9 Reasons Why Service Managers Fail

Good day my friends, and welcome to Service Drive Revolution. I'm Chris Collins and this is Chris Sean.

Hello everyone.

We have an exciting show for you today. We are going to talk about the nine reasons service managers fail. And the list is going to surprise you. There's some good stuff on there. I think this will inspire a lot of you and create some fun conversations. But first, there's some very topical things happening in the news. So let's talk about that.

A burnt out ship carrying 4000 VW Group vehicles sinks in rough seas just off the coast of Portugal. There are roughly 4,000 Volkswagen products sitting in the bottom of the ocean. An amazing amount of Audis, Volkswagens, Porsches, Lamborghinis and Bentleys.

Does it say how much it totals?

Just under half a billion dollars. Oh my gosh, just under half.

Do you think they're under or overinsured?

I'm gonna guess under, but I could be wrong because I don't think I've ever heard of this happening before.

I, they.

Well, the ship caught on fire and then the crew got off right there out and then the thing just floated around and then eventually it sunk. But I don't understand why they never towed it into shore. Like, yeah, for half they kind of let it go. Yeah, there's a funny business going on with insurance fraud because I've heard a lot of times that that's how shipping companies make money, is they sink ships.

What if they found out that the.

Ship was empty, like the cars weren't actually there?

That would be a huge payday.

Well, I'm. Cars have VIN numbers that would be hard to fake, I think. Okay. But the poor customers, they ordered their cars like, oh, like how long do.

You have to wait for some of these things?

Porsche is like, you picked out your dream Porsche. You picked out the color, the interior, all that nothing. Oh my gosh. Bentley's.

Yeah, that's what I was saying about, like these are, these are the kind of purchases, like lifetime purchases.

Like you're.

That's the one car that you think divine, defines your career and all your accomplishments. And it's in the bottom of the ocean.

Yeah. I looked at Bentley's when I was looking for a car and the price just too much.

Yeah, it's a bunch of money.

It's like a house driving around. I mean, not a nice one, not a house here in la, but a house where I grew up in Washington for sure.

Yeah. Yeah. I think that that's the thing is, is that, you know, I don't even know when you think about a car that costs whatever, 200, $300,000, like, you wouldn't want to drive it a ton, but if you didn't drive it a ton, what are you getting out of it? Like, there's no win.

My buddy leases a Ferrari, and I think the lease, like, limits you to like, 3,000 miles a year.

Yeah.

Yes. Yeah. So you got a $400,000 car that you're not putting any miles on, but also, they're not daily drivers.

Yeah. So maybe I don't understand that about the exotic car is the allure. Because, like, if I had a Ferrari, I'd want to drive it.

Did you see the State of the Union address?

No, not at all.

Not into politics.

Not my thing.

Well, we have. We have in this country, we have a president, and the president, once a year does a, hey, how's the State of the Union? Well, let me tell you.

And this was President Trump.

No, Biden is our president now. And so Biden gets up in front of everybody. It's on tv. It's on every channel. You can't avoid it. And I watched it, and one thing that was really interesting to me that stuck out was that he said that inflation is a problem.

But a third of the inflation. So a third of the problem, a majority of the problem, a big part of the problem is the new and used vehicles, the auto industry, he said, because they're, they're in short supply. And so the prices have gone up on cars, and so that's creating inflation.

I mean, he's the president. There's no way he would lie to us. He's seeing numbers that we're not seeing. He's got access to stuff that you and I don't have. But I thought that was interesting, that a third of inflation is because of the automotive industry.

Yeah, I'm calling phooey on that. The math doesn't make sense. No, the math doesn't make sense.

You think a third of inflation is the rise in cheeseburgers?

Well, certainly the rise in cheeseburgers would affect everyone.

But French fries.

Talk about food like that.

We're having. We're having the greatest contest ever in the office. Do we have a name for the contest?

I think angel called it the. It's like the Bulldog. Biggest Loser. Top dog. Biggest Loser.

He's got like, the title is way too long already.

Yeah, he's got a. He's got a board in there that has like a really fat bulldog next to a really thin in shape bulldog.

It's hilarious. We've had forever a PlayStation 5.

That is the good one. It's the one with the CD player too.

Okay.

And two controllers. And we were trying to give it away and then the contest didn't work out or whatever. And so at our Monday meeting, somehow we were talking about having like a bigger Biggest Loser contest because some of us are a little, A little out of shape in the office. And so everybody was like, yeah, yeah, yeah. And then I was like, oh, hey, we could, we could give the PlayStation away. Then everybody got fired up. So we're doing a contest for whoever can lose the most weight in two months. So 60 days, they get the PlayStation. And Christian weighed everybody in.

