These 3 Free AI Tools Can Help Collision Shops Hire, Sell, and Grow Hero Labs Episode 12

Hey guys, on today's Hero Group Labs, it's going to be kind of a different episode. We actually built 3 free tools, 3 AI tools that I'm going to walk you through in this episode. They're going to handle sales, hiring, and financial analysis. Now, I've done these as prompts in the past, but we turned them into actual free, like, software tools. And so I'm going to walk you through all 3 of them and show you how to get to them, how to access them, and how to use them. I think you're going to really like this one. Hey guys, it's Tom and I'm back here in the Hero Group AI Labs. Got the lab coat on and I got something kind of different for you. Um, so we started doing these Hero Group Labs, you know, around December of, uh, 2025, uh, November, December. And the idea is that I take a, a business challenge that either I face in my business or other shops have faced in their businesses, and I just tackle that problem with AI. And so a lot of these have turned into pretty significant master prompts. Some of them have even come from conversations that I've had with shops, challenges that they've, you know, talked to me about, and I built them an AI tool or a solution for it. And we were asking ourselves around January, like, how many shops are actually going to take the time to take the prompt itself and go into ChatGPT and run the prompt? What if we turned them into some, like, almost like software? Well, they're exactly like software. There's only the difference is that we're not charging for any of it. And a part of the mission of the Hero Group is to build as much free tools as we do paid tools and to give back to the industry for as much as, you know, we're trying to, to assist with the, with the, you know, helping every shop out. So we want to try to give away as much as we can for free while still running a business and and all that kind of stuff and supporting you guys. So, so what we did is we started in January with the first one. The idea was that it was going to be a year-end financial analysis tool. It's going to run your P&L from last year and then run it against industry averages and benchmarks and show you where, where you are compared to benchmarks and how changing certain things would affect your business outcomes. So we turned that one into an actual the software. We just got it live. I kicked it off at a speaking engagement. I was at the Commercial Truck Show, Heavy Duty Truck Forum, a couple of weeks ago. The second one is a hiring tool. These— this actually came from a request from a body shop that needed some help with not only writing some job ad stuff, but also in choosing the right role. They had to get rid of a front office CSR and needed some help. Asked my opinion on how AI might help them, you know, do do some of these things. And so we created that as a prompt, and that was a Hero Group Labs episode. The third thing also came from another shop that was struggling with cash flow issues, but I felt that they had a sales issue. It's kind of a lingering theory that I've had from when I had my marketing agency that, you know, we brought a lot of leads to shops and they never called on them. And I think that actually most of the time they had a sales problem. And so what we did is we took those prompts and we turned them into tools, actually designed an interface. We made them work so that they're live, they work. And, you know, you probably could get in there and use them. They're pretty self-explanatory. But I'm going to use this episode to walk you through how to access them, how to use the tool, and what the benefit is like, what the, what the outcomes are. So we're going to help you with sales, we're going to help you with hiring, and we're going to help you watch your numbers. The good thing about the numbers one is we're treating it now as like a quarterly thing. So I'm shooting this today on April 8th. So we're at the very beginning of the second quarter of 2026. So now is a good time for you to stop and take a look at what your numbers were looking like for the first quarter of the year and start thinking about tweaks and changes that you need to make for the following three quarters of the year. So, so with that, let's, let's jump right into it. Okay, guys, first thing you're going to do is you're going to go to this link right here, app.heroegroup.ai/quarter1. /registration/new. It's going to take you to a page that looks like this. You put in your information here, uh, you're going to sign up a shop, create a password, create an account. Oh, he was only taking lots of pic— Okay. And now that you get here, you're going to land here. You're going to see Reclaimer, which is our new product that's coming out in a couple of weeks. And then you're going to see some free AI tools down here. And these are some future products coming our way. So there's CFO Hero, there's Hiring Hero, and there's Sales Hero. So we can start with CFO Hero. So the CFO Hero, um, you're going to come here and, um, it's going to ask you to upload your P&L. It'll also connect to QuickBooks