This thread is all about 'business,' and not auto mechanics, so I'll spare you the technical details.

Suffice it to say that my truck began to run poorly nearly a month ago, and last week the situation became intolerable. I went to the usual mechanic, who identified a part ... the part was ordered, and installed a week ago. The problems seemed worse - much worse ... yet, an unrelated minor glitch was fixed!

The mechanic, as were several others, was 'all booked up,' well into next week. My truck is my livelihood, and I could no longer wait. So, I got up my nerve and approached a certain shop that had all the hallmarks of big expense: fancy uniforms, huge sign, lots of lights, brand name, and a focus on trucks less than 5 year old. (Mine is almost old enough to vote!)

I was greeted with a 'yes, we can look at it today.' I was given an estimate for the diagnosis. I noticed a 'shop rate' that was 30% higher than most shops in town.

The problem was found, and fixed. The total expense wasn't nearly as bad as I had expected. I noticed very little mark-up on the parts. There was no 'nickel and dimeing' me with miscellaneous charges for 'shop supplies' and such.

Getting service when I needed it was worth something.
Having a proper diagnosis done is worth something.
Having the problem fixed is worth something.
Getting my confidence back in my truck is worth something.

Where the business 'dropped the ball' was in the way they had scared me off ... leaving me to flounder amongst the multitude of lesser businesses. The experience has me examining my assumptions.

I wonder how many of us, in the ways we run and present our businesses, are also scaring off customers - or, at least, failing to get our message through to them?

Therre are business lessons in my truck repair story.

You aren't that fancy shops target market.

Their market (like ESI companies) is the technically challenged and the new to town don't know who else to call.

If you were traveling and your truck broke down where would you be inclined to go for service... the whole in the wall shop on some back street or the national chain place (or dealer).?

"People like to do business where business is good."

I suppose that's where the shop put me off for all these years ... I saw a 'flash and jive' hustle, when they are no such thing!

Indeed, what I found was a very competent, very reasonably priced shop.

Ever have someone approach you for a 'side job,' simply because they assume the company would not be interested in their 'little thing?' Or, experience their delight when they learn that, yes, you do 'little jobs' as well as the 'big' ones?

It should not shock you that paying extra for quality is usually the cheapest way to go in the long run.
If you can't afford to fix it right how can you afford to fix it again.

How true that is.

Double DITTOm here.

Now the thorne!
I do "side work" and quite a bit of it. I don't feel bad or ashamed. I charge the going rate for the resi guys in my area,am fully Insured and licensed.

The reason I do (aside from good money). These guys (understandably so) can't make a days pay on these jobs, therefore can't be botherd, with changing out MRS Jones' dinning rm fixture. or repairing that door bell. SOOO here I am. Booming!!!
Very proud of it!!! I advertise for small jobs, estimates (most) over the phone and night/ weekend hours.

EDIT: most service work, mark up can be over 100% and nobody blinks.
I saw a niche and pounced on it.
No appologies or regrets!

Leland, you have no appoligies to make, do a good job at a fair price and people will notice. Fully 80% of my work is old work and service work, the total cost of most of my jobs is less than 500 dollars, yet I still can make a living.

I saw a niche and pounced on it.

That's one point that was raised by my truck repair experience. I would have tried this guy years ago, had I but realized he had something to offer me. Had his 'message' got through my personal "spam" filter, he would have been my first choice - rather than my last.

While I do not intend to open the whole 'side work' debate ... real businesses have to also recognize the reasons the customers might not think to call them. Part of this is 'focus;' I see far too many firms claiming to do everything. Mrs. Smith doesn't want you to 'do everything;' she wants the ceiling fan hung.

One guy here has his phone ringing, and trucks rolling, even in 'slow' times. One of the reasons? He realized that customers could care less about code - but are mighty impressed that his guys wear booties, lay out tarps, and are meticulous in their clean-up. His guy might be the dumbest electrician in town - but he looks professional (rather than the Manson Family reject who works for a competitor). Just as important, he stresses these 'soft' issues in his advertising.

