Recyclers: Two Tips on How to Manage Your Ever Evolving Business Relationships.

2022-04-27T09:13:32-04:00May 3rd, 2022|

It’s April 2022, my distributor’s representative has changed again. This is the fourth time in four years. One of my main suppliers has been a business partner for the last twenty years. He is retiring and will let his son take over the business. I [...]

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5 Tips to Improve Sales at Your Collision Shop

2022-04-04T08:35:18-04:00April 12th, 2022|

Charles absolutely wanted me to share some sales tips for collision shops with you. Our observations in the field indicate that sales are often neglected in Canadian body shops. Charles has visited over 700 shops and we come to the same conclusion. In this article, [...]

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Auto Damage Appraisal: Conversation with Patrick Piché and Charles Aubry

2022-03-23T15:48:37-04:00March 24th, 2022|

As part of our conversation about the auto parts shortage that has plagued the market since 2021, Charles Aubry, Patrick Piché and I also discussed auto estimation and how valuable it is. This article highlights my interview with Patrick Piché from Akzonobel. Let’s first recall [...]

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Work in Progress at the Shop: Consequences of Too High a Load.

2021-12-17T17:35:42-04:00January 18th, 2022|

Whenever they can, Charles Aubry and his wife watch the show My 600 Lb Life. While reflecting on the collision shop industry, Charles draws a parallel between the drama around the show’s subjects and shops that maintain excessive work-in-progress (WIP) loads. He calls it “My life [...]

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Performance Rule #7 for Collision Shop Managers: Pushing Your Limits

2021-11-30T11:38:52-04:00November 30th, 2021|

In the last few articles, we have learned and unravelled six of our seven performance rules for optimizing capacity at collision shops. In summary, a good communication with the team, a sound methodology and a strong capacity planning and analysis tool are the three main [...]

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Performance Rule #6 for Collision Shop Managers: Receive and Deliver Vehicles Every Day.

2021-11-05T12:03:09-04:00November 16th, 2021|

We often hear the usual: “I get all my vehicles to repair on Mondays and I deliver them (heaven willing) on Fridays. I've been doing this for 20 years, and it works.” Why change a winning formula? What is the point of receiving and delivering [...]

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Performance Rule #5 for Collision Shop Managers: Choosing the best time for repairs.

2021-10-22T11:56:02-04:00October 22nd, 2021|

A repair appointment is given to a customer. This simple act happens a thousand times a day across Canada. What the customer doesn’t see is the thinking behind deciding on the repair start date. Ideally, it would be the date when the customer drops off [...]

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Performance Rule #4 for Collision Shop Managers: Don’t Overload the Workshop.

2021-09-03T07:59:35-04:00September 14th, 2021|

Not overloading a workshop seems like a simple piece of advice. However, this is one of the collision shop managers’ most common weaknesses. This was true before COVID-19, and even more so as work returns. The workshops have been hungry, their pantry is empty, and [...]

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Performance Rule #3 for Collision Shop Manager: Maintain and Analyze.

2021-07-28T09:15:57-04:00August 10th, 2021|

With the first two rules for making your body shop successful, you learned to set goals for your team and to communicate them to your team. Now the next crucial rule is to monitor and analyze goal achievement. Doing this properly is a matter of [...]

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