as well, but The easiest thing probably would just be to download your, uh, your P&L. What you're going to want to do is do your P&L with the most detail. There's a couple ways that you can do this in QuickBooks, um, or you can click here and you can enter your data manually if you want to do it that way. It's fine. Just so you know, we're not sharing any data. There's some terms of use and a privacy policy, and it shows you that we're not sharing any of your data. We're not training AI on your data or anything like that. It's literally just The AI is going to crunch the numbers for us in the background, but not have any of your personal data. And then you're going to enter in your shop details here and your, you know, like shop name, all that kind of stuff. Total employees, total of ROs count from last year, years in business. You can skip some of this if you don't want to put all that in. It doesn't really matter, but you're going to want to put your team in here. Because this will track your, um, your staff levels and your ratios of staff pay to business expenses to the industry. So you're going to want to put all that in here, and then you're going to want to put any operational data. So average RO amount, labor hours billed, labor hours clocked, how many comebacks you had, average touch time, average cycle time, and how many, uh, estimates, uh, were unsold, written but were not repaired. So this you can pull from your Close, close jobs by estimator report at a CCC if you use, or similar, similar. Then you're going to put your production labor costing in here. So there's kind of two ways to do this. Also, by the way, you can do it monthly, your monthly car counts, if you want to get really accurate. And this will also predict when you may want to think about doing some marketing for your lean months and things like that. So it looks at seasonality in your numbers. Production labor costing. So this is this concept in, um, uh, you know, in financial— in the business finances where it's the burden or unburdened labor. And this will allow you to do that. Burden labor, your labor gross percentage, you know. So it's— this walks you through some notes here, like if you don't know this, you don't know that, or where to find these numbers, it's in here. And then, uh, how are the paint materials captured? You're going to need to answer that. The more you answer, the more thorough this report will be. Um, you know, any paint program rebates, things like that. How do you want the AI to treat total losses? I know some of you might be the DRP shops that can't charge for total losses, so do we want to include that or not in our revenue and car count totals? So treat them only as admin workload, include total loss fees in the revenue. Which revenue line should I include from the P&L? Include everyone, only include certain ones. Your current, current labor rates. Crap, hold on. What did I do here? There we go. Current labor rates, your severity vehicle mix, any common vehicle types, and then your goals. This is an important one. You can put in your goals: revenue target, profit margin target, parts margins, things like that. And then what are some of the things that matter to you as a shop owner? What do you want less of? What do you want more of? Hit this little guy here and then generate your 25-page report. So this thing is very, very thorough. And again, what it's doing is it's looking at your numbers against a set of benchmark numbers. So, um, so these are, um The, these are pulled from all kinds of different sources, from some general business practices, uh, GAAP accounting practices, um, uh, industry standards from, uh, different industry experts in the collision business. So it's a very useful report and it's a great way to, to, um, evaluate where your numbers are, um, and where they're headed and what you need to focus on for the next quarter. Uh, it'll actually build you out a, a 90-day plan on what to focus on and it'll project out If you fix anything that's deficient in terms of comparing you to the industry average, if you— it'll show you what that number in the dollar and the profit will be if you were to fix these and at least bring them up to industry standards. So a very useful report, a great way to kind of get your mind right as you move into each quarter and evaluate the prior quarter. So, um, and then, you know, I'll show you here as a completed report what that looks like. So So, um, I, I won't go into all this with the video here, but, uh, you can kind of get a sense. So each section here, financial performance, staffing and throughput analysis, it writes an executive summary. It crunches the numbers for you. It shows you if you're, um, above or below an industry benchmark and then key recommendations. So, um, you know, hopefully that's a, a very useful tool for shops. I know if I had a body shop, this would be something that I would be laser focused on because this is going to help you rather than get to the end of the year and determine, you know, hey, we missed our mark, we didn't get there. This will help course correct all the way, all along the way. And just