Jon Kowanetz, former owner of Handcrafted Car Audio, has launched Pathways Coaching & Consulting, aimed at helping retailers succeed in the personal and professional realms (as the two are usually linked).
Businesses tend to hyper focus on the essential, most urgent tasks in front of them, leaving everything else in their blind spot. Pathways gives dealers an outside perspective that helps widen the focus on the retailer’s end goal, said Kowanetz.
Pathways’ process starts with working with key employees to create a better work culture for all. This can include identifying and getting rid of destructive behaviors that effect an employee’s professional performance, helping them to find a better work/life balance and identifying their talents.
“We tend to forget that businesses are made up of a group of individual people, all with their own wants, needs, struggles, victories, weaknesses and strengths coming together to achieve a common goal,” Kowanetz said. “So that is exactly where we need to start if we want to affect real change.”
Then he works on the professional aspect of consulting such as workflow organization, improving customer qualifying questions, polishing up the shop’s presentation and creating policies and procedures that ensure that customers (and employees) are happy every time.
Pathways looks at the shop’s profit and loss statements (under non-disclosure). “I have custom built software that goes through up to 40 unique ways to either increase revenue, decrease expenses or optimize margin using the shop’s actual numbers and goals,” Kowanetz said.
One of Pathways’ current retail clients wanted to attract a more affluent clientele with luxury vehicles, but didn’t know where to start. Through the consulting process, he remodeled his showroom, outfitted the staff in matching uniforms, increased labor prices and changed the shop’s presentation to customers. Since then, the store’s average ticket price has doubled and the quality of the systems and the vehicles he’s attracting is much higher, Kowanetz said.
Pathways also works through manufacturers and distributors who may want to help select dealers with consulting.
Kowanetz won an Installer of the Year award from Mobile Electronics magazine in 2010 and his shop at the time, Handcrafted Car Audio, won a Retailer of the Year in 2013.
See more at whatsyourpathway.com
Jon is a passionate, articulate guy. I am confident that his skillset can help many mobile electronics retailers reach their next level of success in business and life.