FenderBender - January 2019

FENDERBENDER.COM / JANUARY 2019

WHY WORK-LIFE BALANCE IS KEY TO EMPLOYEE RETENTION PAG E 5 3

Providing 20 Years of Strategies & Inspiration for Collision Repair Success

PROTECT YOUR SHOP WITH CONSISTENT WELDING TRAINING PAG E 5 0

MAKE PHONE RECORDING A TRUE TRAINING TOOL PAG E 6 0

TOP-LEVEL TALENT

Dynamic Collision Services owner Danny Szarka has made a bid for better talent by offering a competitive pay plan.

Compete, train and retain—how to solidify your workforce’s future PAG E 32

MIKE ANDERSON

ON THE STATE OF CONSOLIDATION

P A G1 E 2 3 January 2019 | fenderbender.com

D E LT RON ® DB C BASECOAT

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From headlights to tail lights, bumpers to fenders and hoods, there is no substitute for genuine. The only way to assure that you are getting Genuine Kia parts, backed by the Kia Warranty, is to order them from your local Authorized Kia Dealer. Contact your local Kia dealer for assistance and delivery of the parts you need.

*Genuine Kia replacement parts (except battery) sold by Authorized Kia Dealer under warranty are covered for the greater of (1) the duration of the New Vehicle Limited Warranty or (2) the first 12 months from the date of installation or 12,000 miles, whichever comes first. Labor charges not included when not installed by an Authorized Kia Dealer. Warranty is limited. See Kia’s Replacement Parts and 4 fenderbender.com | Warranty January 2019 for further details.

Accessories Limited

january

0 1 .1 9 / V O L U M E 2 1 / N U M B E R 0 1

The Lean Way Tom Constant’s (right) shop has a simple principle: making sure staff, like Zach Constant (left), is trained for operating lean.

F E AT U R E

PROFILE

C A SE STU DY

S H O P TA L K

32

38

54

64

PAY UP The technician shortage is an issue that continues to plague the industry, but for some shop owners, pay structure has been the solution.

MICHAEL HOBBY

BY KELLY BEATON

MOVE BEYOND BAD INVESTMENTS

FIND A PEAK PERFORMER

When the network of Colorado body shops that Tom Constant joined went under, he was forced to continue to innovate on his own.

William Custer thought he had a star estimator on his hands. But when the highly recommeded employee failed to produce, he rehauled his hiring process.

BY MELISSA STEINKEN

BY MELISSA STEINKEN

TRAIN YOUR STAFF Harrison Rusk’s tenure as the general manager of his family’s shop is marked by one distinct characteristic: his strategy to help improve his staff’s skillset.

BY KILEY WELLENDORF

Printed in the U.S.A. COPYRIGHT ©2019 BY 10 Missions Media LLC. All rights reserved. FenderBender (ISSN 1937-7150) is published monthly by 10 Missions Media, LLC, 571 Snelling Avenue North, St. Paul, MN 55104. FenderBender content may not be photocopied, reproduced or redistributed without the consent of the publisher. Periodicals postage paid at St. Paul, MN, and additional mailing offices. POSTMASTERS Send address changes to: FenderBender, 571 Snelling Avenue North, St. Paul, MN 55104.

January 2019 | fenderbender.com 5

TAB LE OF CONTENTS

JANUARY

QUICK FIX

11

19

28

A better hiring process

Industry leaders react to the ABRACaliber merger

Cockrell’s Body Shop

PAST THE PAGE

ANALYSIS

12

23

NUMBERS

VIEWPOINT

The effects of 20 Groups

Mike Anderson’s predictions for 2019

14

AWARDS INSIGHT

New solutions for the new year

THE BIG IDEA How to become a self-actualized leader

BY KEVIN RAINS

LIGHT HITS GM to lay off factory workers Simplify the Floor In order to keep the shop floor uncluttered and remain organized, Cockrell’s Body Shop uses parts carts at each of the bays.

28

MCS PHOTOGR APHY

DRIVERS SEAT

31

24

How to cultivate proactive employees

15

SNAP SHOP

WIRED FOR

SUCCESS

You’re wired differently and we like that. America likes that.

Visit futuretechsuccess.org and find out how your hands-on talent is the key to an amazing technical career.

When Techs Rock, America Rolls ℠ futuretechsuccess.org

6 fenderbender.com | January 2019

FUTURETECH

SUCCESS

™

S T R AT E G Y

49

IDEA SHOP Should you bring IT in-house?

50

EDUCATION+ TRAINING How to ensure consistent welding training

53

60

68

Effectively train using phone recordings

Kevin Rains

SALES+ MARKETING

2OTH ANNIVERSARY SERIES

70

63

OUTSIDE THE LINES

IN THE TRENCHES

Improve communication with staff

The future of electric vehicles and collision repair

BY JASON BOGGS

BY STEVE MORRIS

PROCESS DRIVEN Promote a worklife balance

BY RYAN CROPPER

THINKSTOCK

49

January 2019 | fenderbender.com 7

TAB LE OF CONTENTS

ONLINE EXTRAS

WIRED FOR

SUCCESS

CLICK ON THE LOGO BELOW FOR PRODUCT INFORMATION

You’re wired differently and we like that. America likes that.

Visit futuretechsuccess.org and find out how your hands-on talent is the key to an amazing technical career.

Autel

Auto Job Central

AutoNation

Axalta Coating Systems

8 fenderbender.com | January 2019

Drew Technologies

I-CAR

Kia Motors America

Mitsubishi

Norton Saint-Gobain

ProSpot

When Techs Rock, America Rolls ℠ futuretechsuccess.org

SUCCESS

TechForce Foundation

FUTURETECH

O'Reilly Auto Parts

SATA/Dan-Am Company

Polyvance

Sherwin-Williams Automotive Finishes

PPG

Spanesi Americas

™

EDITORIAL Bryce Evans Vice President, Content and Events Anna Zeck Editorial Director Kelly Beaton Associate Editor Melissa Steinken Staff Writer Jordan Wiklund Special Projects Editor Jason Boggs Contributing Writer Ryan Cropper Contributing Writer Steve Morris Contributing Writer Kevin Rains Contributing Writer

EDITORIAL ADVISORY BOARD Jason Boggs Boggs Auto Collision Rebuilders Elissa Larremore CBS 1 Collision

New FenderBender Podcasts.

COLLISION C A S T

3 SERIES WITH NEW EPISODES EVERY MONTH.

Robert McSherry North Haven Auto Body Bob Pearson Pearson Auto Body Mark Probst Probst Auto Body Randy Sattler Rydell Collision Center

ART AND PRODUCTION Zach Pate Art Director Lily Risken Graphic Designer Fue Vang Graphic Designer Lauren Coleman Production Assistant

SALES Chris Messer Vice President and Publisher 651.846.9462 / cmesser@10missions.com

Adapt.

S E R I E S S P O N S O R E D BY:

Series featuring a rotating special guest each month.

An insider’s look at how technology, trends and advanced vehicle design impact the way shops work today.

New episode this month.

Andrew Johnson Associate Publisher 651.846.9459 / ajohnson@10missions.com Nathan Smock Sales Manager 651.846.9452 / nsmock@10missions.com Ross Kirgiss Regional Advertising Sales 651.846.9485 / rkirgiss@10missions.com Jen George Client Service Specialist 651.846.9465 / jgeorge@10missions.com

10 MISSIONS MEDIA Jay DeWitt President Mariah Straub General Manager and Production Manager Meghann Moore Sales Service Representative and Bookkeeper

Vision.

S E R I E S S P O N S O R E D BY:

Series featuring a rotating special guest each month.

The go-to resource for leadership lessons, philosophies and success stories. New episode this month.

Katie Cornet Event Coordinator Josh Jaskulka Digital Media Strategist Kasey Lanenberg Marketing Communications Specialist HOW TO REACH US 571 Snelling Avenue North, St. Paul, MN 55104 tel 651.224.6207 fax 651.224.6212 web 10missions.com The annual subscription rate is $72 (U.S.A. only) for companies not qualified to receive complimentary copies of FenderBender.

BACK ISSUES Past issue single copies are $8.

Go to fenderbender.com/backissues LETTERS TO THE EDITOR letters@fenderbender.com ARTICLE REPRINTS

Disrupt.

S E R I E S S P O N S O R E D BY:

Series featuring a rotating special guest each month.

An introspective look at collision repair’s most pressing topics and the innovators pushing the industry forward. New episode this month.

For high-quality reprints or e-prints of articles in this issue call 651.846.9488 or email reprints@fenderbender.com.

Opinions expressed in FenderBender are not necessarily those of 10 Missions Media, and 10 Missions Media does not accept responsibility for advertising content.

LISTEN AND SUBSCRIBE

AUTOMOTIVE GROUP

PODCASTS

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PAST THE PAGE COMMENTS, DISCUSSIONS, FEEDBACK AND MORE FROM AROUND THE WEB

PODCAST

COLLISION C A S T

Podcast Primer

Better Hiring Adrian Wright has streamlined hiring at her Augusta, Ga., shop by using personality tests and then asking specific questions based off the results.

REPORTER'S BLOG

COURTESY SHARON COSPER

HIRING CREATIVELY FenderBender often updates its blog on the magazine's website, in an effort to relay as many business-building strategies as possible.

For example, a recent blog touched on keys for creative hiring. Adrian Wright, an accomplished shop owner from Georgia, explained her recently revamped process for finding new staff members.

Nowadays Wright, the owner of Wright One Paint and Body Collision Center in Augusta, Ga., often utilizes personality tests to gauge whether or not job prospects will fit in with her existing employees. But, most importantly, Wright has begun utilizing an outside-the-box approach to performing job interviews by asking several questions that gauge a job candidate's temperament.

“I’m asking [job candidates], ‘Do you watch the news? What’s your favorite food?’”

Wright notes. “I’m just trying to get an idea of the person. Because, they can paint cars and do body work all day, but if their personality doesn’t mesh with your existing team, or if they don’t know how to communicate … it makes it difficult.”

You can access the blog at fenderbender.com/creativehiring.

FenderBender currently produces four podcasts per month, with topics aimed at offering collision repairers tips to allow them to work as efficiently as possible.

Recently, the magazine’s associate editor, Kelly Beaton, spoke with Josh Avello, an automotive collision repair instructor at Ranken Technical College in St. Louis.

The topic: preparing for welding certification tests. Avello says a surprising amount of technicians tend to arrive for the certification tests underprepared. Fortunately, he added, techs can adequately brace for the tests rather easily.

“I have guys and gals show up to take a welding test and … they didn’t even bring welding helmets, so they’re kind of thrown off guard,” Avello says. “I think a lot of us need to, at times, step back and think, ‘What if somebody was over my shoulder right now, watching me weld?’”

The interview can be accessed on the podcast page at fenderbender.com/podcasts.

JOIN US ONLINE fenderbender.com fenderbender.com/facebook twitter.com/fenderbendermag fenderbender.com/linkedin instagram.com/fenderbendermag

January 2019 | fenderbender.com 11

BY THE NUMBERS THE TOPIC S, TRENDS AND METRIC S DRIVING YOUR OPER ATION

Only 33.5% of the survey’s respondents take part in peer groups

DO 20 GROUPS PAY DIVIDENDS? Figures from the 2018 FenderBender Industry Survey indicate that 20 Group participation typically pays off for shop operators. Yet, barely one-third (33.5 percent) of the survey’s respondents take part in the peer groups.

The survey’s findings would seem to suggest that, by having a group of industry peers to bounce ideas off, shop owners are often left with solid gross profits, and stellar CSI scores. Here’s a closer examination of the numbers.

20 GROUP PARTICIPANTS

NON PARTICIPANTS

0%

10%

20%

30%

40%

50%

60%

70%

Average CSI score of 90%+ Overall gross profit margin of 40%+

80%

90%

100%

T O TA L Y E A R LY S A L E S VO L U M E O F $1 M I L L I O N +

86%

58%

20 Group Participants

Non Participants

Has earned I-CAR Gold Class recognition Annual sales have grown in last 5 years

LEARN MORE

In a 2017 article titled “The Key to a Brighter Future,” FenderBender examined the benefits some shop owners in the Upper Midwest have experienced from joining a 20 Group, such as improved consistency with regard to pricing for tools and equipment. To read the full feature story, go to: fenderbender.com/brighterfuture.

12 fenderbender.com | January 2019

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BY MELISSA STEINKEN

Jessica Neely started out as a detailer when she was young and fresh out of high school in 2010. She wanted to branch out, make more money as a young professional and find a new role for herself.

“Honestly, I had just gotten out of high school and I needed a job,” Neely says.

After graduation, she went to join her mother at Nagy’s Collision Centers and became a detailer. After four years, she worked her way to estimator.

