Tracking sheets were all the rage in 1995 in the tire and automotive industry. You came in early, grabbed all the tickets from yesterday and recorded all your sales by certain categories. It was an excellent, yet not exciting task that over time taught you many things. Now, this process is largely digital and automatically generated.
I would like to review the proper management technique of using tracking sheets. This is critical if you want what’s on a point-of-sale report to show the numbers you want.
Tracking sheets are collection tools. They allow management to “see” what’s going on without trying to be everywhere at once. Not only does it help service advisors track their progress, it helps inform managers or owners of what’s happening in a store when they aren’t there.
Tracking sheets put data into meaningful buckets so interested parties can see a picture in their mind of how employees are doing — that is, have an imaginary vision of what’s happening.
Keep in mind, percentages are a far, far greater measurement than raw numbers. It really doesn’t matter if you sold 100 alignments if only 10% of your customers bought one. About 25% of tire purchases get an alignment. Maybe you use a different percentage. That’s fine, as long as you use it functionally — as a percentage.
Oil changes per car count, air filters per oil change — whatever you want to track is fine. Incorporating a percentage will help you understand your business at a far deeper level. It doesn’t even have to be a percentage number, as long as you are dividing one number into another and get a consistent quotient, like an average repair order.
When you are collecting data, you should focus on collecting it both accurately and efficiently. If it takes an hour to get a report together, that’s too long for a service advisor to spend on paperwork. They need to spend time advising customers. Collect quickly, accurately and without bias. It is what it is.
Now, let’s state what tracking sheets are not. They are not correction tools. Again, they help you see things you'd see if you could be everywhere at once, so you look for patterns. You do not make corrective decisions at this point. Percentages and other quotients tell management where to go looking for problems or anomalies.
As a manager or owner, you should also understand that starting conversations with "the tracking sheet says..." is a great way to start a fight and not seek or secure buy-in on a behavioral change. Don't hide behind a shield of “You aren’t doing your job.” That’s like telling an angry person to calm down — bad idea.
Starting a conversation with "I noticed something...” is much more powerful. And it’s even more powerful when it is said with a twinge of disappointment or sadness in your voice. If you then add, “Help me understand why you did it,” and then honestly listen, there’s a greater chance you can hash out some differences and find common ground. A manager barking, “Sell more alignments” rarely gets the desired result.
If you’re stuck in a position where you can’t ever see the interactions or advising or repairs of the vehicle in first person, then you should dial down feedback assertiveness. You could start with, “I haven’t seen this myself, but the (insert poor performing standard here) on the tracking sheet is terrible. Why?”
When they give an answer, dig into it. Understand not just the answer, but where the employee is coming from. Does it make sense? Do they have a plan to correct it? Or is it always your plan that fails? If they don’t have a plan, tell them to think about it and get back to you in a specific time frame. Because they do the work, they should solve the problems around their work if they can. You simply approve the plan. That’s how it’s supposed to be!
“Oh but that takes so much time!” they may say. So does doing something over and over again the same way, while expecting different results. Managers should only ever correct something in collection mode if someone’s safety is at risk or an employee is (hopefully unknowingly) about to break the law.
