Creating Opportunity
Many times, regardless of how well we plan, some things just fail. Maybe it's a meeting presentation that was well prepared, but suffered technical difficulty. Or a disciplined savings plan lost nearly half of its value in today's recession. These challenging situation define our days, but our response to them determines our future success.
Thomas Edison experieced repeated failures. His true success was not his invention of the light bulb, but rather his tenacity to use failures as a means to gain new information and new perspectives. Our most successful employees are the ones who have the persistence and optimism to learn from difficulty and use what they learn to re-imagine, recreate and re-experiment. They are the ones who have learned to be positive and to constatntly hunt for opportunities. As the economy struggles to recover, successful organizations will reinvent their futures by focusing on these opportunities.
While it is impossible to argue with the fact that we need to change and find ways to solve our problems in this tough economy it becomes very important to understand the "intent" of the insurance industry so we can have a proper game plan.
It is my feeling the insurance industry is trying to recoup losses from dumb investments and will continue to squeeze the collision industry until all blood is drained from them. The game plan has always been to reduce capacity, divide and conquer a weakened industry. They can manage and bring their dream of a
PPO world far easier with fewer and much weaker players.
Each and every day some appraiser enters our shop and tries to "cut, slice and dice" a perfectly legitimate request for payment. Insurers refuse to pay a honest and fair rate. Shops need to draw a line in the sand and refuse to perform any function without payment from the owner or the insurer. Why spend money on bagging a car, caulk or weld thru primer or anything if the insurer refuses to pay for them or only wants to pay a fraction of the cost? No money, no work. Push the ball back to them and do it in writing so you have a record. It is called shifting the legal "liability".
In most cases you will find you get more respect, more money, and if enough people fight back it will send a message that "we will no be conquered and we are valuable people that, like the insurer's employees who are paid well, deserve fair payment".
Change will come if those in our industry will stand and fight, demand fair pay and not back down. Change will never happen if we just continue to "suck up" to the horrific demands of the insurers.
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