Neely, who was nominated for the 2018 FenderBender Awards, is now estimator for the Nagy’s Collision Center in Doylestown, Ohio. While she did not start out in the automotive industry with gung-ho passion, she has become a shining star for the body shop.

“She’s never worked on a car before but she understands the repair flow, cause and effect, and problem solving,” says J.R. Noe, general manager of the Doylestown location.

Neely does not freeze in the face of problems, he says. She is proactive every day and gets right back to a solution. Now, her “can-do” attitude propels her toward a future career in shop management, she says. Through simple actions like creating to-do lists each day to investing time and taking training seriously to expand her skillset, Neely has become a stand-out employee in the eyes of her manager.

Her Proactive Way

While Neely does not aim to someday work on the shop floor, she keeps an open mind to improving and growing within the workplace, she says.

In her current role, Neely stays ahead and organized through detailed lists. She records everything with pen and paper.

“When I know I have several things to do, I prioritize them,” Neely says.

One of the first items on her lists are supplements. She says she tries to finish those first each day. When Neely gets into the office, one of the first steps she does is to go to her manager to consult on what he’d like her to accomplish for the day. Her manager, Noe, will usually have her write a few estimates first thing in the morning.

14 fenderbender.com | January 2019

“She has the ability to not just stay in the box as an estimator,” Noe says. “We lost someone for three to four weeks due to illness and Jessica, especially, came forward to help and provide problem-solving.”

Yet, Neely’s process is a little more intricate because she aims to go home every day with nothing on her list. Each day in the shop, Neely encounters different customers. She typically makes customers who are in the shop her priority. Eventually, the final part of her day focuses on ordering parts and going over supplements.

If a customer calls that was not recommended by an insurance company as part of the shop’s direct repair relationship, Neely will focus on the customers within the shop first. Her last part of the

LLI

AI

CO

P SION RE

FenderBender Awards Insights feature past FenderBender Award nominees. For more information, go to fenderbender.com/awards.

day will focus on ordering parts and going over supplements.

“I make lists because I can easily get distracted with customers walking in for estimates,” she says. “The customer standing in front of you should take priority.”

Her Future Goals

Neely’s future plans, she says, involve working her way to a manager position, and possibly an auditor position, so she can check others’ estimates to find what someone may have missed.

While her transition at Nagy’s Collision Centers was not perfect, by any means, she wants to continue focusing on reaching job goals.

For example, she says she did not know about alignments and tasks like frame checking at the beginning of her job. She did not know the difference between repair versus replace. She did not know the details of how the paint department reached the end of a job or how to blend paint.

So, she had to invest in the training the collision repair shop offered, she says. Neely participated in training every other month in order to become an estimator and is now joining a companywide initiative to improve customer service training. The training is comprised of eight modules, two of which she has completed so far.

Currently, her duties include receiving photos of the repair job, writing the preliminary estimate, uploading it to insurance companies and following through on that process. She says she also is trying to enroll in as many I-CAR classes as possible to learn more about collision repair.

“At this point, more training would help me become more knowledgeable and confident in my estimating,” she says.

FUE VANG

Taking Proactive Steps

IN

ESTIMATOR NAGY’S COLLISION CENTER DOYLESTOWN, OHIO

R

AWARDS

AWARDS NOMINEE:

JESSICA NEELY—

FINES HE

T

T

AWARDS INSIGHT

DRIVER ' S SE AT

Paving the Way Why flexibility is key to overcoming challenges

NICK SPAETH

So, let’s get this out of the way up top: I’m not Bryce, the smiling face you’re used

to seeing on this page every month. Clearly. Don’t worry; Bryce is still here and still works on the publication. But as we closed out 2018, like many of you, we ended the year by taking a hard look at our company and changes we needed to make to help us meet the goals we’ve set for ourselves in 2019.

So, that brings me here to this page and to this debut letter as the editor of FenderBender.

Writing that last sentence was kind of surreal. In some ways, it doesn’t feel that long ago that I started with FenderBender as an intern. I still remember my first story: It was a “Collision Art” story (something we don’t do anymore) on a shop owner’s restoration of his 1966 Mercury Comet. I didn’t know the first thing about cars—and had to redo the whole story. Oops.

In the years since, I’ve thankfully gained far more knowledge of vehicles and the collision repair industry at large, and I’ve had access to the best shop operators in the country and a first-hand look at the ways they’ve addressed some of the biggest challenges and changes they face. That ingenuity and resourcefulness is one of my favorite parts of covering this industry, and it never ceases to inspire me.

Those qualities are certainly present in this month’s main feature, “Technical Issue.” The technician shortage is, of course, a topic we address frequently in our magazine; this time, however, associate editor Kelly Beaton took a different approach on the subject: Rather than look at how the industry can attract more technicians, he considered how shops can also retain those technicians through better compensation. The solutions that follow are, no surprise, just as creative and sharp as I’ve come to expect from this industry.

It’s a great reminder at the start of the year (and especially coming on the heels of the ABRA/Caliber merger) that solutions to some of our toughest challenges don’t have to be complicated, or even all that original. They simply require a willingness to adapt, to be flexible, and, above all else, to find an answer.

ANNA ZECK EDITORIAL DIRECTOR a z e c k @10 m i s s i o n s .c o m

January 2019 | fenderbender.com 15

One brand.

Complete focus.

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2 2 4 - S PA N E S I (224-772-6374)

spanesi.com www.facebook.com/spanesigroup

QUICK FIX NEWS

|

IDEAS

|

PEOPLE

|

TRENDS

Streamline the Shop At Cockrell’s Body Shop, the shop floor is designed with the technician in mind, from the tools to the set-up and the lighting.

ANALYSIS VIEWPOINT LIGHT HITS SNAP SHOP

28

MCS PHOTOGR APHY

SN A P SHOP

January 2019 | fenderbender.com 17

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QUICK FIX

ANALYSIS

“we’re confident the technological and operational investments will create unparalleled customer service.”

The sheer magnitude of the merger was attention-grabbing, considering the combined company will feature locations spread across 37 states.

Clearly, the entire collision repair industry took note. To wit: “With this merger, their share that they control is probably pushing 10 percent—in a metro market it might be pushing 20 percent,” says Erick Bickett, the CEO of Fix Auto. “What it means to the industry is they bring tremendous resources.”

“It certainly continues to be interesting and evolving times in our industry,” notes Michael Macaluso, the president of CARSTAR North America.

“I am convinced an independent repair business will [now] have to raise the bar in marketing their business as local community members that care,” says Jeff Peevy, the president of the Automotive Management Institute.

The Power of Networks with Scale

INDUSTRY HEAVYWEIGHTS WEIGH IN ON ABRA-CALIBER MERGER

Collision repair power brokers note the possible ramifications of ABRA and Caliber Collision’s definitive merger agreement B Y K E L LY B E AT O N

THINKSTOCK

On Dec. 5, when Caliber Collision and

ABRA announced they had entered into an agreement to merge, it opened eyes throughout the collision repair industry.

The transaction seemingly tilted a $47 billion industry on its axis, considering it united two of the largest collision repair companies in the country.

The new, combined entity, which will operate under the Caliber brand, equated to more than 1,000 U.S. stores.

“With the flexibility and convenience that come with the broadest geographic coverage in the United States and a full suite of services,” noted Caliber CEO Steve Grimshaw in a press release,

Bickett, who, incidentally, was one of the founders of Caliber in 1991, feels the combined Caliber and ABRA business will have immense strength in numbers.

“Think about it this way,” Bickett explains. “Take some of our biggest problems [as an industry] and that’s training and bringing people into the business. The average shop spends very little on that; the average, single shop maybe spends 1 percent of revenue on that one project. If you [multiply] 1 percent times 1,000 shops, all of a sudden you have a nice budget.

“And that’s just one facet of it. If you take that up a couple notches to the scale they’re able to create with their buying power, and all that sort of stuff, it just puts them at that much more of a competitive advantage.”

The ABRA-Caliber merger also brings with it an interesting array of insurance ramifications, according to industry insiders.

“The thing, relative to the insurance companies, that’s interesting,” Bickett says, “is the OE coming in and now having some influence—more and more influence as to who fixes the cars.

"Caliber, out of all of them, has probably embraced that more than any, in terms of their dealer relationships and January 2019 | fenderbender.com 19

QUICK FIX

ANALYSIS

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20© 2018 fenderbender.com | January

their OE strategies. So, you see that dynamic shift to the control of how the cars are getting into the shop, and now you’ve got a player that, in many markets, is over a 20 percent share.

"I would think insurers would start to get a little nervous about being too highly leveraged that way.”

One positive that the new collision repair supergiant could enjoy, though, is offering insurers a single point of contact for countless shops.

Pressure Applied to Competitors Following the ABRA-Caliber merger, the new company figures to be able to offer employees compensation that independents and even many MSOs will be hard pressed to duplicate.

“As they improve their scale, their buying power, and solidify their position financially like they have done,” Bickett notes, “they actually can offer better benefits, and be more attractive for employees.”

Says Peevy: “My greatest concern is in employee recruitment and retention for independents; it will become increasingly difficult for independents to compete with offering benefits that match these mega MSOs.” The ABRA-Caliber transaction is expected to officially close in early 2019.

In the meantime, consolidation should continue among the collision repair industry’s biggest players.

CARSTAR’s Macaluso, for one, acknowledged that the ABRA-Caliber merger may “accelerate,” his company’s plans for growth; as of the beginning of December, CARSTAR had 325 locations in the U.S. and 300 in Canada, and Macaluso said that “by 2021, we want to hit 1,000 locations.”

Many industry insiders said they had heard rumors of a collision repair merger of a large magnitude for a few years.

Now, more dominoes are expected to fall, elsewhere in the industry.

“I just think [the ABRA-Caliber merger] is really going to sharpen everybody’s game,” Bickett says. “I think it’ll probably create some frenzy, too. …

It might spur some more competition for the acquisitions.

“The competition for grabbing share with somebody that large, that’s got an appetite for pretty rapid growth, could kick up the competition—there’s just a lot of implications.”

WEBINAR

1 /22 11 am cst /

The State of the Industry.

Inside consolidation, the largest acquisitions and what independent shops can do to thrive in 2019.

FREE WEBINAR Get details and claim your spot.

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QUICK FIX

VIEWPOINT

MIKE ANDERSON’S OUTLOOK FOR THE INDUSTRY An industry icon provides insight into what lies ahead for the industry following the Caliber-ABRA merger

BY MELISSA STEINKEN

The time for doom and gloom has arrived for the industry. Or has it?

Caliber Collision and ABRA Auto Body of America officially announced their merger on Dec. 5 and it quickly became a hot topic throughout the collision repair industry.

Mike Anderson says that, while it would be naive to assume there will be no direct impact for the collision repair industry, it is still a familiar business-dynamic seen over the years: two MSOs merging and consolidating instead of an MSO buying out a large number of independent shops.

The transaction, which is expected to close in early 2019, creates a collision repair supergiant with nearly 1,000 locations. Now, consolidation in the industry will likely evolve, to an extent.

FenderBender spoke to Anderson, the founder of CollisionAdvice, at length, to gauge what he predicts likes ahead for the industry in the wake of Caliber and ABRA’s noteworthy merger.

THINKSTOCK , MIKE ANDERSON

Do you feel we’re destined to see more industry consolidation on a pretty large scale now?

I think that you’ve got the mass MSOs—like Service King, Gerber, CARSTAR—you’ve got the mega dealers and the large dealer conglomerates and the regional MSOs, like ProCare and Classic Collision. Those are always going to be there. I think at the end of the day, don’t lose sleep over it.

I think if you’re dependent on doing insurance business, that might be a concern for you, but for many markets, Caliber or ABRA were already doing business in that market. So, in terms of the merger, the ABRA name is going to change but there’s not really going to be a difference.

If there was an ABRA store next door to you yesterday and today it’s a Caliber, it’s not going to be much different.

The one thing that is going to stand out from all the types of shops is the culture. At the end of the day, it’s just who has the best culture and some of that is who offers benefits and what kinds of benefits. I’m sure the Caliber Collisions and ABRAs of the world offer great benefits. It’s time for shops to think about, how do you make employees feel? Do you make them feel appreciated?

For independent shops, do you think DRP relationships are going to shift?

I don’t know if this is going to happen but when you have a company that big, you need to keep work coming in the door and need to feed it. What happens with large MSOs is

that they develop performance-based agreements with insurers where they get them special offers to get more volume and that hurts the market as a whole.

Against these performance-based agreements, it makes it difficult to compete, whether it is based off severity or CSI or whatever it is. If there are performancebased agreements in regard to discounts to get volume, then that can be concerning to a shop. It’s not the end of the world, but it makes it a little more difficult.

At the end of the day, they have to perform and if they don’t perform, one of two things is going to happen: either A) they’re going to lose that DRP or B) make some huge performance-based concession where it costs them money.

What about this new shift would affect shop customers?

