Most likely, you’ve heard of the fairy tale Goldilocks and the Three Bears. It’s about a little girl named Goldilocks, who, while walking in the woods, happens upon the home of three bears. The bears have left on a walk of their own while their porridge cools down.
Goldilocks enters the house and tries the chairs – one’s too big, one’s too small, but one is just right. She tries the bowls of porridge, and one’s too hot, one’s too cold, but one’s just right. And being tired after her walk and nice breakfast, she tries the beds, but one’s too hard, one’s too soft, and one’s just right.
What happens when the bears return home is a bit of a mystery. It turns out that there are several endings to this story. Not to be outdone by folklore and legend, here’s an ending like no other.
Goldilocks became so enamored with the phrase just right, and she realized it had potentially huge implications for business, especially when it comes to marketing. So, she started a marketing firm named Goldilocks Zone Marketing and became famous and fabulously wealthy.
Have you ever heard of the Goldilocks Zone? In astronomy, it refers to the zone that is not too hot or too cold. It’s a zone where water can exist in a liquid form. For instance, most of the earth is a Goldilocks Zone.
The Goldilocks Zone also has applications in other disciplines – psychology, economics, management, investing, pricing, work-life balance, and many more. If you’re a regular reader of my column or heard my presentations, you’ve heard me say, “Marketing drives every facet of your company.” I used to believe that management drives business, but I discovered that marketing drives management. This is the basis of the FIMS – Fully Integrated Marketing System© which has a Goldilocks Zone effect on every aspect of your business.
How does this apply to you? Goldilocks discovered the secret of just right. And just right is the perfect operating zone for any business. Let’s call it operating in the Goldilocks Zone. It’s not too busy or too slow, but it’s just right. What if I told you that there’s a way to control your business’s lead flow and workload so you can operate in the Goldilocks Zone? Is that something that appeals to you?
Imagine having a lead flow that’s just right to comfortably pack your customer intake department and diagnostic bays with enough vehicles to feed the tech department enough quality jobs to keep the techs productive at an optimally productive pace while efficiently billing and completing enough hours at the right price per hour to achieve your financial targets for sales and profits. (Whew! That’s a mouthful – 61 words with no punctuation.) Those 61 words describe the Goldilocks Zone. Try it on. How does it feel?
As a side note, when finding the Goldilocks Zone for your shop, it’s essential to know your shop’s adjusted capacity. Otherwise, how would you know how much work is just right for your company? I’ve dealt with this in detail in previous articles, so I’ll just touch on it here. To find those articles, search GEARSMagazine.com for the keywords Adjusted Capacity.
Meanwhile, here’s an overview. Do you know the difference between productivity and efficiency? Productivity has to do with labor hours produced per number of hours worked, while efficiency is the time required to do a job when measured against a benchmark standard like a labor guide.
For instance, if a tech is at work 40 hours and produces 30 labor hours, the result is 75% productivity. However, a tech who can do a 1-hour flat-rate job in 1 hour is 100% efficient. If it takes 1.5 hours, the tech is approximately 67% efficient, and if it takes .75 hours, the tech has roughly 133% efficiency. Adjusted Production Capacity is a function of total hours worked versus hours produced, adjusted for efficiency.
This principle can be used to evaluate individual performance and team performance. Obviously, once you’ve determined the adjusted production capacity for each employee, it’s just a matter of combining them to calculate the production team’s adjusted capacity.
The problem is, while productivity and efficiency are closely related, you can have one, the other, both, and neither without even knowing it. And if you don’t track them, you can’t manage them. I hope that piques your curiosity. And while there’s a Goldilocks Zone application for Adjusted Capacity, I’ll deal with it in a future article.
Back to marketing. The ultimate determining factor for your shop’s capacity is your sales capacity. If you have a production capacity of 100 hours and consistently only sell 80 hours, your shop’s capacity is only 80 hours or 80%. Of course, the opposite can occur when sales exceed production capacity. Then the production team is overwhelmed, and mistakes happen, only making matters worse.
Sales and marketing are the ultimate drivers for balancing workflow to production capacity. However, when it’s too busy, you may feel like you don’t even want to consider marketing because you’re overwhelmed, and you don’t think you need it. But when it’s too slow, you want marketing to produce instant results. Unfortunately, marketing isn’t instant. However, when marketing is done consistently well, it is adjustable and can produce instant results – like turning hot and cold faucets to deliver the just right mixture and quantities you desire.