Yep. And people are serious and they have.

A little text group going. So everything's very positive right now. But I can tell that's going to turn at some point. So I like the idea that it's two months because one month you haven't hit the plateau yet. I want to see people hit the plateau and see what they do, kind of to push through that.

Yeah, it's a different experience when you do that.

But every Monday in our meeting, we're going to talk about the success or.

Who'S in the lead.

It's really fun. I'm curious to see when it makes the turn into drastic competitiveness versus the sweetness that's going on right now.

Now, one more thing before we get to the nine reasons service managers fail is I've had quite a few people ask me, are you going to Nada? So there's a big convention coming up. It's NADA 2022. It's in Las Vegas. And when I am asked that, I'm always like, hey, do you not listen to the show? Because I've ranted several times about why I will never go to Nada, why I won't speak at Nada. If you're watching this on YouTube, we will, we will put the link to it up here. But if you're listening to it, you have to go find it somewhere. But I'm not going to Nada. I don't align with Nada in the way that they do things, their idea of content and also just how they treat people. Like you can spend a hundred thousand dollars on a booth there, you can be the top speaker that has the most attendance a lot of days, and they treat you like you're.

You know, second rate. Citizen is probably being nice, right?

Yeah. I was gonna say something about prison camp, but that's not fair. It's not that bad. But you know I don't know, I, I put in a lot of work and despite their, you know, them telling me that I can't call my ex wife Satan story and saying that you can't talk about Tesla because it's not a popular subject and all the, you know, weird ideas they had.

Yeah, they're just, they, they don't get it. I'm, I'm surprised that the automotive industry does not expect more out of NADA in the sense that it's very clear that they are just a for profit convention 20 group company. They really have no direction or vision about how the industry could be better in a time when the industry needs leadership, needs direction. They, they, they don't, they just don't see it that way. And I don't know the people at NADA currently, so I know that, you know, presidents come and go and staff there come and go and so if you work at NADA now and you are trying to make a difference, I apologize because I don't want to discourage you from that. Cause we need that. But so far I've seen.

Little signs that it has changed or that they really care. So no, I'm not going to nada. No way. And that's it. I, I think the, the boys in the office did something kind of fun is they put up a survey on LinkedIn and they asked the question, are you going to NADA 2022 and 24% of people said yes. 74% of people said no. And then there was 3% that were yes, but explain why. So I don't know what is that? 27% are going yeah, but that's three.

Quarters on the negative right there. That's significantly down. I wonder, I wonder what their attendance numbers are.

A lot of votes too.

Yeah.

I would imagine that their, their attendance isn't very good because they're just not very good. Like it really is vendor on vendor crime. Like you just go there and people are just trying to sell you stuff. But there's there, there just isn't real leadership there. The leadership is terrible. So a couple comments that I, that I thought were interesting when I was looking at this survey. Dwayne Curto said over the past several years the fixed ops classes were pretty much non existent. Having the meaning of this in Las Vegas says party. I've always tried to bring back and take what I've learned to improve sales hours and processes. Hasn't really happened in several years at nada. Brad Pascal says we are going as a company. I wish they did a much Better job of curating content and formatting the show. And then he says something about.

An event.

A mopar event. That is better. It's hands down the best format for the dealers and vendors. So, you know, nada, no bueno. Not for me. I. I do wish, though, that they would get it together and.

Make a difference. But are you.

It'd be fun to drive to Vegas, right? We could do that.

Oh, yeah. It'd be fun to drive the Tesla to Vegas and try that out. Like, I would like to do a road trip.

I think it would be really cool. When I was driving the other day, I saw. I went into a neighborhood, and I saw a sign, and it said. It said, watch.

Is this a joke?

Yeah.

I want everybody to know that. I got Christian with the joke the other day. Pretty good.

It was amazing. And I think, like, if you could explain, or the best way to explain it would be like. It was a total role reversal. Like, how.

I wouldn't expect it.

Yes, I was. Loved it. What was the joke again?

So I came in and I said something to the effect of, man, it's. It's hard watching this war in Ukraine, and it makes you want to, like, go fight. Like, you know, it's democracy, and.

And then, you know, it's kind of like an agreement. And then I'm like, all right. Did you see that Justin Timberlake volunteered to go over there and fight? He's gonna go fight. And then you're like, no, really? Like, you were all surprised. Like, no, really? And I was like, yeah, they're gonna station him on the Crimea River. And he didn't get it.

Yeah, it took me a little while.

Maybe some of you don't get it, which is okay.