I also think times are changing, and if someone wrecks their car today and an insurance company refers them to a shop, in the past, a customer would go to where their insurance company recommends and blindly go there. I think you’re seeing a generational shift where my niece, who is in her 20s, wrecks her car and she’s going to go online and do research to find the shop’s reputation and read some reviews.

I think consumers are not just going to blindly follow a recommendation, I think consumers are still going to go online and research and look at online reviews and call the shops to learn more about each type of business.

Is there a way that independent shops could approach the fact that MSOs form performance-based agreements with insurers?

I think it’s important to realize that insurance companies measure a shop on performance-based KPIs and that will vary based on the insurance company. Repair versus replace could be one, customer service (whether customers were informed promptly and properly), net promoter score, government ratio.

You don’t have to be the cheapest shop as long as you’re doing well in the other areas and making sure you don’t have any comebacks or re-dos. If you choose to be a DRP, you can still compete even if the MSOs do concessions by doing well in other areas that don’t cost you money.

What do you think this means for the collision repair industry as a whole, not just MSOs and independent shops?

It’s not like Caliber went out and bought 600 independent shops. It does help them leverage their purchasing and buying power more and cut some overhead expenses. I think there are a lot of ways where the merger makes sense from an overhead standpoint.

At the end of the day, if there were three shops in the town, and one was Caliber, one was ABRA and one was your independent shop, now there are still three shops in the town. I don’t think you’ll see a big shift in landscape overnight.

Speaking of market share, some smaller regional MSOs have their own market. Do you see an advantage for those shops to grow in those states?

I think you either have to grow or gotta go.

If I’m one shop, I’m trying to get two shops or if I’m three shops, I’m trying to get four shops. I think there are a lot of opportunities out there of shops wanting to sell their business; someone wants to retire and other shops could buy those as assets.

In your experience, how long do you think it will take to merge the two groups?

I think it will take a minimum of nine months but could take as long as a year and a half. If the two groups are on different management systems or use two different types of paint products or need to rehire employees to the other company, then that all takes a long time. In my opinion, it won’t be overnight.

January 2019 | fenderbender.com 23

QUICK FIX

LIGHT HITS

THE FUTURE FOR MSO SYMPOSIUM, TECH FORUM, NACE While the annual MSO Symposium—one of NACE's flagship events, a one-day event specifically for multi-shop operations—and associated collision repair industry events will still be held while co-located with each other in 2019, NACE will now be held every two years, said Jennie Link, communications manager for the MSO Symposium.

The news comes after speculation regarding the future of NACE, the Automotive Service Association’s event, and its partnership with Messe Frankfurt and Automechanika.

NACE launched during the 1990s, when the industry's technical challenges revolved around matters like the introduction of the first emissions control systems, disc brakes and electronic ignitions, said Tony Molla, Automotive Service Association vice president. NACE attendance numbers had

largely dwindled since the show split from the SEMA Show in 2009, and the latter experienced a continual rise in prominence.

In 2013, NACE hit an attendance low, with fewer than 5,000 attendees. In 2017, a partnership with Messe Frankfurt brought NACE to Chicago. Now, NACE will take a break in 2019 and return in 2020 with a still unknown look and schedule for the event.

In the past, NACE was held during the same time as other industry events like the MSO Symposium, the Collision Industry Conference, the Technology & Telematics Forum (which focuses on advanced automotive technology) and the Collision Repair Education Foundation's annual golf tournament.

Last August, the MSO Symposium was held in Atlanta in conjunction with the Technology & Telematics Forum and other industry meetings at the NACE Automechanika Show.

For 2019, the MSO Symposium will

be held in July in Indianapolis, and Lenk said tentative dates for that event are July 25–26. The Collision Industry Conference will also take place in Indianapolis, running July 24–25.

OLDER RECALLED VEHICLES LESS LIKELY TO BE REPAIRED The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration noted in mid-November that, in particular, older vehicles have a lower rate of being fixed due to recalls than newer ones.

Vehicles that are 6–10 years old when a recall is made have an average 56 percent completion rate. For cars 1–5 years old, the rate jumps to 76 percent, and 80 percent for vehicles newer than 3 years old, the administration indicated.

Some of the recalls that affect numerous vehicles are the ongoing recall on Takata air C O N T I N U E D O N P. 2 7

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bags, which affects more than 50 million air bags in 37 million vehicles. The air bags are prone to deploying after long-term exposure to high heat and humidity.

GM TO LAY OFF 14K FACTORY WORKERS IN NORTH AMERICA In late November, General Motors announced plans to lay off over 14,000 factory and white collar workers in North America and said it might close five plants, according to New Jersey.com.

The company is restructuring to cut costs and focus more on autonomous and electric vehicles. The reduction includes 8,100 white-collar workers, some of whom will take buyouts and others who will be laid off. Most of the affected factories build cars that won't be sold in the U.S. after next year.

FORD RECALLS FOUR NEW MODELS On Nov. 16, Ford issued four safety recalls for recent models of its top-selling SUVs

ONE TOOL TO RULE THEM ALL

and trucks, as reported by the The Detroit Free Press. ​The alert applies to the 2018 Ford Explorer, 2019 Ford Super Duty, 2018 Ford Expedition, 2018 Lincoln Navigator and the 2019 Lincoln Nautilus. The manufacturer noted that it is not aware of any accidents, injuries or fires to date related to the latest recalled vehicles.

Roughly 38,000 vehicles with second-row center bench seats may be missing J-channel reinforcement brackets in the seat track assembly. A seat track missing one or both J-channel reinforcement brackets may not properly restrain the seat assembly during a crash, increasing the risk of injury.

​ STUDY: DISTRACTED DRIVING CAUSES MORE SEVERE CRASHES

A recent study by the Risk Institute at Ohio State University noted that crashes caused by distracted driving tend to be more severe than others, and the severity depends on the type of setting in which the crashes occur, The Washington Post reported. ​

According to the study, distracted driving raised the odds that a crash will cause severe injury or death, compared with other crashes, particularly if those crashes involve rear-end collisions or occur in work zones or interstate highways. By contrast, roundabouts or rotaries appear to lower the risk of crashes and diminish the severity of distraction-related crashes.

The analysis found that in-vehicle distraction accounted for 48 percent of the crashes. The study also noted that younger drivers, especially those between 20-24 years of age, account for the highest percentage of crashes.

Ohio State’s study analyzed 1.4 million police records obtained from the Ohio Department of Transportation for crashes that occurred between 2013-17. During that period, the number of distracted-drivingrelated crashes increased in Ohio, just as the number has increased nationwide, according to the report. ​​

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January 2019 | fenderbender.com 27

QUICK FIX

SNAP SHOP

COCKRELL’S BODY SHOP

BY MELISSA STEINKEN PHOTOS BY MCS PHOTOGRAPHY LOCATION:

Robertsdale, Ala. OWNER:

Mike Hawthorne and Joey Lambeth SIZE:

7,000 square feet

1

STAFF:

7

AVERAGE MONTHLY CAR COUNT

50

ANNUAL REVENUE:

$780,000

2

28 fenderbender.com | January 2019

Submit Your Shop

Proud of your shop and want to show it off to your peers? Tell us about it at

submissions@10missions.com.

1. A NEW BEGINNING Mike Hawthorne worked for Cockrell’s Body Shop for 15 years and has been with the company since it was a Big Four MSO location.

Now, Hawthorne is 50 percent owner, and operates and manages the independent shop.

When Hawthorne came on board as the owner, he was in his early 30s. He made the decision to rehire a new team of technicians due to his younger age.

Part of the decision also came because older technicians did not want to work for Hawthorne in the owner transition, he says.

Now the shop has seven full-time employees, with three technicians in their early 30s or younger, as well.

2. STAYING COOL The Alabama heat index can reach 115 degrees, Hawthorne says. And the shop is not air conditioned. As a result, he invested $3,000 for a MasterCool machine, which the team can attach a water hose to and the fan will blow out air to cool the shop. The machine saved the shop money that can later be invested in expanding the facility.

3

3. OUTFITTING THE SHOP Hawthorne pushed for the shop to buy pre- and post-repair diagnostic scanning equipment.

The previous owners did not want to invest and preferred sending vehicles they couldn’t work on to dealerships, he says. But, there are no dealerships in the town of Robertsdale.

The shop had to sublet vehicles to dealerships that were about a 30-minute drive away in either direction. Since purchasing an iTECH diagnostic machine about a year ago, the shop has only had to sublet one vehicle to a dealership, for a camera recalibration.

4. REARRANGING TOOLS

4

Since expanding jobs at the beginning of the year, the team had to build an additional parts room on the shop floor. Hawthorne purchased two new parts carts and two parts racks in addition to building the room. The room was built in the back of the shop building, between the body shop floor and the paint area. While paint, body and parts are each in separate areas, the rooms are all attached to one another.

“The parts room butts up against the body shop floor,” Hawthorne says.

He says the separation has kept each area cleaner and more organized.

January 2019 | fenderbender.com 29

THE TECHNICIAN

SHORTAGE W IL L N OT D E FE AT U S

autojobcentral.com 30 fenderbender.com | January 2019

COLUMNS

THE BIG IDEA KEVIN RAINS

Toxicity and the Self-Differentiated Leader

Key leadership lessons rediscovered in a time of transition

FENDERBENDER FILE PHOTO, THINKSTOCK

This is a season of major transition for

me. Aren’t they all in some ways, though?

But really, this one is big for me and my family. We are moving from the home we have lived in for almost 24 years. We are only moving about 40 minutes away but the distance is not the challenge. The challenge is all the boxing of our things and getting the house ready for our buyers. And, of course, there’s as much emotional baggage as there are boxes when you’ve literally raised your kids in one home and have thousands of memories embedded in the walls and rooms of a place. Yet, to grab onto something new by its very nature means letting go of something you hold dear. And we are right in the middle of that process.

For us, the hardest part so far has been the books! I’m a reader and also a collector. My wife might even go so far as to say a hoarder when it comes to books! I buy books that I may not read any time soon just because, well, they seem interesting.

So, I have a lot of books. And while I was able to part with about half of them, there are still 10 very large boxes of books with which I just can’t part. This is where my wife rolls her eyes. And I don’t blame her.

But I’m also not letting go of the precious “few” that remain.

In the course of going through all my books, I came across a real favorite and realized I have never written about it before.

It’s a leadership book called The Failure of Nerve by Edwin H Friedman. Friedman, for me, is in a class all his own when it comes to leadership. He cuts across the grain of so much of what passes for common knowledge or assumed wisdom, that most of the book I read with a head tilt.

His topics range from anxiety to toxic environments to relational dynamics to adventure to data to stress. But he weaves it all together into an understandable and applicable way that any team, family or organization can get their arms around.

A key theme for Friedman is the idea

that leaders need to be self-differentiated.

That means, in short, that leaders can’t be overly identified with the groups they lead or else they won’t have the needed perspective to make hard decisions. In other words, leaders need to have clearly defined boundaries. They need to be in touch with the ideas and emotions of others but not dominated by them.

The opposite of being self-differentiated is a leader who tries to make everyone happy and has a hard time making unpopular decisions. We all know one.

Some of us may be a (recovering) one (my hand sheepishly goes up).

But, the benefits to being or becoming self-differentiated are huge. Friedman says that self-differentiated leaders: 1. Act as the immune system for organizations. If a toxic person enters the system (team, family, group), the leader keeps that toxicity from spreading.

2. Have the capacity to take strong stands and make hard calls that are ultimately good for everyone 3. Contain their own reactions even when those around them grow anxious and insecure 4. Are clear on their own personal values and goals 5. Take responsibility for their own well-being rather than blame others or the context

How does all this apply to leading and managing body shops? While I would love to give several examples— many, unfortunately, all too recent—of what this looks like, in my context, it would be hard to do without divulging too much information that really needs to remain private and between me and a few former employees.

Suffice it to say that, at times, there has been some toxicity in our organization and sometimes I handled it well and other times, not so much.

Sadly, on the worst days, I contributed to it.

But getting back in touch with Friedman is helping me become the leader I need to be to get us back on track.

In my morning routine, I have a prayer that I repeat almost daily. One of the lines of that prayer says, “Teach me to act firmly and wisely, without embittering and embarrassing others.” That is really the heart of a selfdifferentiated leader: the ability to be decisive in a way that doesn’t hurt, shame or distance the very people we are trying to lead.

I’m no pro at praying but that is my prayer for you, whoever you are, as well.

Be strong. Be kind. Be self-differentiated. The ones you lead and the health of your business depend on it.

KEVIN RAINS Kevin Rains is the owner of Rains CARSTAR Group with locations in Cincinnati, Ohio, West Chester, Ohio and Lexington, KY. He is also an industry consultant and founder of Body Shop 2.0.

