Did You Know, May 12th 2021

Proper Battery Support when scanning and diagnosing vehicles is tremendously important. A regular battery charger simply does not cut it, you need a professional grade Power Supply with Battery Support, Check out this article from AsTech 

In Saskatoon Sutherland Automotive has the Schumacher INC100 available – this is the one Mike Anderson recommends, you can contact darrylt@sutherlandautomotive.com for the details.

Marketing your business starts with providing a great customer experience, people that come to your shop expect competency. Once you’ve got that area of your business locked in it is a great time to start developing a Marketing Plan. Check out this article in Fender Bender magazine – https://www.fenderbender.com/articles/10693-four-phases-of-a-long-term-marketing-plan?utm_campaign=10MMCD210430002&utm_medium=email&utm_source=newsletter&oly_enc_id=5134E7737701H2J

I can relate to the shop in the article because when I took over Parr Auto Body it was doing less than $700,000 a year in sales. 

For those of you that are interested in the social media aspect of marketing I have reached out to my friend Song Rattananvong to give a short presentation on what body shops can do to promote their business online. We have scheduled a ZOOM meeting for Wednesday May 19th at 4 pm to share his insights.Put the date in your calendar then copy and paste this link: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/87664226714?pwd=NnExQUtxRDF0RXhEQ25wR3JkaFFXZz09 

Aftermarket Parts Issues

I have received a couple of complaints from shops regarding the fact that Mitchell is sometimes getting non CAPA Certified parts into its MAPP program. I’m not sure if it is their issue, SGI’s issue or the supplier’s issue but you need to be aware that only CAPA Certified or Diamond Quality parts are allowed to be used on SGI claims.

It could be a simple fix but spend some time to check that you are ordering the correct part for your insurance claims.

Tom Julius from Car-Part Pro sent me the following note:With the SGI announcement of migrating to Mitchell Cloud Estimating and wanted to let know that Car-Part Pro is also integrated with the Mitchell Connect/Cloud Estimating solution.

 Enabling solution access is very easy and we can be enabled under settings/part providers which I have attached reference guide for your review. All is needed is to authenticate your Car-Part Pro account with Mitchell Cloud Estimating which only takes a couple minutes.

 Although 85 % of workflow is the same as Mitchell Estimating I will be providing a Workflow Reference Guide for MCE in May.

 If there are any questions on activating the Car-Part Pro accounts the users can send email at sgisupport@car-part.com or tomj@car-part.com 

Don’t forget that as a SAAR member you can get 25% off an adasthink subscription for 2 years by using the code SAAR25 at https://adasthink.com/ If you already have a subscription contact Nick Dominato at nick@marketing.ca and he will apply the discount retroactively. 

Donald Cooper is a legendary management consultant and SAAr has had the privilege of hosting him early in 2020. He continues to put out a management blog where he freely share information and insights. His May 5th Blog even had a free download that I can share with you:

I’ve just redone one of my most helpful Biz Tools #B-9…’Define yourself by how you help!’.  Most businesses define themselves by what they sell…and it’s a big mistake.  Defining yourself by how you help your target customers can create hundreds of ideas on how to differentiate yourself, add value, increase sales and grow your bottom line.  To access this Biz Tool, no charge, Click Here.   If you’d like help in implementing this transformational process, I’m easy to find at donald@donaldcooper.com.