Operational Intelligence - Episode 3 Closing Ratio Tracking - Shane Orlando - Orlando Autobody

Quick, what's your shop's close ratio? Did you just shout out a number to me or do you have to take a wild guess? You know, for 15 years I owned and ran a marketing agency that was focused on getting more cars to auto body shops. But the second that that vehicle arrived, I lost control of the process. You know, we tracked everything we did and we could prove that the leads were coming in, where they came from, or even who the person was instead of visits or clicks count. But if the shop didn't see sales improved, we'd lose the account. The real issue was simple. Most shops aren't vigilant about their sales process and very, very few actually track close ratio. But this is so important, especially as we head into each new quarter or each new year and we seek to make sales and growth improvements. Owners know their car count, they know their capacity. But ask them, hey, what's your close ratio? And you'll hear everything from, if they're in the lobby, we close it to, I don't know, 80%, I think. Today I'm talking with Shane Orlando from Orlando Auto Body in Arizona, a shop that has a real system for tracking, improving and forecasting their close ratio. And I think you'll be surprised by what the real numbers actually look like and what changes them. So let's jump in.

Welcome to Operational Intelligence. I'm Morgan Felschner, here with my co host Tom Zoblin, a 15 year collision industry veteran and former marketing agency owner turned AI software builder. Each episode we dive into one shop owner's unique superpower and unpack the exact steps they took to master it so you can bring those ideas to life in your own business. Enjoy the episode. We hope you learn as much as we did.

Listen, thanks for being guest number two on my podcast here. I really appreciate it.

Happy to.

So, you know, on operational excellence, the point of this podcast is to, you know, when I had my marketing agency and I would meet guys like you and, you know, we would talk about marketing for like this amount of time. And the rest of the time we'd talk about the collision industry, your shop, and then, you know, and then I would come out to shops and get to know guys like you and see, I would always see things that I thought shops were doing, you know, kind of a little bit differently than other shops or something that you excelled at. And in the back of my mind I was always like, you know, these are kind of like podcast episodes. Like, this should be, this should be out there more. You know, there's, there's a lot of focus on what's right and wrong with the collision industry, but nobody really focusing on the doers and in the shop to the point of like what they're doing, like a specific aspect of what they're doing or something, something that maybe another owner could hear and say, you know what, I probably could do that or you know, I've been struggling with that. That's a really great idea. I could take that home and, and put that into action. So, so instead of being broad, I'm being very focused. And so that, that's the role of this podcast. So, you know, we kind of talked about a couple of things that I've observed from you and obviously, you know, we worked on the marketing side of things. So marketing and sales was a big one. So for you, I want to focus on, you know, as you mentioned that you're really kind of dialed in on your close ratio, right? That's kind of what we're, we're thinking about is your kind of your diligence around that. And I'll tell you why I think that's important. You know, you talk to a shop owner and about sales and growth goals and you know they're going to always talk about like where they want to be. You know, like any shop owner will tell you, oh, we do 50 cars a month but we can do 65. You know, they know, they know what the, what it's capable of producing. But there's this gap, you know, well, why aren't you doing 65? Right? It's probably a sales and a marketing thing or you just a front office, there's a, there's a roadblock in there somewhere. And then you ask them, well, what's your close ratio here? You know, as you kind of start to drill down in there because in order to figure out how to get 15 more cars in the door, in the front door, you can start to do the math backwards. Well, how many phone calls are you getting, how many appointments are you getting and all that stuff? And so when you ask what's your close ratio? They'll just say 80, 80%, you know, 75%. And it's a number that is just a made up number. So if you are not tracking it and you're just guessing at it and you're trying to build an entire yearly plan, you're going to be flawed from day one because you don't know the math. So that's why I want to kind of, kind of get in with you on this one. So that's what this episode will be about. But, but before we get into that, just kind of want to, you know, get everybody up to speed on who you are. For those that don't know, you know, tell me a little bit about, you know, your shop and your locations, how you got into the business.

Yeah, no problem. Well, I, like probably a lot of owners at a young age, started working on cars myself. And, you know, I'd never actually worked at a body shop. I just fixed up my own cars and then eventually had people ask me to fix theirs. And you know, this is back in the 80s, so it was real popular to, to paint muscle cars for people, etc. And so I started out in that side of things. I realized that very quickly that I was working for the clock, right? There's only so many hours in a day and, and you know, the same clients would bring in a wrecked car and ask me to fix it. And while I could do that car in three days for twice as much money as the restoration I was doing for them, I quickly realized I should be doing that. So it took about 10 years to go from, you know, 100% collision work to, you know, 90%, excuse me, 100% custom work to, to and to roughly, you know, 90% collision work and 10% custom work. And I did that for the next 10 years. I gave up the custom work, retail custom work, probably 10 years ago, quit doing that. Shops got too busy, grew from one location to six, and then, and then only recently in the last couple years have I started to implement the restoration work again. That's a business that's underserved or an industry that's underserved. It's tough to find people to do it. There's another level of interest starting to come up with younger people and, and on top of that, it's starting to pay well. You know, if I was painting for 3 to 5 grand in the 80s and 90s, that the same paint job today would be 30 grand, you know, and so in some cases, 50 grand. So, so because of all that, that, that might be changing. But yeah, I, I, that's kind of how I got started. And, and you know, you don't even know what marketing was back then. I knew I was, you know, building beautiful cars for people and in a sense, marketing for myself through those cars at car car shows. And that's how I got more work. But, you know, as you start to collision do collision work, you need to actually market, right, and figure out how you're going to get the phone to ring. And, and you know, having done custom work for almost, you know, almost 15, 20 years, I had a fairly good reputation. So believe it or not, that, that, that served me well on the collision side of things. But you know, you can't get so far it's not going to take you from one shop to six, you know, and unless you are a DRP shop, which I really hadn't been for majority of those years, and being served business by the insurance carriers. To your point earlier, how do you grow your business and how many boost cycles and all the data that will support, right. What numbers you can actually do out of a facility if you're in, if you're in a situation where you have endless amounts of work, so long as you can produce it and meet your cycle times and all the measures to satisfy the carriers, you know, if you're not going to do all that, you'd better figure out another way to get the phone to ring. And so, and if you're going to pay to have the phone ring, you better figure out a way to sell those people and follow up with them. Because there was a few years where we tracked our, and all of our close rates and our cost to acquire a customer all the way down to, I mean we included our hats and shirts and our marketing, right. So there's times it was, you know, oh man, on a bad month, 300 a customer, you know, that you would.