E M A I L : kev i n r a i n s @ g m a i l .c o m A R C H I V E : f e n d e r b e n d e r.c o m /r a i n s

January 2019 | fenderbender.com 31

TECHNICAL ISSUE

Could increased compensation help solve the collision repair industry’s technician shortage? Industry veterans weigh in B Y K E L LY B E AT O N PHOTOS BY LESLIE JEAN

32 fenderbender.com | January 2019

Push Forward Danny Szarka (center) isn’t one to rest on his laurels. Instead, he’s made a concerted effort to find solutions to the tech shortage.

January 2019 | fenderbender.com 33

FE ATURE

TECHNICAL ISSUE

Danny Szarka refuses to lament his industry’s issue of a growing lack of technicians.

He’d rather search for solutions.

“Some people say, ‘Oh, we have a technician shortage; feel sorry for us.’ Well, no—you have to change your mindset,” says Szarka, the owner of Dynamic Collision Services, in Baltimore. “No longer can you put a [job ad out] and have 15 people in front of you, and you get to just pick someone that’s going to make you money—those days are over.”

According to multiple national organizations, the industry needs to hire roughly 120,000 new technicians per year through 2028 to meet demand. And, in order to accomplish that daunting task, Szarka feels shops need to alter the way they pay entry-level technicians.

Quite simply, they need to start compensating technicians better, he contends.

“So many businesses want to grow their business, but they don’t want to shrink their profit margin,” notes Szarka, a 15-year veteran of the industry.

“Look at the big tech companies; you look at Amazon, you look at these [companies] that are paying $15–$18 per hour to start, and they understand that they can’t move product without people.”

So, as a shop operator, Szarka concludes, you have to ask yourself how much money you might be losing by not having a technician in a stall for an extended period.

At Dynamic Collision Services, all of the technicians are largely paid differently, Szarka says, mainly because no two technicians work at the exact same pace.

At his shop, entry-level technicians are paid hourly, in addition to production incentives.

But these days, Szarka adds, body shop operators need to make the role of a technician enticing even beyond applying larger numbers to paychecks.

Because, to put it bluntly, what much of the industry has tried simply hasn’t captivated young people—many of whom would be suitable collision repair technicians.

34 fenderbender.com | January 2019

THE COLD, HARD REALITY

It’s a staggering statistic, yet one that’s verified by multiple collision repair organizations: The industry needs 1.2 million technicians over the next 10 years.

“It’s obviously a very big issue,” admits Brandon Eckenrode, the director of development for the Collision Repair Education Foundation. “We know it’s a problem now, and it’s only going to get worse if we can’t help address that issue.”

For various reasons, the collision repair industry isn’t overly appealing to Generation Z. “What’s different with this generation,” says Eckenrode, is that a lot of them have the mindset, “‘You know, when I get out of college, I believe I’m going to make $100,000, and it won’t be long after that that I’ll be running a shop.’

“What happens in a lot of instances is, a [collision repair] student graduates, they go to a shop, they can’t do some of the basic [repair tasks]. They’re pushed into a corner with a broom to clean up, they get frustrated, they end up quitting, and they don’t come back to the industry.”

Making matters worse is that, these days, entry-level pay in the collision repair industry pales in comparison to other trades.

Few are more aware of that fact than Greg Settle, the director of national initiatives with TechForce Foundation, an organization that has thoroughly

Set Goals Danny Szarka (center) knows that, to make the industry more appealing for his techs, he needs to provide a pay plan with incentive.

researched the industry’s technician shortage in an effort to solve it.

“I took 15 skilled trades, and I looked at plumbers, welders, electricians, HVAC, and even wind-turbine technicians,” Settle says. “If you look at auto and collision entry-level positions versus some of the other skilled trades, it’s horrendous— they’re down at the bottom of the scale as far as pay.”

The numbers might surprise many shop operators. According to BLS figures from 2017, among 15 of the most popular current trades, automotive body technician ranked 11th.

According to the BLS, the lowest 10 percent of earners among “automotive body and related repairers” throughout the industry are making an average of $12.24 per hour.

That per-hour figure is less than the minimum wage in Washington, D.C. What’s more, according to the 2018 FenderBender Industry Survey, 43.2 percent of collision repair respondents paid their employees disability insurance, 55.8 percent offered employees a retirement plan, and 69 percent made health insurance available to their staff.

In Settle’s view, shop operators need to consider compensating employees— especially entry-level technicians—better.

Consider: according to ASE’s 2018 Training Managers Council ATMC Benchmark Survey, roughly 33 percent of responding collision techs made $40,000–$60,000

per year; only slightly more than 25 percent of respondents made more than $80,000 annually (and many of the respondents were presumably past the entry-level stage).

“For the most part, if you talk about young men and women, they’re going to be focused mainly on starting pay,” Settle says. “Not many of them are going to be looking long term, like, ‘Where am I going to be in 20 or 30 years with this career?’”

Another factor to bear in mind: the auto industry has had fewer and fewer potential hires to choose from in recent years. After all, the average family simply isn’t producing as many children as in previous generations (according to statista.com, the average U.S. household decreased from 3.33 to 2.54 between 1960 and 2017).

And, an immense amount of youth are attending college in this generation; according to the National Center for Education Statistics, the number of students attending American colleges and universities in 2018 reached 19.9 million—up from 15.3 million in 2000 (and nearly 67 percent of that group attended four-year colleges).

“The issue we have,” Settle explains, “is every parent wants their kid to go to college. So, we have not been sending kids through trade schools” in recent years.

In effect, body shop owners are fishing

A KEY FOR KEEPING YOUNG TECHS — At Dynamic Collision Services in Baltimore, owner Danny Szarka has one general tactic that helps him get on the same page with entrylevel technicians. Szarka explains to young employees that, as a shop owner, he’s akin to the general manager of a pro football team. In other words, he has a salary cap he must abide by in order to keep his financial figures in the black.

Szarka explains his philosophy on staffing structure thusly: “You know, we have our lead guys—our quarterbacks, per se. But you still need wide receivers, you still need defensive linemen, and you still need backups, too. You need all those players to make a team.

“Look at an [NFL] general manager,” he says. “They have a budget. They know if they hire this person that they have to have two or three backups [earning a] lesser amount. It’s the same thing in automotive; you can’t have 16 quarterbacks on the team anymore. So you’ve got to level out your salary.

“And I think that’s what makes it better—when people are always pushing toward that next salary, and what’s next, versus if you have everybody that’s maxed out— that’s really, really hard to keep people happy.”

in a rapidly shrinking pond, and their bait isn’t all that appealing to today’s youth.

THE YOUNGER PERSPECTIVE

Roughly six years ago, Michael Lamm got his foot in the door in the auto industry.

Thanks to a letter of recommendation from one of his instructors at Dunwoody College of Technology, Lamm landed a job as light-duty technician at nearby Porsche Minneapolis. He quickly learned just how in demand young techs are in the auto industry.

“I was working afternoons, after school,” recalls Lamm, now 32. “And they actually asked me, before I graduated, if I would just quit going to school and work full-time, because they needed the help because they were so short” on staffing.

Lamm can understand why so few members of his generation flock toward careers as collision repair technicians.

January 2019 | fenderbender.com 35

FE ATURE

TECHNICAL ISSUE

Fill Your Shop Danny Szarka’s (center) shop is filled with a diverse group of young people. It’s a purposeful way to keep fresh talent in his shop.

“When you go to a two-year, private tech school, a lot of students come out with $30,000 in loans,” he says. “And you jump into the bottom of a dealership or collision center, and you’re making less than $20 per hour to start? It just doesn’t make sense to some people.”

Andy Roiniotis, a 25-year-old body tech in Wisconsin, has similar sentiments regarding the industry’s entrylevel pay.

“There’s definitely a pay issue starting out,” notes Roiniotis, who says he didn’t earn flat-rate pay in the industry until he significantly exceeded employers’ expectations in terms of his production.

“I had to pay for school, and tools, and I had to pay off my student loans,” Roiniotis recalls. And “starting out, some shops don’t really want to pay what you’re worth, until you can push out what some of these experienced [technicians] can.”

Add in the daunting challenge of mastering evolving vehicle technology, and the physical strain that collision repair can put on a person’s body, and the body shop world just isn’t all that attractive to many young people, by the sound of it.

Tane’a Winters, a high school senior 36 fenderbender.com | January 2019

“It’s a laborintensive job, and, with the pay as low as it is, it’s difficult to keep doing this that long. ... You need to work up the ladder pretty quickly to continue doing [it].”

—Michael Lamm, technician, Porsche Minneapolis

working a paid internship at Tom and Ed’s Autobody in Merrillville, Ind., says her generation largely favors a sedentary lifestyle, and thus, careers in collision repair aren’t on many teenagers’ radar these days.

“In my generation,” Winters says, “most people might feel like [collision repair] is hard, or too much work. My generation, they don’t want to … take the time to make sure they do [work] right.”

Most young people, in the opinion of Roiniotis, “don’t want to work with their hands. They want to get an office job.

It’s turning from what it used to be, but people still look at [collision repair work] as a dirty job.”

Says Lamm: “It’s a labor-intensive job, and, with the pay as low as it is, it’s difficult to keep doing this that long.”

Many young adults lack the finances or patience to work their way up the company ladder, spending months making entry-level, hourly wages.

“It takes a long time to become one of those A-techs,” says Roiniotis, a body tech at Pulera Collision Center in Kenosha, Wis. “They tell me all the time, ‘Just wait, you’re going to make a lot of money

here.’ But you look at your bills from school and your tools, and it’s tough.”

Make no mistake: Lamm, Roiniotis, and Winter appreciate their current jobs, and insist they’re passionate about the industry they work in. But making ends meet when you’re an entry-level technician isn’t easy.

“You need to work up the ladder pretty quickly to be able to continue doing this that long,” Lamm says. “It is intimidating—a sink-or-swim type of thing.”

POSSIBLE SOLUTIONS

As dire as the technician shortage might currently seem, there are steps that shop owners can take to guard against feeling its effects.

Potential solutions include: When Hiring, Don’t Obsess Over Experience.

In the last year, Szarka has hired five employees who had next to nothing in terms of auto industry experience.

Those new hires did, however, have enthusiasm for cars, and that youthful exuberance has translated into employees who appreciate the opportunity given to them at Dynamic Collision Services. …

And employees who have few complaints about their pay.

“We’re willing to [make such hires] because no one’s really giving these

Build the Future The key, Danny Szarka (right) believes, to fighting the technician shortage is to retain the employees he has and create career paths.

kids experience anymore, unless you’re stealing them from another shop,” Szarka explains.

When Szarka needs to hire a young technician, he doesn’t sit on the sidelines, waiting for job prospects to come to his doorstep. Instead, he actively seeks out job candidates. He frequently checks job websites like Indeed, Monster and CareerBuilder.

“The last guy I hired actually had no job history,” Szarka says. “But I called him, because it only takes 10 seconds for me to call him.

"I found out he was a No. 1 student in an automotive program in high school.”

Offer Work/Life Balance.

In his research with TechForce Foundation, Settle has discovered that young adults value professional perks like getting involved with charitable endeavors in the workplace.

“Doing something that makes a difference is important to” today’s young adults, Settle says. “That’s the type of stuff that attracts these kids.”

Many members of the industry say today’s young workers tend to appreciate flexible scheduling, as well. At Lamm’s workplace in Minneapolis, for example, technicians are appreciative of the fact their employer only requires them to work one out of every eight Saturdays—

in fact, Lamm says he considers that kind of scheduling “a bonus.”

“The person I hire, I want to figure out what makes them tick,” Szarka adds.

“Sometimes it’s not money; sometimes it’s flexibility of hours. Maybe, if they have a family, they can come in at 10” each workday.

Provide Incentives.

As Eckenrode notes, entry-level employees often enter the industry and are taken aback by the amount of tools they need at their disposal. And, in his mind, employers should provide those tools to young technicians … with a contractual assurance from the employee that they’ll continue to work at that shop for a set period of time.

Eckenrode also feels that body shop operators should consider offering tuition reimbursement to employees who are taking college courses.

“Those kinds of things showcase how they’re going to save money,” Eckenrode notes of employee incentives. That’s “what I think this generation of students would get excited about.”

Lamm largely agrees. The young technician feels shop operators need to re-examine the overall compensation they provide entry-level technicians, thus allowing the young employees to make ends meet. Because, he noted, he has grown weary of hearing young industry peers speak of their overall financial struggles while earning perhaps $25 per hour in flat-rate pay.

Plot Out Career Paths.

Settle feels its imperative, in 2019, to help potential job prospects envision the potential career they could have in collision repair. All too often, the national foundation executive has observed young technicians get frustrated by their lack of career advancement after two or three years.

Settle suggests that shop operators should clearly explain how long an entrylevel technician can expect to be given certain types of repair jobs before being given the opportunity for a promotion.

