[J. Larry Bloodworth]

In my quest to create a compelling business story, I ran across the book, Storybrand by Donald Miller.  I couldn’t put the book down.  It was that good.  I also found quite of few of his informative videos on YouTube on his Storybrand channel. He is also on Dave Ramsey’s EntreLeadership channel.

Brian & Kim Walker, owners of 5 Stones Media and contributors to this site, are Storybrand-certified guides.  If you read this, check out their other posts.  Also, check out their freebie 72-page The Ultimate Guide to Auto Repair Shop Marketing. on their website.

Bottom line is this:  Although I have taken a lot from all the information I’ve run across concerning the storied Elevator Pitch, the Storybrand book and videos have clarified how to tie the whole marketing package together better than any other single source.  Additionally, it shows how all the pieces of the marketing puzzle fit together and their relationships.  I suggest you check it out for yourself.

[J. Larry Bloodworth]

Adam,

I agree with Tom.  A good management coach is worth their weight in gold.  They will be able to help diagnose and fix your problem(s) better, simply because they will be armed with the information concerning your situation.

Generalizations are tough to implement.  I can’t tell you what to do, but I can tell you what works for me in our shop.

We are/were a transmission specialty shop that had big-ticket jobs due to the nature of the business.  Our ARO was slightly over $1.700 and our MARO was almost $3.500.  We discouraged leaks, noises, & vibration type repairs because of the time/profit reward wasn’t there for us.  We did do transmission services simply because we’re expected to, although we only made a minimal profit.  Sort of like going into a Mexican restaurant where everybody expects free salsa & chips.

We set the shop up with enough techs, equipment, & room to get the jobs in and out in a timely manner.  Production was the name of the game.  However, that’s easier said than done.  I’m sure by now your aware of hiring more techs to get the work out and soon as you get caught up, you start to have techs standing around not making money.  This brings me to my 3rd and final point.

A shop owner’s primary job should be marketing.  Generating leads, converting leads into appointments, and closing appointments into sales.  And all that starts by making the phone ring off the hook. *  That’s the basic job description of a successful shop owner.  Some shops are successful enough to delegate some of these duties, but you’re probably not.  You’re suffering from what I affectionately call “production constipation”.

To get help with all of this, and more, contact Bob Cooper’s office at Elite Worldwide in San Diego and his office will hook you up with one of their business coaches. https://www.eliteworldwide.com/

I’ve used Elite multiple times, have purchased many of their products and they were worth every penny.  I’m not saying another business coach won’t help you.  I’m just telling you what worked for me and perhaps you can apply it to your individual situation.  Good Luck!

*See http://bit.ly/2CYouE7

[J. Larry Bloodworth]

Here’s a 14-minute Vimeo presentation by Don Miller, author of StoryBrand, that will help you clarify your Elevator Pitch.  In this video, he narrows it down to a 1-liner.

https://player.vimeo.com/video/211521127

Here’s my notes from the video:

A one-liner is a summary of your story.Be specific.Make sure it’s a pain point.Get it down to a sound bite.Make it feel like a new idea.Make it understandableMake it brief.Make it a happy ending to your story.Make it the “controlling idea” of your business.Make it something they actually want.

Identify your customer’s problem.Explain your plan to help them.Describe a successful ending to the story.

You memorize it by saying it hundreds of times.

Memorize it and be able to repeat it over and over.

Teach it to your entire team.

Open you keynote with this statement.

Use it in as much marketing collateral as possible.

For the first 3 chapters of Don Miller’s book, StoryBrand, for free, text the word “Storybrand”  (one word, no spaces) to 33444  Put it on a notecard and put it in your top shirt pocket and pull it out and read it often to remember it.

[J. Larry Bloodworth]

Could you please recommend a company to use for pay per click my email is billy@billycraven.com we are seeing the results that you are receiving.

