay plan supports it right productivity, we have a lot of shops that are paying our hourly and they just pay hourly and it doesn't matter how many hours I produce, you know, if so one of the first things that happens often when I start working with a client is I try to find out kind of who they are and how they're managing their people.

Cecil Bullard: We have a lot of guys that are screaming and yelling at their employees. But their employees are not changing. So if, if, if the screaming and yelling is not doing the job, it would be like I don't know, expecting to fix a leak, but you never replace the radiator, which is the problem. You're always replacing the water pump.

Cecil Bullard: And if that's not going to solve your problem, find out what's going to solve your problem. Stop screaming and yelling. That doesn't belong in business. Learn how to manage people correctly, create expectations, goals. And then help them understand what a, what a Bob problem is and what a, what a institute problem is, and then fix the institute problems.

Cecil Bullard: Stop, stop taking away the hope of your people that they can ever be productive because your shop runs poorly. Look at your estimating, look at your dispatch, look at how you schedule look at, at how work flows through your shop, how you communicate, how. How technicians estimate how service advisors estimate take responsibility for the things that are your responsibility and get them fixed.

Cecil Bullard: And you'll create more productivity in your business. 

Amber Wright: We don't have any other questions. Vic asked about training for service advisors and managers, and I did send over your website programs for both general managers and advisors, and we'll be in contact afterwards. 

Cecil Bullard: I think we have a 

Cecil Bullard: great service advisor training program.

Cecil Bullard: Of course, I own the company, so I and I developed most of it, so I I would think it was great. We get great results from it. I think we have a great management training program. We get great results from that. And I think all owners need to learn management. There's some great accountability books.

Cecil Bullard: There's some great manager books, things that you would you know, read or have read to you, you know, however you want it audible, however you want to do it. I can go on about productivity for the next three hours, five hours, 10 hours. I think we got about five minutes left. 

Amber Wright: We do have two more questions.

Amber Wright: So they're still coming in unless you wanted to finish out. 

Cecil Bullard: No, go ahead. 

Cecil Bullard: Go ahead. 

Amber Wright: With vendor 

Amber Wright: parts delays being a major issue at this point in time how do we improve production when it's a part 

Cecil Bullard: manager 

Cecil Bullard: vendors, first of all you need to have two or three good vendors and it needs to be not about what it costs.

Cecil Bullard: But about how quickly they can get your parts and how the quality of the part. So you manage your vendors like you manage your employees. The better you manage your vendors, the better that will happen. I would also say that there's a third thing that you're going to find when you're looking at this wall, that's keeping you from being productivity with all its different bricks, you know, your dispatch brick, your, your tech enthusiasm, brick, et cetera.

Cecil Bullard: One of those bricks is going to be. We're in the middle of the country. We only have a certain amount of suppliers. They cannot get the parts to us quickly. That's not something I can fix. So work around that. What other things can I fix? There are challenges in life. I shattered my right leg. I'm not going to run any races.

Cecil Bullard: I don't I work around that. I do things that I can do and I do what I can do really well so that my Right leg doesn't come into play. Right. And I think in the shop, if you, if you have vendor display delays, et cetera, talk to your vendors, find other vendors, find the other suppliers. If you need to make sure that you manage, I'm probably the only guy ever that went to my vendors and said, charge me 2 percent more.

Cecil Bullard: Just get me the parts here in 30 minutes. How do we do that? If I'm going to spend 20, 25, 000, 30, 000 with you every month, I want the parts here quickly and I want a quality part. I don't want a part that's going to be breaking down or falling apart. And so, and I think right now, some shop owners, rather than price their Parts correctly because there's so much quote unquote transparency and parts competition.

Cecil Bullard: They're trying to buy cheaper parts from a cheaper vendor and that's never gonna, it's never gonna pay off. It's just not gonna pay off for you. Find good vendors and manager vendors. That's all I'll say on that subject right now. And if you want to have more, whatever it was, 

Amber Wright: Communicate expectations, I would imagine.

Cecil Bullard: What's 

Cecil Bullard: that? Yeah. I always set my vendors down every year and I said, this is what I spent with you last year, and this is what I'm probably gonna spend with you this year. This is what I expect of you. Can you meet that expectation? You create goals for them too. Every, every position you have in the business should have goals.

Cecil Bullard: And the vendors are a part of your business and you need to create realistic goals for them. And then if there's things you can't fix because now it's a different world than it was five years ago, then work around that. I need to bring more jobs in. I may have to have more space. I maybe have to buy a small vehicle so I can move things in and out of my shop while we're waiting for parts.

Cecil Bullard: I have to work with what I have. But I'm still going to fix the Institute problems and I'm going to help Bob understand what his problems are. And help Bob come to the right answers to solve Bob's problems. And then there are a few things I may not be able to affect much. I'll do the most I can, but I'll spend my energy in places where my energy will give me the best return.

