Page 14 - Australian Paint & Panel Magazine May-June 2019

14
News • In Focus
PAINT&PANEL MAY / JUNE 2019
WWW.PAINTANDPANEL.COM.AU
NEXT GENERATION 2019 IS A WINNER
OVER 30 REPAIRERS CAME TOGETHER FOR THE NEXT GENERATION SEMINAR AT VACC, MELBOURNE ON 3 APRIL, SPONSORED BY RIGHT2DRIVE FROM ALL OVER AUSTRALIA.
Next Generation speakers and delegates.
One of the great aspects of Next Genera- tion is having business owners share their business journeys warts and all. Steve Lozenkovski from Bears Group is a dynam- ic speaker and passionate about the broad- er industry. He talked about why he'd sold his six repair shops to AMA Group and moved into the hail repair space. Lozenko- vski is an entrepreneur and, unlike some repairers for whom profit is a dirty word, is interested in making money. He discussed how much more dynamic he found hail re- pairs and other opportunities in the repair sphere as well as the importance of sur- rounding yourself with a dynamic team.
Cheyne Oxford, marketing manager from sponsors Right2Drive, gave an in- sightful talk about Google and website met- rics. Delegates were also given easy take home improvements for marketing strate- gies and monitoring such as Google analyt- ics. Oxford also talked about the most im- portant currency on the internet - trust and offered great suggestions for managing and capitalising on online reviews.
There were only a few 'badged' repairers in the room but a show of hands and some enquiries to I-Car's Jason Trewin after- wards demonstrated that many aspire to acquire. Trewin carried out audits for a number of demanding OEMs and the room discussed what they thought was most im- portant to those manufacturers.
There was some discussion as to whether it was worth the financial outlay and effort to gain these 'badges' when there is no work provision and it wouldn't guarantee an influx of that particular brand. Others thought that it was an
D
AN MAHER FROM L&M SMASH
in Sydney summed up the
feedback we received on the day: "It was great meeting eve- ryone and speaking with open minded and optimistic operators that have different business models that are all prof- itable. That in itself was a valuable experi- ence. My take away from that is we need to diversify to grow our business and we can do so by listening and learning from each
other and getting the right guidance."
The whole idea behind the Next Gen- eration seminars and closed Facebook page is to create a positive environment for younger repairers to exchange ideas. Many of these younger repairers have told us that they have found the older generation can be negative about the in- dustry while they feel positive about their futures. The event takes place every two years to coincide with the Collision Repair Expo and has been supported by
and held at VACC since its inception. More intimate and less formal than
events such at Paint & Panel L!VE, partici- pants can ask questions of the presenters at any time.
We kicked off with everyone introducing themselves and explaining how they came to be in the industry. Many are second gen- eration or married into the business.
Our first session was with Steve O'Brien from iBodyshop who talked about the im- portance of accurate quoting and under- standing how productive your shop is. One of the features of iBodyshop that not everyone uses is the clocking on and off function. O'Brien explained how so many shops who had implemented this quickly found out who their productive employees were. There were also examples of how overtime bills had been slashed because managers and owners had had their atten- tion drawn to why the work wasn't being carried out in normal working hours.
Various features of the program were discussed with delegates sharing their own experience of what had worked in their businesses.