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Fixed Ops Roundtable with Thomas Hall from QB Business Solutions

Fixed Ops Round Table

Ted Ings from Fixed Ops Roundtable interviews Thomas Hall from QB Business Solutions. Thomas discusses warranties, rate, filing, qualifications, and much more. They also discuss the benefits of dealers using QB Business Solutions services vs trying to do it on their own. To learn more: Call Us: 800-970-4701

QB Business Solutions is the Fastest Growing Retail Warranty Reimbursement Company

QB Business Solutions continues to be the fastest growing retail warranty reimbursement company in the US. We take a different approach with all of our dealers and provide each store with an Acct Mgr to ensure your results are Sustainable. We provide Fixed-Ops expertise, and most of all we get dealers the Highest Increases in Labor and Parts. Whats great about QB Business is we do not charge any upfront fees, no admin fees, and we only get paid when you get paid!! QB works for FREE during the entire process until the brand approves your new rates!! Nothing to lose except for more time your dealership is not getting compensated for the correct amount on your Warranty Labor and Parts. Stop by our booth and learn more on how we can help you make more money. Want to learn more about us , Visit our website at https://QBBusinessSolutions.com and see how we can help your dealership more profitable in 2022

Ted Ings (00:00):

Well, we’re about to discuss a subject. That’s very dear to my heart. And I think dear to the heart of most of the people watching today, automotive news is reporting that the chip shortage in north America is not gonna end any time soon in 2022, and even more of a time for focus on fixed operations and making sure that we’re maximizing all the dollars possible. I’d like to introduce everybody to Thomas Hall, who is the owner of QB business solutions. And first time speaker here at the fixed stops round table, Thomas, welcome to the event.

Thomas Hall (00:31):

Thank you so much. I appreciate it. Glad to be here.

Ted Ings (00:34):

Hey, really honored to to have you and QB business solutions. I know you do a whole lot for the automotive vendor and I know one of the things that you do really and do it really well is some of the things that have to do with warranty and rate and filing for that. And if you don’t mind, I’ve got a number of questions. And I think our audience will have some questions as well. But in particular if I’m a fixed ops director and I’m looking at 2022 here, we are still early in March. And especially if I came in new to a store, how do I know if my dealership Thomas, or if my store qualifies for a, a warranty reimbursement, especially in, in my state, because I know the laws are different state as we go through

Thomas Hall (01:23):

It is you know, the first great answer is all 50 states qualify. So all 50 states qualify for labor, which is great. There are a few that have held off on the parts. Really just two of them, Wyoming and Alaska are waiting on the parts. So I would tell you that 97, 90 8% of the cut does qualify. And surprisingly enough, 15 to 20% of people only know about it. So we see this huge gap where again, 80, 85% of the country qualifies, but either they don’t know enough about it, or just don’t know how to get the right process going.

Ted Ings (02:00):

And if I don’t, if you don’t mind, how long, how often should I be looking at that? You know, if I’m a fixed ops director or even a general manager in a dealership who wants to be sure that they qualify how, how often should I be, you know, taking a peek at that?

Thomas Hall (02:17):

Well, you know, I think all fixed ops, you know, service directors, service manager, parts, you should be looking at your business two or three times a year, no matter what, right? You should be looking at your market survey, your parts makes it your labor. Where are you at by law? It does vary in each state, but for the majority states, you can file once per year. So as you’re doing your analysis and your marketing and looking at, you know, where you’re at, you should be looking at, Hey, listen, how close is my warranty rate to my door rate? How close are my parts markups to the local competitors down the road, even the small, you know, like the advance auto parts, you know, those are competitors for parts departments that people just forget about because they’re thinking about the dealerships only. So at least once a year, you wanna look at it.

Thomas Hall (02:58):

Now, there are some great states that allow you to do it twice a year. So, but at a minimum, at least once a year and then any adjustments that you do to your labor rate survey, or excuse me, your, excuse me, I’m sorry, your labor throughout the year, you actually can go back and see, you know, how much have you went up. If you went up $20, $30, you can and see, okay, do I have more opportunity for me at that point? So it’s not just one time and you’re done, it can go on for years and years.

Ted Ings (03:27):

I know historically you know, going back in the, in the in the car business, a lot of dealers say, well, you know what, my service manager, you know, he can, he can do this process himself. I’ll just assign another other task, right. Thomas to that person and, and put another pile there. But, but, but typically I know that’s not practical. And you are the experts in this field at QB business solutions. How long does the process take? And you know, who would be involved at the process at the dealership at the store level?