Amber Wright: I love that. That was answered really well. Last question. Think we've got a few and I'm going to kind of piecemeal this one together. How do I take into account teamwork and customer satisfaction in a tech bonus? 

Cecil Bullard: I think customer satisfaction is not necessarily up to the technician. I think that's more of a service advisor bonus structure.

Cecil Bullard: The service advisor is really the interface between the tech and the, and the, and the, you know, the customer. And so, yes, I think a tech has something to do if they're going to have a lot of comebacks. And my customer satisfaction is going to go down. They're going to leave greasy fingerprints on the car.

Cecil Bullard: My customer satisfaction will go down if they leave rags under the hood that are going to then smoke or. You know, whatever catch fire, then my customer satisfaction is going to go down, but customer satisfaction primarily as a service advisor and, or an institute issue, and so I'm going to put processes in place to make sure that we have a good QC on the car, whether that's the tech doing it or an individual as far as quality of work having production bonuses that also either using reward, not punish.

Cecil Bullard: But reward them for doing a great job on the car. I would also say education. The smarter they are, the more they know, the better job they'll do on the car. And then I think if also if the owner is answering too many of their questions, they're not learning what they need to learn. So I would say the secret for all management is really Creating a vision upfront and helping them to understand what that vision is and agree to that vision.

Cecil Bullard: So, you know, when, when I sat and talked with, with my employees, I came into a shop that was really losing a lot of money, not doing very well, not a million one with 14 employees. I sat the employees down and I said, what kind of a shop do we want to be? Do we want to be an also ran? Do we want to be a discount shop?

Cecil Bullard: Do we want to be a, I don't really give a crap shop. We're just going to drag as much money through the coffers as we want to. Or are we going to be a great shop? Are we going to be the best shop? And, and so we define that and discussed it in a company meeting and we discussed it routinely whenever we, whenever our comebacks went up too much, we sat down and said, what's our goal for comebacks.

Cecil Bullard: And in my shop, it was less than 1% based on a dollar spent on comebacks. And at one point we were at 8 percent in my shop and I sat down with the employees and I said, what's the goal? Because they, we'd already talked about it previously and we'd agreed to it. And they said, well, the goal is less than 1%.

Cecil Bullard: And I told them, well, right now we're at 8 percent and everybody kind of jaws dropped. People went, oh my God, that's not acceptable. And then we sat down in that meeting and we came up with three or four solutions. Implementation things to do to increase or decrease our comebacks and increase our customer satisfaction.

Cecil Bullard: We put those in play. Then we reported that. Hey, we went down below 1%. We're back where we need to be. Thank you very much. And I think I think if you create the vision and you help them, there's there's Like if I'm selling to a client with a car, a whole nother subject, but I want to know who they are, how they think about their car et cetera, because I want to lead them.

Cecil Bullard: I want to say, this is kind of a nice car or you think about keeping it. I think you can get another five, 10 years out of it, blah, blah, blah. And if they agree to those things, then I have a different conversation. If they say, well, I hate this car and I'm trying, I'm going to get rid of it next week. By the way, customers will also lie to you.

Cecil Bullard: So you don't always take what they tell you. You know, with, with you know, we take some of it with a grain of sand. But if I can define the kind of shop we want to be with my employees. And then I can have regular meetings about that and help them see we are or we're not that. And if we're not that, is it an institute problem?

Cecil Bullard: Or is it a Bob problem? Right? And if it's a Bob problem, then how do we help Bob get where he needs to be? If it's an institute problem, how do we solve that? It goes It goes for almost everything that I'm going to manage in my company, right? And, and so I would, I would tell you that in your pay plans, they should about 40 percent of your pay to any employee for any position should be rewarding for the behaviors you want from them.

Cecil Bullard: And about 60 percent should be base. And we have financial classes online at our gear for shops. com. We have, you know, we're going to be teaching a lot of financial classes at all the different events that are going to happen this year. If you don't understand your business financially, it will be hard for you to understand some of the other things that will help you to build the right pay plan to manage and motivate the person.

Cecil Bullard: That's out there. Get the right pay plan in place. Stop. Stop rewarding them for crappy production and crappy work. Start rewarding them for good production. Good work. 

Amber Wright: Love that. I think that's really important. And I think a lot of times I think employees to are looking for rewarding What they're supposed to be doing.

Amber Wright: I think we've gotten away from actually rewarding people for working hard and being the best at their skill, right? Sports, right? We give everybody a trophy and it's lost its meaning. And so rewarding people for actually doing what they're supposed to be doing and setting those expectations as the owner that really, I think.

Amber Wright: Setting the goals and understanding productivity issues and where they're coming and holding people accountable. 

Cecil Bullard: We did 2. 6 million with four technicians, two service advisors and a parts person at our shop. It's 119 percent productivity out of, I would say, everyone in the business. People ask me why that happened.

