Estimate Coaching

‘’We don’t teach you how to estimate damaged vehicles, we coach you to charge for what we do to the vehicles’’.

How Estimate Coaching came to be? For me, the biggest problem I had, was not many VDA’s estimated the same way as we do. We were always being told we were in the ‘only one club’ and some engineers openly said we totally agree with what you are adding to your assessments but because no one else adds these items and operations to their assessments we can’t really authorise it. One engineer said if you can get other VDA’s to estimate the same way as you it will be much easier to authorise our assessments. With this in mind I thought we really need to share best practice with others. We need consistent assessments not only at a single site bodyshop, but across a group of bodyshops. By standardising the estimating process across multiple body shops, we can achieve greater uniformity. This means that we can all use the same zone 99 file which is now in alphabetical order in Audatex and reference the same points to support our assessments, resulting in a more consistent and reliable estimating process.

​

During May 2018, I was approached by a body shop group that expressed interest in our VDA process. I provided an overview of the coaching we were offering, which left a strong impression on the group. We arranged to visit one of their sites to demonstrate our approach and methodologies. After seeing the value that Estimate Coaching could bring to their business, the group decided to sign up on the spot and become part of our community.

​

We now have over 100 bodyshops and around 210 VDA’s using the Estimate Coaching programme.

 

The benefits of being part of Estimate Coaching:

​

• Introduction to Estimate Coaching by site visit or via Teams.

• Share best practice, how can you beat sharing the knowledge of over 210 VDA’s?

• No need to maintain your own ‘Zone 99’ file on Audatex or ‘User operations’ in G T Motive as these are maintained for you.

• Charge for all the operations we carry out on the vehicles by imaging the repairs at all stages.

• Weekly Estimate Coaching ‘Tips of the week’ sent out on a Sunday evening.

• No set up fee.

• No monthly fees.

• No cost of coaching new VDA’s in your business.

• Audatex and G T Motive training tailored to your needs on either a ‘one on one’ or in a group.

• On going coaching with all the workshop staff.

• We don’t repair the vehicles any differently, we just charge for work carried out. 

​

One estimating system stated that the average assessment is around £175 per job light for work being done but not charged for. Being part of the Estimate Coaching family greatly reduces this figure to around the £65 mark based on over 500 audits carried out on authorised assessments by VDA’s on the Estimate Coaching programme.