Garage visit 53 www.aftermarketonline.net MARCH 2025 and retain a team is to grow it himself and invest a lot in training. All the team have been trained one-to-one by Mark —apart from his father! Mark takes them on as an apprentice and trains them ‘his way’; he calls it ‘the A&S ladder’. Once qualified, they can also train for everything from MOT testing to Mastertech. There is now a total of nine staff across the two businesses. In the last 12 months, Mark has spent £45k on training. “The best tool we have is our brains. You can have the best equipment money can buy, but without skill, it’s useless.” To recoup that cost, you’ve simply got to attract the right customers, the ones that want their vehicles fixed properly, not just make do and mend,” Mark said. To do that, it was crucial to upgrade the website to one that could get to the top of Google search results for the profitable work the garage wanted to be found for. “GSO came highly recommended and designed a website that literally does just that.” Mark then combined the online strategy with the introduction of a garage management system from Garage Hive. “The website and GMS work together to make the customer journey seamless. From the moment they find us online, to leaving a Google review, the customer experience is one of complete professionalism. We’re now considered one of the top three garages in town.” The investment in the subscriptionbased website pays for itself 50 times over every single month, Mark said. “By getting clear on the profile of work we wanted, we could tell GSO exactly what jobs the website needed to pull in. It worked straight away. When the website went live, we had our best month’s turnover ever. Since then, its continued to almost double every month.” Mark said the techs are happy too, because they’re doing work that utilises a lot of their specialist training such as complex mechanical repairs and diagnostics. The business is also seeing a lot of EV work coming through from all around Lancashire and as far away as Yorkshire. “Working with GSO has enabled A&S to come from what was perceived as a back street garage, to one that competes with main dealers,” Mark said. “They’ve made a massive difference to our business. If we didn’t have the website we’d be surviving, but certainly not succeeding.” Visit https://ascarcarecentre.co.uk to check out A&S online. Turnover continues to increase after the launch of our new website
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