Thanks,

Billy Craven

Shores Automotive

561-391-0260
==============================================================

Billy, I sent the following directly to your Email address.  The following is for others that may want to contact me as you did.

==============================================================

You were probably expecting a sales pitch, right? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯  I hate to disappoint but I have nothing to sell except free information on how I did it.  I’m paying it forward for all the people who helped me along the way to get me to where I am today.  

I didn’t use any company for PPC advertising.  I did it all myself.  I learned how to do it from subscribing to the Google Ads blog and YouTube channel, referring to their support site, and you can too.  For me, it was a very profitable activity to learn and manage my own PPC account.  I did use Convirza for call tracking to measure my PPC effectiveness.  

Because we had a manager in place, I also used Convirza’s conversation analytics product as well, which scores calls based on the conversation because I didn’t have time to personally listen in to every call to find out if he was handling inbound calls correctly.  

PPC companies know the mechanics PPC advertising but they don’t know the automotive business.  People who know the automotive business don’t know PPC.  Hence the problem.  I found myself to save thousands by doing it myself.  It was well worth my time to learn on my own.

However, if you don’t want to do it yourself, I have limited experience with only 1 company, for just a few months, and it was about a 5 on a 0-10 scale.  That was ReachLocal.  You can also do a search for PPC companies.  I wish I could really recommend somebody, I really do, but can’t because of my very limited experience with them.  Here are the DIY resources I used to learn…

Google Ads YouTube channel

Google Ads Blog

Google Ads Tutorials/Support

 

[J. Larry Bloodworth]

It’s possible as well as desirable to design a mobile-first website that looks and works well on the desktop to.  Let me share a couple of technologies that make that possible.

With CSS3, flexboxes allow themselves to size to the screen automatically upon a media query asking the browser what size screen it has.  You can Google “flexbox” for a detailed explanation.

An even more exciting technology (at leas to me) is a website framework known as Bootstrap.  Bootstrap was developed by Twitter specifically for designing a mobile-first website by using a flex grid layout using 12 columns that can be grouped and resize themselves, depending on the screen size.  Technically, Bootstrap is the most popular HTML, CSS, and JS library in the world and is available for free at https://GetBootstrap.com  You can link to the libraries via a CDN if you’re into website design.

[J. Larry Bloodworth]

I’ve been taking comments and suggestions on my Elevator Pitch and I’m grateful for such great input.  Based on what I’ve been hearing, I edited my pitch slightly to make it more conversational and to answer the question, “What do you do for society?” or something similar.

=====================================================

We’re an online transmission repair shop catering to the unmet needs of 10-year old & newer vehicles. People need a choice for transmission repair on late model vehicles other than the dealer.   We help late model vehicle owners by being their online guide for a firm price on a transmission replacement before their vehicle comes into our shop.

Stats:
Paragraphs ……………………1

Sentences…………………….3

Words………………………….57

Characters…………………….344

Characters excl. spaces……..285

I’m sure the future holds more tweaks.  Can you describe what you do for society in 30 seconds?  It’s much harder than you think.

[J. Larry Bloodworth]

The vehicles are getting easier to diagnose and fix at the same rate of change as our customers are getting easier to diagnose & fix.

z

[J. Larry Bloodworth]

Prototype Help Wanted ad from FixedOps Journal is highlighted in the attached article.

[J. Larry Bloodworth]

In the attached article, one program is training inmates from the local jail to be automotive technicians.

If a person was a poor student in school, they will be a poor student in real life.  On the job, or not on the job, the outcome is usually the same.

[J. Larry Bloodworth]

Before you believe a customer is going to buy a new vehicle instead of fixing it, read this…

https://www.autonews.com/world-congress/affordability-tops-concerns-nadas-welch

[J. Larry Bloodworth]

This says it all.

 

[J. Larry Bloodworth]

I wanted to pull together some of my resource material for our Candy Jar route.  The primary function of our outsides salesperson is to keep the candy jars full.  The secondary function is to drive referral work.

