Sherwood Ford started 2026 with the ambitious goal of growing business by 30%, and six months later, service director Damon Egan said they have overshot that target with a 40% boost.
Driving the news: Egan told Sam D’Arc in a segment on Daily Dealer Live that the growth is the result of a change in strategy across talent acquisition, technology deployment, and scheduling.
More specifically, over the past six months at the dealership in Alberta, Canada, Egan explained that they moved from being reactionary to more proactive with their recruiting and hiring.
“We define exactly the talent that we want to get and who we have to reach out to get that talent,” Egan said.
That strategy change has filled its 54 bays with 47 technicians, all producing at least 180 hours.
They’ve also seen their usual June slow period turn into the store’s best month ever.
The secret sauce: For Egan, the results are tied to the dealership’s dynamic scheduling to handle warranty work, customer pay, and recon.
“If you dynamic schedule properly, you can get everything in, and it’s all based on the hours or the capacity at the shop.”
Schedules are adjusted by the hour to pivot quickly to optimize capacity.
Added quality with MPIs: Egan also pushes for quality, standout MPIs, given that a lot of shops are now utilizing MPIs to boost service orders.
To do so, he said a professional film student handles 90% of the videos, using microphones to cut the ambient noise and help produce a more professional video for the customer.
“The ease of the customer looking at it and not having to sift through the noise makes it so much easier to watch, view, and approve,” Egan said.
With that professionalism and utilizing MyKarma, the dealership has seen more than a $500 lift per video viewed.
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Deploying robots: Given the dealership's size and workload, it runs two shifts, with the evening guys pulling parts for the next day.
To speed up the process, the dealership partnered with Reynolds and Reynolds to deploy a parts-delivery robot.
“Last month it saved us over 30 hours of guys walking back and forth to the parts department,” he said.
Splitting responsibilities: Borrowing from baseball, Egan calls his approach “Moneyball,” and while he’s the general manager overseeing the analytics for the shop, he’s split other responsibilities.
His shop manager handles throughput.
Another manager runs the CSI exclusively, which he said has never been better.
“Too often what we try and do is we try and shoehorn a manager into doing everything at once, and they can’t do it,” Egan said.
Bottom line: The 40% boost in the shop is from an overall change in culture and processes, not just from more repair orders.
“There’s been such a change in the attitude and the culture from just us not believing in the line of ‘we’ve always done it that way,’ or ‘that’s the way the market is,’” Egan said. “We’ve completely changed what we do and how we do it.”
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