“You know, give them something where they can [envision] themselves in that path, instead of just [saying], ‘We’ll hire you and see how it goes.’ Well, that’s not going to cut it nowadays,” Settle says.

January 2019 | fenderbender.com 37

PROFILE

DESPITE THE END OF A NETWORK IN C O LO R A D O, O N E C O L L I S I O N R E PA I R CENTER CONTINUES TO GROW IN SALES

P. 3 8

BY MELISSA STEINKEN

PHOTOGRAPHY BY MICHAEL HOBBY

A Lesson in Investing 38 fenderbender.com | January 2019

Produce More Work Tom Constant runs a massive $7 million body shop—partly thanks to processes learned from a former network of Colorado body shops.

January 2019 | fenderbender.com 39

PROFILE

A LESSON IN INVESTING

It’s easy to see why Tom Constant nearly immediately jumped on board when presented with the idea. A network of small, independent shops in his Colorado area joining together to adopt uniform repair processes as a way to compete with large MSOs and consolidators?

It seemed to be just the thing that his 37,000-squarefoot, 32-employee body shop, McDonald Collision Center in Littleton, Colo., could use.

That network, the Repair Plan Network (RPN), was formed in 2008 on the dream of Hecky Heckendorf, who teamed up with Brad Fukui, a 30-year bodyman at the time, and set out to create a universal repair plan that would help independent collision repair shops repair vehicles with higher efficiency and attract more work.

The network quickly gained interest. Sixteen Colorado shops jumped on board (membership fees ranged from $500 to $3,000 per month, depending on shop size and level of service) and FenderBender even wrote an extensive 2013 feature on the network’s rise and effect on shops—in fact, Constant’s shop was one of those featured. In that feature, Constant explained how, over the course of one year in 2012, his shop went from a monthly car count of 150 to 210, a cycle time drop of 10.45 days to 7.3 days, a touch time increase of 2.7 hours to 4 hours and a sales increase of 26 percent 40 fenderbender.com | January 2019

in one year to $4.5 million—all as a result of adopting those uniform processes.

To say the least, the return was more than worth the investment for him.

However, after a quick rise and plans to go nationwide, the network abruptly disbanded, leaving Constant without that network, its buying power, and, perhaps most unfortunately, thousands of dollars out.

Constant’s story isn’t unique in the industry; there are all kinds of investments that any business owner makes that may not turn out as pitched. An expensive piece of equipment breaks down, a highly recommended employee turns out to be a dud, a marketing campaign fails to attract customers. It’s not about that failure, though, Constant says; it’s about how you react to it, adapt, move forward and, ultimately, learn from the situation.

That’s exactly what Constant has done, and in the years since RPN disbanded, Constant has nearly doubled his shop to 40 employees and $7.4 million in annual revenue.

MCDONALD COLLISION CENTER OWNER:

DOUGLAS MCDONALD LOCATION:

LITTLETON, COLO. SIZE:

37,000 SQUARE FEET STAFF:

39

AVERAGE MONTHLY CAR COUNT:

320-330

ANNUAL REVENUE:

$7.4 MILLION The Lean Way Tom Constant’s body shop is massive at 37,000 square feet, which is why lean processes are so essential to create an efficient workflow.

The Beginning of the End

Back to the beginning quick: For independent body shops, implementing lean processes might seem like an easy concept but is hard to start, Constant says.

“We were kind of a guinea pig to get outcomes for them in which they could show others the success of the plan,” he says.

Constant’s team joined the network to be part of a test group for it. Since he was part of a test of the network, he paid no fee to enter the program.

In spite of minor conflict within the group, Fukui and Heckendorf maintained a steady stream of success for the shops that were involved, including Constant’s.

But in 2015, that network began to fracture when the shops involved started to sell to the consolidators and the network’s presence in Colorado diminished.

The multi-shop operators and national brands form roughly 80 percent of the collision repair market in Colorado, he says. The other 20 percent is spread between independent repair facilities and dealership collision centers.

“The cause of the end was two-fold,” Constant says. “I think the growth of the consolidators was a contributing factor but, at the same time, most of the shop owners and managers involved had different views on where the network should go.”

Shop owners had disagreements on how to carry out the Repair Plan Network’s processes and who should be ultimately in charge of the network, Constant says.

January 2019 | fenderbender.com 41

PROFILE

A LESSON IN INVESTING

“There were some that felt like they had more ownership in the process than others,” he says. “There was a lot of head-butting.”

That head-butting, Constant says, ultimately led to the disbanding.

Recovery, in the End

After the Repair Plan Network disbanded, Constant made the decision to continue changing and reworking shop processes.

While it was a disappointment for Constant to lose the opportunity to consult with shops in the network, he says he still had complete faith in Heckendorf and Fukui’s consulting skills.

Despite most independent shops losing business in the face of large companies like ABRA, Caliber, Service King and more flooding the Colorado market, Constant was able to maintain a relationship with the duo, which he says resulted in exponential growth for his collision repair center.

In fact, he harbors no ill feelings toward the network and its demise.

It was an important first step for his body shop, he believes, and he’s still retained many of the processes he learned from the network.

“Most of everything is process driven and we’ve grown at what I consider an exponential rate,” he says.

When Constant joined McDonald Collision Center in 2011, the center had roughly 27 employees and was producing on average $270,000 per month in sales.

Since that time, the shop has grown to 40 employees and produces an annual revenue of $7.4 million as of late 2018.

The body shop is trending toward hitting $750,000 per month in sales for the first quarter of 2019.

One step he took during his time with RPN was moving toward a team orientation, which he continues to fine tune.

The latest steps involve updating the shop floor technology with new tablets and stronger WiFi to enable estimators to work directly and conveniently on the shop floor.

Weekly calls with Fukui and Heckendorf provide still more insight for the shop operator.

Constant, in part, decided to consult with the two because he is not a part of any 20 Groups in the area and not a part of any national associations for collision repair.

42 fenderbender.com | January 2019

Focus on Training

Another takeaway that Constant has used in his shop has been a unique training method. He says he knows there are not a lot of skilled workers coming into entrylevel positions in the industry so he’s developed a training program for technicians.

“We’re going to teach you the trade and it’s going to take you two to three years but you’ll save on loans,” Constant says in his pitch to prospective trainees.

Constant and his team partnered with a local technical school, Lincoln College of Technology and offers people the opportunity to start in an entry-

level, C-tech position and work his or her way up.

His sales pitch to prospects involves the enticement that the technician will not have debt from going to school to learn the same trade.

If someone is hired on the program and possesses minimal body work skills, then the person can expect to take about five years to get to the B-level technician position, Constant says. For someone with no skills and no background, it might take roughly three-and-a-half years to get to the point of doing minor body work and be hands-on in the shop floor.

Continued Investments In the years since the Repair Plan Network disbanded, Tom Constant has continued to make investments in technology and tools a priority.

One of Constant’s technicians was an apprentice at another shop and came to McDonald Collision Center. The technician spent about six months doing reassembly and teardown, and then was put onto the floor to do minor body work, he says.

Shop Floor Progress

Constant has more recently dabbled in the process of rearranging the shop’s layout. The goal is to have a shop flow in which the vehicle goes through a repair process from the teardown all the way through reassembly, he says.

Ultimately, Constant would like to bring his two main estimators onto the shop floor and out of the front office, he says.

“Technicians used to manage two to three roles,” Constant says. “It was more segmented before and now it is a group effort.”

The shop consists of a production manager, parts department, paint department, technicians and front office administration. The parts department includes parts manager, a person who is a shipper and receiver, and a floater.

Within the paint department, there is a head painter, a painter for the minor and

express repair, and three other helpers.

Two technicians are the team leaders and the technician group consists of technicians skilled from C-level all the way to Alevel. There are nine technicians in total.

“One thing lacking was having the technology in place,” Constant says.

The team has worked on getting new tablets, computers and workstations running on WiFi. Constant has purchased Dell laptops, and dual-screen monitors for the estimators. Technicians are able to grab the equipment and technology from non-movable work tables and take it anywhere in the shop.

January 2019 | fenderbender.com 43

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*Only HVLP. | Additional nozzle sizes to follow January 2019 | fenderbender.com 45

READ WHAT THE PROS READ. “I HAVE TO TAKE MY HAT OFF TO FENDERBENDER. IT’S DEFINITELY BETTER & ABOVE THE REST.” - Greg Lobsiger, Owner Loren’s Auto Body, Bluffton, IND.

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FENDERBENDER.COM/SUBSCRIBE 46 fenderbender.com | January 2019

STRATEGY LEARN

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Hiring Hardships After a hire that significantly reduced sales, Will's Auto Body in Concord, Calif., is back to full capacity and even able to push out more work than before.

IDEA SHOP EDUCATION+TRAINING CASE STUDY SALES+MARKETING

54

AVANT-GARDE PHOTO

CASE S T UDY

January 2019 | fenderbender.com 47

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©2019 Drew Technologies, Inc. Patent(s) pending. 121918-2

STR ATEGY

IDEA SHOP

The IT Dilemma

The pros and cons to bringing IT in-house or outsourcing the work For a small shop or a big shop, the thought might have crossed your mind: Should I outsource my IT department or keep it in-house?

With evolving vehicle technology and the advent of computer systems into the repair of the vehicle, technology is an essential part of the process. The first evolution was back in the ’80s and ’90s when shops moved away from paper estimating to computerized estimating.

Today, shops are moving away from the desktops that were used to tablets or other portable devices, says Kelly Shortreed, senior manager of sales engineering for Mitchell.

“Computers used to be considered an afterthought and now people are investing and budgeting for that,” Shortreed says.

Shortreed has witnessed shops struggling to keep up with the demand of this new mobile workforce and properly using a strong WiFi connection. Shortreed works with Mitchell International’s implementation team and spends roughly a few days per month in shops, helping set up repair facilities with Mitchell’s software and products, he says.

Recently, more cars on the market are connected cars. According to the Mitchell Industry Trends Report, connected cars are made more prevalent by sensors and computers within the vehicle. It is such a hot topic in the industry that the insurance industry will have a Connected Claims Summit USA in June 2019.

The debate is riddled with variables from cost of the employees to the availability of the IT expert. Shortreed discusses each side of the argument and lays out the pros and cons for both.

“In the past, I’ve seen more shops using someone in house but I think they are getting away with that and shifting to hiring an outsourced IT firm to do it for them,” Shortreed says.

AS TOLD TO MELISSA STEINKEN

In-House IT

THINKSTOCK

An in-house IT person might cost the shop a full-time salary but the potential cost of a ransomware attack could cost smaller businesses around $700,000 per incident, according to Tech Transformers and Acronis. Businesses could also lose five days without productivity or being able to do business.

Pros: • The “obvious” pro to working with someone exclusively for your shop is to have their undivided attention to IT problems.

• The consultant can become more familiar with the shop’s software and technology because the person will be able to spend time at the shop for long periods.

• Since the person is on site, he or she has the capability to respond quickly to problems and, thus, problems might get resolved quicker.

Cons: • A person on site could end up costing the shop more money. If the employee is considered a paid salary employee, then the cost could be high for a small shop.

• There are additional problems to trying to get help from another job role in the company. Even if the estimator is good with computers, that does not mean the estimator can safely fix IT issues. Typically, someone already on staff that says they can do the job only knows about personal computer issues and might not know details about networking—in which computers' server, mainframe, and networks share data with each other through data links.

Outsourced IT Pros:

• An outside company might be able to invest more time and money into following the technology updates. For example, WiFi has become increasingly complex and more vehicles are entering the shop on different wireless networks. A shop might think they’re remote but, in reality, they could have 20 or more wireless devices just sitting on the shop floor.

• A lot of IT professional consulting businesses have the means to offer consultation 24/7. When the outside company shares that cost among a handful of businesses, it is cheaper.

• For larger shops, outsourcing might provide a better solution for owners who don’t feel qualified to interview candidates for a full-time position. Outsourcing also allows the owner to switch to another company more easily if he or she is not happy with the service that is provided.

Cons:

• Based on my personal experience, outside consultants take longer to respond to problems. Often, the response time is half a day to a couple of days. They’re generally slower but there are exceptions to every case.

• While both in-house and outsourced professionals would place safeguards on the networks, an owner should take into consideration that an outsourced professional places security, virus and malware protections on the shop’s system.

• It depends on the person that is hired but if a shop owner is charged per incident, he or she will have a harder time budgeting for that expense. The shop owner might be inclined then to not call for minor issues and that can lead to bigger problems and larger expenses later on.

January 2019 | fenderbender.com 49

STR ATEGY

EDUCATION+TRAINING

Necessary Actions for the Perfect Weld Six steps for more effective welding training

BY MELISSA STEINKEN

necessarily mean they’ve been properly trained to weld on newer vehicles.

“Only about 75 percent of the technicians coming to tests take it seriously and the other 25 percent come and complain,” says John Helterbrand, department chair, automotive collision repair and high performance racing technology at Ranken Technical College in St. Louis.