Outside Sales (Candy Jar) Program

A few tips:

• Don’t put your shop’s name on the jar.
• Half the shops won’t keep the jar on the front counter for their customers.  They either keep it out in the shop or under the front counter.
• Quit delivering candy to shops after calling on them for a year with no referrals & forget about getting the candy jar back.
• Be consistent!  Don’t let the amount of business (or the lack thereof) determine your sales call frequency.  People will come to expect it.

The year we started the Candy Jar program, our business increased almost $300K.  I hope this helps others.

[J. Larry Bloodworth]

We have never offered any parts person a commission, although we have offered it to other shop’s service advisors.  We are a transmission & drivetrain specialty shop.  We don’t do GR, or as Aamco calls it, TCC for Total Car Care.

We give them 5% of the ticket total, before tax.  The shops that refer work our way are not in competition with us, nor are we in competition with them.  This is all a part of our outside sales program.  We affectionately call it our Candy Jar program.

Some shops, especially franchises, frown upon taking a commission and we don’t do it.  However, we do call them after a referral and ask them what they want on their pizza/sandwich/burger and we buy the whole shop lunch for a day.

More on the Candy Jar program in another post.

[J. Larry Bloodworth]

Watch out!

There’s a scam going on in the transmission industry where somebody calls a shop from out-of-town and wants a transmission rebuild.  -BUT- to get the vehicle to the shop, it has to be towed a significant distance.

The caller wants to pay for the entire transaction with a credit card, but needs $XXX back so that he can pay the tow truck driver who doesn’t accept CCs.  The unsuspecting shop takes the CC# over the phone and the sale goes through for say, $3,500.  It clears and then the shop owner is instructed to send $XXX to the caller via Western Union so he can pay the tow truck driver to get the vehicle on its’ way to the hungry shop.

The vehicle never arrives and the shop never hears from the caller again.  A week or two later, the shop is back-charged the full amount of the CC sale because the card has been reported as stolen.

I’d be very suspicious.

Another variation of this scam is when the caller is allegedly hearing-impaired and the call is through a TTD operator.   Here was the way I fought back.

First, I hit the card for the full $3,500 and never sent the caller any money through Western Union. (I say American Express by mistake in the video)  Then I called the FBI which referred me to the Secret Service.  Then, I made the following video.

How The TTD Operator Scam Worked (almost)  4:27

I ended up sitting on top of $3,500 for a couple of weeks before I was back-charged.  You can’t BS a BS’er, right? 🙂  Boo-Rah!

[J. Larry Bloodworth]

Great video.  Bob Cooper and his people are awesome.

I want to point out something that either happens, or may not happen, before the caller decides to pick up the phone.  Some refer to this as a sales funnel.

We have to remember that a shop website’s NUMBER ONE PURPOSE is to generate phone leads.  That’s it.  If a website doesn’t convince a visitor to pick up the phone and make a call, the right tonality or even the world’s best salesperson is of little use.

What’s your shop’s website #1 purpose?

 

[J. Larry Bloodworth]

When you say the average age DOWN, as in the average age is NEWER?

Insurance won’t buy you a new car unless you lost a new car.  If the vehicle was 5 years old, that’s all they’ll cover, the cost of a 5-year old vehicle.  If somebody wants to pay the difference and get a new vehicle, then that’s on them.

I’m a transmission guy.  I was born and raised in Houston and never left until the age of 33 when I moved to Utah.  I sure miss the flood (no pun) of business we would get following every hurricane.  I actually really looked forward to it.

But that was before ‘electronification’, too.

[J. Larry Bloodworth]

Wes,

What I’ve learned during the course of my career I have made a part of the SOP of my business.  What works for us is to target 10-year old and newer non-Euro vehicles.  I could extoll all the mechanical advantages of working on them, but won’t.  However, dead jobs and people with no money all but evaporate, and that’s the business reason we’ve been doing it for almost 20 years.

