Kevin Eadie

I will be taking off early this afternoon to support the Kevin Eadie Foundation www.helpkevin.org  with assistance of the Peninsula Pilots http://peninsulapilots.com/ as we work together tonight to present Kevin Eadie Night at War Memorial Stadium at 6:30pm.  The Peninsula Pilots are donating all game proceeds as a fund-raising event for the Neimann-Pick Disease Foundation www.nnpdf.org .    Come out and join us as we enjoy great Kevin stories, baseball and fireworks.  

Managing Decisions

What happens to a decision once you make it?  Is it followed, are there checks and balances, is there subordinate involvement, is it managed?  If not many of your decisions might be short lived.  Any decision should have a support system behind it and it should be managed.  The simpliest way to ensure your decision lives is to gain support of those having to implement or are subject to your decision.  Empowering those around you to take your decision and create a process eases your burden and also guarantees it's success.  People will enjoy doing a task they had involvement in creating and ensure it is followed.  A decision without management is just an idea!

Value of I-CAR

I-CAR has taken a positive step forward with the new role based training.  Gone are the days when an estimator could take a course in detailing or a structural technician could take a course in sanding and buffing to achieve Platinum or Gold recognition.  There are now six roles, Estimator, Steel Structural, Aluminum Structural, Non-Structural, Electrical/Mechanical and Refinish with each role having three PROLevels.  It is very important to identify your role as a Collision Repair Professional, review your I-CAR Training Planner to determine which courses you have taken carried over, and identify the courses you need to become certified.

If you have not declared a role Today is the day to declare it.  I-CAR is being somewhat lenient in the transition and have given allowances for previous Platinum and Gold certifications.  Follow this link to review the new Professional Development Program http://www.i-car.com/html_pages/recognition/professional_dev_program.shtml

Management System Survey

If you are thinking about a management system or want to see where your current system stacks up you need to read this article from AutoInc.org http://www.linkedin.com/news?viewArticle=&articleID=648563237&gid=3992993&type=member&item=62825907&articleURL=http%3A%2F%2FAutoInc%2Eorg&urlhash=kXUJ&goback=%2Egde_3992993_member_62825907 The article has great questions you can ask yourself to qualify your management systems needs.  If you already have a management system I would encourage you to read the survey on your system and see if you are using all the systems capabilities.  I am willing to bet you will find that you are not using all the capabilities of your system and it is probably doing things for you that you did not know.

Using SCRS Guide to Complete Repair Planning

As I visit shops I have been encouraging people to download SCRS's Guide to Complete Repair Planning http://viewer.zmags.com/publication/391c3166#/391c3166/1 and save it on their desktop.  While I was at Suttle Auto Body http://www.suttlemotors.net/CollisionShop I showed them the best way to use the guide is to print out the page with the section of the vehicle you are writing a damage appraisal on and use it as a checklist.  Using this checklist combined with the P-Pages of your estimating system you should be able to create a very accurate damage appraisal.

Front Office Harmony

I was walking out of a restaurant after eating lunch and ran into a dealership general manager who asked me if I had a minute to talk.  I said I did and while he ate lunch we talked and he asked me to help him find a new manager for his collision center.  Told him it wasn't really that easy, there just aren't many good shop managers looking for work and it might be better to try and fix what you have.  He shrugged and said he had tried everything but it seem like the shop was in a downhill spiral.  I asked him if he minded if I went by and looked around?  He said that would be fine and he would catch up with me there after he ate.  I went by and saw he had a small front office that consisted of the shop manager and a receptionist.  As we were talking a tech came in and asked the manager a question and the receptionist answered it.  So I continued to watch the interaction in the office, talked with the manager and during the conversation the receptionist interupted on several occasions to put her two cents in.  I then walked out to the shop and talked to the techs and asked how often the receptionist answers for the manager, "All the time was the answer".  It was clear to me that changing the manager would not solve the problem. The GM came back. I talked with him and said I thought the issue with the shop was in the front office.  That the disharmony between the manager and the receptionist was whittling away at the effective management of the shop.  I offered a solution of developing job descriptions for each of the two positions and creating a process to promote focus on the specific tasks of each job descriptions.  I guess the reason I am relaying this is sometimes what we think is the problem really isn't the true issue.  In this picture changing the manager probably would not have given the GM the solution he was looking for, and for the price of an average collision repair a consultant can look at the whole picture and really see what is happening.  An outside view will look past the trees of the forest your are sitting in, find what is causing the decay much faster and more effectively and create solutions that will last. 

Before you make any changes, call a consultant!

Selling to the Collision Customer

There are a lot of discussions on various blogs about estimating, practices used and the tools we should be using to create a complete damage appraisal.  It all gets a little mind-boggling reading all the theories and mindsets surrounding whether you should write an estimate or “grab the keys” and convince the customer you need to accomplish a “blueprint” to find the true cost.  I agree that the most effective way to determine the damage on a vehicle is to tear the vehicle down until you find the last damaged part and write a complete damage appraisal, but are collision customers ready for that process.  We are at a time where a change needs to be made in how we talk to collision customers; it needs to be an education process to help them make the decision to leave the vehicle with the shop without an estimate.  With today’s vehicle design an estimate does not do either the shop or the customer justice in regards to determining what is required to repair the vehicle.  The vehicles are too complex, exterior body panels are designed to absorb energy and at times spring back after impact hiding expensive sub-structure damage.  To learn more about communicating with the collision customer I offer “Selling to the Collision Customer” as part of my lunch and learn series.  Contact me for scheduling information and other classes in the series.