December 2020

DECEMBER/JANUARY 2021 AFTERMARKET 21 just in time. If you’re paying roughly £7.50 per square foot in rent per year for your unit and storing a car with a footprint of 90 square feet (15 feet by 6 feet), the cost of storing that car in your unit for one year instead of using that space for something else making you money is £675. If you can move that car off your site (sell it, fix it and use it, or scrap it) for less than it costs to store, it’s worth it. Overbooking If you’re good at what you do, customers will be pushing their cars onto you. If you struggle to say no, your garage will quickly become full. This is one of the most common causes of an overflowing garage. Customers are waiting for you to work on their cars so they can drive them proudly. In the meantime, they don’t want to look at them, so they’d rather just hand it off to you. While you see that your garage is comfortably booked, you might be tempted to get the car in as quickly as Driven Performance Advisors provides finance and operations expertise to owners of independent garages. The business was founded by Arun Coumar possible so the customer doesn’t go to your competition. Once the car is in, the customer is ok to leave the car with you for a while. Win-win, right? Overbooking not only leads to a full garage. It shows disorganisation, poor planning, and a lack of confidence in your value. If you are delivering high value and customers are eager for you to take their car, they can wait and they will wait. A waiting list signifies high quality and high demand. If you plan your working days properly, taking the patient approach will not cause idle time. Job delays You planned out your bookings meticulously, you didn’t overbook, your waiting list is well-managed, and you have acted on all the dead cars sitting in the back corner. There are still situations where your garage can get too full. When a supplier is on back order, one of your techs calls in sick, or there’s some unforeseen damage on a car, it can become impossible to meet your deadline. If you don’t have a contingency plan in place, your upcoming bookings will get dropped off and the backlog will begin to fill your space. You need to have a plan in place for when jobs get delayed. Here is a generic example plan: Establish a new deadline as quickly as possible. Work with suppliers, make sure your team is healthy, and estimate how long the damage will take to fix Communicate with your future bookings. If you need to push back by a day or two, let them know. Seeing as they’ve already booked, they’re likely ok with a slight adjustment Switch work around if needed. If a supplier can’t get you a part for a month, ask for a refund and find an alternative supplier. If there are no alternatives, can the customer take the car as-is? If the car won’t drive away legally and safely without the missing part, you can store that car. In that situation, shift your bookings forward. Don’t forget to plan time to complete the stored car when the part arrives. Conclusions It’s possible we’ve let things get away from us. As car enthusiasts, “too many cars” isn’t necessarily a bad problem to have. At the end of the day, however, you’re running a business. Having too many cars on site is a costly issue that can be a challenge to solve. Create strategies to reduce the number of cars on site and maintain that lowered level. The space unlocks mental capacity, physical capacity, and financial potential to act with more discipline, professionalism, and quality. The business runs smoother and our clients enjoy higher sales and profits. Free your space, free your garage. drivenperformanceadvisors.com