Higher AROs, fewer vehicles, everybody paid, & I made more money.  I figured that out when I worked in a dealership a long time ago.

[J. Larry Bloodworth]

Not being able to research a market before you go into business should have been his first clue. 🙂

Reminds me of the buggy whip story.

[J. Larry Bloodworth]

I did a search on the CR website on the term “haggling” and hit a treasure trove of articles like, “The Many Benefits of Online Haggling When Buying Electronics”  The article said:

>”In a Consumer Reports survey on electronics retailers, 69 percent of the online shoppers who tried to negotiate a better deal on a TV, computer, or other electronic product received a price reduction. By contrast, only 59 percent of the in-store shoppers were successful. Online hagglers also received a larger discount on average ($94) than their in-store counterparts ($84).”<<

Other article titles,

• How to Save on Appliances, Sale or No Sale
• Does Car Buying Make Your Head Spin?
• Get the Most TV for Your Money
• How to Score a Mattress Deal Online
  Six simple steps to search, strategize, and schmooze your way to the lowest possible price
• 7 Ways to Score Brilliant Bargains at Garage Sales

Yes, the articles are seemingly endless when it comes to haggling.  It’s not just our industry.

[J. Larry Bloodworth]

Consumer Reports promotes haggling on just about everything.  That’s what they do.  Here’s an example on a recent rating on Telcom (internet/phone/TV) providers.

>”But It Is Possible to Bargain
One bright note is that our survey respondents were often successful when negotiating with their telecom bundle providers. While there are signs that many providers are cracking down on serial negotiators, our advice is that when your telecom company gets tough, bargain harder. Even if you can’t get a lower price, you may be able to negotiate for additional services, such as adding a premium channel free of charge or getting faster broadband.”<<

We’re not the only industry CR suggests to haggle.  It’s in their DNA.

[J. Larry Bloodworth]

UPDATE:

I just purchased (1/28/19) a file from the Texas DMV that has every registered car and light truck (up to 1-ton) in the state for $186 bucks.  I did it online and didn’t even have to make a phone call.  Try it for the town, county, or state that you’re in.  I promise it to be a real eye-opener.

Secondly, I have attached a file that has all of Texas’ demographics sorted by county and then the counties are sorted by zip code, according to household income.  Check out the info that’s available as each record is a mega-wide row.

[attachment file=52775]

[J. Larry Bloodworth]

Here’s what I’ve done with the last 2 shops I built, BEFORE, I opened up…

First, determine the market.  The best way I’ve found is to build a “vehiclegraphic profile”.  It’s like demographics, but it’s for vehicles.  Contact your state’s DMV and buy a list of every registered vehicle in every county you’ll draw customers from.  In most states, this is protected information.  However, if you ask them to delete the columns that have personally identifiable information such as name, street address, and plate number, they will be more than happy to sell you a list.  The last list I purchased for all of Salt Lake County cost me $400 bucks.

-THEN-

Import the database into something like MS Access or some other database program.  From there, you can create a query (or queries) to see how many vehicles of the type you want to target are actually in your area.  For us, we were targeting 10-year old and newer vehicles for a transmission shop.

Very few shops do this.  Don’t be surprised if you’re shocked at what you find.  I was.  For example, I learned that all European vehicle makes COMBINED only make up 6% of the registered vehicles in our county.  “That can’t be right.” I thought.  Maybe it’s just our area.  Well, it was right.

Moreover, upon further research, I also discovered that all European makes combined, nationwide, make up only 10% of the vehicle population.  I had many doubters, but it’s true.

What about VW specialty shops?  What about any European specialty shop?  Stop and let that sink in.  By default, they are targeting a very narrow segment.  If you do your research on electric vehicles this same way, you’ll find there’s simply not enough EVs on the road in any one market area to support a business specializing in EVs at the present time.  Later, yes.  Today, no.