So, yeah. So I'm driving around, and I see this sign in a neighborhood. It says, watch for children. And all I could think of is, that might not be a bad deal.

Pretty good. Pretty good. Okay, you want to talk about the nine reasons why service managers fail? This is a fun list.

And very, very, very, very on point.

Point.

So are you ready?

I'm ready.

Okay. Number one.

Reason why service managers fail.

Because they gravitate towards comfort.

Instead of challenges.

So we are kind of conditioned as humans to go away from pain and go towards pleasure or safety. Most service managers think about safety, and if they're not on the radar, if nobody's talking about them, then they're pumped. Safe.

Yep.

And they're good, right? Yeah.

That's. Which.

As we go through this list, you'll understand why I put that one as number one because that ends up being the trick bag in, in the end. So number one is they prefer comfort over challenges and obstacles. Number two, they're managers, not leaders. So a lot of times somebody can come up through the industry, they start off in the shop or they start off as an advisor. They were the, the most reliable person there. They, they had some sort of skills and common sense. And so as people leave, they get promoted up and they become the manager. And most of the time I can, I can tell this by the questions that are asked. One question that is a real indicator of somebody being a manager and not a leader is when they ask the question, how do I get my people to. So they say, Chris, how do I get my people to do a walk around? How do I get my techs to do an inspection?

That's a manager, not oh leader. Because if you're a leader, you have authority, you're, you're creating a want, you're, you have some sort of trajectory forward, people are following you to conquer a cause, you have a purpose and you're getting people excited about that.

Number three is most service managers, the training that they've had and the understanding that they have about the customer experience, employees, pricing, whatever it is, came from tribal knowledge. And so they worked for somebody who they watched and then they are copying what it is they watched or they're copying the parts that make sense and the parts that they didn't like or don't understand, they're not doing. But at the end of the day, most of our industry and most service managers, what they're doing is through tribal knowledge. And every generation it kind of loses something. And if you think about we've been around for over 100 years, basically as an industry, we're kind of doing the same thing in a sense, but it's just lost a little something.

Yeah, well, the other thing too, and I was thinking back to my own time, transitioning from advisor into manager. Any training that I did get was about the tasks, not about leading the team. So that reinforced that whole comfort thing because I got really good at understanding how the warranty thing worked and making sure everybody was certified and certain things within the DMS and what the role of the manager was task wise. That really made me comfortable. When I figured that stuff out, I thought I was doing a good job. That's missing the whole point of leadership.

Number four is they do not understand the financials. So I always like to kind of explain this as they are driving a car without a steering wheel because if you don't understand the financials, you don't understand why you're in business. And if you don't understand why you're in business, I always use this analogy. It's like driving a car without a steering wheel. Yeah, I know, I just went full circle there. But you don't understand the financials. Somebody asked me yesterday.

They said, Kris, like, what made you get into reading so many books and learning? Like.

What was it that happened? And I thought about it for a couple minutes and I came up with three things kind of in my life that were pivotal in the sense that I did something to learn more. And then from that I had success and my world opened up and I increased my.

Results, my productivity, my success dramatically improved in what I was doing. So the first time was when I was in a band in Seattle and I think I'm like 17. And our band was doing pretty good. We were playing bigger shows, we were getting popular, and we signed with a management company and manager and record companies were kind of starting to look at us and everything became very important. Like all the little things became important. And one thing that came out of that is that I should probably have some drum lessons because I was self taught, but I didn't know how to play to a metronome. Like, I was pretty raw in a sense. And so they actually paid for me to take lessons from. This teacher's name was Steve Smith. Incredible drummer, very talented, played in big, you know, big stuff. And I remember.