Spend, you would spend 300 per customer.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And again I, I included anything that resembled marketing in that. So hat, shirts, you know, I could strip that stuff out. You only bought them a few times a year. But you know, I wanted to know and it worked better when you told your riders, hey, every time you talk to a customer, it's about, it's, you know, close to 200 bucks and then, excuse me, close to 100 bucks and then every time you close one, it's close to 200 or 300. Right. So you know, every time you walk out that door, if you burn $100 bill, you know, you may, may talk differently to, to the client, right. And, and then, and what are you doing after they leave? And so yeah, it's important to, to for me to track close rates given our marketing budget is so much. Right.

So yeah, so, and despite the name Orlando, which is obviously your last name, you're all your shops are in Arizona, right? In the Phoenix, you know, Scottsdale Mesa. So is that a challenge actually having the Orlando part of it, you know, does it, does it kind of fight you in any Way like people searching for your name and things like that.

Well, you have to remember. Yeah, I totally get it. And you know, if I started my business before there was the Internet and so it wasn't challenging until the Internet came out and then because early on in the days of the Internet, you know, my last name was competing with Google and Orlando, Florida. Right. So to your point, it was challenging and so they don't want to do paid ads, et cetera. In the early days. Right. It was really tough and that's changed a bit. Right. So Google's got itself sorted out and it doesn't impact me nearly as much. In fact, you don't get a lot of Orlando listings if you type Orlando in Phoenix because it's looking right around, you know, your area for anything named Orlando. And then maybe broadly it would, it would start to search for Florida, but that's fixed itself. But you know, oddly enough, given that I'm from New York originally and New York Orlando is the last name and then if you're next to Mexico here in Arizona, Orlando's a first name if you're Hispanic. So I would say more challenging than Google was that, you know, I, you know, was my shop Hispanic owned or, you know, or Italian owned or whatever. Right. In a market where maybe people might show up expecting us to speak Spanish and we don't. Right, yeah. So because that was a problem I had early on, I went to the radio and TV to promote my business which ended up, you know, being very effective and I did it for that purpose. I needed people to realize that, you know, I probably don't speak Spanish and, and either. And whether we do or don't, we'll still fix your car. But you know. Yeah, yeah, those are challenges that people don't pay attention to when they're naming their business or growing their business or you know, there's a lot of things that when I coach people now or mentor people and to get into this business and I start with a name.

It'S very important, start with a name. And I could tell you all kind of stories about shops that have named things and like buying shops and name and after the town that their first shop is in, even though they know they're going to grow. And I'm like, why are you doing this? Only to have to change all the branding again. And, and then you get some sort of weird name that doesn't make any sense anymore because it's tied to some, some town. Yeah, it's name naming is, we probably should do a whole thing Just on shop naming, you know, for those that are looking to, you know, rebrand shops and things like that. But yeah, yeah, I recently helped the.

Guy in, I think it's Hereford, Texas and he was leaving his employment of 30 years at a big shop in town and, and he was going to name the business his name and I went and explained everything. I explained to you. Maybe you want to rethink that. But, and then, but then we ended up on Lone Star Collision. Right. It's Texas. Sounds like it's probably been there forever and if it hasn't been, someone just didn't pick the name. Right. And, and it worked. Right. It's very important to be some recognizable and, and, and not. And not so niche. Right. Epic collision. All the different buzzwords that people are using for all those years that, that are trendy. Not, not very smart.

So yeah. So as far as the tracking of the close ratios, I guess let's talk a little bit about how you're doing that. So what's your system? I mean I actually don't know the answer to this. I just know that we would go over the opportunities, what the phone numbers were and things like that. But on your side of things, I never thought to ask this until now. How are you tracking? Is it a chart, is it a Google sheet or Walk us through that a little bit.

