Recently, I had the opportunity to sit down with some of the amazing team members at Sun Motor Cars in Mechanicsburg, PA, including: Dan Sunderland, Owner, Lisa Forgie, Human Resources Manager, and Caroline Krishan, Human Resources Assistant.
As a part of the marketing team, I am fortunate in that I get to speak with a lot of owners, directors, and managers of dealerships and independent shops about how they’re running their service centers and, in particular, how they’re recruiting and retaining technicians.
I can say, with confidence, that Sun Motor Cars is one of those businesses that just “get it.” In the 30 years Dan has been with the company, Sun Motor Cars has seen tremendous growth—expanding the business from one Mercedes dealership to adding two additional locations for Audi and BMW in Mechanicsburg and two dealerships in Chicago.
Not only has Dan helped grow Sun Motor Cars tremendously, but he truly understands that recruiting technicians starts from within. They put a great deal of effort into creating an environment and a culture that technicians want to be a part of.
Sun Motor Car Top Shop Pages
About Sun Motor Cars
Sun Motor Cars in Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania is dedicated to providing superlative service—starting from within and spreading outward to clients. Sun Motor Cars has been family owned and operated for over 52 years, with both second and third generations active in the day-to-day business today.
Dan Sunderland, Owner of Sun Motor Cars, started out his professional career as a banker lending money to car dealerships. It didn’t take long for him to start developing a love for all the different facets of dealerships (i.e., parts, service, used car sales, new car sales, collision, etc.). As a result, he decided to take his banking knowledge into the dealership business and has been growing and expanding Sun Motor Cars for the last 30 years.
Biggest Dealership Challenge: Finding Quality Technicians
With more technicians than ever retiring and less young people entering the industry, finding technicians is the biggest challenge the industry is facing, and Sun Motor Cars is no exception.
We continue to sell more cars so we have larger needs and we keep growing, so it [finding technicians] has been one of our biggest challenges for years.
Dan Sunderland
Owner, Sun Motor Cars
Sun Motor Cars has always done a great job of trying to grow from the ground up—visiting tech schools and focusing on getting technicians to want to come work for them, but they knew they were missing something and needed to do more to attract technicians to their dealerships.
You can only advertise on Indeed so much. You can only do so many tech school presentations.
Dan Sunderland
Owner, Sun Motor Cars
Sun Motor Cars Partners with WrenchWay to Create Top Shop Pages to Take Their Technician Recruiting to the Next Level
Lisa Forgie, Human Resources Manager, Sun Motor Cars, was first introduced to WrenchWay when she attended a webinar, 7 Mistakes Shops Make When Recruiting Technicians.
What he [Mark Wilson, Co-Founder & CEO, WrenchWay] had to say was really hitting home. I thought, ‘Wow, they’re making some very valid points here. Maybe this is something we haven’t tried yet.’
Lisa Forgie
Human Resources Manager, Sun Motor Cars
After signing up for WrenchWay Top Shop memberships for all three of their Pennsylvania dealerships and going through onboarding, Lisa along with Caroline Krishan, Human Resources Assistant, got to work building their Top Shop pages with their dedicated account manager.
While Top Shop pages can be set up in a matter of days, it was important to Sun Motor Cars to take their time and make sure their pages were exactly what they wanted before going live.
We wanted everything to be perfect. We wanted to make sure we had all the pictures, all the videos, and all the information… We’re representing our organization so we wanted to make sure prospective employees could see what we’re all about.
Dan Sunderland & Lisa Forgie
Owner / Human Resources Manager
Taking Full Advantage of Video to Recruit Technicians
For Dan, the true value in their WrenchWay Top Shop pages is really the videos, which they use to promote their shop to technicians on social media.
My favorite part of the pages are the videos. It makes it real for prospective technicians to see one of our technicians. It’s almost like they’re in a conversation with them. For me, that’s so much more valuable than a posting on a job board or even a picture.
Dan Sunderland
Owner, Sun Motor Cars
Dan, along with Lisa and Caroline, took the time to personally meet with the technicians they were going to interview to explain what they were doing and why.
It was a really fun process. I really enjoyed it after the videos were done seeing what they [the technicians] said because we didn’t tell them what to say at all. We just told them we appreciate them, business is really busy, we need to grow our technician group, and we’re hoping they would be willing to answer some questions on video.
Dan Sunderland
Owner, Sun Motor Cars
In addition to promoting their Top Shop pages on social media, Sun Motor Cars also includes links to their Top Shop pages on each of their dealership websites; they include links on every job posting; and they encourage every job candidate to check out their Top Shop pages.
Three Months, Three New Hires, & Just Getting Started
Within three months of their Top Shop pages going live, not only has Sun Motor Cars seen several leads come in as a direct result of using their Top Shop pages, but they’ve also been able to use their page to give all candidates a better feel for what it’s like to work in their dealerships.
Recently, they interviewed a technician who saw them on Facebook, visited one of their Top Shop pages, and decided it was worth his time to apply and interview after seeing their technicians videos. The tech turned out to be a great fit for their Mercedes location, was hired, and is now working for them.
As great as their Top Shop pages are, Dan and Lisa understand that the pages themselves are only a part of the equation. They have done a phenomenal job in marketing their pages and putting in the work, with WrenchWay, to get it in front of technicians.
We took it to the next step. Instead of relying on just you guys doing the marketing of it, we market it and use what you guys have helped us build to recruit technicians, and that’s been successful as well.
Dan Sunderland
Owner, Sun Motor Cars
The team at Sun Motor Cars is really just getting started with their Top Shop pages, and they’re really excited to continue working with WrenchWay and see how their recruiting efforts continue to grow and pay off.
One of the greatest needs we have in this industry is technician recruitment. To have a partner like WrenchWay help us with that recruitment is very valuable and we appreciate that relationship.
Dan Sunderland
Owners, Sun Motor Cars
