Proudly serving the industry for which it was named for more than 50 years, Outdoor Power Equipment provides dealers who sell and service outdoor power equipment with valuable information to succeed in a competitive market.
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28 DECEMBER 2016 OUTDOOR POWER EQUIPMENT www.outdoorpowerequipment.com COVER STORY | Best Practices The service department Results from the survey: ■ 53 percent of respondents pay less than $19 per hour to their best technicians. ■ 59 percent of respondents charge less than $70 for their shop labor rate. ■ 92 percent of respondents say there is a shortage of qualifi ed service technicians for the OPE industry. What do these results tell us? Number one: Dealers can't fi nd good service technicians. Number two: The majority of dealers charge less than $70 an hour. Number 3: Dealers pay their best technicians $19 or less per hour. The biggest takeaway from these results is that you should raise your shop labor rate. Call your local car dealership and ask what it charges for its shop labor rate. The car dealership will probably tell you $100 or more per hour. Your goal is to increase your hourly shop labor rate to within $10-$15 of the car dealership's shop labor rate. You might need to gradually increase it, but when March hits, make sure that you're bumping up your labor rate by $5-$10 per hour if there is a big difference, or incrementally if it is a small difference. If you have a shop labor rate of $90 per hour, then there is room to pay your best technicians more. As a goal, I would suggest paying your best service technicians 30 percent of your shop labor rate. I favor paying a base salary plus commission as the effi ciency of your technician increases. In the $90 example, that would mean ■ BY JEFF SHEETS As the New Year approaches, now is a natural time both personally and professionally to look forward and see where you want to be in the future. I think of resolutions as more personal, things such as losing weight or physical exercise. I know that a lot people create these resolutions, and much like most lists that we write, they are lost or forgotten when the grind of the year starts. We need to move past resolutions and spring into action by resolving or re-solving those things that we know need to be fi xed. For this article, I decided to take a close look at the results of Outdoor Power Equipment's 2016 Dealer Survey that were published in October 2016 OPE, highlight some areas where dealers want and need to improve, and offer some possible solutions. I mentioned resolving or re-solving in the title of this article, but both terms need to be addressed. The defi nition of resolving is "settle or fi nd a solution to a problem, dispute or contentious matter." You are not just formulating a list, but taking action. Sometimes, you may have tried to solve a problem, but it didn't work, hence the word re-solving in the title. You should never give up on trying to make your business better. Sometimes, when things don't work out, you may give up or make modest attempts when what you need to do is come up with a new plan. Here are a couple of areas from the survey that show some good room for improvement. IMAGES ©ISTOCKPHOTO.COM With winter here and New Year near, time to move from making resolutions to resolving or re-solving problems