A bunch of the listeners to this won't know this but you and I, not only have we marketed together but what keeps us coming back to each other is our software experience. Right. Our technical knowledge of software. And I've built software for about seven years inside of another company that I owned and it'll teach you a lot about how a business runs and statistics and data and data driven industries and, and why it should be that way. And I, so I, I developed the software, you know, in 2010 that ultimately on the web we have a form fill on the web for everyone that shows up at the shop. Right. Most people hand them a clipboard, you fill us out. It's an information request. I digitize that. Right. And then, and then when they push submit it emails them a copy of it and it emails our staff a copy and of course then that goes to the writer in the back so he' you know, redundantly doing anything. ID has everything he needs to start an estimate etc. Short of having an API into CCC which everybody knows is nearly impossible or the estimating software is, we have what we need. And so, so there's the information request, whether it be at the curb or whether someone logs onto our website. I was one of the first companies in Phoenix market do online estimates. And those are both the same way. Right. So we get an email, we follow up with them. Now if at any point those people decide to use us, they have, we have an online work authorization that works the same way. And, and then that software we developed is able to connect those two things as being they came in or they came in online and, and, and they signed with us. Now CCC has that ability but what you find is people show up with an estimate and they don't. You don't write one. Right. You might schedule them in and then they immediately go to, you know, you wrote one a preliminary, converted it to a job and accounts but it's not as accurate as ours. Right. There's a lot of conversations that happen at the curb that don't, don't require any kind of paper transaction. So so we, our workaround was to have everybody sign something right. When they show up. The most accurate way to have a really good close rate. And then our system reports back to us monthly with what our close rate was per location, whether it be online for the month or for the year on average. And so that's recently in the last couple years changed. It started to. We're implementing a high level software that now allows us to follow all of those leads.

Is that Go, Go high level. Is that right?

Go high level. Yeah, we're using it now. But mind you, I've had what I've had since 2010.

Yeah.

So I had my own version of that that would be generated every month and it was more, you know, like an Excel spreadsheet and we would just follow up with those. Yeah. So but now go live. Go high level. And quite frankly another proprietary software that we built that similar to that we'll have, we'll. You'll be able to dump social media. Excuse me, you dump all your social media. Any leads that you have, you dump them into their own funnels and then you can follow the process. So it does both of our online and our curbside estimate requests. But now we have social coming in also. And then you know when you're, when you're asking people, you know, for how they heard about you. Right. So you can track your, your, your campaigns, etc. Easier to do digitally. Right. So there's a drop how you heard about us and then the report can come to you automatically. So when I built all that stuff I also tied a CRM into it. So everybody that either whether they're online or on the Curbside, once they include their email, automatically subscribes into our, to our CRM. So curbside estimate gets a message, an email in 10 minutes just thanking them for stopping by and then five and 10 days later trying to get them to use our services. Those, those communications stop if at any point they sign a work authorization, so that's helpful. And then if they sign a work authorization, of course they get an email that says thanks for choosing us. And here's what you can expect, communication wise or how to handle payments, etc. And so you know, you can eliminate one or two jobs by, by doing all that. Right. It's a lot of work to manage a CRM. And yeah, the communication.

So just to kind of restate what I'm hearing you say, so the, the customer shows in and you, they sign in. Like I just went to my, you know, I had to get some skin doctor stuff done up here. That's what this is. So I, I, you know, I walk in the doctor's office, I sign in. So you have them sign in like that.

Like, like they're, we have an iPad locations and we hand it to them and it's open to the form that they just fill out and then they use their finger sign and push submit. And in the past most shops have a clipboard with paper on it. Makes it challenging. Yeah, someone's got it.

Okay, so it's already electronic then. Yeah, because I was going to ask those, one of my next questions is are they signing a piece of paper that you're scanning in and then you have some sort of OCR like reader or something like that. So, so there, so it's an online, it's a, it's a form that you just hand them digitally. That's a, that's pretty, pretty slick actually. So they, they're signing in, it's already in the system. And I'm thinking about this for those that are listening to this, that don't have your software that might want to try to build something like this for themselves. Yeah, yeah, especially, especially moving in 2026, everybody's thinking about like how do we do better than 2025? Which was not, you know, the easiest year for the collision industry, at least the shop owners anyway. So, so, so step one would be some, some, some kind of a form that, that everybody that walks through the front door has to fill out. That, that's this way, you know, this person was here. So then, then step two and then that goes into like some kind of thing where if you were to do this Yourself maybe that goes into like a spreadsheet or something. You know, we had this many walk ins, right? And then you're. And then also you're. That same form. Is that being used now in your, in your digital like leads or does that somehow convert into that? Like if I, if I'm on a Facebook and I do like an in ad lead submission, am I, is that, is that porting into that or is.

That the same form that it notifies us that somebody did it? Right. Email. And then our current system, you know, go high level or the version that we made, similarly it dumps into like a can man, right. System where you have the lead came in and it tells you where and then you can move it to first follow up and then, you know, move it to second follow up and then, yeah, either got the business or trash, right? Um, yeah, but they're all separated by the campaigns that they came in on. And then all of those dump into our CRM. So they get a, they get on continuing communication over the next, you know, three to five years. They're constantly being touched with our how to winterize your vehicle or some, you know, how to. Summer's coming. We have what, you know, happy New Year, wish them a happy holiday, that kind of thing. Remind them that we're available.

So what about, what about follow ups on leads that are in but not closed? So, so they came in you. Are you writing street estimates at that point when they walk in or are you, you getting them in talk, walking the vehicle and then scheduling them in so you can do a full tear down. What's, what's the process there?

