Short Q&A video (Chris Collins with Christian) about hiring technicians for a busy/seasonal period. A viewer asks about hiring extra technicians for peak season (snowbirds) but worries about layoffs in slow season. Christian advises keeping high-quality techs year-round, ‘flattening’ workload by creating higher-value, personalized visits in slow times, and repurposing slower periods for marketing and planning. Chris recommends staffing to roughly 85% of peak and using slow months for marketing and preparation. The episode includes a CTA with the show phone number (833-ASK-SDR) and promo for merch/offers.
Questions this video answers
833-ASK-SDR (spoken as “8333 Ask SDR” / “833-ASK-SDR”).
Chapters
Foreign.
To your Friday drive by. This is where we answer your questions. Say hello to everybody, Christian.
Hello everyone.
The number should you have a question need help with something is 8,333, ask STR. That's 8,333, ask STR. If we play your question on the show, we'll send you a fun swag bag of SDR and parts hold merch.
Might be some top dog merch coming. You never know.
It's that time of year maybe. Okay, let's go to this week's question.
We are headed into our busy season when all our snowbirds come down and I feel like I need a couple texts, but I'm worried about having to let them go when we slow down next spring. What would you guys suggest? Thanks a lot.
So I think it's a great discussion. Just the general, the general belief around seasonality. And I've had this discussion with a lot of clients and non clients altogether. And their thought is that if they staff for the busy, busy times, they're not going to have anything for the people to do during the slow times. And I found actually that there is a way to flatten. And maybe it's not a perfect flattening, but the first thing I would say is if you get a good tech, like never let them go, like grab onto them, chain them to the shop or whatever you have to do, but they should never leave. And the theory behind that is, and maybe this has to do with the story that you tell as a leader as well, but when.
When RO accounts are higher, typically what we see is, is that the RO value goes down. So when you're writing a lot of cars and everything like that, it's harder to get a lot of hours per hour because you kind of start cycling vehicles. But the time where you get the most out of a repair order is when you have a little bit between customers. So my thought is, is that they could set it up to where they're doing a little bit more of a customized and personalized visit with a customer during those slow times, which their RO values would go crazy and almost have the same amount of hours, even with less traffic. That's kind of what my thought is, is if you get the text, if you say you need two texts tomorrow for the people that are coming, then you just got to figure out a way to make it so that you need those texts during the slow times too. So what do you think?
I think you always want to staff to like 85% of what you of your peak and in the down times you can find stuff to do, you can market, you know, just plan ahead to the months, you know, that are, that are slower. I mean, it's always kind of funny how even when it's like winter and it's time for tires and tire season, how they don't pull that ahead or think about it, they just let it happen. And you want to kind of control that in a sense, too.
Well, think about if you were controlling it, especially tire season, right? Like the way that you stored tires, if you were controlling the way that the flow of the cars was coming in, how efficient could you make that whole thing? But it's so much like they're just, they're, they're the catcher just waiting for the ball to get past on plate, but it never occurs to them to be the pitcher.
Great question. Remember 8333 Ask SDR. 88333 Ask SDR. And we'll see you next time on Service Driver Revolution.
Thanks for watching this week's Drive By. I hope we gave you something to think about over the weekend. We're uploading new stuff every day, so make sure you subscribe and click the bell icon so you don't miss out. If you have a question you'd like us to answer on the show, call 8333 Ask SDR and we'll answer your question on the show. That's 833-ASK-SDR. For special deals on our books and training, head over to offers.chriscollinsinc.com now that's offers.chriscollinsInc.com I'm Chris Collins, and I'll see you in the next video.
