Hello Shop Owners, Sunil Patel, Co-Founder of Tekmetric here. I’m writing this blog because I believe it’s both an honor and a duty to be a leader in business. Recently, I was awarded by Houston Business Journal as a Most Admired CEO of 2020, and this got me thinking about the leadership principles that have helped me along the way and made Tekmetric what it is today.
Not only do I lead a team of great talent, but I also speak with and have the pleasure of doing business with many strong leaders, whether it be shop owners, other entrepreneurs, or even other leaders within the company.
The fact of the matter is that I wouldn’t have been able to build a robust shop management software without my team. Watching them succeed and set each other up for success is hands down the most rewarding part of my job. It’s a privilege to work with talented and innovative individuals that make me proud each and every day. Playing a part in helping them grow and flourish makes me feel like I have served a purpose larger than simply building a product or making money.
Inspired by the HBJ honor, I took the time to sit down and outline a few of the leadership principles that I have always relied on. They focus on listening, learning, and recognizing everyone as an individual. I hope they help you and your team grow as people and as a unit.
1. Listen to Your Team
Good leadership relies on a strong feedback process. Listen to your team, whether it’s an idea or how they’re feeling so that they know you care not only about their contributions but also about them as people.
Once a week, I sit down with the leaders of different departments and simply listen to how things are going. What are the current challenges they’re facing? What are some successes they’re proud of? What do they feel they could use more support with? Giving them the room to voice their concerns, their desires, and their victories provide them with a model for being the best leader they can for the people they lead. Even when we’re hiring new team members, we like to get input from our current team to make sure we’re considering all voices in the process.
No idea is a bad idea. Even the ideas that you never end up using still have value because they can spark other ideas, show your team a new perspective, or simply show the person who voiced them that they were included as part of the team or project.
2. Act on Feedback
Internal feedback is important, too. That’s how I came up with Tekmetric. When I owned and operated an auto repair shop, I realized that there was no easy way to check on things when I was away on vacation or at a conference. I either had to call someone and ask them to read me the numbers or use a VPN and brute force my way into my own system. I thought, “This should be easier.”
I took note of those challenges, then asked myself how I might be able to solve them. I began developing a cloud-based shop management solution that could be accessible from anywhere. My business partner Prasanth and I were able to develop a system that worked, but I realized I could keep innovating and make it better with feedback from other shop owners.
3. Acknowledge Individual Uniqueness
When you have a growing team, you start to notice the different strengths and tendencies of the people you work with. Sometimes you have people who are capable of filling a whole marker board with ideas in a short amount of time. Other people are much more measured and reserved, but when they say something aloud, you better listen, because they have powerful insights. Your technicians know how to get to the heart of what’s going on with the vehicle, but one technician might do it a little differently than the next. Your service advisors all know how to make sure guests are getting what they need, but the little differences in how they operate are all worth observing and learning from. Everyone has their strengths and understanding what each person’s strengths make it easier to maximize their performance in their roles.
Even when we’ve implemented Tekmetric at large companies with hundreds of shops, drawing from the strengths of different players has been invaluable. Corporate executive leaders have a macro-view of how things work that’s critical to our success, but equally critical are the perspectives of our own team members and individual franchise shop owners. The people in the shop every day are the ones who make sure we don’t miss details, and that our system and all the systems it interacts with work for them as they serve their guests. Input from everyone makes for a simple and easy switch.
No matter how someone thinks or expresses what they’re thinking, there’s something to be gained from every team member as long as you have an environment where everyone is respected and you have implemented a healthy feedback process.
4. Never Stop Learning
Feedback is on an ongoing process that never ends and always seeks more refinement. Listening to ourselves, our team, and other shop owners continues to be crucial to ensuring that my business keeps innovating products that can outcompete similar products on the market and help shop owners scale up, be more profitable, and help as many people as possible.
These are just a few principles that we use, but I always encourage leaders to keep adding to and adjusting their mindset because we’re always going to run into new challenges.
If your shop isn't using at least one mark up matrix to get the most out of your parts sales, then you might be leaving a lot of money on the table.
In fact, auto repair shops have an amazing opportunity to maximize their profit margin on parts sales in particular. Especially when you consider the tools available to support and simplify the entire process. Gone are the days of using pen and paper or busting out the calculators.
Cloud-based shop management systems have made it easier than ever to not only manage your shop, but really get the most value out of the work you're already doing.
Using a parts matrix in particular is one of the most important aspects in making sure your shop is profitable. By building streamlined process for marking up parts, shops can ensure grow your shop’s profit margin while staying fair to customers.