a quick note, if it's in green, it's good. If it's in red, then that's a problematic area. So this is an area where you are— it needs your attention, or you are below an industry average. So You can see just some— just a high-level executive, you know, overall snapshot, financial performance, profit leakage report, staffing, parts vendor economics, total loss impact, cycle time and bottleneck, you know, 12-month revenue projection, 12-month profit potential. So, um, 12-month SMART goal plan. So, uh, 90-day— here's your 90-day action plan. Based on your SMART goals that you created. And then there's an owner priority map, what you should focus on yourself as the owner. Break-even, uh, monthly break-even analysis. Surprisingly, a lot of shops don't know what their true monthly break-even is. Um, so here's a— here's an analysis of that pulled right from the P&L. Um, you know, you get the idea here. Um, and then, uh, yeah, so that's— so that's that report. Um, then I'm going to go back out here to, uh, reports. Um, sorry, let me go back out to Hiring Hero. So, uh, again, this one is for hiring. So the idea here is that, um, it's going to ask you some questions that about your culture, and then it'll help you match, create a role and interview questions for any single role that you have in the shop. So whether it's a painter, a prepper, body man, front office, you know, estimator, it doesn't matter. This, this will help you build it. And what it does is ask you some information about your shop. So And this is all just, you know, fake data in here, but shop name, kind of market are you in, what's your shop size, what's the vibe here? Because, you know, this thing will create interview questions to help match culture and psychology. So there's a psychological analysis in these questions. It'll also score the, score the candidate's responses and some things like that. And I'll show you in a second about that. But speed for production— speed versus production perfection trade-off, management style, what's the mistake policy like, what are the behaviors that you praise, what are the ones that get you in trouble, what are some non-negotiables. Now the role profile. So here's what we're looking for. We're looking for a parts manager, senior We need them to know CCC because we're on CCC. We need to know OEM procedures. We need to understand blueprinting. Um, core duties, you know, they're going to order parts, they're going to do returns, they're going to do matching parts, ROs, inventory management, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, right? Additional duties, you can type all that in here. Uh, what are some of the 60-day success outcomes? 3 measurable outcomes. Comes what you want good to look like after 60 days. What are some of the failure modes? How have people in this role failed before? So things that we're going to try to avoid and try to interview out. Um, what's the hardest part of this job? Uh, auto no, no hire even if they're skilled, you know, like, uh, I don't know, bad attitude, whatever you want to put in there. Landmines to watch for. So things that you don't like. And then output settings, you know, um, So this will help with some of the AI content that generates, you know, do we want professional, friendly, do we want on-screen or copy blocks? This is for the questions themselves. So this thing, I have a preset for an estimator where it's preset all the, um, all this information here. Um, actually, wait, let me go back one. Sorry. You fill all that all in there and then you go continue to interview kit. And so, um, that's when I need to go to this pre-filled one. So, um, so this is the, uh, pre-filled shop role information here. This is the interview kit. So role summary, and then there's an interview kind of script flow and intro script. So, you know, just to kind of prompt you, like, I always got really nervous on interviewing people, and this is just kind of a way to kind of help you get into the groove of interviewing because it's not something you do every day. And then the weighted scorecard. So these are the, the, the, um, how it's going to score these issues, you know, what 5 looks like, what a 1 looks like for all of these different things that it's going to write questions for. Excuse me. And then it's going to create these interview questions. So tell me about a time you made a mistake on a repair plan or estimate. What happened? How did you communicate? What did you do next? This is for an estimator. Tell me about a time you caught a quality issue before delivery. Walk me through how you found, found it and what you did, and so on and so on. And so here's what we're going to see, what we're going to look for as a strong indicator, what's a red flag, and what's going to be the follow-up process. So all you got to do is just kind of sit there, um, and interview your candidate and ask them these questions, whether that's in person, over a Zoom call, over a phone call, whatever. Um, if it's a Zoom call and you can record it, uh, that's the ideal thing because then you can transcribe that and put it back into the tool, and I'll show you