By Tom Ham. Is your dumpster an eyesore at your shop? Are you using email correspondence to its fullest potential? What does your Customer Area look like? Check out the latest Auto Shop Monthly Management Tips from the Automotive Management Network to get inside secrets on managing your shop and increasing your bottom line.

By George Witt. There is sure a lot of talk about this subject. I hope this helps give you a strategy to deal with "the competition". I am surprised and disappointed that so few of us truly understand the business we are in and who our target market really is. I hope that none of you really believe that those people laying on their backs in the parts store parking lots all across this great country of ours are really any kind of prospect for our repair businesses. Good Heavens.

By Tom Ham. What have you done about lost customers? Have you looked extensively at your website lately? Do you have any plans for your sign? Check out the latest Auto Shop Monthly Management Tips from the Automotive Management Network to get inside secrets on managing your shop and increasing your bottom line.

If referrals are number one, then why do so few shop owners put much effort into getting more of them? Do you really want to know what your customers are thinking? Do you always make a point of communicating a sincere thank you to anyone picking up their car? Check out the latest Auto Shop Monthly Management Tips from the Automotive Management Network to get inside secrets on managing your shop and increasing your bottom line.

A little while back I wrote an article concerning key numbers for auto service shops. The numbers covered at that time included total spending, total gross profit, potential work found per car, number of oil changes, number of new customers and tech vs. non-tech ratio. I was recently asked to cover some additional key numbers, so here we go!

By Mitch Schneider. Intermittent automotive service problems are one of the few things capable of terrifying and paralyzing folks on both sides of the service counter. Everyone is terrified of something. It’s a fact of life. Probe deep enough, look hard enough and you will find a phobia that is if not paralyzing, then, at the least, debilitating. If that fear isn’t enough to inhibit your ability to act, I’ll bet it is significant enough to ensure that at least some of your actions fall out of the realm of what most of us might consider “normal” — whatever normal means.