Building a Winning Team
Are the people who help you run your shop first-string or just benchwarmers? Choosing trustworthy and hard-working managers can make or break your shop’s progress and success. Does your team have what it takes to win in the competitive game of collision repair?
Cool Route for Creating Profits: A/C Repairs
Repairing air conditioning systems as a profit center can be quite rewarding — provided you’re quite knowledgeable when it comes to systems, environmental concerns and government regulations. Otherwise, you may be cooling your heels in an empty shop.
Consent Decree: Enforceable or Forgetable?
In 1963, 265 insurers signed a Consent Decree drafted by the U.S. Justice Department and Attorney General Robert Kennedy. By signing, they agreed to abide by the Decree’s terms: no more demanding discounts, setting hourly rates, boycotting repair shops and using specific appraisers. It’s still a binding agreement today … but will it ever be enforced?
DOIs: Help, Hurt or Hinder?
"Why don’t body shops have any rights with their state Department of Insurance?" — Walter Danalevich, owner, Santa Barbara Auto Refinishing, Santa Barbara, Calif. Over the years, collision repairers across America have looked to state insurance departments for help and assistance in dealing with unprofessional and unethical insurance company practices. The results have been disappointing
Behind the Paint: History!
Mistakes, World War II, foreign invasion and guinea pigs all played a part in the history of automotive paint. Who said history had to be boring?
Ditch Your One-Dimensional Ways
Only selling collision repair service these days? Diversification is the answer
to getting your profits back and making your business worth owning.
In SOPs We Trust
Standard operating procedures could offer a body shop owner more freedom and the ability to attract new insurance business by creating ‘verifiable’ trust.
Analyzing “McDonald” izing
The concepts that made McDonald’s arguably the most successful small business in the world can help propel your collision business to the next level of success.
Life in the Fast Lane
The latest industry buzzwords — speed lanes, cycle times, process efficiency — all focus on repairing cars faster. Fast is hot; slow is not. As we ring in the new millennium, we may also be ringing in the era of rapid repairs.
Community Spirit: Body Shops Giving Back to the Community
From sponsoring a little league team to repairing vans for non-profit agencies to collecting food for the hungry, body shops across the country are giving back to their communities — and getting business in return.