Car Count Daily

Hi Shop Owners! It’s Ron Ipach. Some people call me Captain Car Count, and welcome to Car Count Daily. On today’s episode we’re going to talk about making a good first impression. You’ve no doubt heard the saying you never get a second chance to make a first impression. When it comes to finding a new auto repair shop I’d like to know what the first impression people are getting when they find you. There’s various ways that they’re going to find you to do business with you, so let’s go over a few different ways.

First is online. If they’re searching out an auto repair shop what are they seeing when they find you for the very first time? Chances are they’re going to do a local search and they’re going to find a lot of reviews for the local auto repair shops. What do your reviews look like? Do you have a lot of stars in a five star rating that Google and Yelp give out? Are you getting at least a four out of five stars? Do you have a lot of reviews? Are there a lot of positive reviews? If there are, they’re getting a really good first impression by looking at you.

At that point they’re maybe going to go over to your website, or maybe they just do a search for auto repair and they go directly to your website when they find it. What are they seeing? What is their first impression about you that they’re seeing when they look at your website? Is it clean? Is it up to date? What I mean by up to date is has it been created in the last year or two? Unlike a building that maybe you painted five years ago, that can still look good. A website that was built five years ago really shows it’s age because technology’s constantly changing. Take a look at your website and it you’ve had it up for quite a while maybe it’s time to refresh it a little bit and kind of spruce it up and make it look new again.

Again, that’s the very first impression they’re getting when they’re looking online to find you. The same thing is with the mobile phone. What are they seeing when they find you on the mobile phone? Just make sure it’s a good positive first impression. Another way that they’re going to find you is simply by driving by your shop. What are they seeing when they drive by your shop? Is it clean? Is it well maintained? Is there a fresh coat of paint on the outside? If you’ve got awnings, are they clean? What about your signage? Does it look old? Does it look outdated? Is it rusted? Is it falling apart or does it look really nice? These things are very, very important to somebody when they’re choosing to do business with somebody.

If you’ve got a bunch of junk cars piled up in your parking lot and they’re not driving a junk car they’re not going to feel at home doing business with you, so really take the time. What is the very first impression people are going to get when they see you for the very first time? Don’t discount this, don’t ignore it because if they’re getting a bad first impression they’re never going to come in and do business with you.

I hope this helps. Take a fresh clean look at your business online and offline and you decide is it a place that you would like to do business with. Thanks for watching this episode. By the way, go down below this video and let me know your thoughts. Give me your ideas, give me your likes and dislikes. I’d love to hear them. I’d love to hear everything you have to say about this program and if it’s helping you, if it’s not helping you, whatever comments. Just go down, post them below, I’d love to read them.