Well, you know, if they don't already have an estimate, which we prefer they don't, we'll write them something. I, I try to tell, to teach my guys to, you know, to just confidently sell the client that we can handle the claim. Right. If, if, you know, if you don't have to write an estimate, you've done your job really, really well and convinced them to just schedule the car in or, you know, if there's any reason that that car can't be driven, which it happens more often than not. You get them an Uber home or set up the rental car for them and get them right in the repair. But you can't do that every time. But, but we do write an initial preliminary. We let them know that it's a preliminary. We can't, you know, really do a proper estimate until the car gets delivered and torn down. So, yep, that's what we do.

Okay, so so then, so you've got people that have walked in that you've scheduled to come in. And then I'm assuming there's some sort of. Is that a manual process or is that a follow up? Are the guys trained to just go through those after or is the system pinging them or how are they knowing who to call and. And when?

Yeah, so, so I wish there was more visual for that for this. But, but in our.

You can actually, if you want later send me a couple screenshots and I'll put it in this.

Okay, good.

I'll do it.

Yeah. But basically, you know, you have the walk in estimate column where we've initially done an estimate for them. And then you, then you're, then you're, then you set a ticker in there. We, we say you gotta follow up with them in so many days. So every day when you come in, there's either a new email or something that says, hey, these ones are ready to follow up. The tile may change a color. So you know, you have to follow, follow up with them. Follow up will move them into you followed up with them. And then that has a new ticker. Right? This is follow up with them a second time. It's kind of preset in the background. And then online estimates. Right, they're on online estimate. You haven't done, you haven't done anything for them. So it's not the first follow up. Isn't, it's not first follow up. It's, you know, reach out to.

They're a step, they're a step further down the funnel.

Exactly. They're, they're, they're one step removed. So you have to actually reach out to them and that you get notified right away. Our, our rule of thumb is to contact any, any new lead within five minutes or less. Yeah, we found that you're more successful in doing that with online leads. And man, if you wait too long, you're gonna lose them. And so strike while they are. Right. It's fresh on their mind. They just reach out. It's good customer service. So we'll do that.

Yeah, yeah.

And, and you know, in my size, I, I have, you know, I have a dedicated person kind of managing all the locations and sitting at a computer doing this all day long and so, but not, not real difficult to set up at the store location with each rider giving a certain email, etc that somebody can just constantly dive into, you know. So.

Okay, so if you're gonna kind of build something yourself, something like a go high level with Kanban Board map out your phases that you want get some, some kind of like a, a way to get the walk ins into the system as well as the digital leads, you know, so work with whoever you're working with for marketing on making sure that, that, that lead form comes into a way that you can capture it into your system. So yeah, that's, that's all good stuff. I'm curious as the, as an owner, how, how, how frequently are you looking at the, those numbers? Are you tracking that weekly and having a meeting with the team? Are you just looking at it kind of monthly or quarterly or you know, because especially with all your locations, right.

Company wide we get a company wide, we get an email monthly and it goes out to the entire company. We have one email that forwards to everybody's email. It's where we do company wide communication. That report goes out monthly to the team weekly I get my own report from, you know, built into our system. It sends, sends one and then quite frankly at some level, you know, I could get a day's end report from every location. So it's a spreadsheet of all the cars that dropped where the referral source was, ones that were picked up, checks that were delivered, etc. And it has a pie chart on it and that pie chart has all the referral sources on it so that I can track our referral sources real time. And that particular report from each location has a year to date price pie chart. Right. And then, and then a weekly, monthly or monthly pie chart which kind of tells us where our referrals are coming from. Which is huge if you're marketing. Right. Helps you help you spend, spend your money in the right way.

Yeah yeah.

But yeah, to your point, I get a, I get a message every week that talks about how quickly to the five minutes that those people respond to how they doing with responding within five minutes to certain needs. And then what's the current close rate? You know, capture rate.

Yeah. So what, what do you think is a healthy capture rate for a body shop? What do you think a typical owner could expect? And then where, where are you guys? Are you?

Yeah, well a little shock. Yeah. The industry says around 75% is, is, is a good close rate. Now that being said, it includes DRPs. So they're getting a lot of shop online shop assignments etc and you know you've been, they've been, cars have been directed to go there and those are easy closes just like in non DRP environment like us. Referrals are a really easy close. And so I Think that's skewed. So when we first implemented, I think we're in the 30s, I think healthy is the 50, 50%. You know, that's, that's everything's firing and you're doing really good at it. But it's a lot. Right? Marketing is, I can't tell you how many people spend money and you did marketing spend money to market. But if they don't have their team set up to capture the calls and sell them and follow up correctly, it only makes the marketing company look bad. Right. Like they didn't do their job.

I know. I can't tell you how many times that that was. Again, I could tell you horror stories on that one too. But one, one thing that you mentioned too is like on the dropdown, how'd you hear about us? And Google is always gonna be the answer. So I would have clients that would be like, you know, I've been spending money with you for four months and anybody just comes in here, they just say, we saw you on Google. I'm like, well, where do you think our ads are? Where do you think we're buying our ads? It's not on Yahoo, you know, like we're Google advertising for you. So of course I'm gonna say Google, you know. So like honestly, like if you can. And with the geofencing was even harder because that is everywhere. I mean it was banner ads everywhere. Apps and website websites and everything. So to ask, they'd say Google, despite.