Thomas Hall (03:58):

Oh, that’s a good question. There are definitely different processes by, in gen, excuse me. In general, it takes about 30 to 45 days to complete a pretty good size volume store, maybe 45 to 60 days for a store. That’s a little bit smaller. Now this dives into a lot of different things that we do, we’re gonna sample the store every single week. So we’re looking at your business through this whole process. So it’s very, one-on-one, it’s consultative. We’re, you know, seeing how you operate, how we operate, you know, we don’t really dial into your system. We’re actually giving you that fixed ops, consultative as a freebie, why we’re doing our warranty reimbursement for you. So on average, it takes a about, I said that 30 days, 45 days for a, a medium size store, 45 to 60 for a, a smaller store. Once we get that done and you’re locked in, then it’s up to the state. The state law determines about usually a 30 day timeframe for the dealer to get paid. So all in all to get from beginning to end, you’re looking at 60 to 90 days from start to payment of the store.

Ted Ings (04:57):

Oh wow. And you know, I know there’s been, there’s been some general of managers Thomas, who said to me in the past, you know what, well, I’m, I’m not sure if we filed time recently, but I don’t wanna get in trouble with my manufacturer, you know, because I wanna make sure that we’re getting the supply of new vehicles. And I, I don’t wanna upset the apple cart, which, you know, think about it for a second, right. Could be realistic thought in somebody’s mind right now where their parts supply does filing for the warranty increase, affect in the real world. My relationship with the manufacturer,

Thomas Hall (05:30):

It really does not not only do majority state laws actually say, there’s no retaliation from a legal perspective and there’s nothing on, you know, additional costs, almost all states say that, but realistically, it’s been around for about 10 years. Now that stores are doing it. Different states are, you know, different timeframes have started this, but there really is no retaliation any effect in relationship. Let’s, you know, cuz everybody worries about, you know, okay, listen, I need Goodwill help, right? I need some help operation. I need some things that really, you know, are gonna help me and I need to build this great relationship with my, you know, DSP DPSM and I don’t wanna hurt that. And I will tell you that is probably the number one question that we get asked every single time was, will this hurt me? And the answer is no. Now are some brands a little bit tighter. Absolutely. You know, that I’d be, you know, to, to say the least that’s not possible. So there are some brands that are a little more difficult, but for the majority of everybody, it’s just a good conversation. They understand the practice and just like everybody things change every year and we’re looking to, you know, move the store rate up or the stores parts up and they understand it pretty well.

Ted Ings (06:42):

And I know that you’ve got a, a different approach than other companies take to doing this. You’ve got a consultative approach and I mean, that’s opposed as to logging in, into the DMS system like some of the, let’s say competitors out there walk us through it. How do you do it?

Thomas Hall (07:00):

Okay. So again, up today, we really are the only ones that do not log into your system. So we’re not a software based company. We’re not pulling it in and just getting data here’s for a few reasons. The data, when you do that is in the past, it can’t be affected. You know if you had something that wasn’t operationally sound, then you’re going to take that data and submit it to the brand for money. You know, it’s not a great case you might do well, you might not. It really depends on each store. You know, each store has their own struggles, their own opportunities, their own strength. So what we do is we start from the beginning, we do a launch call with the stores. We get them set up say, Hey, here’s what the next 30 days are gonna look like. You’re assigned an account manager.

Thomas Hall (07:40):

Each store has their own account manager, which so you’re a actually a consultant talking point person. Who’s a resident expert in the field you’re going to go through. And they do samples every week. They look at 25, 30, 35 ROS a week and say, Hey, listen, here’s some good things. Here’s some opportunity. For example, you know, how’s your CCC notes. Everybody talks about complaint cause correction in the fixed ops world, you know, especially around warranty compliance, you know, how are you doing? Where are you at? You know, overall, then we look at your discount and we look at your accounting practices. Overall, we look at your entire fixed ops to see how you’re doing while we’re doing this. We’re working on your re be every single week. We send this out to general managers, the dealer principle, the fixed off everybody involved. So everybody is aware of what’s going on in your building.

Thomas Hall (08:29):

And I will tell you, there’s a lot of aha moments from GMs, from people that are like, wow, I’ve been so busy. I didn’t even get a chance to look at that because of my task load. And you know, and it’s just great have brought up. So we do this every week for probably I said three or four weeks until we see that, listen, your operationally sound, you look great. The numbers look great. You know, everything that you’ve done is basically we’ll call it Bulletproof, right? So the brand can look at it and say, wow, this store really understands, you know you know what it’s about? And you gotta think about this, the brands look at it and say, wow, this is a good store. They’re operationally, right? We have no problem giving the warranty, increase to the stores that are doing the right things. And that’s what changes for us. And we see some good, some bad, like I said, and overall the stores love it because they’re growing at the same time, why we’re doing reimbursement and that’s a free of charge. We don’t charge for that. We just differentiate ourself from our competitors that way,

Ted Ings (09:30):

You know, I know if a dealership went at it alone, they really are alone because you know, here are, you know, trying to be compliant and do all these things, but you’ve got the experience and the recent portfolio, if you will, of what’s happening with that manufacturer. So I would imagine that you and your team, you know, the ins and outs of what to look for and what to stay away from, and again, to keep the dealership and also make sure that, you know, you’re doing the right thing for that man with that manufacturer as well.