that. Or you can manually just kind of take some notes, um, or, you know, pull out your cell phone and record the interview, but this will help you seek out the right candidate, interview for the right candidate. So, walk me through recent job moves, tell me about a time you had to give difficult news to a customer. You get the idea. These will change. It'll be specific to your shop, to your culture, to the role that you're hiring, the duties you're hiring. It'll create its own set. Some scenarios and judgment. So this is interview questions about their judgment. You know, walk me through when you would do what you would do if this happened. Tell me about a time you disagreed with this person, you know, so on and so on, right? And then there's a script for references. So if you want to check references, like what to ask. And then here's the decision guidance. 85 to 100 equals a hire, 70 to 84 is hold. And then you continue this candidate scoring. So this is where you can put the candidate's answers into the system. So, um, you know, like I said, if you can record it and transcribe it, just copy paste it in here. And then resume text right here, if there's anything you want you want it to check against on the resume. And then you hit Score Candidate, and it will go through and evaluate all this stuff and tell us if we want to hire this person, bring them in for a second interview but ask these questions, or, um, you know, it's a no-go. And then once we have that, it'll, it'll show us, um, you know, this candidate got a 78 out of 100, so we're they were going to hold them for a second interview. Here's the results of that. So accountability, honesty, how they, how they scored and what we analyzed in their answers. So kind of like a summary of what we found in their answers. So they got a 78 out of 100. Here's, here's what's strong about this candidate. Here are some of the red flags. Here's what we should do. We should bring them in for a second interview and then ask them these questions. And then here's what to focus on in the reference. And then some, some manager notes on the, on the interview. And then, let's see, where am I in here? And then when we do hire this person, then The next step is the onboarding plan. So this will give us an overview of the, you know, what we'll put in there. It's asking for a couple things like weekly task map, rework risk task, top 5 cycle time risks. So fill out this information here and then generate an onboarding plan, and then it'll do this for here for you. So day 1, here's what you need to do for day 1. Here's day 2 to 3, day 4 to 5. 30, 60, 90-day milestones, and then coaching cadence scripts. So, uh, daily check-in questions with this candidate, weekly review prompts, reinforcing script when things are done well, correcting scripts when things have gone off track, uh, some early warning indicators, some things to look for. Um, these are actual examples in here that, like, you know, I've got all this dummy information here, but this will generate this for you. So these are the things where there's like an onboarding gap here, there's a fit risk here with these situations that have happened so far. And so it's analyzing that and then giving a 90-day review scorecard— what they're good at, what needs improvement, and where they might not be a fit. So you may If this is trending very high, maybe you need to, you know, get rid of this candidate, get rid of this new hire before it becomes a problem. So that's that. So that's the hiring tool. You know, again, I'm breezing through these to make it fast just so you get an idea what's in them. And then let's see, we're going to go back now to the final one. This one's my favorite, the Sales Hero, because I think that You know, I said it before, I think shops are really— when car counts low, they really, really need to get laser-focused on close ratio, and you need to analyze it and maintain and try to grow your close ratio, get better at sales. Sales is most important right now. So what this will do is you— there's a report in CRM CCC. So you can come over here, new analysis, um, to put in some basic information here. But there's a, uh, there's a close ratio by— close ratio by estimator, I think it's what it's called. Um, and, uh, you can export that out of CCC and just upload that into here and put your gross sales in here. Um, and then add your estimators in here and click on continue to review. We're kind of setting the benchmark at a 52% industry average. As we get Reclaimer off the ground, I may change this number once we start to see more and more shops' actual close ratio. I'm going to put in my own, um, like, this is, this is kind of an aggregate of a bunch of shops' close ratios, but what— the more people we have on Reclaimer, the more more, we'll be able to actually see what the true industry average is. So, um, but this kind of gives you an idea, you know, if you can— the top performers at 65%, you know, industry average is 52%. If every— for every 1% improvement at the shop, it's $15,000 to $50,000 a year. So anyway, so you fill out this information and then you hit continue to