It was from other places.

It could have been their brother that said it. I mean, unless they have a very, very specific answer of where they heard from you, that's the one metric that I think is probably the least accurate. You know, it's just like referrals. Yeah. People want to please you. You know, it's just like they may have heard you three different places. Is there an answer for. Well, I heard you, I saw you on your Facebook and then I saw you on this and then this. You know, like they're not going to tell you that. They're, they're just going to pick something to kind of. Because they're not thinking about your marketing and your sales. They're thinking about how much is this thing going to cost me and how, how long, how, how long is this going to suck for me? You know, like, is this a two week thing or am I going to have it on Friday? That's all they care about. So, so yeah, that of all the data capturing, asking a client prospect, where did you hear about us? That's A really hard one. Now with you it's probably a little bit differently. The shops that I, that I know that and I always recommend we didn't do TV or radio. It just wasn't something that we ever got to the scale to handle or you know, you need a special kind of media buyer that can, you know, because we were a national company so you need to have relationships with all the, all the markets.

That'd be tough.

Yeah, too, too hard. We'd have to, we, we couldn't have done it by just focusing on collision. We would have to be doing dealerships, national, nationally and all that stuff. But anyway, the, the shops that I worked with, I always said if you have the budget to do some TV or radio, I think it does pay off. It's very top of the funnel. But I, everyone that does it, that I've talked to, they always say, people will come in and say oh I saw you on, you know, on such and such like I. One guy in Jersey, he does a TV and he's non DRP and does a TV ad on all sports channels because he figures, you know, age, male, female, doesn't matter. Everyone watches sports. And so that's a pretty smart bet, you know. So you know, local, local TV I think is local TV and radio does, does pay off.

It doesn't just for your, for your listeners. For your listeners. It's, it is top of the funnel in the long game. But you know, my experience ten years ago is you know, I had a seven thousand dollar budget and, and the very next day someone dropped off a ten thousand dollar repair. You know, now granted I didn't make ten thousand but you know that kept me going and, and I'll just give some advice, right? You want to do traffic spots around the news, right? Because there's a lot of digital radio out there. And then same thing, use network TV, don't use cable cables. Fragmented, right. Network, you know, 5, 10, 3, 12 is, is local radio or TV. Excuse me. And yeah, and so everybody will hear your ads. It's over time. You know, nobody knows if that they need a body shop until they need a body shop. I say we're in the oh business, right? Like you don't know until something happens. And you know, it's the U haul effect. You never saw a body shop in your life until. Or U hauling your life till you rent one. And similarly the body shops, they're here but no one knows where they are. And so you want to be top of mind and suspend something. Now people will be Happy to hear this. If you're in rural markets, radio's cheap. You dominate the radio for a thousand dollars a month. You know, in rural markets, you know, populations of 10,000 to 25,000 or less, you know, so good for your listeners to know that. But, but it does help. One thing I want to mention, just because I like to add some value to people, you know, beside, besides what we're talking about is that, and I talk to a lot of body shops. I'm in a 20 group, in fact, I've, you know, seen you at some of them. And, you know, we travel the country and, and, and I'm always surprised that some of the things that we're doing that is, is, is cutting edge or not no one thought of. And, and so it's not for everybody. But, you know, our, our, our work authorization, we've included things like, you know, do you want your car detailed? Do you, would you like your chip or cracked windshield repaired while the car's here? And those are opportunities in that forum to generate more business, you know, and nobody thinks about that. And, and why I've again tried to ultimately just take, you know, guys have 15 hats on at a body shop, and if I can make them all wear one, we'll be more successful. And so taking some of the load off of people asking all these questions, ask them in your work authorization and then, you know, in ours, if they click that box, we get a separate email that says this person would like the windshield. Right. So that we look in the windshield email box and we forward those to our glass partner and we make sure they follow up and make it happen. And, and, you know, our details get noted at the top of the estimate so we don't miss any of that. Was there anything spilled in the car during Iraq? How many people forget to ask that and they show up and the whole inside of the car still got soda pop in it? Well, we didn't know that. You're, you know, half our customers. That's what the car looks like when they dropped it off, you know. Yeah, we don't know, you know, if I had, you know, 10 bucks every time a woman told me she was embarrassed and please don't look at the inside of her car while I'm doing an estimate, I'd be rich. You know, I'm not picking up on picking on the ladies, but I got that a lot when I was sheets 20 years ago, you know, you know, we just, we live in our cars. That's just how they look sometimes. But asking that simple question is helpful for people and half the time it's, it's something you could cover, you know, is covered in the claim. You want to ask them if they have had a car seat in the car. Now to train your staff to ask those questions all the time is really difficult. But to just ask a few of those difficult questions on your work authorization or on your sign in sheet, you know, it eliminates 100% of your customers are being asked that question the minute you, you add it to a work authorization.

So, so how many, if you had a guess what percent of customers do you think you actually have an automatic upsell every time they're getting the car repaired that other shops might be leaving on the table?

Well, I'll just, just tell you this. I mean that at our locations we probably cross for the main locations because we have satellite locations that don't produce the actual work. They get about 10 to 15 windshield requests a month and we close 30 of those. So that's huge.

