Toronto, Ontario — January 30, 2020 — Early arrivals to this year’s CCIF conference in Toronto got the chance to see one of the auto aftermarket’s best-known figures share key managerial insights on Thursday afternoon.
Steve Trapp, the North America Services Manager for Axalta Coating Systems, delivered a workshop on how to drive for 45 percent gross profits.
One of the automotive aftermarkets best-known management experts, Trapp now manages nine strategic account managers across the U.S. and Canada. A former vice president at ABRA, he joined Axalta in 2009, where he has played a leading role in writing its management training curriculum, develop innovative e-Learning modules, refined their performance management tool, and other services.
The importance of driving overall profitability has been a theme in Trapp’s past presentations.
“It is critical that body shop owners use market research to develop and validate their shop’s marketing plan,” said Trapp back in 2016. “The goal of every workshop is to put body shops in the best position to succeed in today’s marketplace,” Trapp explained during a similar workshop. “It is important for shop owners to identify strategies that work and reallocate funds from unsuccessful efforts to a diversified strategy that targets each customer segment.”
In the workshop, he reviewed weighted gross profit and the key drivers of sales mix and per department gross profit.
He also highlighted the key moments in any effort to drive business performance, before delving into how to find the ultimate balance between driving sales and sales performance. Trapp also touched on new opportunities to increase profits, including repairing plastics, and how the drivers of costs made an impact on overall business profitability.
