Now is the perfect opportunity to invest in equipment, training and planning for the rest of the year.

After a long and snowy winter, it’s imperative to ensure your collision centre is prepared for the months ahead. As we head through spring and toward summer, now is a great time to perform maintenance on your tools and invest in equipment upgrades. During the busy winter months this is often challenging because your equipment is in high demand, and vendors are equally run off their feet.

By the time spring rolls around, there tends to be a calming in the frequency of heavy repairs, providing a much better opportunity to take stock, analyze where your business is, where you want it go and make investing in your equipment and training your technicians are key priority. Additionally, at this time of year, vendors will likely have better availability to work with you and assess your needs, as well as offer more competitive rates when it comes to upgrades and training.

A shift in repairs
Spring also frequently sees a shift in the type of work that comes in. During the winter, heavy hits tend to be a priority, and cosmetic repairs are often overlooked, since they’re often masked by a combination of snow, salt, sand and reduced visibility.

Now, as the days get longer and the weather improves, we’re in that time of year where people are starting to find defects on their vehicle and are looking to get them repaired. And if you’re able to accommodate them in a shop that is clean, organized and up-to-date, with the latest in tools, technology and training, it can create a win-win situation for the shop and customer.

Another factor to consider, is staff absences, such as vacation time. Collision centre staff, including technicians and estimators work hard and vacation time is important, but you want to make sure that time is organized and effectively scheduled, so people are available to perform the required tasks while others are taking time away.

Often, because spring and summer tend to coincide with more cosmetic and drivable repairs as opposed to heavy hits, it provides a relief for your technicians and estimators, making the idea of scheduling time off for them more feasible during the spring and summer months.

Sales and revenue
At the same time, the emphasis on more drivable repairs provides opportunity to boost sales and revenue, including customer pay and re-conditioning work on used vehicles. This can be highly effective in both adding repair volume and profit, plus it can go a long way to strengthening relationships, not only with  individual customers but also dealers, who are looking to have clean, presentable used vehicles on their lots during prime selling season.

Reconditioning work can keep your technicians and estimators steady during the warmer months, and if you’re able to perform the work to high quality standard and do it consistently, that will lead to strong, long-term relationships which can serve you well, even during times when insurance or traditional type repairs maybe less frequent.

By taking steps to invest in shop organization now, including equipment and training investment, as well as scheduling vacation time for your employees, it sets you up for not only a steady and profitable summer season, but ensures that when fall rolls around, you’re well prepared to meet the repair demands of the coming winter.

Bio:

J.R. Martino is Vice President and Managing Partner at Budds’ Collision Services, one of North America’s most progressive collision repair facilities. You can reach him at [email protected].