Building a successful business doesn’t happen by accident. You must go beyond hard work and determination alone by using essential tools to pave the way to the excellence of your auto repair shop.
The Scorecard for Success is one of the most important tools you’ll use in this journey. You can easily set and achieve your goals through this tracking system, ensuring you’re constantly pushing your business forward.
Ready to start pushing your auto repair shop to the next level? Here’s what you need to know about using the Scorecard for Success to build a profitable enterprise.
What is a Scorecard for Success?
A Scorecard for Success is a system designed to help you measure and track your most important performance metrics. As you do that, the scorecard creates a navigation chart you can follow to promote the growth and profitability of your business.
To use this system, you must first define categories—or metrics—that impact your business success the most. Then you set goals for those metrics, measure your performance, and score your success weekly.
By the end of the month, you can instantly see where to focus your efforts and start troubleshooting to improve.
Why Scorecard is Important for Auto Shops
Many businesses make the mistake of only using data from previous months to years to guide their growth decisions. Known as reflective data, these distant metrics only tell you what’s happened in the past. Since your auto shop changes as it grows, that data may not properly give you the stats needed to achieve your current goals.
With the Scorecard for Success, you can see what’s happening at your auto shop in real time. By following your business metrics weekly, this predictive data gives you the power to be proactive. You can use the metrics to make an educated guess about the future and be more prepared.
How You Can Measure Success with Your Scorecard
Although it might sound a bit complicated, you’re only seven simple steps away from using your scorecard to reach your goals. Here’s what to do.
1. Commit to Creating a Personalized Scorecard
The first step in doing anything worthwhile—and potentially overwhelming—is choosing to begin. Take a deep breath, sit down with a pen and paper, and put on your thinking cap. Your initial commitment to elevating your business’s success will help you see it through to the end.
2. Define Your Five Scorecard Categories
Next, you want to define your five scorecard categories. These categories are the metrics—or key performance indicators (KPIs)—that let you know how your business is doing that week.
To do this effectively, dig deep to figure out how you like to gauge the success of your business, such as:
- Car count
- Average estimate
- Average repair orders
- Labor hours per repair order
- Auto tech productivity
- Gross profits
Think about it this way: if you were to call your shop for a performance update while on vacation, what would you want to know? The categories are 100% unique to each business, so there’s no right or wrong answer here.
Ideally, you want to create one to three scorecards. If you just go with one, create a master scorecard with both sales and service metrics. Otherwise, separate each division to see how everyone fares separately before looking at the big picture.
3. Set a Weekly Goal for Each Category
Once you have your categories in place, set a weekly goal for each one. You’ll want to reflect on where you want your business to be while staying realistic, so you can push forward and still celebrate wins.
Depending on your business goals, a weekly scorecard for an auto repair shop might look like this:
- Car Count: 70
- Average Repair Order: $695
- Total Labor Dollars: $20,000
- Labor Hours Per Repair Order: 2.25
- Tech Productivity: 85%
In addition, you might want to add profit dollars to the mix to ensure you’re making enough money to keep your doors open.
4. Link Each Scorecard Goal to a Department
You need your whole team on the job if you want to create a truly profitable auto repair shop business. So, keep them in the loop by linking each scorecard goal to the associated department. Car counts land squarely on the sales team’s shoulders, while techs are responsible for boosting their productivity numbers.
5. Assign a Scorecard Keeper or Rotate It Out
In addition to your teams taking accountability for hitting your goals, you need someone to serve as your scorecard keeper. Alternatively, you can rotate out the duty across your entire team to teach all your team members how to run your business and take ownership of its success.
To properly keep the score, the assigned individual must grab the weekly performance numbers from the point-of-sale (POS) system and enter them into the spreadsheet. If the figures exceed the set goal, they will give one point for a well-done job. If not, it’s a zero for that category, pointing to the need for improvement.
At the end of the month, they can grade your efforts by dividing your score by the total points possible. You should see your grade improve bit by bit as you improve.
6. Update the Scorecard Every Week
This step is easy. Repeat this process weekly to stay on top of your shop’s ongoing performance. Don’t skip any weeks, or you’ll end up with costly holes in your data. You’ll have no real clue how to push your shop to the next level.
7. Review the Scorecard Results with Your Team
Don’t just update the card and file it away for later. Go over the results with your team during your weekly meetings. Offer congratulations for the wins to start the session on the right foot. Then look at your opportunities for improvement and troubleshoot ways to hit your goals.
As you measure, track, and review your data, you’ll undoubtedly find ways to improve your existing scorecard. Don’t make the changes right away, though. Jot them down each month, then alter your approach quarterly until you’re happy with your dataset.
Set Up Your Scorecard with Help from Your Automotive Business Coach
Setting up a helpful Scorecard for Success takes time to get right. If you feel like you’re not on the right track with it, let your automotive business coach help you out.
By partnering with Chris Cotton of AutoFix Auto Shop Coaching, you can get the insights and guidance you need to elevate your shop’s performance. The coaching support will help alleviate any doubts you may have as you focus on building a truly profitable auto repair shop.
To get started, simply request a callback or call the team directly by dialing (940) 400-1008. We look forward to helping you create your personalized scorecard and achieve all your goals. Feel free to reach out to us today!