Yeah.

And, and then, you know, it comes natural to me when I'm talking to somebody and I see their windshield cracked and I want to help them and you know, or they're dropping the car off. Can I, can I get this taken care of you while you're here? You know, but do, if I could duplicate myself, I'd be really, really successful and I can't. Not everyone's great at everything. We got a lot going on. There could be four people in your office. You can't ask everybody everything, including things like your payment, your payment policy and all that. You may have it on the wall. When they push submit on our estimate or sub or exceed our work authorization, it triggers an email to go out to tell them all the stuff they need to be looking out for with regards to this car when they come pick it up, the car repair and what to expect when they come pick it up. So, you know, you like to think your staff has enough time to explain all that and that they're going to read the frame on the wall that has your payment policy, etc, but it doesn't happen. And they don't always read the emails, you know, but, But I've told 100 of the people how this is going to go, you know, by automating a lot of that stuff. So yeah, that's, and that leads back to what you said. Knowing the close rates helps a lot. Upselling people helps a lot. And then, and then statistics and real data helps a lot. You know, and then, you know, how do you, how do you get good information out of. I mean, you can ask your guy how you think he's doing at the curb and he'll tell you whatever he wants to tell you. But the numbers don't lie. And so if 100% of the people are being upsold on windshields and being asked about car seats and etc. Etc. You know, you're probably doing pretty good.

So do you actually sell them a car seat if they, if the we.

Get them a reimburse, you just ask them to get the receipt and give it to the adjuster and they'll get reimbursed for it. And it's just taking care of your client. They didn't know that.

That is. Of all the years of 15 plus years doing this, I think you're the first shop that I've ever heard not saying that other shops I worked with weren't doing this the first time I've heard about that. What a great idea to ask about the car seat because we all know that has to be replaced immediately after an accident. Who you know to actually help facilitate that for customer? I bet you that goes really far. I mean, does that help a lot with referrals and things like that too?

I, I would think so. I mean, I, I will tell you, most people are shocked to know they can get a new car seat if it was in the car during Iraq. That's not something that, that people are just openly telling people. Right. They also don't know that they're entitled to diminish value and those kinds of things. And so I know that's a sensitive subject, depending on the listener, but, but our job is to help people. Right, and guide them through this. It's never happened to most people and it'll happen maybe once in their lifetime. So you have one chance to, to earn their business and then, and then hopefully the rest of their, their family's business or people or acquaintances get their referrals. And so you know, all that stuff that you can stand out. And back when I first started, I used to just do extra stuff for them. That's all I knew what to do. Right. They had a, had a dent in a blend panel. I'd fix it and point it out to them when they, when I deliver the car. And of course that, that, that never happens and so they never forget you. And that worked for years and it helped grow my business. But, but there's other things you can do that will leave a lasting impact on people and that's how you'll get them to come Back, otherwise it's transactional.

Yeah, yeah. You know, speaking of the transactional thing too, and back to what you're saying about the people. One of the observations that I've seen in shops is you can train your staff, you know, like this is the process. You got to go through this, this, this and this. But what tends to happen is after a while I think that the, the, the person is just going through their job and they're just dealing with the mechanics of their job. You know, I need to do this for the insurance company. I need to get this in the ccc. I need to. And they, and they forget. It's easy to forget because it's easy to forget that that person, this is their first time going through this because it's the millionth time your front office person is going through the process. So it's easy, it's easy to leave things off. And I, you know, I, I don't think enough, there's enough focus on the constant reminder of the sales process, the constant review of the sales process. Even shops that I think are operating on the highest level. And I'll sit there and I'll, you know, I'll be, when I visit a shop, I may like shadow the front office person or something and I'll see them jump into mechanics mode. Like, you know, a Tesla certified shop, parking lot full of Teslas, Two Teslas pull up and it's like, would you have an estimate yet, ma'?

Am?

We'll go, go back, go out and don't come back till you get one. You know, not in those words, but it's like you got a perfect opportunity to sell this person. You know, I've been there where the car smells of brand, like a brand new car. So, you know, this person's just bought this thing, freaked out that this thing just got into an accident. They're in a sea of Teslas and no one's saying, you know, just want you to know that you are in the right spot for Tesla repair in X town. Because just take a look around, pop your pop up, you know, look in the shop there you can see where the Tesla people, you know, like stuff like that. How do you, how do you, how do you automate that? And I think that the closest thing you can do probably is what you're doing is, is putting that on that, that intake form. Your marketing can kind of bring that in. But to make sure that that's happening, because one of my questions actually is now that you've built these things, like what does that Give you in the shop. And it sounds to me like it's consistency.

It does. And of course, you know, there's never enough time in the day. So if you can take some of that off of your staff, they have more time to do the things you're talking about. There's the inspect what you expect. I like the, you know, you put a formal practice in place and it doesn't take very long before it becomes informal. And to your point, right. We just sit used to it. Right. I listen at my own jobs often I'll be talking to you but listening to the phone call. And one thing that will drive me up the wall is that somebody might tell ask for directions and they'll hang up without getting their phone number and what time they expect them and their name and number. Their name. Right. I'm like write it down, put it in the calendar, put it on there for three. If they don't show up, call them and I'll go out and go. Did you get their information? No, I didn't. They just want our address. Okay, well how you, how do you know that they showed up?