Your correct. It not only is what you sell...
But how you sell it.

BTW: Manson Family reject. Leave me out of this. Personal attacks are not alowed on this site.

there are days when i can sale ice to an eskmo

I don't see taking small jobs as side work. It is just expanding the scope of your business.
I usually think of "side work" as when an employee is doing work on his own that his employer is not willing (or never gets a chance) to bid on.
As an employer I always found that troubling, particularly if the employee didn't talk to me about it first.
If someone came to me and said he was helping his brother and sister in law wire their house I wouldn't have a problem with it but if this guy is running a part time business on the side I would suggest it is time he sought other opportunities away from my company and I would escort him to the door if he insisted on continuing.

I do agree with that Greg, I work now (for the next 2 wks anyway) inside maint. So no conflict.
When I was younger The contractors I worked for would not look at residential under $1.5M. So no issue was ever raised. And I would not do the comm. Ind. stuff, I would pass it to my employer.That was in my best interest.

When you work for big companies this is a lot more straight forward. IBM makes you sign an intellectual property agreement with an air tight "no compete" clause.
I wrote a couple programs on my own time to make my job easier. I was not really even a programmer but IBM went out of their way to point out to me, they owned those programs.
In the case of the online test program, they said it was so our competition couldn't use it. I really think it was just to remind everyone, they owned your thoughts.

Non-Compete-- Thsi can be tricky.
If worded right/wrong (depends on perspective) You May not be allowed to work in your choosen profession.

I'm an Electrician. My fire alarm employer,once wanted me to sign one. This would have excluded me from almost any position in my field. I declined, and they re-arranged it.
I still did not sign.

Where I am now, a fellow employee (plumber with handicapped daughter) worked with some professors and came up with a great device, the college holds the pattern, he got a little something. Thats understandable, He used their resources. No problem.

I think were all discussing the same basic issue: a failure to communicate. Call it the "Cool Hand Luke" paradox.

The customer fails to communicate to the vendor what they desire.

The vendor (us) fails to communicate to the customer that we are in a position to fulfill their desires.

Often, we need to overcome a pre-existing bias. I had assumed that the place I finally -out of desperation - would be arrogant, "full up", and expensive. I assumed that I would by 'strip mined' by wholesale parts changes, additional charges, and pressured to authorize unnecessary work. I was 100% wrong.
They, to be fair, seemed to assume I was a professional, who really needed his truck, and was an adult who would happily pay a reasonable amount to get it fixed. (I'm glad their assumptions were better then mine!)

I recently did a gas station / mini mart job. The customer told me afterward that he had discovered me purely by accident, through the GC. The customer told me that everyone he had asked had recommended a certain competitor - a fine firm, that has pretty much sewn up the 'gas station' market in this town. Many folks assume this other EC is the only guy who can do 'haz loc' installations.

The fact that I was, at that time, building a CNG plant for a major fleet operation was generally unknown. People - including this customer - were not aware that I was qualified, and interested in doing, such work. That almost became my loss.

I experienced something similar when I purchased my first 'utility body' truck. Suddenly, I was a "real" electrician, and not just another handyman. That nothing had changed - not I, nor my tools, nor my stock - well, that didn't matter. The big truck did.
The truck is a two-edged sword. Some folks feel better when they see the truck, and are happy to pay more for a 'real' electrician. Others see it, and assume that I simply must be out of their price range.

We need to recognize the expectations of our intended customers, address those concerns ... and make sure they know about it!

You've hit the nail on the head Reno when you say that failure to communicate is a basic issue. It really is true that no matter how you slice it, "perception is reality".

Andy

Quote: "These guys (understandably so) can't make a days pay on these jobs, therefore can't be botherd, with changing out MRS Jones' dinning rm fixture. or repairing that door bell."

That may be true of some commercial, or industrial only shops, may say they can'r be bothered, but for many years these small jobs have been our bread and butter jobs, and many of the small shops in the area, depend on them as well.

