People are talking about your business - and it’s not good.

I hate to say it, but it’s true. People are talking about your business behind your back and it’s not all good news.

How many of the following hit a nerve with you cause you know they probably ring a little true?

• “Their yard is filthy!”

• “Their parts are dirty and unwashed”

• “Their packaging is terrible”

• “The quality of their parts is poor”

• “Their processes are chaotic”

• “Their website doesn’t work properly”

• “They don’t have social media - are they even real?”

• “They have terrible Google reviews”

• “They buy the wrong cars, they obviously don’t use any data to make decisions.”

• “Their business just seems tired”

• “It’s all a bit of a mismatch. What they portray isn’t what I actually see when I’m there.”

• “They have no core values for the business”

These are all comments that we have heard over the past 12 months. Passing comments from onlookers or other auto recyclers. Different comments about different yards. 

They’re brutal right? It’s personal when someone says something about your facility. BUT it doesn’t mean it’s not true.

If people are saying even one of the above about your business - you need to be asking yourself “what can I do to fix this”? 

In 2024, auto recyclers need to be looking at the bigger picture.

Image, branding and perception matters.

We are photographing our facilities every day when we shoot new inventory. What are you capturing in the background of the shot - scrap metal and rubbish?
You are sending parts out - have they been cleaned and packaged to represent your business as you want to be seen?

How can you drive some positive Google reviews to drown out those negative ones?

If you are buying on a whim - maybe 2024 is the time to start investing in data so that you can buy with purpose?

Sometimes it doesn’t have to be a big change, but making plans for some small shifts in how you operate could have a big impact on your business.

Just this week we’ve been talking to a client who was recently in the early stages of considering wrapping up their second generation family facility. Their motivation was gone. Buying cars the way they had always done, no longer yielded the same results and the online world was just moving too fast for them to keep up. Times had changed and it all just seemed a little too tiring to overhaul and start again.

But with support from APS, some internal changes to operations and a renewed zest for the business: they have just recently had their biggest month in business. Ever.

How you’ve always done things, isn’t going to keep working.

Don’t be the facility that people talk about for all the wrong reasons. Be the facility they talk about for the great things you are doing:

“They have an amazing facility - it’s so clean and well run.”

“Their website is excellent - so easy to use.”

“Their parts are always immaculately presented when they arrive.”

“I love what they are doing on social media.”

“They always have the best inventory - their buyer is good!”