Right? Yeah.

Like it drives me baddie again. If it costs, it cost 110 bucks to get the phone to ring or have someone drive up, you know, it's, you're, you're going to be, you're going to pay attention. So.

Yeah, so that's a good point too. So once you actually are tracking your close ratio with any kind of confidence and you're tracking your opportunity ratio, then you actually could dial in. How much is that customer costing you? That, that, that opportunity cost. Yeah, yeah.

And then that's all the tools you use to share with your staff. Like either it's gonna, you know, they're gonna want to really take care of people. That's their nature. Money, money motivates them. So you know, letting them know that it's 100 bucks to talk to people. Right. Oh, you have a three ring policy. Answer the phone at before three fourth ring. Right. Always. So you might get these people to start taking action on all the things that seem like are not that important but are extremely important when you really start to track those things, you know.

Yeah.

And I think we're pretty good at it. But it's constant. I can't tell you. I at least send one email a month reminding people that including I did one today just reminding them of what I request. In fact, I did two this week just. I saw just one person slip a bit based on an adjuster response that Wouldn't have happened had they followed our process. And so I'll screenshot that, send an email out and remind people as to why we follow the process. Here's a great example. Not pointing fingers, you know, but just to better the company. And I request that everyone that reads it responds back. That hurt and understood or you know, that they got it because that's another thing. You can send an email to the abyss, but you know, if they're not responding to you, they're not paying attention and that's, it's not a dig on them. We're busy. But I want to know you, you read it. So again, that company wide email is great and that's another tidbit for people. You can create one email, mine's team at Orlando Autobody, and then it's forwarded to all the inboxes. Right. And so when people respond, everybody, you know, if you have, if you figured out a way to get paid for something, you shared it in that email to the entire team. So you know, if we've had a challenging OEM repair that we have been challenged in the past to get, to get repaired, or we found a solution to a problem we've had ongoing share with the team. So that's made a huge difference.

So actually I've got kind of a follow up question to that. You know, for the person that's listening to this, that may be trying to implement this thing to kind of help shortcut some of the stuff. Are there any things that you've tried that didn't work, that just flat out didn't work? You know, and trying to build up these processes or, you know, this, this kind of mantra that you have at the shop.

Well, well, I, I'm sure there's a lot and, and mostly just what comes to mind is keep it simple. Because given that I did software, I use an example like everybody uses Excel and everybody uses Microsoft Word and there's a toolbar at the top and it'll do a lot of stuff. But most people know how to use about 10% of those tools. And that's because really smart people dove in and built something and then they figured out while they were building it that they could, it could do this and do this and what if it did this? And what ifs go on for months and months, but you're never done with software. You don't want to do that to your team. Right. So you want to be very careful to, as I mentioned, try to integrate some of what needs to be done electronically in your Business and just keep, Keep it simple. Right? Try to keep it simple and then don't try to implement too many things all at once. Change causes upset is a famous saying. And if, if you don't believe it, right, Go buy yourself a different brand cell phone and see if you're happy the whole time you try to learn it, you know, it doesn't happen. So, I mean, every time they give you a new upgrade on your iPhone, it's frustrating. So I, I could, I'm sure I could find stuff.

I.

When I built software, about 2010, we had version one. We got about 40 SAS users in the restoration space for the flood and fire restoration, one of my other businesses. And version two came out, it was so complex because we took input from the 40 clients we had and tried to solve all those things. And I quickly figured out why they come out with 1.1. Version 1.1, 1.2. Not. You don't go from 1 to 2 all in one jump. You get a lot of customer service calls and frustrated people. And so, you know, you got to have one chief, you know, one person in charge. That's another big thing for some of the bigger companies. And, you know, anyway, I can talk for hours.

Yeah. So a simple system, one person in charge of it, and then small iterations will get you there a lot faster than big sweeping changes all the time and constant changes all the time.

Oh, frustrate your people. Yeah. You know, your culture is really important, so getting everybody swimming in the direct same direction is as hard enough as it is. And then, and then, you know, you'll have turnover. So you're always trying to get somebody up to speed. And then if you change everything too soon, it's tough. We, we do the 20 groups annually. You come back with, you know, you can have 10 different ideas, but you better. They only ask you to try and implement one or two between this meeting and the six months, the following meeting, and then see how it went. And, you know, if you're lucky, you can do both of them.

Yeah, I think that's why, that's why things like the EOS method work so well. It's like three rocks, you know, there's just three things. Just focus on three things every quarter. Just every quarter. If you stay laser focused on it. Because, you know, I think that the nature of collision repair owners specifically too, we're tinkerers, you know, like a lot. Like, I'm a car guy, you're a car guy. We build hot rods. You always want to tweak stuff you know, like, it's never, it's never good enough. It's always something that you could do different and better. And so when you want, when you're the tinker of mindset, you forget that not everybody else is, you know, and there's, there's personalities that, yeah, they want to just do it. Hey, this is, you know, I have my coffee at 10, I have lunch at noon, you know, like, I'm out of the door by, you know, four o', clock, whatever. They have their thing and just because you, you see all this like, cool shit you can be doing, cool stuff you can be doing, but you forget that not everybody thinks it's that cool too.

