BYOB-Be Your Own Boss
This weeks tip goes hand in hand with last weeks tip. In the automotive industry as a flat rate technician, you have to treat your self as being self employed. I know this may sound strange because most technicians work for another shop. But if you start looking at your career that way, you will become so far a head of the game it will be unreal. As a flat rate technician you have way more control over your paycheck than you could ever imagine. If you start going over and above the average technician in your shop or in your area, you will start building your own clientele. There are several ways to go about this, but here are the top 5 excellent examples of what you can do to go over and above.
1-Start getting as much training as you can possibly get, this not only grows your knowledge but it also looks good on paper. Display your training and certifications with pride, so that way when a customer sees what you have accomplished they are much more likely to ask for you.
2- Take your time and try to limit the amount of come backs you have. I know from first hand experience that no matter what you do, you will have come backs. It is just the nature of the beast. But if you take your time and properly diagnose and repair the vehicle you will limit the amount. Not only will this allow you to have more time working on paying customers and less time working on free come backs. But this will also help build your reputation as that got to guy who “always does the best with my vehicle”.
3- Leave the customers car in better condition than what it came in as. For this I don’t just mean from your repairs. When I was a flat rate technician after each repair that I did under the hood, I would always do a quick spray with degreaser and a quick spray off the the water hose(or pressure washer, which ever I had at the time). Because sure enough when a customer picks their vehicle up after a repair 90% will pop the hood to look (even when they don’t know what they’re looking at), and if the under hood area is still filthy they will think to themselves “did they even work on this”. Or if I put finger smudges on windows I would clean that off. Anything I could do that would make the customer feel they received top notch service.
4- Have business cards made with your name, your info and your shops info (make sure you have the shop you work at’s info so they don’t feel like you’re trying to steal business from them). Once you have these business cards made, put them in every vehicle that you work on. Doesn’t matter if it’s a low tire light or the biggest gravy ticket you have ever had. Doing this lets the customer know who you are, and who performed the services on their vehicle. This tip is a double edge sword though. Because if this is the only tip you decide to do, the customer now knows who you are, when they return with your come back. But if you gave this customer top notch service they will know who they want to return and ask for.
5- Tip 5 is probably going to be a lot harder for some than it will be for others. But this is probably one of the most important when you are trying to BYOB. This tip is about you, and how you present your self and how you speak to customers. Imagine the customer walks up to two different technicians at the same shop. One is neat and clean with out 6 years of dirt under their finger nails and someone who is well spoken. The other technician looks like he hasn’t taken a bath in 2 weeks same uniform for the past month and dropping the F bomb in front of the customer every other word. Who do you think the customer would choose to perform services on their vehicle? The dirty technician could be the best technician in the shop and the clean one well spoken one could of been the lube tech that just left his 5th drain plug out on the Tesla oil change. The customer doesn’t know that, the customer is going off of their first impressions. So go to work clean everyday, start working on how you speak and present your self in front of customers, then you will be amazed at how much return customers you will start receiving.
These were just 5 quick tips to help you BYOB on your current job, because as technicians that what we really are. And always remember DO YOU EVEN DIAG BRO?