In addition to his role as department chair, Helterbrand has been an I-CAR instructor for the last 13 years.

Mike Croker, global repair and training product manager, collision for Chief Automotive Technologies, has been in the industry for more than 18 years and he says the proper welding technique takes continuous training.

If technicians don’t follow the proper 50 fenderbender.com | January 2019

welding techniques or wear the proper equipment, the weld might not hold up and create even more damage on the repaired vehicle.

On top of the weld causing more damage, respiratory effects (specifically impaired lung function and fibrosis), have been found in workers who have been exposed to aluminum dust or fumes, according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

Croker has been around enough fumes in his career that he says his lungs have started to deteriorate. When he gets sick, he has had to be admitted to the hospital and can be out for weeks at a time.

“I’d rather know about the tools and pay for safety equipment than go through the cost of all the hospital bills,” he says.

Croker and Heckerbrand outline the actions a technician needs to follow to

pass a weld test and maximize the investment in welding training (sometimes as much as $1,100 per technician).

Action No. 1: Schedule for the certification test well in advance.

Technicians need to take a welding certification test through I-CAR every five years.

For some certification programs through OEMs, the testing occurs every six months.

Helterbrand says shops don’t put enough priority on when and where they will schedule the I-CAR certification test.

He says in many cases the technicians are simply not prepared for it.

He emphasizes that tests shouldn’t be scheduled on a weekend because a technician comes in and often isn’t mentally prepared to work on a day like Saturday.

Before scheduling, the owner and

THINKSTOCK

Technicians may have 10–20 years of collision repair experience, but that doesn’t

Only a very low percent of the shops Croker has seen and worked with use some type of ventilation system for the fumes.

Croker says he personally prefers a welding helmet with an attached fume extractor. Fume extractors are critical because while there might be standards out there, some chemicals and fumes, like the ones used in manufacturing, are so severe they can send you to the hospital.

Action No. 3: Make sure the shop's equipment works.

technician need to take time, well in advance, and look online at the free welding qualification and materials information provided by I-CAR. The types of materials that will be used in the test depend on whether the test is done by a manufacturer or by I-CAR. Most importantly, Helterbrand recommends a shop owner block out a time for the test that is separate from the day’s production schedule. He says the technician needs an environment in which the equipment has been checked and is ready to be used, and the technician can solely focus on the test.

Action No. 2: Put on proper safety gear.

A technician needs to wear a welding jacket and welding gloves, Croker says. A better and safer helmet will have a darkening shade on it. Closed-toe boots are a must.

The gear protects a worker from the light and heat generated by welding.

“It surprises me how often technicians do not think about ventilating the fumes they are inhaling,” Croker says. “Proper ventilation systems are not that expensive and only cost about $3,500, give or take.”

Each manufacturer will have its own equipment requirements. Welders usually run on a power system of 220v.

Croker learned 15 years ago, when he took his first I-CAR weld test, that an old machine can slow down a technician.

With old equipment, it can take as much as six hours, yet, with a new machine, the process can be completed within a couple of hours.

Helterbrand says if a shop schedules a test weld, it needs to adequately prepare for the testing day.

He says shops often run out of welding gas needed to complete the weld and forget extra tips or nozzles to use the welder.

“Most of the technicians have old equipment with no manuals available and assume they know how the equipment works,” Helterbrand says.

Don’t buy a new welder right before the test, Croker and Helterbrand say.

Often, techs buy new equipment and then go take the test. The weld test could then take them hours to complete.

Action No. 4: Do a test weld before actually doing the proper weld.

Doing a test weld on the same type of material the welder will be used for can prevent the weld from failing on a customer’s vehicle.

During the weld test, Helterbrand says that instructors will test the weld by methods such as bending the metal back and forth or twisting. The instructor looks for a patch or fail in the actual weld.

Simply make sure the welding process will hold up by taking the smaller piece of metal once it’s welded, put it in a vice grip and try to tear it apart, Croker says. This testing of the weld is usually referred to as a destructive test.

“No one can tell if the weld is going to work by simply looking at it,” he says.

Action No. 5: Use the proper technique for the metal.

Aluminum equipment is also set up differently and a pulse-welder or a double-pulse welder is used. Additionally, the wire size is different for that equipment.

Argon gas is typically used instead of an argon gas mix used in steel welding.

Steel melts at a higher level than aluminum. The tools used for steel cannot touch aluminum and vice versa. If the metals were to touch, it could cause contamination on the metal.

With aluminum, someone typically pushes the torch and, with steel, someone typically pulls. In steel welding, the wire is more robust than aluminum. In a MIG welder, the wire can be pushed by the rotating feed roller all the way to the end without collapsing in on itself.

Croker says aluminum wire can easily jam the gun when it is loaded. Since it is a softer wire, the technician needs to use a push-pull gun in which a specific welder can push the wire from the feeder while a pulling feeder is in the gun itself, maintaining constant tension and preventing the wire from getting tangled.

It also allows for the welder torch length to be much longer, making it easier to work around a vehicle. It’s harder to push aluminum, so a welding gun that has more length is ideal. For instance, the technician does not need a machine close to the car if he or she has a welding torch three times the standard length of a typical welder.

In addition to the wire differences, aluminum conducts heat more rapidly than steel, shrinks when it is re-solidified after being welded and has twice the thermal expansion of steel.

Action No. 6: Test the weld visually.

While you can’t do a destructive test on a car once the weld is done, there are other options for a final work check.

One solution is simply conducting a visual test and making sure it meets welding standards.

A more accurate test is to use a dye penetrant and inspection kit that includes a spray, Croker says. The welder can spray one coat onto the car, wait for it to dry and spray a second coat.

If there are cracks that are smaller than the eye can see, the second coat will react to them and show it to the naked eye.

January 2019 | fenderbender.com 51

52 fenderbender.com | January 2019

COLUMNS

PROCESS DRIVEN R YA N C R O P P E R

Focusing on Culture When Hiring How to make work/life balance part of your sales pitch to job prospects

FUE VANG

When it comes to hiring, I take a differ-

ent approach than most people. I think, if you focus on culture at your company, then it makes the hiring process significantly easier.

I spoke at the 2018 FenderBender Management Conference about how the hiring process hasn’t been a concern of mine for many years now. And that’s because our focus is on the culture of the company; when you have 78 employees speaking to colleagues within the trade about what their work/life experience is like, then other potential hires hear about that. And, when those job prospects have heard that your shop is a positive place to work, then hiring becomes easier.

When we do go through the hiring process, though, our procedure works like this: First, one employee might do a phone interview with the job candidate. Then, another employee might do a quick, 10-minute face-to-face interview.

Then, we almost always do a group interview, and, depending on the position, we’ll have anywhere from three to six employees help lead the interview. That way my staff can buy in to who we’re hiring. When you do group interviews, the team of employee interviewers will typically share your business’ values, how long they’ve been with the company, what they get out of it, and why they choose to work here.

The good thing about that type of group interview—and that type of group decision-making—is that it illustrates to job candidates that we care what other people think, and that this shop isn’t a dictatorship.

Plus, when job candidates are hired following group interviews, then you tend to have fewer employees end up arguing with

that new hire, because they likely voted for that person to be hired. They’re not going to fight with that employee—they’re going to fight for them to be a success.

A lot of employers promise that once a job prospect joins a business that certain things are going to happen, but then they don’t follow up with that. So, whatever commitments you make during the hiring process, you need to make sure you stick to them.

But, if your focus isn’t on the culture of your company, and the quality of life for the employees, then hiring is always going to be a struggle at your shop. I mean, in this industry we already have a hard enough time finding skilled technicians. But it’s going to be really hard to hire when your focus isn’t on what kind of shop you’re operating.

An important issue in this business is a lack trust, where the employee doesn’t trust the employer. So, as an employer, if you make a commitment, you need to keep up with it and take care of the things you promise you’re going to take care of.

I try to focus on what I can do as an employer to give my staff a better quality

of life—for example, maybe that entails providing a creative work schedule that’s ideal for everybody. I have friends in the industry that run shops that are open Monday through Thursday longer hours, and then they close at midday on Friday.

We don’t do that but, during the summer, we try to over staff so we can make sure that we’re always providing the time off that employees want. You’ve got to figure out what are important factors along those lines in your area and then do everything you can to cater to that, knowing, of course, that business still has to get done.

It’s important to really consider: What can we do to bring value to an employee? I think so much of hiring is having a place that brings value to them beyond just the paycheck. And that could mean health care, retirement, time off, creative work schedules, or creative pay plans.

You have to remember: you’re really not fighting against your competitors for every employee; you’re really just negotiating with that employee in an effort to keep them happy.

RYA N C R O P P E R is the owner of Able Body Shop, with three locations in Anchorage, Alaska, and Total Truck Accessory Center.

E M A I L : r c r o p p e r @ ab l e b o d y s h o p .c o m

January 2019 | fenderbender.com 53

STR ATEGY

CASE STUDY

BY MELISSA STEINKEN PHOTOGRAPHY BY AVANT- GARDE PHOTO

54 fenderbender.com | January 2019

SKIP COSTLY HIRING EXPENSES AND LEARN HOW ONE SHOP OWNER FOUND A SOLUTION TO HIRING THE WRONG RECRUIT

P. 55

January 2019 | fenderbender.com 55

STR ATEGY

CASE STUDY

T

he hardest part of owning a business is hiring the people for the business. Or at least, this is what William Cluster, president of Will’s Auto Body Inc. in Concord, Calif., says has been his experience.

He thought he had an ideal situation. A friend recommended someone for an estimator position and Cluster thought it would be the perfect fit because the woman had 15 years of experience in the industry. Plus, she was recommended by a friend. It had to be a good recommendation, right?

When that estimator started, Cluster realized the learning curve was steep. No problem, he thought; he’d just train her. For the first three to four months, he spent time personally re-training the new hire on how to write an estimate and use the shop’s basic estimating software package from CCC Information Services.

Once she learned the process, the estimates started to get cleaner and the shop was mostly back on track to charging the correct amount for repairs, he says, and he became more lenient of mistakes.

He was fooled.

Cluster realized the shop was losing money. Each month when he sat down to work on the numbers, he noticed KPIs, like capture ratio and profit margin on parts, going down. The numbers had decreased from the financial period before the new hire. His capture ratio was resting at 33 percent. Later on, he realized he lost roughly $150,000 in profit margin on parts and was losing vendor discounts due to the estimator’s poor process of sending back the wrong part, ordering the wrong parts and not communicating issues with vendors.

That’s when Cluster realized: He had hired the wrong estimator. And it was up to him to fix that critical problem.

The Backstory

WILL’S AUTO BODY OWNER:

WILLIAM CLUSTER LOCATION:

CONCORD, CALIF. SIZE:

8,000 SQUARE FEET STAFF:

6

AVERAGE MONTHLY CAR COUNT:

30

AVERAGE REPAIR ORDER:

$2,852

ANNUAL REVENUE:

$1.2 MILLION

The Problem

Make the Goal When William Cluster (right) began using a new piece of software, it quickly became clear that members of his team didn’t hit their numbers.

56 fenderbender.com | January 2019

Growing up, Cluster spent every Sunday watching car shows and soon realized the automotive industry was one in which he wanted to work. After school, he worked for a junk yard while repairing vehicles on the side and then he moved his way to a Chevrolet dealership where he worked as a combo-body technician.

Eventually, Cluster opened his own shop in March 2014 and started out in the industry by hiring people who said they knew the job and could properly perform the collision repair work.

“I was able to spot it within two days if something was not being done right by a technician,” he says.

Cluster had successfully opened his own collision repair shop, moved from Illinois to California on his own and started a business in a market that was nestled away from the business of major roads.

And, he had the experience he needed to successfully run a body shop since he had years of experience working in the shop floor.

He soon learned that starting a business entails more than good luck.

At the beginning of a hire, Cluster says he normally did a background check on the potential hire and did research into his or her prior work experience. In the estimator’s case, however, he decided against it because she was recommended by a prior colleague.

“I wasn’t worried at first because of all the years she had been doing estimating, but when she started, it was a big learning curve,” Cluster says.

When Cluster noticed a drop in his revenue and KPIs, he decided to start figuring out what exactly was going wrong in the process. He started by upgrading the CCC estimating software.

First, he upgraded to a $400 package, then a $800 package and a $1,200 package. Once he upgraded, he was able to receive reports on his KPIs more often than when he was looking at them monthly.

He realized the new estimator was working hard but didn’t produce the same money the shop was making before she was hired, he says. But, Cluster did not want to completely give up on the money he invested to find the problem and the money he invested in the hire.

EXPERT ADVICE

A STEP TO TAKE IN THE WAKE OF A BAD HIRE

Hand in Hand Since making a hire that cost him significant business, William Cluster has adopted a more hands-on approach to working with staff.

