Frequently Asked Questions
I feel completely overwhelmed. What should I do?
Book a tune-up call! The first step for folks in the program who are overwhelmed is to book a 20-minute tune-up call with one of our coaches. Here’s the Calendly link to book that call: https://calendly.com/—-251/20-minute-tune-up?month=2021-11
You can also try posting your issue in the Engine Room Facebook page, to see if your fellow Roomies can help you.
Finally you can email support@workshopwhisperer.com for some guidance on where to start tackling your overwhelm.
The Engine Room coaches are here to help you with whatever challenge you’re facing in your business. Perhaps you’re struggling to understand something in the ER’s teachings. Maybe you’ve decided on a solution to a problem but you’d like to run it by someone first. You could be at your wit’s end with a team member and have no idea what to try next. Maybe you’re so overwhelmed you don’t even know what it is you want to talk about on the call!
Book the call. Bring one thing you want to talk about. A problem shared is a problem halved. The more you do it, the easier it gets.
How do I book a tune-up call with an Engine Room Coach?
Our coaches are available for tune-up calls on a round-robin, meaning when you book you’ll get whatever coach is next in line and free for that booking time. Use this calendly link and pick a time and date that works for you. https://calendly.com/—-251/20-minute-tune-up?month=2021-11
TOPs stands for Tactical Operating Priorities. One of the core pillars of the Engine Room is forward planning. We help you build a 90-day Game Plan and at every ER Retreat, we revisit that Game Plan. Your TOPs are your main goals for the quarter. Every week you post your TOPs, and you also post the 1-3 things you’re going to do THIS WEEK to move the needle closer to you achieving your TOPs.
In businesses where performance is measured, KPIs stands for “Key Performance Indicators” and KPAs stands for “Key Performance Activities”.
KPIs are measures of how the business is performing at a business level – so some examples of KPIs in a workshop might be:
- Sell 36 hours of labour per tech this week
- Upsell 80% of all incoming service jobs
- Quality: zero comebacks this week
KPAs are the activities which, if each person achieves theirs, should allow the business to achieve its KPIs.
To be able to measure KPIs, you must collect data. So to know whether you sold 36 hours of labour per tech, you must know how much work each technician did and whether or not it was billable labour.
To achieve that, you might give the tech a KPA which is, “Time clock 100% of your time in the business this week”. That would be the first step to you being able to collect the data that will tell you if you have achieved your KPI.
KPAs are tasks. KPIs are goals that use the data collected from KPAs to measure performance.
You can find more information on measuring performance in our course, “Onboarding 101 – The Revenue Accelerator”, and specifically in Lesson 4: The Productivity Power Up.
An SOP is a Standard Operating Procedure. It’s a record – in writing, or a video, or an audio recording – of how a particular task is undertaken in your workshop as standard. An SOP should assume a basic level of qualified understanding in the person undertaking the task, while mapping out the steps, in the order in which they’re undertaken, to complete the task the way you want it done.
Some basic SOPs for any automotive workshop would include:
- How to open up in the morning
- How to close up in the evening
- Handling customer keys
What do we mean by “basic level of qualified understanding”? Well, in the SOP “How to open up in the morning,” you might include the task, “Turn on the computers”. You wouldn’t need to go into the detail of how to turn a computer on. You can assume a suitably qualified admin person would know how to turn a computer on.
SOPs allow you to set an expectation of how you want processes completed, provide consistency between team members and provide you with a tool to help onboard new employees.
There are a number of resources in the library to help you tackle creating your first SOPs, including:
Systems & Processes: Your Top SOPs Part 1
Systems & Processes: Your Top SOPs Part 2
Coaches Corner: The Systems Review
Our client support heroes can be reached on support@workshopwhisperer.com. Drop them an email explaining the problem and they’ll respond to you as soon as they can.
I have a question about accounts and billing, who should I ask?
For any questions about your contract with the Workshop Whisperer, email support@workshopwhisperer.com.
If you have a specific accounts question, email accounts@workshopwhisperer.com, but cc support@workshopwhisperer.com.
I want my new service advisor to watch some of this content. Can you give them a login?
We won’t give your team their own separate logins to the Workshop Whisperer resources, but we do recommend you share your own login with them using a secure password sharing application like LastPass. That way, they can log in without knowing your password (so they only login on machines you want them to login on), and if they leave your employ you change your password and that prevents them accessing Engine Room resources.
What is “The Million Dollar Mechanics Boardroom” and how do I access it?
The Million Dollar Mechanics Boardroom (MDB) is an elite program for businesses who are well positioned to enter the next stage of development. It’s restricted to businesses with a seven-figure (or more) turnover who’ve successfully completed at least 12 months in the Engine Room program. Access into the MDB is by invitation, because not every business will be in a position where the content of the MDB program will provide appropriate value, but you are welcome to email support@workshopwhisperer.com with a request to be considered if you meet the criteria. In the MDB program, we focus on installing a layer of middle management in your business that allows the business to function smoothly and profitably without you needing to be there all of the time. We also look into the potential for developing your long-term personal wealth, so you can truly reap the rewards for all those years you slogged in business!
DO YOU HAVE THE WORKBOOKS FOR THE ONBOARDING AS ONE DOCUMENT?
Why yes we do! We have the workbooks for the lessons in Onboarding 101 and separately for the lessons in Onboarding 102 combined into two separate documents. You can download them here. Onboarding 101 – The Revenue Accelerator and Onboarding 102 – The Growth Gameplan.
Print these yourselves if you like, or you can get Office Works to print them out, or alternately go paper-free and load them into an app like Notability for iPad or NoteLedge or Zoho Notebook for a tablet, so you can write directly on the worksheets on your app.
i need help with productivity and efficiency – where can I find out more?
Productivity and efficiency are vital key performance indicators (KPIs) we must track to have a successful workshop.
Productivity is a measure of how many hours we sold today versus how many hours we had available to sell. If you have three technicians working today, and you pay each of them for eight hours, then you have 24 hours of their time you could sell as labour today. Productivity is a shop-wide measure and it’s possible to be more than 100% productive if you have particularly efficient technicians who are able to complete jobs in less time than the time allowed.
Efficiency is a measure of how quickly an individual technician did a job versus the time that was allowed for that job.
This information is covered in more detail in the lesson The Productivity Power Up, which is in the Onboarding 101 course.