Cecil Bullard: I will tell you it's not because Cecil was managing it maybe in some part, maybe 20 percent was that, but it's really because we decided who we wanted to be and we constantly went through and said, okay, if we're not there, what's in the way, is it an Institute problem? Is it a Bob problem? And we fixed those and we continue to fix them.

Cecil Bullard: And if you own a business and you're not spending the bulk of your time doing that. Then you're spending the bulk of your time in the wrong place doing the wrong things. 

Amber Wright: And going back to the questions you know, making sure to that your employees have the resources to be able to figure those things out.

Amber Wright: Right. And so that goes back to processes. Have you set them up for success? 

Cecil Bullard: Well, we have a great question. We have a couple of really great process things. I, I wrote an article, I don't know, 20 years ago about processes. And I define, I think I defined 63 or 64 processes. My latest class has like 140.

Cecil Bullard: You. You, you look at, at two different things for processes, whole nother class, but I look at, at my positions and the requirements. So every position I have has three goals, three targets at least. And so I look at the position and what are they, what process do I need for that position to be successful?

Cecil Bullard: And then I also look at my workflow from answering the phone call to the followup with the customer. And all the way through to develop the processes, the process for dispatch, the process for scheduling, the process for technician estimating the process for service advisor, estimating how do we finish the work order, you know, the process for asking for referrals the process for tracking marketing, you look at all these processes and you just write them down and you say, okay, you know, every, every business already has processes.

Cecil Bullard: The problem is most of them are not official. And therefore they're not managed and evaluated and, and improved constantly. And so you, you start somewhere, you get the first process and the first process is I teach everyone in my company how to write a process so I don't have to write them all.

Cecil Bullard: And then the second is to identify everything. And then by the way, if you're one of those people that has to have everything perfect before you get, you know, you start you can't, you're never going to have completely perfect processes for your business. You do the best you can, then you improve them as you as you deal with them and have issues with them.

Cecil Bullard: But it is one way to create consistency of product and consistency of profit and productivity. 

Amber Wright: Yeah, and I think too, right? You know, we are a management system that helps with these things, right? Your efficiency, your productivity, but it has to start from you, right? Tools in place are great, but if you don't have processes in place, they're not going to, they're only going to work.

Amber Wright: As they're supposed to 

Cecil Bullard: It's funny too because you're depending on the management system you have, you're going to design some of your processes around that system because you have to. How do I write people up? How do I finish tickets? How does my technician estimate in within the system to get it to the service advisor?

Cecil Bullard: Etcetera. If you don't have a management system and you, we have people that surprisingly don't have management systems, oh my gosh, you gotta start there. Second thing for me would be marketing website, S-E-O-S-E-M. And then coaching is probably third. I hate to say it, but it's probably third 'cause if I can't.

Cecil Bullard: The information and you can't get the clients. We're all in trouble. 

Amber Wright: Yeah, last note. And I want to make sure that I've directed the attendees to the correct resources. When you were talking about processes I. Took them to your course library on your home page. Is that where you would like them to go?

Amber Wright: All of that should be there. Yes, so take a look at that. James, I put that in as well. 

Cecil Bullard: Kent Bullard has a great class. On process. It's a little more modern because he's younger. I have a great class on processes in there. It's a little less modern because I'm older. But both of them have really great assets will really help you get it done.

Amber Wright: Yeah, I love that. Guys, there's a lot of other great resources. When we're talking about service advisor training. There's a lot of industry events out there that are held for you guys. The Institute hosts a lot. You know, something that we love to do as a company is to help kind of sponsor you guys to get to these events.

Amber Wright: So if there's any events that you are interested in or you don't know where to look for those, you can email me at amber at autoleap. com and we will get you those resources to help you get there. And yeah, so, we look forward to hosting you guys at our next webinar next month. More details will be pushed out, but Cecil, I know you're with us for a few months this year, so everybody be on the lookout.

Amber Wright: We have at least four more webinars with Cecil, if not more. You can go to our website online under the resource tab. Some of the things that Cecil was talking about have actually been webinars that we've already hosted. We do have an on demand resource for you to go and get that from, from us.

Amber Wright: Or go to Cecil's website. I'm happy to get you guys connected. They're phenomenal coaching company that we work with. So we really appreciate it. Thank you for the engagement. Cecil, thank you as always for your time. I look forward to seeing you on Thursday at your home. 

Cecil Bullard: Thank you for having me. I can't wait.

Amber Wright: I'm excited, guys. We did send out the webinar survey. I want to make a note again. We are cracking down. We really do want like actual survey feedback. It is important to us. So if you have any questions, guys, just let me know. But thank you everybody for joining. We had a lot of people staying.

Amber Wright: So, Cecil, thank you as always. Michael, thanks for the behind the scenes. Bye guys. 

Cecil Bullard: Thank you.