NORM BOBAY, FOUNDER AND PRESIDENT OF HIREMA X , A CONSULTING COMPANY THAT WAS FOUNDED ON HELPING BOSSES HIRE THE RIGHT PEOPLE AND TRE AT THE PEOPLE RIGHT, HAS BEEN CONSULTING SINCE 1991.

Bobay has developed a set of ways to measure the skillsets of potential hires and the benchmark in which to evaluate each person. He says that, ultimately, bosses want to keep their employees within the category of “demotivated but still

So, he brought in trainers from CCC to help retrain her, the other office manager and himself on the software program.

But still, the problems persisted. The estimator did not improve. If anything, her attention to detail, willingness to adapt to new processes and overall attitude continued to suffer.

“We should have been producing 50 percent in capture ratio at a minimum,” Cluster says. “And that’s if we’re in a high-volume and high-traffic area.”

Since Will’s Auto Body is out of the way of a busy market, the shop needed to produce 80–90 percent in capture ratio or better, he says.

The Solution

Cluster was faced with a hard decision.

He had just spent the past several months investing significant time and money into this estimator. Was it worth it to continue the training and hope the situation would turn around?

After more than five months of this training and tracking KPIs, Cluster says the only solution was to let the estimator go.

“We already were having a hard time with profit margins and then training was padding that expense and we couldn’t afford it anymore,” he says.

Now, Cluster was left down an estimator. And this time, he knew he couldn’t afford to make the same mistakes, so he decided to overhaul his hiring process.

“Since it was a specialized position we decided to put an ad out on Indeed. com this time around,” Cluster says.

Cluster interviewed over 15 candidates to find the correct person to replace his estimator.

And, Cluster realized that he might not like the person he hires for the position personally but he knew exactly the characteristics he needed in a new hire: passionate, hard-working and loyal to the job.

He also started to focus on the results from the “test runs” he did with potential hires. He would enter the interview and walk the hire through a scenario in which he pretended to be the customer and the job candidate had to walk him through an estimate he would receive.

The hire that replaced the previous estimator was put through a couple interviews and test runs before being hired, he says.

competent” because it saves the

The Aftermath

maintains a good relationship

Now, with the new hire, the shop is back to producing its average sales of $100,000 per month and has even expanded the

company from another expensive hiring process.

Yet, staying in this category might be difficult, he admits.

Bobay says that if a boss has tried first to relocate the hire to another position in the company and it still is not the right fit, then the way the boss handles the firing will make a great deal of difference for his or her company.

“A boss needs to take documents and write down what the employee is doing wrong,” he says.

In addition to documenting the reasons for letting the person go, Bobay says it is a good idea to take the person out to lunch or something similar, talk with him or her and explain why another position could not have been found within the company.

Then, offer to help the person find a job at another place.

“The employee walks away knowing it wasn’t the right fit but with you,” Bobay says. “The person might become a referral for your business.”

January 2019 | fenderbender.com 57

STR ATEGY

CASE STUDY

Back on Track Will’s Auto Body is back on track, after the shop's owner overhauled the collision repair center's process for securing new hires.

square footage of the shop from 4,000 square feet to 8,000 square feet, to double capacity for the influx of work.

Not long after firing the estimator, Cluster’s capture ratio went up to 87 percent.

Parts discounts from vendors increased from 11 percent to 40 percent.

The Takeaway

Now, Cluster says he will never make the same mistake of neglecting a background check in his hiring process. He also says he now checks the reports from CCC at least once per week.

“It’s a lot easier to clean up incorrect data from a week’s time than six months worth of incorrect data,” Cluster says.

Another important realization came from Cluster recognizing he made too many excuses for the old employee’s mistakes.

“I initially made up a bunch of excuses and thought, ‘Oh well, she’s had some kids and that can explain the gap in her work history and why she needs to be retrained,’” he says. “I thought she just had to get back in the swing of things.”

58 fenderbender.com | January 2019

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January 2019 | fenderbender.com 59

STR ATEGY

SALES+MARKETING

5 Steps to Make Call Recording a Habit

Experts explain how, by studying how your staff handles calls, you can significantly increase sales

BY MELISSA STEINKEN

A customer may be taken aback by the automated voice that first begins a call. The customer, however, may not be aware of how a phone recording system is used not just to record the customer’s information but also to help the shop with its sales and business practices, says Michelle Marchant, phone skills performance coach.

Phone recording benefits include improving training, improving coaching, bringing accountability into the workplace and verification of information, she says.

And, according to her, roughly 15–25 percent of calls are missed opportunities, in which a sales inquiry did not result in a commitment from the customer.

So, for every 100 calls, you’re losing 20 jobs.

To top off the list of benefits, listening in on the staff’s calls to custom60 fenderbender.com | January 2019

ers does not need to take eight hours or even much of the day, according to Kevin Schwarzhoff, the body shop manager at Witham Auto Centers in Cedar Falls, Iowa.

“Even if the employee just knows they are being monitored, it can keep them on their toes, “ Schwarzhoff says.

For more than seven years, Schwarzhoff developed small business centers for dealerships and used phone recording systems to turn an employee’s call into a sale.

Schwarzhoff says when the phone recording system is done in a non-intrusive manner, in which the manager listens in on a few calls per day and then pulls the employee aside to go over the call, it can be the difference between making a sale and not making a sale.

Marchant shares the steps an owner can take to make using the phone recording system a habit within a day-today business routine.

Step 1: Train the employee to be the face of the company.

A customer’s overall impression of the shop can be determined within this first interaction with the employee, Marchant says. To correctly train staff, use best phone practice skills.

These skills include the CLARC phone skills. CLARC stands for connect, listen, acknowledge, recommend and close.

The main key to this step is to ask questions, Marchant says. Questions, after all, are the main way to get sales.

First, connect with the customer in the greeting and then start taking notes.

The questions are a way to show the customer that the employee is actively listening and to then build up to acknowledging the customer’s concerns.

This approach works extremely well if a customer calls for an estimate, Schwarzhoff says. When someone calls for an estimate, it is an opportunity for

THINKSTOCK

“This call may be monitored and recorded for training purposes.”

to point out an area that needs improvement because once the employee listens to the call, he or she will point it out.

Some warning signs that indicate the manager needs to sit down with an employee, he says, include the worker missing opportunities to sell during the call, missing opportunities to solve the customer’s issue. Additionally, being argumentative and showing too many emotions during a call can be still another red flag.

Step 4: Save time by tracking calls.

the staff to take the customer’s problem and make it the shop’s priority.

He says that every phone call can be viewed as a way to do light selling.

The repair job might not require a large undertaking but it could be an opportunity to act on and do a replacement repair or lighter job for the customer.

aside at least 30 minutes to an hour to listen to some calls made that day.

If a problem or urgent situation is found, you should then bring the employee into the office for a meeting.

“The manager needs to spend enough time to get a ‘screenshot’ of how the day is going,” Schwarzhoff says.

“It is time consuming to listen to each and every phone call,” Marchant says.

One way to track phone calls is to use speech analytics, she says.

Speech analytics analyzes your phone calls using different indicators and algorithms to determine what is or isn’t happening on a phone call.

The speech analytics system can help gather information from all the phone calls made that day, rather than just a few, and helps in the process of selecting which calls to review, Marchant says.

At the end of the day, a manager needs to remember that this phone recording training process is not equivalent to a huge life goal or achievement, Schwarzhoff says.

Instead, don't overdo the amount of time spent going over this type of training. If an employee thinks he or she is going to get grilled after every phone call, he or she is more likely to give up and quit.

For an owner, the second step in the process is to record calls and learn what types of real-life situations each employee encounters, Marchant says.

“We’ve found that role-playing is not as effective as actually using the conversation,” Marchant says.

A problem that Marchant has seen in her line of work is a shop not committed to finishing the phone recording training program.

As a result, the employees can pick up on the fact that the boss is not in it for the long haul, she says.

“When your employee knows your commitment level, it will raise their commitment level,” Marchant says.

Schwarzhoff says you should set

Step 3: Consistently review the calls with staff.

After training the employee to use proper phone etiquette when answering the phone and recording the calls, the boss will need to coach the staff.

Work ahead by scheduling weekly, bi-weekly, or monthly coaching sessions with employees.

To coach employees, listen to the calls and then sit down with them.

You should discuss different parts of the phone call and set a goal in these meetings. Then, follow up on the goal with daily actions to help each employee stay focused and improve.

In his experience, Schwarzhoff says the employee is typically his or her own most severe critic.

The supervisor might not even need

Step 5: Establish the practice as employee accountability.

Step 2: Commit to recording every call.

The phone recording system can not only gain more sales for a shop but also help the shop employees become more accountable for their actions in the workplace, Marchant says.

“Soft skills, like telephone sales and service performance, can be improved by being measured,” she says.

And, the phone recording system practice will provide another way to keep a record of information.

The recording will act as a second type of verification of the customer’s repair details and verify the information written down is accurate.

“We recommend transcribing calls so they can easily be searched,” Marchant says.

January 2019 | fenderbender.com 61

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COLUMNS

IN THE TRENCHES STEVE MORRIS

Are Electric Vehicles the Future?

A critical look at the possibility—and the challenges

NICK SPAETH, THINKSTOCK

Back in 2011, I was told that the colli-

sion repair business would circle the drain in five to seven years. I was very disheartened at the time but here we are, eight years later, it’s 2019 and, as near as I can tell, the collision repair industry is still going strong. Now the question is, what’s in store for us in the next five to seven years?

In last month’s column, we looked at some of the predictions that ridesharing and ride-hailing apps will be a leading cause in the decline of vehicle ownership, as well as the advent of autonomous driving vehicles and its impact on our industry.

In 2019 and going forward, I believe there are several trends and challenges that collision repair operators need to be aware of and, in some cases, for which they need to be begin being prepared.

Some of these trends come to us by way of wild predictions from people who act like they are “in the know.” These trends include plug-in electric vehicles, an increased proliferation of advanced driver-assist systems, telematics with connected cars and infrastructure, artificial intelligence–based estimating and claims settlement, and the fact that American-built sedans and coupes are falling out of favor with consumers. We will talk about one of these predictions today and, in future columns, we will talk about some of the other technologies and trends that may or may not affect our industry.

Plug-in electric vehicles (both battery only and hybrid) are steadily becoming more popular globally and domestically.

Global cumulative sales of these vehicles reached the 4 million mark in September 2018. Roughly 2 million of that number are found in China, 1 million are registered in Europe and the remaining 1 million are driven in the United States. Interestingly, one-half of the 1 million PEVs in the U.S. are registered in California. So, what does this mean in the big picture? At first glance, not much.

Because PEVs in the U.S. only account for roughly 1.2 percent of total vehicle

sales, if the market share grows at recent historical rates, the net result would be that about 4 percent of vehicle sales five years from now will be represented by electric vehicles. There are a few major wild cards to this prediction that could accelerate or hinder the growth of PEV market share.

One is the fact that many European OEMs have declared that they will be rapidly phasing out internal combustion engine propulsion systems in favor of electric motor–powered vehicles. Volvo (which, by the way, is owned by a Chinese corporation) has stated that, by 2030, all vehicles they produce will be plug-in electric. Jaguar/ Land Rover (which, by the way, are a subsidiary of an Indian auto group) have announced a similar timeline for production of electric vehicles. Buyers who are fond of European vehicles will, by default, become owners of PEVs, but we are looking at least 10 years out before this happens.

Another wild card is the fact that there are some start-up rivals to Tesla that may compete for some of Tesla and electric vehicle market share. In spite of some growing pains, Tesla has done a remarkable job of going from an idea to an actual producer of cool vehicles that people want.

The final wild card to the growth of PEV market share has to do with the aging infrastructure of our power supplies and the sources of electric power. Summers in southern California can be brutally hot and our business and homes are equipped with air conditioners to provide some relief from the heat. Unfortunately, our electrical utility

companies don’t have the infrastructure to handle the load demands and we often experience brownouts during peak use hours.

Millions of residents have devices installed on their air conditioners that allow the utilities to turn off the A/C units when demand is too high. When I think about this, it makes me wonder how the electric utility companies are going to be able to handle a few million people plugging in their electric cars for recharging in the evening. I know that some people like to tease Californians about their stances on all things related to the environment, but there is a pretty strong consensus here, and in some other states, that our power needs to come from clean sources such as solar and wind. Environmentalists dislike the idea of hydro-electric power because the construction of dams is just as harmful to the environment. No matter where you sit on this debate, the fact is, California and many other states have begun to legislate their way into only allowing clean energy sources in the future.

I didn’t want to throw a bunch of data at you, but I’ve done the research and I’m not convinced that electric vehicles will dominate the marketplace anytime soon.

