Ken Bertholf Email & Phone Number

Atlanta, Georgia, United States

Greater Atlanta Area

Atlanta, Ga

.Managed a team of five Service Consultants, who covered 25 states in the eastern half of the USA, providing business improvement services to collision repair customers that generated more than $44M in annual sales for the company. Managed and delivered the Acoat selected services, a comprehensive range of business improvement services including educational courses, regional and national performance group meetings, and business consulting, with a strong emphasis on using process improvement tools (Lean, 5S, Theory of Constraints, Kaizen, and Six Sigma philosophy).• Successfully managed annual operating budget of $950K, coming in at or under budget every year.• To increase the Service Consultant skills, developed a competency assessment that tracked and measured resulting Service Consultant of the Year awards for two employees (2012 and 2013).• As a Six Sigma Yellow Belt certified trainer, worked with more than 40 customers on process improvement projects, ranging from increase in worker efficiencies, customer satisfaction, and production flow.• Used process mapping to uncover bottlenecks and 5S to free up work space that improved a customer’s sales by 50%.• To increase customer satisfaction, made “mystery” sales calls on a six-shop operation and developed new guidelines on customer engagement and closing sales.• Led team to achieve overall customer retention rate of 98% and a $2.9M increase in new sales for 2013.

Atlanta, Ga

Covered eight southeastern states, teaching the educational series (100+ hours of collision industry specific training), facilitating performance groups (including benchmarking financials, developing agenda, and case studies) and consulting one-on-one with collision center owners and managers. • Created and led East Coast Services Conferences, which brought together more than 100 collision center owners and managers for 2.5 days to inspire, educate, and celebrate. Brought in each event at or below budget. • Achieved average personal Customer Satisfaction Index score of 4.57 out of 5.• Taught the Acoat selected educational series, 20+ classes to more than 3000 students. All of the classes are AMI certified and most are I-CAR Gold certified.• Served as facilitator for more than 55 Performance Group meetings, creating agenda topics, financial benchmarking and goal setting plans. • Increased the membership and participation in Acoat selected from a handful of shops to nearly 300 annually.

Atlanta, Ga

Supported the refinish sales staff with six-step sales training, market analysis, price comparisons, and sales calls on existing customers and prospective customers. Territory covered 8 states in the southeast, supporting 20+ sales representatives. Taught Frontline Service training to the sales force and wholesaler network to increase CSI numbers

Greater Atlanta Area

Brought the Acoat program to end users, distributors and the sales team in eight southeastern states.• To help specialize the performance groups, created and led a new National Performance Group, consisting of dealership-only collision centers. This increased the group’s average sales increased from $350K to $428K a month (18% increase), increased total gross profit by 3%, and increased operating income by 43%.• Increased material gross profit by 5% by creating a material invoice program for collision centers. • Grew the Tri-State Regional Performance Group from eight members to 40+ members in six years. The group’s semi-annual meeting included financial benchmarking, industry updates, roundtable discussions, case studies, team building and shop tours.• Helped start two new paint store branches (SC and VA), after the local distributor changed paint lines to a different manufacture. Made sales calls to keep customers from switching. Ordered and stocked new store; delivered paint and took orders.• Created new estimating training class for the Acoat program which focused on best practices in providing customer estimates and negotiation tactics. This class proved to be one of the most popular in the program.