Motivating Auto Detail Shop Employees to Increase Speed Without Sacrificing Quality

Prior to retirement I'd set up a mobile detailing franchising company, and over the years I'd learned that auto-detailers take their trade and craft very seriously. Most treat it like an art more than a science, and I understand that, and so would you if you detailed cars to perfection and show room quality for a living. We all know that auto detailing isn't a rocket science, but maybe it should be closer to a science than an art, without destroying the finesse and talent it takes to get there.

Now then, I've sat in seminars and listened to automotive detail experts and gurus explain how to turn a detailing shop into a production line. And, Winslow Friedrich Taylor, the grandfather of modern management, is in my family tree, and he believed in paying people piece-meal, paying people for each unit completed, rather than a salary or per hour. That makes sense for a mobile detailing shop, and you must have goals for your production, so that you don't waste any of your bays, or any of the time during the week, and still have maximum output.

Granted, all of these things are important however when you are dealing with artists who really care about the detailing, and pride themselves in perfection, something that your customers also desire, then the last thing you wish to do is alienate them. If you push your detailers too hard, or chisel them on the amount of money that you pay them for each car they detail, they may get upset when you give them a "dog" or a totally trashed car when another detailer gets a car which is already in pretty good shape, and each person gets the same amount of bonus for each unit completed.

They won't find this to be unfair, and the "dog" could take them twice or three times as long to do a perfect job, and being a perfectionist they won't quit until it's perfect. You need to have some sort of a bonus system so when someone gets a really ugly car that is totally trashed, they get a few extra bucks. You should also take "before and after pictures" and put those in the lobby with the individual's name under it, to show how great their work is. I used to introduce them to the customer and have them thank the detail directly and perhaps even give them the tip and request them next time.

Motivation should not only be based on money, there should also be for rewards for performance, perfection, professionalism, and production. I hope you will please consider all this because it's important, and it's also the fair way to play it. Think on it.

Lance Winslow is a retired Founder of a Nationwide Franchise Chain, http://www.detailguys.com/ and now runs the Online Think Tank. Lance Winslow believes writing 24,222 articles by July 22, 2011 at 2:22 PM is going to be difficult because all the letters on his keyboard are now worn off now..

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Motivating Independent Contractor Mobile Car Washing Teams

Before I retired, I had built up a mobile car wash franchising company. Towards the end of my career the Internet started to become quite a factor in the business. It became a great recruiting tool and having a website made our franchisee real, and we noted that our competitors that had no website, at that time, were not taken seriously by the customers. Today, of course some dozen years later everyone has a website in the industry.

During this time concierges started to enter the industry. These folks would set up a website portal, grab all of the traffic online, and then attempt to find operators to do all the work, while taking a percentage of each job for their efforts. Many operators were angry about this because, these companies basically took the web traffic by using SEO type strategies and then sold the customers back to the actual operators. I had always told such companies where to stick it, when they contacted our company to use our franchisees to cover all of their promises to the customers who emailed in orders.

One thing I noted when dealing with concierges was that they would be quite pushy with our franchisees, demanding that they dropped whatever they were working on right then, and handle their referral customer first. This was unfortunate because our customers which we were working on at the time, were steady customers, and they were quite important us. However, the concierges would demand that their clients get first treatment, and if we didn't give them top-of-the-line priority and put their customers in advance of our own, they threaten to cut off their referral flow, and give those customers to one of our competitors.

I can tell you that if you are running a business using independent contractors and mobile carwash teams to service your clientele that this is a mistake, not only is it in bad form, it's unprofessional, and it will lead to animosity between the contractor, and the concierges. Another issue that happens is if one company has too much business it will refer its excess business to a secondary competitor or an independent contractor.

Currently with all the employment restrictions, withholding taxes, worker's compensation insurance, and now ObamaCare, it really doesn't make sense for mobile carwash owners to hire more people unless they have enough to keep a whole full rig busy. There would be no reason for them to expand their business or hire more people, therefore they either go down to the local Labor Ready and pick up a few workers, or they use an independent contractor.

When paying independent contractors, there should be a bonus for happy customers as well as immediate payment. If this occurs then all of a sudden it is worth the independent contractor's time to stop what they're doing and do your work first, if not all the threats, belligerent attitude, and demands are liable to get the concierges or the contracting company on the blacklist of the independent contractor. Indeed I hope you will please consider all these thoughts and think on it.

Lance Winslow is a retired Founder of a Nationwide Franchise Chain, http://www.carwashguys.com/ and now runs the Online Think Tank. Lance Winslow believes writing 24,222 articles by July 22, 2011 at 2:22 PM is going to be difficult because all the letters on his keyboard are now worn off now..

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