The contractors that I have as friends, that do residential. They have 1 maybe 2 guys,that this is all they do, Service, This leads to the bigger projects.. Yes we do compete, and yes we're all stil very close friends.
We don't share numbers, only stories.:)

So how do you communicate it besides being and having employees that are approachable by homeowners, consistantly do a good job at what you do and put it on the side of your truck? This is what we do and it seems to be working for my small growing business.

I've seen "No job too big or too small!" included in contractors adds before but I've yet to see that phrase in a yellow page ad for a dealer mechanic.

My experience with my dealer's service dept. hasn't been pleasant. After repeated visits totaling hundreds of dollars the 2002 Tahoe still rattles and makes bumping noises. They can change the oil but apparently they can't hear. I believe I'm done with them.
Rant off/

My previous employer was so busy with new construction that he encouraged me to take the small ones on the side. He even let me use his tools and materials, within reason of course.
The only problem was that we were working 10 or 12 hour days 6 or 7 days a week at the time so there wasn't much of me left to go around.

When I went out on my own it was because I was tired of having one GC after another's poor planing or schedule hogging keep me from having any kind of a life outside of my job. I was always one phone call away from losing Saturday or even Sunday too. They didn't flinch at replying "Sunday will be fine." when you told them that was the only way you could get there before the middle of next week. Oops--rant off again/

With that my plan was to try and keep about 50/50 new construction and service work, thinking that when the GC's were all over me I could get some breathing room by saying no to service work. Scheduling is still tough (it's hard to say no you know) but up until recently it's worked out pretty good. Now as new construction is slowing way down I'm glad that I built up a decent word of mouth network for my service business. I don't even have an ad in the phone book. Yet.

I recently finished a new house and shop for a lady who originally hired me a couple of years ago to change a fan on a tip from a local lighting store. They keep a stack of my cards handy.

Working with her GC led to me now having a set of plans on my desk for his next project, a 3500 sq. foot custom house.

As I was typing this I received a call for some minor service from a man who works with one of my clients.

I guess where I'm going with this is that communicating your capabilities doesn't always require a lot of banging the drum. But I guess it might if you wanted to grow really big. I don't.

And that small work leads to big work (not that wiring houses would be considered big work by many of you) and vice versa and having both can provide a little insulation from the economy.

#1-Stay vas far away from the dealer as posable. Even for warrenty work.My best friend is an independant mechanic, you NEED it, he'll fit you in. Small business "brotherhood"!
Get in with someone and you can form a relationship.
Not to mention the "pay me when you can". Plus he gets top billing for Electrical,pool service,plumbing etc. etc...

#2- Ranting is good and healthy!
#3- Service IS the bread and butter of the industry.
And a technician who can do service is totaly invaluable.

22 yrs, never been out of work, unless I requested the respit!

If that is a certain Chevy dealer that is across the street from AAA and near WalMart I understand, the Ford side of that dealership is no better, took a F150 into them that had a malfunctioning speedo, and tranny was not shifting correctly $700.00 later they told me I needed a new inst. cluster, (special order & $500.00) and still did not work, after taking it to another shop that the owner of the tranny shop who rebuilt it recommended, $63.00 for 1 hour of labor found the problem, a dirty connector on the speed sensor on the rear differental, that was my last dealing w/ that them & my cluster works just fine, thank you..

My rant over...

Dealers ... now, there's a good example where common assumptions are called into question.

Car dealers - even new car dealers - have several negative stereotypes. One of them is the assumption that they're expensive, and suited only for warranty work on your new car. This, despite decades of "Mr. Goodwrench" advertising.

Contrast this with survey results from Consumers' Union ... where dealers, as a group, did pretty well. Indeed, they did better than every other category, save the "I'm loyal to a specific one-man shop" category.

Now none of us are GM (some are actually turning a profit!), and we can't hope to run an ad campaign of the "Mr Goodwrench" scale .... but we have some of the same issues to deal with.

Does your advertising do anything to set you apart from all the other contractors out there? Or, does your message get lost in the shuffle?

