One thing I missed discussing during the estimating part, was taking good photos. Rarely can we put a line item on the estimate for, ‘Take photos / one hour labor’ for a car we are going to repair. We wish we didn’t have to do this of course, but it’s just part of being in our industry. Many times, photos from our shops look like they were taken literally by five-year old’s. We must do better. If your shop doesn’t own a good PDR light, then buy one!!
Also, please take photos of a clean car by the way or take a photo of a dirty car. Then, add a line to ‘Pre-wash’ the car on the estimate then wash it, then photo the damage with a PDR light. I inserted some photos of how damage can be seen so much better with proper lighting. If your shop uses CCC, please use the CCC phone app for all photos, time is so expensive to do anything different then this!!!
Just before you send in an estimate or supplement, you must look at it as you are the desk review person on the other end. Does the estimate even make sense? Do your photos make sense? Are the OEM procedures applicable to the job? As it was explained to me, “The estimate must tell a story”. One of the best ways to ensure this, is to have someone else inside your shop review your estimate. It may take this person 15-20 minutes to look at the estimate lines, all the photos, the car and parts carts. I just bet you, that they will find something we have missed!!! Most often, in my shop we can find $50-200 of missed operations when we just have a 2nd set of eyes.
Don’t forget, about the time you have ‘Clean & Retape a molding’ on your estimate and the car doesn’t have any moldings or photos to support the line item on the estimate, you’re done. The desk reviewer has just lost any respect for you and will hammer your estimate.
When it comes to R&I’s, there is great $ here if the R&I’s are merited of course. Take photos of every item you have removed. Don’t enter to R&I something on an estimate when the part is still on the car. Now the desk reviewer is questioning, if you are really going to take the part off or not? As I was taught, ‘you tell and don’t ask when it comes to R&I’s.’ This isn’t, “Lets confirm they will pay for it first.”
In our shop, once the car is in the repair process, our body techs get photos of a repaired panel, just before the vehicle goes to prime. In prep the painters will get a photo of the sprayout cards and then get photos in the booth just prior to spraying. During reassembly, if any Denib & Buff is required the techs take photos also by using their phones. Having too many photos is almost never a problem, a missed photo can cost you several $100’s!!
Now to totally switch gears on you here.
We are over halfway for 2022. My question to you is? How are you doing on your goals for the year? I am talking about say, Gross Sales goals or Net Profit goals or both. We must be asking ourselves daily, where are we at by having a checking point. Are we on target, or aren’t we? If not, what are we going to do to fix it?
I have been listening to a good book titled, ‘Success through a positive mental attitude’ which was written in 1959 by Napoleon Hill. Funny how the book was written over 60 years ago and its as up to date as tomorrows newspaper. It is very interesting, as I have gotten older and more the people I have observed. Folks that are more positive, have a higher propensity to succeed. This is in whatever folks they have deemed as ‘success’ for themselves of course.
In Napoleons’ book, he talks about the two different types of people, who are either PMA’s or the NMA’s. When we have a ‘Positive Mental Attitude’, we can accomplish much more than someone with a ‘Negative Mental Attitude’. thinkiThe NMA’s almost wear a sign and have such a distaste for PMA’s. Here are two great quotes from Napoleon Hill, “A positive mind finds a way it can be done: A negative mind looks for all the ways it can’t be done.” “Whatever your mind can conceive and believe, it can achieve.”