In Automotive Repair as in any business you are defined by your customers and their perception of you. In order to define yourself look to your customer base. Identifying the demographic attributes of your customer base will provide valuable information but knowing their priorities when evaluating automotive repair service providers may be even more powerful. If you can identify why people choose you and why they don’t you can exploit your strengths and improve on your weaknesses. Performing this analysis will provide a picture of where you stand in the marketplace. Following are steps that will define who you are as a business:
- Define Your Target Market – To know who you are you must know who your customer is. This can be accomplished by a sample of the customer base. For example asking all the customers that visit the shop in a one month period to provide demographic information such as age, gender, occupation, income level, etc. will provide a basic description of the target market. Some demographic information such as age and income level is best asked for in ranges. And to really define your target market you’ll want to know things like what is most important to them regarding maintenance of their vehicle. And why they chose you over the competition.
- Check Online Reviews – Find out what people are saying about you. This will give you a picture of your strengths and weaknesses. Look for common threads and identify what is working and what is not.
- Analyze Business Won – When you earn a new customer it’s important to know where they found you. This will tell you where to focus your promotional resources. Maybe even more important is to ask why they chose you. This will tell you what you’re doing well and allow you to take advantage of it.
- Analyze Business Lost – Knowing the reason for business not earned can be extremely powerful. When a prospective customer inquires or asks for a quote and doesn’t become a customer find out why they went elsewhere. Not every person will cooperate but those that do will provide valuable information. When an existing customer decides to go elsewhere finding out why can provide powerful information on improving your business as well.
