Management skills gained along your career journey can only enhance your ability to become a successful Revive! business franchisee.
Tom Giles was a directional drilling specialist in the oil industry before taking voluntary redundancy and setting up Revive! Aberdeen. As UK operations director, he held a great deal of responsibility, and with clients representing millions of pounds for his company, customer service was paramount.
He explained: “My oil industry customers were high level decision makers. Outstanding customer service was both expected and delivered, and I apply exactly the same principles at Revive! The customer service levels we deliver at Aberdeen were recognised at the Revive! annual network conference where I was proud to win the bronze award in the customer service category in just my first year with Revive!”
Equally, negotiating with customers is second nature to Tom. His previous role prepared him well when it came to securing the Enterpise Rent- A- Car SMART repair contract for his area. Explained Tom: “If our equipment broke down, an hour’s downtime offshore could cost £40,000 which really puts you under pressure. I was used to dealing with very senior customers at an operational level working under time critical situations, so having to go into dealerships to negotiate contracts didn’t faze me. For the Enterprise Rent-A-Car contract we had to invest in additional equipment and meet their service level agreements (SLAs). One of the SLAs is to repair each car within 48 hours– our average is 16. “
For some, making the transition from being an employee to becoming the boss isn’t always easy, which is why Revive!’s award winning support team is always on hand to help. For Tom though, the isolation of working offshore meant he often had to make decisions on his own. “I learned to think on my feet and be quite resilient. As ops director the buck stopped with me – and of course the same applies to running my Revive! business. Working offshore or in remote areas, if there was a problem you had to fix it yourself – you just had to get on with it. At Revive! Aberdeen there’s been many times when I’ve just had to figure things out. The buck still stops with me, but the difference is that I now have full support and training from Revive! HQ on every aspect of my business.”
Managing and mentoring people has always been one of Tom’s strengths and he has brought this into the way he manages his team of four technicians: “My management style is to give my staff responsibility to demonstrate my trust in them. In my previous job I trained and guided new engineers, getting them to do a lot of tasks or pushing them beyond their comfort limits but always there as a fallback. I’ve brought this into my Revive! role now. There’s just so much to do, you can’t do it all yourself. If I ask the guys to do something, I just trust that it’ll get done and I know I don’t have to ask if they’ve done it.” One new skill he’s mastered since setting up Revive! Aberdeen is time management. Said Tom: ”Time management is one skill I wasn’t able to manage before as I was on call 24/7. What this did give me was the determination that things would be different in my own business. It took me a while to be able to go to bed at night and not have to worry about the phone ringing. My work life balance is so much better, I can spend far more time with my family now. I got off the hamster wheel that was life in the oil industry and I’m never getting back on it!”
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