Nevertheless, in some major metropolitan markets, it behooves collision repair shops to be prepared to handle the repairs to these vehicles. If you’re not prepared, please just pass on the repairs for the safety of your team—and the integrity of your business. If you are taking these vehicles in for repair, read, then re-read and understand the latest OEM repair instructions and guidelines.

S T E V E M O R R I S is the director of operations for Pride Collision Centers, a seven-location MSO located in Southern California. He is an Accredited Automotive Manager (AAM) and ASE-certified master technician.

E M A I L : s t ev e m @ p r i d e au t o b o d y.c o m A R C H I V E : f e n d e r b e n d e r.c o m /m o r r i s

January 2019 | fenderbender.com 63

64 fenderbender.com | January 2019

SHOP TALK

“I want to improve the overall quality of living for the people on my team.”

HARRISON RUSK GENERAL MANAGER

PHOTOS BY TESS CATHERINE PHOTOGR APHY

MASTER CAR CARE AND COLLISION

HOUSTON Making Strides Harrison Rusk’s priority every day as managing partner of his shop is simple: He wants to improve his staff’s skillset and abilities.

January 2019 | fenderbender.com 65

SHOP TALK

HARRISON RUSK

I try to walk the whole shop and greet all of my team members in the morning before I answer any phone calls. It’s impor-

At Master Car Care and Collision in Houston, Harrison Rusk runs the family businesses’ collision repair and mechanical repair facility. Rusk’s brother, in return, runs the shop’s satellite store for estimate and collision repair.

“My dad ran shops while I was growing up, so I grew up around shops sweeping the floors, helping out around the shop doing general service technician stuff,” Rusk says. “When I graduated high school, I was not interested in working in the automotive field and wanted to try different things.”

After a nine-year career in the Marine Corps, Rusk came back with a refreshed outlook on the industry as his father, Byron, owner of Master Car Care and Collision, inched closer to retirement, he says.

“I enjoy interacting with people and running a team so it was a perfect opportunity for my personality type and thought it would just be a really good career choice, as well,” Rusk says.

In 2014, Rusk was made general manager of the business, which had been purchased by his father a few years prior. The facility, built in 1941, was revamped to fit the business’ structure as both a collision repair and mechanical shop.

“We upgraded some of our technology and started focusing on I-CAR certifications to really boost our collision repair services,” Rusk notes.

Today, Rusk serves as managing partner of the business and works directly with staff on both teams throughout the day.

He finds that, in order to gain success at a shop, you need dedicated employees.

“I want to better improve the skills [of my staff],” Rusk says.

“Should they decide to go somewhere else or continue with their future they’ve got everything that’s going to have them best prepared and be the most successful going forward.”

AS TOLD TO KILEY WELLENDORF

66 fenderbender.com | January 2019

tant to me to be able to touch base with the guys in the morning or even simply say, “hello.” Our staff all comes in at different times, so it’s important for me to touch base.

We have staggered scheduling at our shop, so we split the staff into thirds and each third comes in at different times: before opening, when we open, roughly 1–1.5 hours after opening. I started this scheduling method when I got into the shop because I wanted to give everyone the chance to get home at adequate times, and then we rotate those schedules each month. In this industry, a lot of people work such long, hard hours, and after I got feedback from my team, I did some adjustments and this was something we were able to make happen. I think this gives everyone the chance to have enough personal time and time at home after work.

I like to know what’s going on with my team at the start of the week. I’m not a

big formal meeting holder, but we hold a “team huddle” on Monday mornings to get things rolling. During these meetings, I like to address what everyone’s goals are, as well as what the overall team hopes to accomplish. We do some coaching sessions if they are needed, especially if we run into any issues that need to be addressed. I typically like to keep the huddles no longer than 30 minutes and if we need to have more, we’ll have smaller huddles throughout the week.

During the huddles, we also really encourage the guys to bring up any issues they see and we try to address those issues early on. When they bring those issues up, it allows everyone to learn from one another.

After initial greetings, I do a lot of follow-up with customers. I try to reconnect

with customers who have had their vehicle picked up within the last two or three days because I find that it’s the perfect time to do a general follow-up. Once I’m off the phone, I coordinate with my service writers and make sure that we’re on track with what our game plan is as far as sales plans for the day.

I don’t like to be removed from everything, so I keep my desk in the front

MASTER CAR CARE AND COLLISION OWNER:

BYRON RUSK LOCATION:

HOUSTON SIZE:

COLLISION SIDE: 12,000 SQUARE FEET; MECHANICAL SIDE: 14,000 SQUARE FEET; OFFICE SPACE: 2,000 SQUARE FEET STAFF:

10

AVERAGE MONTHLY CAR COUNT:

120 CARS FOR COLLISION, 680 (OVERALL)

ANNUAL REVENUE:

$1.25 MILLION (COLLISION ONLY)

In the Loop Harrison Rusk starts every week by learning what’s going on with his team. That way, he’s able to follow up and remain updated on those concerns or potential issues.

office as a way to stay connected with the shop floor and my customers. If there are things I need to take care of, I head into the back office, but I think it’s important to stay accessible for my team. Even though I’m not 100 percent involved with all customer interactions, I still think it’s important to stick around the front office if I’m needed.

By lunchtime, everyone’s schedules are different as the staggered scheduling gives everyone the opportunity to eat at different times. I leave it up to each

department to manage their time and their lunches. When mid-afternoon hits, I make my way around and make sure they know that I’m available for a consultation or if they need any assistance.

It’s important to me that my team is set up for success. We have some programs for technicians where, based off of their productivity, we go ahead and fund their tools. Our team is pretty experienced here, but if there are advanced training opportunities available, we send the guys out to a day-long course. If an opportunity arises that would increase their skill set, we want to encourage staff to attend training and stay updated with the industry.

When I wrap up the end of the day, it’s important for me to touch base with everyone in the shop. Typically, I touch

base with all of the key players and make sure that all bases are covered before we all leave for the night. I also do a final

sweep of the shop where I look around and check on the status of everything, making notes on what needs to be covered for the next day’s shifts.

I try to make sure that everyone is out by 6:30 p.m. With the staggered scheduling, some guys will head out before we close at 6 p.m., and I try to get the last round of guys to be out of here by 6:30 p.m. We’re really fortunate to have some really dedicated staff members, so since we are located in a pretty bustling spot in Houston, some of our team members will make the decision to stay later to assist a customer, if needed. I try to push to have everyone out by 6:30 p.m. because I think it’s important that staff members are able to go home and relax for the rest of the night.

January 2019 | fenderbender.com 67

20TH ANNIVERSARY SERIES

KEVIN RAINS

The Anniversary Interview

SPONSORED BY

As FenderBender celebrates 20 years we take a look back at the collision repair industry through the eyes of some of its largest influencers

Kevin Rains is a veteran shop owner and a FenderBender columnist. He also works as an industry consultant focused on helping collision businesses develop and improve their marketing efforts. His simple, effective marketing measures have allowed him to grow his own businesses—CARSTAR Center City in Cincinnati and CARSTAR West Chester in West Chester, Ohio—tenfold within the last decade.

AS TOLD TO MELISSA STEINKEN

How does the industry today compare to what it was like 20 years ago?

Technology has increased at a speed that is unexpected to many people, including myself. By technology, I mean estimating, estimating capability, OEM certifications and pre- and post-repair scans.

Now, there are more super-high strength steels and different tools that have come out, like ones that are designed to fix aluminum, as well. In the new era, shops are going to have invest more to keep up with these developments.

Some key areas that shop owners can focus on in terms of training include training related to emerging technology like anti-collision features.

Anti-collision features are sophisticated and require that we follow OE guidelines including pre- and post-repair scanning to ensure we put families and customers back into a safe and correctly repaired vehicle. If we 68 fenderbender.com | January 2019

fail to do this, our integrity is in question and we are exposing ourselves to great liability.

What has been the biggest game changer over the past 20 years?

The advent of the large consolidators has been the biggest game changer, Consolidators like the Big Four are forcing independent and MSO shops to think differently. It’s like when I got involved in CARSTAR; it is forcing owners to think about longevity.

They’re forcing a new level of healthy competition for the industry but also placing a strain on smaller shops.

When I joined CARSTAR, it was the best of both worlds. All the CARSTAR shops are family-owned but we also get to leverage a network of 600 other shops. We have the benefits of the buying power and insurance companies with this MSO.

What do shops need to do to be successful over the next 20 years?

I think training is going to play a larger and larger role.

As cars become more complex, we’re getting back to the technology issue and, in order to keep up within the next few years, the shop needs more and more training.

Training should focus on anti-collision features and pre- and post-repair scanning, like I mentioned before.

We’re driving computers with wheels.

Gone are the days when a spray booth and a downdraft spray booth put you ahead of your competition.

The shop should look into partnering with groups like I-CAR and OEM people. To name a few tools that shops need to be successful are scanners, aluminum repair tools like specialized rivet guns and welders for highstrength steel.

COURTESY KEVIN RAINS

KEVIN RAINS

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COLUMNS

OUTSIDE THE LINES JASON BOGGS

The Road to Better Communications Lessons from an unwitting travel mishap

el. I love the sights, the food, the culture— the entire experience. If you travel outside the country with any frequency, you’re bound to run into situations where you have no real command of the local language.

I remember a few years ago when I was on vacation in Italy and took a boat across Lake Como to a town called Tremezzo, where I had dinner reservations. I stepped off the boat and realized ... I had no idea where to go next.

I spent a minute or two looking for someone who spoke English—to no avail.

So, I walked into a store and communicated with the store operator, who also, unsurprisingly, only spoke Italian. With language no longer an option for communication, we had to resort to hand gestures, even drawings on a piece of paper (we did laugh at how ridiculous we must have looked). Instead of asking me if I was driving, he put his hands on an imaginary steering wheel.

I shook my head “no.” He then asked me if I was walking by pointing his fingers downward and moving two fingers back and forth (you know, the old “walking” gesture). When I nodded “yes,” his eyes got very large. I found out why a little later, as I went on a small hike up a very steep path to get to the restaurant. While we never spoke a word in each other’s language, he helped navigate me to the restaurant.

It was a memory I’ll never forget and what I remember most is how easy communication can be when both parties are interested in communicating properly.

Anyone in a leadership position has certainly felt the frustration when you tell someone what you want done and then, later on, find that your directions weren’t followed very well. If only I had a nickel for every time I, or another leader I know, gave directions that weren’t followed.

More often than not, the initial reaction of the leader is to think the person he or she gave directions to just didn’t listen.

Here’s the thing: most people listen quite well when they know the importance of what they are listening to.

70 fenderbender.com | January 2019

It is very common for leaders in our industry to give directions to their team.

More experienced techs give directions to new techs. Parts manager gives directions to our vendors. It is more than a daily occurrence in our industry.

But because it is something that happens so often, I believe it makes it more difficult to listen well. When I asked for directions in Italy, we both knew that it was unlikely we would ever see each other again. We knew our “discussion” was a one-time event. We have to think and act differently with people we communicate with five days per week or more.

It’s no different than a married couple, really. In the beginning of a marriage, communication is so easy because it’s new and there is usually more effort given to the dialogue.

As couples grow together, they sometimes find that communication becomes more difficult. “What do you mean you didn’t remember Aunt Betty is coming over today?” is something we can easily expect to hear from a long-time married couple.

In the same way, when we communicate with people on our team on a daily basis, we must change the way we approach communication.

We can’t just assume that, because we said something, which in our minds sounded exactly like we wanted it to, that it will be followed exactly how we expect. And when it doesn’t go that way, the first person we should blame is actually ourselves.

The good news is that there are plenty

of ways we can make things easier. First, work on a team vocabulary. We all know that different manufacturers can call the same part lots of different names. Is it a splash shield or fender liner?

A knuckle or a spindle? When an entire team uses the same language, it makes communication easier.

Think of a football QB who calls an audible. If his teammates didn’t use the same terminology, the play would have very little chance of success.

It also helps after giving instructions to someone to get them to repeat it back to you so you can verify what they heard is indeed what you said.

Sometimes our egos can get in the way of doing this, yet it is an easy way to make sure two people are on the same page (and avoid the old saying about what happens when you assume…).

Just because two professionals are speaking about something they are both knowledgeable about doesn’t mean that communication is easy. It takes a great effort from both parties to make sure the communication goes smoothly.

I will end with one of my all-time favorite sentences: “I never said he stole the money.” Repeat the sentence seven times, but each time emphasize a different word.

When you change the word you emphasize, you completely change the meaning of the sentence. Communication is vital to a successful team. Make sure you take the simple steps to verify all the players are on the same page.

JASON BOGGS is the owner of Boggs Auto Collision Rebuilders in Woodbury, N.J. He has attended the Disney Institute and Discover Leadership, and has studied lean manufacturing processes.

E M A I L : j a s o n @b o g g s au t o .c o m A R C H I V E : f e n d e r b e n d e r.c o m / b o g g s

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