Business is cyclical – sometimes too busy, sometimes too slow, and occasionally, just right. During the last couple of years, we’ve enjoyed quite a season. Business was running so hot that many of you looked at me like I’d just grown another head when I talked about marketing. You felt overwhelmed with too much business, so why do any marketing? But, for many of you, things have already begun to swing in the other direction. You need to start marketing again, and you want instant results. Do you know marketing works for all seasons and cycles?
The answer is a real-time marketing system that you can adjust to match the cycles with little or no delay. You need a system that establishes and maintains constant momentum rather than a frustrating stop and go system. With momentum, you just control the flow by making subtle, timely adjustments as your shop’s demand for jobs changes with the cycles.
One way to do this is with a formal outside sales program. You can watch my four-part seminar, “Turning Outside Sales Inside Out” on ATRA’s VTS. In these workshops, I explain how we maintained a consistent, formal outside sales program in my shops for over 25 years. I even used the faucet analogy to describe how we controlled lead flow with our outside sales system.
Today, the internet presents a whole new way to achieve better results more predictably and without even leaving your shop. All it takes is an investment of time and money (less of both than you might think) into a FIMS© web-based marketing system designed for your specific market area and matched to your shop’s Adjusted Capacity.
The Coach Thom Marketing web-based, SEO, SEM, Social and Reputation Management Marketing Strategies are based on the FIMS – Fully Integrated Marketing System©. With FIMS©, you’ll consistently operate in the Goldilocks Zone, and we guarantee the results.
It’s that simple. But is it automatic? Of course not. We can’t be in your shop to manage productivity, efficiency, workflow, and product quality. But we can show you how to produce the just right numbers of quality leads and convert them to jobs, leading to consistently operating in the Goldilocks Zone.
Wise shop owners know their strengths and weaknesses. Because you’re so close to your business, it’s difficult to objectively do your own marketing. Yes, this is an unapologetic self-promotion, but not a veiled solicitation for new clients. When it comes to marketing companies, you have choices.
We’ve been called a “boutique marketing firm” because we choose to work with only a few special clients. Frankly, collaborating with us isn’t for everybody. We’re intimately involved with your business. We call our service “The Executive Marketing Suite” because it’s as though we become your marketing department.
However, we can help any shop learn and implement FIMS©. Once it’s in place, you can maintain and manage it yourself. We’re available for support, if you need it. In other words, we can teach you to fish, or we can do the fishing for you. Either way, though, you’ll need to clean the fish and cook the meals.
Speaking of fishing, about 20 years ago, a friend asked me to go on a fishing trip to Lake George in Upstate New York. He said it was the opening weekend of Bass season, and he guaranteed a great weekend of fishing. So, full of anticipation, off we went. Early on Saturday morning, we rented a fishing boat, motored over to the dock in front of our cabin, loaded up our gear, and we were off.
It was the best day of fishing I’ve ever had! Never (before or since) have I seen fish so eager to strike. In fact, at one point, I accidentally cast my line over the boat dock. The line was snagged, so the baited hook dangled about a foot above the water. A Bass literally jumped out of the water and snatched the juicy nightcrawler, hooking himself in the process. The poor fish was flopping against the side of the dock until we could get over to release him. Until that day, I always thought fishing was boring and a test of my patience.
By the way, we were catch-and-release fishermen, and it turned out to be a good thing we were. On the way back to the boat rental marina, we swung by the cabin to unload the gear. When we returned it, the boat rental guy asked how we enjoyed our day of boating. When we told him about our amazing day of fishing, the look on his face was priceless. He laughed as he shouted, “Fishing season starts next weekend! You guys are lucky the game warden didn’t catch you!” As I said, it’s a good thing we were catch-and-release fishermen, and that we had dropped off our gear at the cabin, so there was no evidence of our crime.
The point of concluding with a fish story is this. For the last few years, shops have enjoyed a season with customers practically jumping into the boat. Don’t wait for the fish to stop biting or for the season to end. When it comes to marketing, there are no seasons. Establish and maintain marketing momentum, making timely adjustments rather than suffering through the old stop and go routine. Instant, on-demand marketing solutions don’t exist. Get into the Goldilocks Zone and stay there. It’s up to you to take the first step. If not today, when will you do it? Even Goldilocks had to take the first step.
About the author — Thom Tschetter has served our industry for over four decades. His article topics come from our readers and Thom’s years as a speaker, writer, certified arbitrator, business consultant, and his own in-the-trenches experiences. Thom owned a chain of award-winning transmission shops in Washington State, and ATRA presented him with a Lifetime Achievement Award for his years of training for the transmission industry.
Learn more about Coach Thom Marketing and get unlimited free access to sales and marketing articles and videos in our online library. Initial consultations and guidance are always free. CoachThomMarketing.com Phone: 480-773-3131 Email: coachthom@gmail.com