Right away, like the, the technique that he taught me and the actual like playing of the drums was incredible. Like I dramatically improved just in, like I was holding my sticks wrong and it was just very inefficient in the way that, you know, I was hitting the drums, but I wasn't letting the sticks kind of do the work. I wasn't using the bounce. It was very inconsistent in the way I was doing it. The things to practice that made me better. All that was amazing. But what I really learned from him was how he treated himself, how he thought about the day that he played a show, how he would take his own money and pay somebody to help him carry his gear and set it up so he could, you know, he could worry about the perform, like just the thought process of seeing yourself as somebody that's more important and that, that thing you're doing is really, really important. And you have to show up your best and how you, how you think about it, you know, influences how you approach it and then has a, you know, a huge impact on the outcome. So I just remember thinking, like, what I'm learning from this guy is amazing. But really the mental part is the part that's giving me the edge. And so I got way better. Like, I improved dramatically in a very short period of time. So that was the first time I ever. And I had taken lessons before and all that, but not from somebody of that. That quality. Then the next time was in my early 20s. I knew that understanding the financial statements was crucial to becoming a dealer or doing whatever it was that I wanted. And this, this is. Is my point about service managers not understanding the financials is I started doing advisor training for this consulting company, but in order for me to actually be a consultant in that company and be able to turn departments or businesses around, I had to go through their training. And part of the training was the, you know, learning the financial statements. And this guy, his name was Rob Butts, the late Rob Butts, he passed away not that long ago. He spent, like, I want to say, four months in a room with me. And he taught me Excel and financials because he would make me build these incredibly complicated spreadsheets where, if, you know, you. If you wanted to add sales, how many technicians did you have to add? What would have to happen to your effective labor rate, your gross profit? Where would your expenses go? Like, very complicated. What would happen with part sales? And all these sheets were connected, and at the end of it, there was a test, and he gave me a financial and kind of an outline of the business and said, you know, tell me what's wrong? And I found more things wrong with it than what, what he had on his list. But I remember coming out of that, and even in the process of learning financials, I was like, oh, that's why they do things this way. Oh. And my perspective completely changed from being somebody working in a department to actually understanding the finances and why things are the way that they are. And you understand the customer experience and the employees experience, the production, the, the pricing, your value in the marketplace. All of those things are a snapshot on the financial. When, when I look at a financial today, a lot of times I will do a strategy session and I am talking to somebody about their business. I already know what's wrong with the business by looking at the financial statement. It's pretty clear. You can tell, you know, by the margins, by the average per, by how many employees they have, by their personnel expense, by their profitability. Like, most of the time, I can tell one thing right away is that the service manager doesn't understand financials and that's sadly about 80% of the time service managers understand gross profit and that's about it. They don't understand the financials. And you can tell because, and I tell this to dealers all the time.

Your best friend is the service manager understanding the financials because they'll do a good job. They're not, they're not ignoring the financial because they want to. They're ignoring it because nobody's ever taken the time to one, create a safe place where they can ask stupid questions because they feel like, oh well, I've been doing this for 10 years and I'm supposed to understand this, right?

Yeah.

So creating a safe place where they, where they can ask stupid questions and then teaching it to them in a way that isn't confusing. You know these, these companies like nada. A lot of people come back from that more confused about the financials than they were before they went in. And so that really is the key and a big one is you're going to make decisions about the business that aren't rooted in the actual financial well being of the business.

That's right.

So that's number four.

That was a long one.

The third one in that was the book how to Win Friends and Influence People. Dramatically changed my perspective. And you talk about, I felt like, oh, this is cheating. Like there's books out there that have knowledge that you assume being a poor kid, you know, without great mentors that you know, they teach that in college or whatever and you can find it in books. So that was the third one that you know because I took those things and implemented them and it worked. And I always say that about our trading too is if we don't give the, the people taking our training early wins that they can implement and get a result, then we're going to lose them because if we're not building up their self confidence they're not going to be excited about learning more stuff. Like I really think that's true about our advisor training in a sense where the comment will be like even our veteran advisors liked it because they think, well, they know it and they're not going to want to learn something. But we're considering that when we're creating the training is like if you're a veteran advisor, what, what in here is going to, you know, is going to spark some ideas that you're like oh well that worked or hey, I like that I tried it and it worked. So that you know, that's.

In a sense like I was lucky that Some things really impacted me and I got results because that's what made me want to learn more.

Yeah.

If you, if you did it and it didn't work, then you'd kind of.

Be like, ah, yeah, you wouldn't have the inspiration.

Yeah, sure.

Number five, most service managers hire for Pulse.

That's, that's a great description. I love it.

So, I mean, how many times have you heard like, oh, well, they know.

Adp, like that's the lead in for, for an ad in some cases. Yeah.

Or they're Chrysler certified.

Yeah, that's great.

They've, they've, they've been indicted for embezzlement, but they're Chrysler certified.

Right.

You know what I mean? Like, that isn't the, that isn't the only reason to hire somebody.

Yeah. Felons accepted with DMS experience.

Yeah. So, you know, you want, you want to hire for the right fit, you want to hire for past performance, but just hiring because that pulse is going to kill your culture in your department.

Number seven, they don't understand that technicians drive everything. The most important part of our business is technicians. They are their production. Without technicians, we have nothing to sell.

Yes, you work in an empty factory if you have no technicians.

So they spend very little time recruiting technicians, hanging out with technicians, understanding technicians.

They just basically kind of complain that the technicians aren't productive or aren't, you know, but you, to be a good service manager, you need to spend a portion of your time understanding what's going on in your shop personally knowing your technicians, you know, taking interest in their goals and where they, where they're headed. But you have to be active in the shop more than anywhere else.