Norcal-
No, it was the other one on the north end of town. We bought the car from them used and just out of factory warranty and about 90 days later the tranny blew while towing the boat to Oroville.
Fortunately they gave us a 3 month/3000mi used car warranty and also fortunately the underwriters of that warranty policy opted to replace rather than rebuild. No troubles with the tranny since.
That was what started us taking it into their service department. Soon after noises started developing in other places and we figured we would use them for that too. Mistake.
Being as my van is a 2004 E350 (bought used in Sacramento) I will heed your warning about u know who's service dept. as well.

Sorry about the thread jack Reno, I'll try to get this back on that track.

My dealer service experience was pretty much exactly what you would fear it might be. The attitudes of the service managers were mostly arrogant, as if I should feel lucky to have them looking at my car at all. Prices, when they did anything, weren't cheap. And while they got the tranny swapped without any perceptible disaster occurring, their technicians either can't or more likely won't go to the trouble it will take to isolate and properly repair a couple of very annoying (to me) noises. Evidently, this isn't the only dealer shop treating customers this way.
This is what stereotypes are built on.

Now I find myself wondering how they keep their bays so full of work. Is the image created by both advertising and the direct affiliation with the manufacturers enough to override an otherwise negative experience in the minds of the average consumer? Do people think "Even if they are a bunch of jerks they're still the only one's who can do this right"?
Or do most of their customers come from situations like mine, a warranty issue leading me to beleive that they might feel some degree of responsibility and want to make it right? And then not wising up soon enough, hoping they would get it right next time.
Or maybe my experience isn't typical.

As far as my own business goes I think it's already been said. Be approachable. In the case of small companies that in itself should provide a lot of positive grassroots advertising. I don't do any advertising other than some business cards left at a few locations and some logo shirts. What I do do is go above and beyond in explaining to my customers what I see as their solution and why I see it that way. I don't give them an attitude of "Hey, I don't write the codes" or "I didn't frame the house". Instead, when issues of structure or code are going to create issues of cost or compromise I do my best to explain why that is. In many cases they don't care to follow along but they do get the impression that I care that they are making informed decisions.
The time I spend talking to people is what I currently pay for advertising.
This has led to many referrals, most of by business actually.

It may not still be true but the last time I paid a dealer to do something and they screwed up GM made them treat me right. I am not sure I would have the same luck with the guy at the end of the street. Dealers also have the real tools, important these days when the "tool" is a computer that talks to the computer in your vehicle. The dealers should have all the latest software updates.

DEALERS BITE!!! Propriotory issues as you speak of.
01' van. needed an ignition modual. I knew this. Plain old common sence and logic.
3 days of return visits and $80 min. diagnostic charges x 3. Plus the $180 charge for keys.
4TH visit. I TOLD them replace the ignition modual (as I requested at the first PHONE CALL).
$173 peice. done... have had no problem since!!!!
I told them the problem. They soaked me!!!! Most are 1 dementianal andf bad to boot!!!! total: $453.73. To change it as requested... $243.

Any good mechanic worth his/their salt- has access to all but a few computer related equipment and programs.If registerd, No problems with the factory. On any issue.

Dealers are THIEVES!!!!! But a needed evil! Created by them.

Dealers. Last resort ONLY!!

Nicely said, leland.

However, it was the dealer who was there when I needed him. He was the guy I was afraid to visit. I had heard the opinion you voiced far too many times .... looking back, it seems most folks were just passing on what they had heard, rather than having any direct experience.

That's why I stressed checking your assumptions.

Yet, I didn't start this thread to damn / praise dealers. I started it to make us ask ourselves to consider how we - both individually and as a trade - look to the customers, and to address those issues.

Do the folks you want to serve start off assuming that you're too expensive - or that you're not interested in their 'little' stuff?
Or, do you keep getting calls for the sort of work you'd rather avoid ... while the work you want goes elsewhere?

In short, my repair experience has me looking at the way I run my business. Don't forget ... you're a customer too, and what you want from vendors might just be what your customers want from you.

What you sell and how you sell it, thats what we must convey.
No easy task, how do you sum up an entire industry into a few lines on a card,truck or big phone book?