[J. Larry Bloodworth]

Here’s something that may help shed some light on the subject…

https://www.autonews.com/commentary/mobility-driven-future-will-mean-more-sales

People are going to be buying electric vehicles because they will be much less of an investment, dollar-wise.  Forget saving the planet, it’s going to be money driven.  When a new F-350 SuperDuty Powerstroke is $100K, it makes a Rivian R1T truck look like the bargain it is. https://www.autonews.com/article/20181203/OEM03/181209964/a-throwback-and-an-upstart-meet-in-l-a

Moreover, like everything else electrical/technology driven, prices will come down over time to where they are really cheap; but not in the immediate future.  Not to mention, we’ll be replacing them every 4 years, not 15 years like they are now.  Read the article and you’ll see why.

J. Larry Bloodworth, CMAT

 

[J. Larry Bloodworth]

Here’s how to put a video on your website:
Bring up the video you want.
Right click on the video.
Out of the selections that come up, left click on [Copy embed code]
The HTML code is now copied to your clipboard and you can paste that into the page you wish to show the video.  Modify the [width=] and [height=] parameters to the number of pixels of the size you want the screen to be.  Otherwise, it may be a size that’s bigger than you want.
There are other options available and you can find those at:

https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/171780?hl=en

[J. Larry Bloodworth]

Here’s an easy “Fix or Trade?” calculator from our trade association.

http://www.atra.com/fixortrade

[J. Larry Bloodworth]

I was reading tip #237 Imprinted Advertising Items in the premium area and my vote is a “No”.  Here’s why:

I bought a few phone numbers ($5/mo. ea.) from our website phone tracking company and put them on specialty advertising various items, including business cards.  If ANYBODY calls us using one of those numbers, we not only know it was an imprinted item, but we know what it was.

Long story made short, after a year we received no phone calls on the imprinted items.  The only people that called me (3 calls in a year) from our business cards were the shops I stopped at soliciting transmission business. (That’s what we do.)

We don’t waste our money on specialty advertising anymore.

[J. Larry Bloodworth]

Every sale involves a story.  Period.

Here’s a copy and paste from Seth Godin’s blog:

=================================

Putting a value on a story
Walk through the diamond district in Manhattan and in the course of one block, at least a dozen men will stop you and ask if you’re hoping to sell a diamond ring.

A few blocks away, Tiffany will happily sell you a diamond ring.

Buy a $7,000 ring at Tiffany’s and walk over to one of these guys and you’ll be lucky to get $1,000 for your new ring.

That $6,000 is what you paid for the story.

It’s the cost of the box, the lighting, the salespeople, the architecture and most of all, the special feeling.

Do a blind taste test. In one glass, wine from a $10 bottle. In the other, wine from a $200 bottle. The untasted difference between the two is what you paid for the story.

The list goes on and on.

Just about everything we buy comes with a story included.

And yet, most creators, sellers, and marketers don’t invest enough, don’t take enough care, and don’t persist enough in making sure the story is worth what you paid for it.

==================================

‘Nuff said.

[J. Larry Bloodworth]

No, I haven’t.

[J. Larry Bloodworth]

To reinforce what Doug said, read this article from DoubleClick…

https://www.doubleclickbygoogle.com/articles/mobile-speed-matters/

[J. Larry Bloodworth]

I wrote our first employee manual 30 years ago and it was something like 20-25 pages.  Nobody read it.

Years later, I trimmed it down by about 10 or so pages.  Few read it.

Frustrated, I trimmed it even further and about half of the employees read it.

I read a book by Marcus Buckingham and it motivated me to get the employee manual down to 1 page.  Everybody read it.

You simply answer 4 questions.  You can fill it out for yourself.  Each business has their own answers.

1. Who do we serve?
2. What’s our core strength?
3. What’s our core score?
4. What action can we take today?

That’s it.  a 1-page manual.  It worked for me then, and it works for me now.