Slow Down or Speed Up? Preparing Service Teams for Q4 | Mentor Mentee Podcast

September looks very different depending on which side of the service industry you’re on. For automotive dealerships, the summer and back-to-school rush often starts to slow down. For heavy-duty diesel shops, freight, harvest season, and Q4 demand can mean the busiest stretch is just beginning. Either way, the question is the same: Is your team ready for what’s next? In this episode of the Mentor Mentee Podcast, Anjelika Surprise sits down with COO Samer Damer and Client Success Manager Hannah Helmer to talk about technician readiness, skill gaps, development planning, labor utilization, and how service teams can prepare for Q4. In this conversation, we cover: • How dealerships can use slower months to fix what busy season exposed • Why heavy-duty shops need shorter feedback loops during peak volume • What a useful technician skill audit should actually show • How to separate skill gaps from tooling, parts, and process problems • Why technician development should focus on proficiency, not just completed training • How a focused “development sprint” can prepare teams for Q4 • Why hands-on repetition and mentoring matter for technician growth • How skill coverage can help increase capacity without immediately adding headcount • What TMC can tell shops about the skills technicians may need next • The new DOL and ASE Education Foundation apprenticeship opportunity • How service managers can identify the skills that will matter most over the next 90 days Whether volume is slowing down or ramping up, technician readiness comes down to knowing what your team can do before you need them to do it. Dealerships may have room to address skill gaps now. Heavy-duty shops may be discovering those gaps in real time. Either way, the work done today can determine how the team performs when Q4 gets busy. Learn more about Mentor Mentee: mentormentee.com