I have written about leadership before, but I find it a worthwhile subject to bring up again. I find that many great service or parts advisors get promoted and suddenly become the “manager.” What exactly does that mean? I get …
Accurate technician punching improves productivity tracking, warranty recovery, profitability and repair-order accountability A service manager should make reviewing completed work orders before they are filed part of their daily routine. The information managers can uncover by doing this is invaluable, …
Dealerships are absorbing the cost and the strain of fixing problems they did not create I have tremendous respect for all the dealer principals and general managers in Canada, and the challenges they face every day. The car business has …
A practical exercise for dealership leaders to identify wasted time, improve processes, and better support technicians “Gemba” is a Japanese term used in Lean processes. It means “go to where the action is.” In a vehicle manufacturing plant, a CEO …
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 …
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 …
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 …
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, …
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 …
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 …
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 …
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 …
