Exit strategies for owners tomorrow and getting paid what you’re owed today are top collision center concerns. Both drive conversations among collision center owners and operators, and Automotive Training Institute is on it.
“We’re continuing our succession model — how to do it, buy/sell, whether to go with a consolidator,” said Ron Greenman, interim president.
Ron Greenman.
Increasing vehicle and insurance costs produce customers concerns about “protecting your investment, keeping vehicles in the best shape possible — what carmakers are saying on OEM specs, versus what the insurance [company] is saying,” he said.
Coursework — often taught by ATI partners directly involved with shops on such work — reflects current thinking in those areas. More precisely, it integrates exactly with ATI’s long-time focus on the independent owner-operator, and a top-down approach.
“We usually work with an owner first,” Greenman said, “people who can make changes in the shop.”
They come to ATI, believe and buy into it, and develop a regular relationship. “Usually it’s all-in,” Greenman said, and its suite of training offerings become available to take as often as needed, with virtual and onsite quarterly meetings for top peer groups of clients.
Four-Part Harmony Forms Curriculum’s Core
“Our training is a couple pieces,” Greenman said. It includes teachings in how to run the business; sales and service; collision operations — “estimating, production, negotiating” — and hands-on technician training.
Most coaching and training is virtual. In the quarterly “update” meetings, collision shop operators “are sitting with other owners” from various business and industries: the mechanical repair core of Automotive Training Institute, collision shops, tire dealers, fleet services and truck centers.
There are more mechanical shops in the U.S. and in ATI’s ecosystem, and that industry in some ways more developed than collision.
The meetings then serve to cultivate shop owners’ networks, across disciplines.
“Especially on the collision side there are not a lot of support networks for owners,” Greenman said. “By the very term ‘independent’ they’re on their own, and we want to create this, ‘Hey, you’re not the only guy doing this, going through this.”
Florida shop owner Drew Bryant has grown personally and professionally from ATI for eight years, and sees the relational element as a specific benefit.
At one recent quarterly confab at ATI’s Maryland offices, Bryant “sat next to someone in mechanical, with 14 stores and $30 million in revenue.” He was there with other owners to “bust through every nitpicking piece of our business” and improve it.
‘Ask Questions … Offer Solutions’
“Our job is to be executive coaches, for whomever, shop owner or GM or second-in-command, work-through and ask questions about what they’re doing, and then offer solutions, said Keith Manich, ATI vice president.
The company works with 1,700 clients; about 20% are body shops. It also will do onsite consulting.
ATI as an organization dates to 1980, according to PitchBook. Driven Brands bought the company in 2019. Its collision consulting is independent of Driven Brands’ collision industry work, but becoming available to train franchisees in DB’s system, if they seek it as any other client.
“ATI’s leading training program further enhances Driven Brands’ training platform, providing opportunities to improve operational support and increase profitability for both Driven Brands and our franchisees,” according to Driven Brands’ annual report with the SEC.
Greenman became ATI’s first full-time CFO in 2016, its first-ever COO in 2021; he was named interim president in April.
