Swiss wisdom
Everything I learned about the car business, I learned from the Swiss I learned a lot living and working in Switzerland. I remember my first visit for a business meeting. I was waiting for a colleague outside the hotel when I …
Author: Wolfgang Koehler
The importance of work order review
Work orders aren’t paperwork — they’re profit, protection, and a powerful management tool hiding in plain sight When I was a service manager, there was never a time you could walk into my office and not see a stack of work …
How to boost hours per RO
Your service advisors can sell more service and keep customers happy Hours per RO, simply put, is the total labour hours sold divided by the number of work orders written in the same period. For example: if we wrote 927 …
The future is in the past
Your service advisors play a key role in keeping your business successful. I believe that the service advisor has the most important job in the dealership. If you think about the relationship between the service advisor and the customer, …
The LinkedIn advantage
Using social media well can help attract and retain key talent I always tell managers that they are always in HR mode. I tell them how they should always be thinking about how to grow their team and develop existing …
Are you in the tire business?
Based on our observations most dealerships are missing out on opportunities for tire and alignment sales When we ask general managers or dealer principals: “Are you in the tire business?” 99 per cent of the time the answer is yes. Once …
With leadership comes incredible responsibility
A reflection on leaders that have truly made a lasting impact I was recently on vacation with my wife in Europe and we decided to stop in Zug, Switzerland where we used to live for a year. We wanted to …
Women techs face real hurdles: Part 2 of 2
Canadian auto dealer columnist Wolfgang Koehler shares what female techs told him about what it’s like being a woman in our industry. We can do better. In the previous issue, I wrote about a personal account of a female service technician …
Women techs face real hurdles: Part 1 of 2
Canadian auto dealer columnist Wolfgang Koehler shares what female techs tell him about what it’s like working in our industry. We can do better. It is sad to think that gender bias is still going on as we enter 2025. …
Planning to fail
Planning is considered the single most important element of the administrative process. The higher up the ladder you are the more the involvement and time devoted to planning. If it is so important why are so few service managers …
Tackling the employee engagement crisis
We are losing too many employees — and some fixes won’t cost you any money To quote Jack Nicholson from the movie A Few Good Men: “You can’t handle the truth!” The truth is — we are in a crisis. I …