Thomas Hall (10:01):

Yeah. It, it is a very complicated process and we tell stores all the time, some go out and do a great job, but I will tell you that numbers probably less than 5% if they do it internally. And here’s some of the problems, the brands not only can give money, they can take money as we know. So if it is not done correctly and in the right path, they can readjust you negatively for the store. So we caution everybody not to, not for our company to get more sales, but just be careful. We do a lot of training. We do different blogs to let people know, Hey, here’s some best practices. Here’s some things help you understand. If you don’t then great, we’re a resource for you to look at it. And you know, each law in each state and every brand is so complex and different by state. So, you know, brand X over here in we’ll call it we’re our home town is Florida, our home west Palm. So what’s different in Florida is different in Georgia for two different brands and single brands. So it is very complex if you don’t know what you’re doing and it could hurt the store for sure.

Ted Ings (11:06):

And instead of this becoming another task for my service manager you, you become an ally and you actually become a, a colleague to them. And you’re, I would imagine that there probably a lot of coaching moments that come out of this for the dealerships management, based on the things that you find and you recommend

Thomas Hall (11:24):

Absolutely. And some are operationally, some are financial. You know, we are not only our increase obviously helped them in gross, but it actually might help them in discounting where they were doing things incorrectly, didn’t realize an advisor was over, were discounting overriding. They didn’t know that, you know, there was no parameters put in place. There was, you know, we even go to and say, listen, you know, you talk about having an alignment machine. You know, you went out and bought this $50,000 machine, but you’re only doing five alignments a week. You’re not paying for it. So we try to give every service possible to help them grow service wise financially and operationally. And that’s just one part of our company. We do have other parts of our company, but that’s the main part that we focus on.

Ted Ings (12:07):

And I know for a lot of general managers, they know the Thomas, they know the right question to ask at the end of the month for their sales managers and their finance managers. But I would imagine that you can help provide a lot of those right questions they should be asking in fixed operations as well, based on things that you find now tell our audience, are there any upfront fees and how, and when does the dealer, and when do they respond to pay you for doing this?

Thomas Hall (12:35):

OK, great. And again, this is a huge differentiator for QB business solutions. We don’t charge any upfront fees, no connection fees, no service fees. When you sign ’em with us, you’re signing on a handshake and a contract, basically the handshake. We actually won’t charge a store until the approval from the brand. So again, think about this, we’ve worked 30, 60, 90 days for free. We haven’t cost or risk the store anything. And once your approval is in at that point is when we’ll send you the bill for our percentages of, you know, that we talked about through our forecast and that allows stores to feel comfortable. I mean, today there’s a lot for sale services, a lot of goods for sale, but for us, we take it approach and say, listen, we’re gonna on a handshake. We’re gonna show you what we can do and really go way above you know, our forecast and actually achieve more. And at only at the end is when we settle up. And I think that old school mentality helps us grow very fast, you know, in in the marketplace.

Ted Ings (13:36):

I think that goes a long way with the with the dealer audience and with the fixed stops audience as well. Okay. So if I’m a, I’m a dealer, I’m a general manager right now realizing that I need to go ahead and start tackling this or a service manager or you know, somebody who’s in charge of, of that looking at those warranty numbers. How do I get started with you? How do we reach out to you? How do we take the next step?

Thomas Hall (13:59):

Perfect. Well, obviously we visit our website. We’re really proud of our website. It has a discount calculator for someone just to look at it really quickly and they can figure out their own math and get an idea of their own numbers. So that’s a great tool. That’s a QB business solutions.com you can reach out to me. My email address is T hall QB bus solutions.com, or obviously I’m always on my phone. So you can reach out to be mobile or send me a text 5 6 1 2 5 2 4 4 3 4, and I’m always available.

Ted Ings (14:30):

And that information is scrolling at the bottom of the screen. I see. So that’s your cell phone where we can reach out to you with questions and find out more and learn more about how it would pertain to my dealership or my dealer group.

Thomas Hall (14:41):

Absolutely. It’s directly right to me. I want to give you just a direct contact and gimme a call and see what we can do for you.

Ted Ings (14:48):

Okay. Everybody you’re hearing it from the top. Thomas Hall is the owner QB business solutions. Thomas, I wanna thank you very much on behalf of the fixed stops community. This is a this is a topic that really needs to be discussed and you know, discussed a whole lot more. So, you know, on behalf of the fixed stops Roundtable, thank you so much to you and to QB business solutions.

Thomas Hall (15:09):

Thank you so much for your time. I, I appreciate it.

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