The checkered flag is in sight, moving to the last stretch of the race at a good pace! As Tekmetric kicked off Q3, we focused on two main priorities: streamlining the customer experience and enhancing our relationships within the auto repair industry. With a customer-obsessed approach, Tekmetric is committed to driving product innovation through these two avenues, as we continue to evolve and better serve you – our partner shops.
Streamlining the Customer Experience from Beginning to End
This quarter, we made it our goal to continue helping shops improve the customer experience from start to finish. The customer experience involves streamlining operations at every level, so the vehicle can be safely repaired and back on the road as soon as possible. From estimate to the final payment, our end goal is to help you be as efficient as possible.
As part of our efforts this quarter, we sought to identify and eliminate bottlenecks to enhance shop efficiency while meeting customers where they want to be. We also implemented updates that many of you, our partner shops, have recommended to keep Tekmetric relevant to the entire shop experience. Together, these updates combine to create a stronger shop management system that helps your shop run smoothly and ultimately supports growth over time:
Simpler Day-to-Day With Enhanced Data Integrations: With ALLDATAandTireFitment, service advisors can now get labor and tire data directly from these integrations within the Tekmetric platform.
Tire Purchasing Made Easy: With Tire Suite you can manage all tire operations directly from the platform including compliance, regulatory standard adherence, inventory management, and even purchasing via our integration with PartsTech.
Increased Transparency in Inspections: Through our integrations with Advance’s MotoVisuals, you can now more easily educate your customers with repair animations. iCustomer Comms Simplified: We added template messages and the ability to adjust text verbiage for estimate, inspection and invoice links, which limits redundancy and streamlines communication.
Increased Payment Flexibility With BNPL: Our partnership with Affirm allows shops to meet vehicle owners where they are with flexible payment plans for nearly any budget or repair need, including Buy Now, Pay Later (BNPL). Customers who introduce BNPL see a 3x increase in ARO.
Growing Relationships Within the Industry
As Tekmetric continues to streamline and enhance the customer experience, we are also focused on strengthening our relationships within the auto repair industry. As a customer-obsessed shop management system, we aim to support shops in providing the highest quality service to vehicle owners they can – and this wouldn’t be possible without valuable feedback and insights from you, our partner shops. This approach allows us to better understand the real challenges you face, so we can provide innovative solutions that help you accomplish your goals and succeed in a market where the consumer expects more from their repair shops.
You may have seen us at the Shop Hackers Conference in Murfreesboro, Tennessee, where Adam McInturff, VP of Sales and Phil Acree, Head of Payment Sales presented on our latest features and upcoming innovations. We also spoke to many of you about the trends you are seeing in the industry and how Tekmetric can support your needs – from hiring service writers to succession planning. We continued these conversations at ATE Spokane in Washington and ASCCA in California and gathered key insights as we look ahead to the end of 2024 and the beginning of a new year.
Thanks to you and your key feedback shared through these conversations, Tekmetric has been able to provide excellent service and innovative solutions throughout this quarter, resulting in recognition from the G2 Summer Awards in these categories: Overall Leader, Best Usability, Most Implementable and Momentum Leader. In addition, Tekmetric was named the best auto shop management software by G2. This recognition is a significant testament to the support of each of you, your teams and the valuable insights you provide.
Aspiring To Inspire with Thought Leadership
For Tekmetric, customer relationships aren’t confined to the walls of a conference room. We also aimed to share the knowledge through webinars and conversations with industry outlets that sparked important conversations about what’s changing in our industry.
With our webinars, our aim is to help you uncover actionable insights that you can apply to grow your shop. Some of these conversations included our webinar, “Innovate to Elevate,” led by John Phelps, Director of Channel and Partnerships, where he talked about transforming the customer journey with the end goal of streamlining operations and boosting customer satisfaction. Similarly in our payments webinar, Phil Acree, Head of Payments covered the current state of consumer financing and how shops can enhance the customer experience regarding the payment process.
We also shared this knowledge through key industry outlets, so you can share and discuss with your team, including:
Future proof your shop exit strategy. P.J. Leslie, Director of Business Development, along with Matthew Schwab, owner of Clutch Automotive, shared tips to prepare your shop for the future and retirement by building a well-crafted exit plan so exiting shop owners can confidently step into the next phase of their lives, knowing they have set up a legacy for their shop.
Strategic use of evergreen and real-time data. We also published an article with Vehicle Service Pros titled, “Using numbers to supercharge your shop’s performance, where we discussed how to use real-time and evergreen data to expand your shop.
As we leave an upbeat Q3, Tekmetric continues to keep its eye on the finish line for this year: helping shops enhance the customer experience through product innovation. We are very proud that our commitment to a two-way relationship with our customers has been the driving force behind every improvement and our collaborative approach with other leaders in the industry enables us to build a steady foundation for continuous innovation. We aim to continue measuring up as we enter the final quarter of 2024.
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