Right, I agree with that.

Most managers don't even go in the shop.

Well, they're afraid of it because especially ones that came from the advisor world, they don't know the shop.

But what you are selling is time. And that time can only be produced by a technician.

That's right.

Number seven is they don't have boundaries. And so I would go back to earlier where we want to stay off the radar. We want to be liked. And so what happens is, hey, the toilet is plugged in the showroom. Hey, you know, I got a friend in from town I need. Like, we're the, we're the catch all for everything. And we feel like if we're the catch all for everything, then we won't get in trouble for the fact that we don't understand financials and we're not actually profitable. And so we gotta have Some boundaries and understand why we're there. Which understanding the financials helps you with that. But we were there to collect customers and create profit. And we want a customer experience that customers want to come back over and over again. And if this is in a dealership, they're going to buy their next vehicle from us. Right. So the retention aspect and then make a profit, those two things. And we spend time doing all kinds of other things and we don't have boundaries because we don't have the self esteem or the understanding of, of what it really is to be successful.

Number eight is our self image. Our self image is that we're the afterthought that we're not important. And the industry does that to us.

I don't think that managers do that on their own most of the time. I think the industry says that sales is more important. All the, you know, all the spiffs, the games, the cigar smoking, the trips, all that come from the front end. And so then we buy into the idea that we're support, we're the after effect.

Yeah, the interior manager and all that other stuff. Like the thing that always has amazed me is the difference in training for management on the front end versus the back end. It is insane how much access you have to training on the variable side.

And just understanding as an industry like here's one thing that nada doesn't understand but would be incredibly valuable is that we have to raise the self esteem of a lot of people in service in order for them to then feel good about learning. In order for them to want to learn. Right. Because if you, you know, if you, if you don't think you're important, then you're not going to, you're not going to invest in yourself, you're not going to want to get better. And that's lost in our industry completely. It's just the afterthought.

So I actually, I thought of another one that wasn't on my list. So it's actually this is gonna be 10. Sorry about that.

Number nine was most managers are stubborn.

They want to be right versus winning.

And so we go back to the first one where I say they want to be safe. Right. They don't want to take a chance, they don't want to, they don't want risk, they want to move away from pain towards security. And that creates an element of stubbornness where you just don't want to try anything. And so even when nothing is working, you'd rather double down than try something new.

With the idea that if you keep doing things the same way, you're going to keep getting the same results, but that somehow is lost on us often.

Well, I think another thing too is service managers don't have the right definition of what a win is all the time either.

Yeah. And partially that's because they don't see the financial, they don't understand it. And so they're in a no win situation.

Yeah. So they try to hold on to what makes them feel the best, which is their win.

Yeah.

What makes them feel.

The general manager goes by and he's like, get me more gross and got it. Yeah. Well, let's send out coupons. Or, you know, it's just, it's a vicious cycle. So the, the last one, and this one's really important, this is your bonus 1. Number 10 is that most service managers don't understand that it's systems first, people second. They think that hiring good people is going to fix the broken systems. And I see so many times in a service department that we have, we've done the quick lube that, you know, Nissan wants us to do. We have our least talented people touching the most customers. We have, you know, no real system for how customers make an appointment, how they're, how they're greeted, how they're accepted, how the work flows into the shop. And we throw good people into that and we think that that's gonna, that's gonna save the day and all it does is create more turnover and burn them out. And so you have to have good systems in order for good people to succeed. And.

It'S lost on our industry. Systems first, people second. Now what I did not say there, but you might have thought you heard, was that systems are more important than people. That's not what I said. I said systems come first and then people second. You have to have a deep understanding of systems and systems have to have accountability built in. There has to be an expected outcome from that system and there has to be constant improvement in the system, which means you have to have a culture of, you know, how do we get better, how can we make this better, how can we improve the efficiencies of the system, the outcome, all of that. So systems first, people second. That was my list. Anything you think I left off?

No, that was a good list. It was a little bit of a surprise because I didn't know exactly what you had on there, but you nailed it. I'm also trying to think if.

There isn't just a huge mistake in the fact that.

So many managers try to be everybody's friend instead of the leader.

Yeah, I was kind of. Kind of meant that with the boundaries number seven.

Okay. Yeah, I think so. But the. And I didn't really connect the two.

But definitely I could have worded that a little bit different in the sense that it's boundaries in relation to the desired outcome.

Yeah. Okay. That's probably just one of the things I see the most, is that it's all about friendship, but not leadership. I don't know. Having made those mistakes in the past, I really regret it.