Yeah, well, a simple thing might be that people can relate to is like implementing parts carts. Sounds simple. Take the parts off the cart, put them on the cart, put the broken ones on one, you know, and the good ones on another. And, and you know, try and implement that. See how it goes, you know, and then beyond that, then it, then it goes from that to a, you know, laminated binder on there or something that you put the parts list in and then you require the parts guy to highlight everything that's there or the parts, you know, and so that we can clearly see if all the parts are there or not. And there's mirror matching and I mean, if you lay in bed long enough, you come up with 50 other things. Well, easy, you know, make sure it's simple and easy. Do one thing at a time.

So, yeah, yeah, that's all. That's good advice. Yeah. So, so I think that's a lot of my questions there because, you know, I was going to say if you could teach a master class on, you know, what would those steps be? And I think we just covered that one. So, so, so Shane, kind of my last question here is, you know, who do you think we should have on the show next? Like, are there anybody, is there anybody that comes to mind that you think is like a great operator and they have the, like a specific thing that would be worthwhile kind of digging into because I'm always looking for ideas and people to reach out to.

Well, I know, I know the guys over at Quality Collision are, you know, pretty high level. You know, they are good guys and they do a great job and they're, you know, OEM centric, they fix cars with OEM parts and whether they do parts concessions, whatever it is that they do, it'd be useful for. It may be some insight into how they're navigating that world. That might be fun. Tim Roanick's always a great guy. He's an exo guy that has his finger on the pulse in the industry. That's huge. The current. Current things in the industry that are really challenging is the pushback from insurance companies and sudden co pays on every car, the customer having to pay more than their deductible. There's some topics there that might be interesting. Interesting that there's some experts on. Tim. Tim's got his finger on the pulse with that. Maybe some of the other people doing podcasts. That's. That's always fun to get two people doing podcasts talking.

Get a podcast host on here.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

That's not a bad idea too. That would be. That would be kind of interesting. I'd actually like to. Since I'm new at podcasting, maybe I'll ask them for tips on how to podcast.

Yeah, well, they don't get out there on their own a lot. I love seeing that. That's always a good move. But I'll think about it and text you outside of this meeting.

Yeah, yeah. Anybody that, you know, there's just, like, that one thing that kind of stands out to me. It was always pretty obvious, you know, I would just see, like, parts. You mentioned parts. You know, I would see, you know, 20 different parts, things. But there's one that just seemed to kind of, like, work better, you know, it was a little bit smoother or just. It just. They just were on it, you know, and I was always curious about that. So I would ask them, you know, hey, this thing's kind of different than what else I see. And then they would just launch into this whole thing. And basically, before you knew it, we had had a podcast with no microphones, you know, and so I always felt like if I, you know, when I. On the marketing side of things, the last thing I wanted to do was a marketing podcast, because there's only just so much you can talk about with ads and websites and SEO. You know, I. I still do the 20 group for. For Collision Hub, and I'm happy to do all those kinds of things, but. But to do a podcast about marketing over and over again I just think would be kind of tedious. But inside the shop, there's just all this stuff that is happening, and there's just always an owner that just seemed to. And I was always curious, like, why'd you focus on that? You know, and what. What drew you to this? And so I just. I always wanted to kind of learn that more. You Know, and, and put it out there. So.

Well, something, something came to mind. You know, Axel has Car Beatborn, which is a production schedule. It, it's interactive, the whole team uses it and I get a lot of messages annually from other shops asking us how we like it and how it's changed our business. And you know, it doesn't replace a production manager, but it almost does really close. And so, yeah, maybe you want to get somebody from AXO to, to, to do your podcast to talk about the Car B board and the importance of, of, you know, of that. Right. And the production schedule and, and managing your, you know, the process. So that might be.

As you know, I have an AI production scheduler. I don't know if they're gonna want me to my podcast or not because we will, we will be pushing that more later in the year. We're gonna, we're getting our insurance rebuttal product out in the market hopefully next month and then that's on. The roadmap is to get our scheduler out there more. So. Yeah, yeah.

Currently bathing an AI attend assistant for our follow up calls. Yeah, super excited about that and it seems to be going fairly well. So once again trying to take some hats off of our people and have some of those preliminary follow ups called by AI and then moved automatically.

Right, yeah.

And then scripts from those conversations being emailed to the team and added to the notes so that, you know, you can do the manual follow up maybe based on that information.

Yeah. And so we're looking, we're looking into that too for our own sales process on our software is to do some AI calling.

Yeah, yeah, I love our. Her name's Kate and she's got a southern accent.

Yeah.

You know, so. But it's all, it's all. It's an exciting time and it's very challenging. So hopefully what I shared is helpful to people and always available. I love helping people and more than that, I hate watching people make the same mistakes I made. It's painful. I remember how hard it was.

I was going to ask you if they want to learn more about your software. Do you sell that still at your.

We do. We've got other shops that are using what we built, so I could.

Is that all right if I put, put a link to you and that in the show notes here and they can reach out to you if they want to learn more about that?

Absolutely, you bet.

Okay. All right, cool. All right, Shane, thanks so much. I really appreciate you coming and good.

Luck to your future in podcasting. Man. You're a great guy for those. Those out there that don't already know you. Right. You've got a passion for this industry, man. I appreciate what you're up to.

Yeah, thanks, Shane.

You bet. You take care. Bye.

Bye.