review, and you're going to get something like this. And what this is going to do is it's going to show you your full team close ratio. These numbers are in that CCC report, but it doesn't analyze it. It doesn't do any kind of projections on or show you where you're at to industry benchmarks and things like that. So this will take care of that for you. And if you're a Reclaimer user, we're going to connect, connect that to CCC. So to pull that report in for you automatically, and we can start to track to see how Reclaimer is helping your close ratio increase. Anyway, this is, you know, your top numbers here. Estimator performance ranks. So we've got one estimator at 73.8%, one at 63.6%, and one at 55.7%. So all three of these estimators are above that 52%. So that's why there's no missed revenue by estimator. But if you have any that are under 52%, it'll show you what that estimator is costing you in dollars. For example, the shop that I kind of built this for originally, they, uh, their one person was costing the business $470,000 a year by not being at— they were at like a 30-ish percent close ratio— by not being at 50%. Um, no lost deals recorded yet because this is just dummy, dummy data in here. But it will have a scoreboard that you can track And again, Reclaimer will fill this in automatically. It'll start tracking your daily, weekly, um, like who's a prospect and by estimator and have they closed yet or not. And then you, if you put in there, if you lose them, put in why you lost them, you know, like got steered to another shop and that kind of thing. It will study it over time. It'll give you suggestions on how to fix those sales issues. So then it'll show you some revenue scenarios. It'll run some numbers, based on where you're at. If you were to increase your close ratio by 1%, you're gonna add another $36,000. If you bring everybody up to 52%, this is assuming anybody is below that, it'll show you how much more money you'll make there. If you bring everybody up to 53%, and if you match the top performer, in this case I think their top performer was at 80-something percent, then you'll add another $326,400 in revenue. Again, this is just using your existing numbers, not having to bring another car in or do a dollar in marketing. It's just getting your salespeople, your CSR, selling more, and then what your revenue would be. So not $2.4 million, but you'd be at $2.7 million. All right, so then let's see, what's the next thing? Oh, I know. So then targets. So this will set targets for you. So down here at the bottom there's this little tabs. So hit targets here. Um, because our shop is targeted at 52% industry average, the, um, there's no, uh, it's not showing any goals like increase in sales because they're already at that number. But if we did, it would show that we need to get another 30 per year, another 1.2 per month. You know, another 0.07 per day and, you know, 1.1 per week, whatever. And then how much that would add in revenue. And then each, each person here that is below, it's how many more cars or closes they need to do a week, like 2.5 or 1.3 or 0.07. Um, then there's the scoreboard, which this is coming soon, but this would be connected with that report on your CCC. And when, when you're, if you're a Reclaimer user, it'll pull in all of your estimates that you're working, uh, in the shop, and, uh, it'll track your close ratio in real time for you. So you'd be able to look in here and see on any given day what jobs are being worked on by what estimator and if they've closed them or not. And then there's some AI tools here where it'll do some analysis on why you're losing jobs and write some scripts and give you some tips and suggestions. These are just set to coming soon just because they're going to connect in with our Reclaimer tool, uh, and so when we have that, but we'll offer this, you know, we'll unlock these two things for free for everybody. So anyway, that's it. So those are the, those are the three tools. So, um, again, get in here, play with this stuff. You know, it, it will ask you to put your shop information in and create an account. All we're gonna use that for is just for our, um, newsletter. We're just gonna get a, uh, every two weeks we put out a newsletter. So you'll start getting that if you're not already getting our newsletter. It's not a sales gimmick or anything like that. It's really, it's a free tool for the industry. The only gimmick is we want more people finding more of our stuff like this. So any free tools that we build, it's just a way for us to get that information out to everybody. So you'll join our mailing list, but you can opt out of it afterwards if you don't like what you get from us. So if you don't like what you're getting, please let us know. So anyway, guys, that's it. That's all I got for today on the Hero Group Labs. Like I said, 3 freebies for you that are like software but not software, or at least not a paid software. Paid software. They're— it's free software for you guys to use. That'll solve a real couple of real challenges in the shop. Hopefully that was helpful, and I'll see you guys on the next AI Labs.