A short Service Drive Revolution episode (hosted by Chris Collins) that opens with a light anecdote about advisor nicknames—highlighting the favorite alias "Never late for lunch"—and gives a practical coaching tip: in the coming weeks, take coworkers, vendors, and technicians to lunch, ask probing questions, and mostly listen to gather information and strengthen relationships. The latter half previews industry trends: a discussion about global electrification (China ~30M new cars/year and a reported 2026 EV mandate; the UK moving to ban combustion sales by 2035 with ~2M annual sales) and the implications for dealerships and service departments if vehicle ownership and service models change.
Questions this video answers
About 30 million new cars a year.
By 2026.
By 2035.
A little over 2 million cars per year.
Chapters
Foreign.
Welcome to Friday's service drive revolution. The drive by. Today I want to talk about my favorite nickname in the service advisor managers comp. And how it can apply to you and help you broaden your horizons and get better results. So in our service advisor competition, the advisors get to pick aliases. Originally it was so if anybody ever got the list, they wouldn't know who to go recruit. It was like a.
CIA deep secret service society tactic that nobody would know who advisors were who because they had aliases or nicknames. And then over time, it just became a fun thing that when you come into our coaching group and you, you join the top dog underground, you get to create an alias. And my favorite one of all time, his advisor's nickname that he picked was Never late for lunch. Never late for lunch. It's the greatest. There's been great ones, but that was the best one. But this is what I want you to think about going into the weekend and next week is I'd like you to, in the next couple weeks, take some people to lunch. I'd like you to take some text to lunch. I'd like you to take an advisor to lunch, maybe a porter to lunch. Take a vendor to lunch, right? And ask them questions. I want you to say nothing about yourself. If they ask you a question, I want you to be like Cardi B on her first Tonight show interview where she was just like, yes. No, I don't. Don't answer a lot of questions. Make it all about them. Ask them questions about who home, about goals, about frustrations, about where they grew up. Really, really get to know somebody every day for a couple weeks. When you're with your vendors, ask them, what do you see out there that is working for other departments? Who's successful, who's doing it right? I just want this to be an information gathering activity. If you're talking to technicians and taking them to lunch, ask them like, how could we increase our sales? What could we do better? How could we recruit more techs? Like, ask them everything. And listen, just listen. Don't give your opinion. The hardest part of this is not to give your opinion. Not to get on a soapbox, not to preach, to just listen. Even if you don't agree with their opinion or their point of view, just listen. That's it. It will be an amazing exercise for you. You will learn so much. And I promise you, if you do it every day for a couple weeks, you will be a different person. Especially just the fact that you got to listen. But vendors, prospects, technicians, advisors, porters salespeople, sales managers, parts, whatever it is, take people to lunch, ask them the day before, two days before, hey, I got an opening on Wednesday. I'd love to take you to lunch, buy them lunch, take them to lunch and learn about them. And just watch what you learn. It'll, it'll be very, very powerful. So that's your tip for this week, your drive by. And now stay tuned for a preview of what's coming up Monday on Service Drive Revolution.
Next week on Service Drive Revolution. When I was speaking months ago in Vegas at a automotive accounting event, I.
Thought you were going to bring up nada again.
No.
They. One of the brokers that brokers the sale of dealerships was talking about how Volkswagen doesn't have a clue because they think Americans want electric cars. And I was sitting in the back and I was like, it's about China, it's not about us. Right. But so the thing, if you don't understand why so many car companies are pushing for electric cars, China has historically been selling about 30 million new cars a year, which is twice as much as we sell here in the U.S. correct.
Yep.
And so they're kind of dominating the world market and they sell twice as many new cars as we do. But they also have mandated that by 2026, every car sold in China has to be electric. There's no combustion engines sold.
It's a game changer.
It is. That's why Tesla opened a factory there. And it's why, you know, part of the reason why the CEO of BMW stepped down and Volkswagen, hypothetically, is kind of ahead of a lot of companies because they're going electric in anticipation of the, of this coming. Now, I didn't know this, but we were talking about this. The UK says by 2035, everybody has to be.
So they just moved that up five years.
It was 2030.
It was 2040.
So they've, oh, they moved it up.
They've accelerated it five years.
So no combustion engines, that means no gasoline engines can be sold in the UK after 2035, which is 15 years away. But China, which is the biggest market, 2026, that's coming fast.
It is absolutely.
It's very aggressive.
And this is something that I watch because the internal combustion engine has built our market. And, you know, everything that we've worked in this industry has been, you know, modeled after what Henry Ford did, you know, with the Model T. And that's our industry now. And transportation is changing. So it's not just about selling cars or servicing cars. With this new Technology getting rid of the internal combustion engine. Transportation is going to change. So it's definitely changing.
Well, and yeah, too, when you talk about Tesla avoiding the dealer body and going to direct to consumer, you wonder sometimes, like if Toyota doesn't have a different car line that then just sells electric, if there aren't shenanigans coming because historically they've been shenanigans.
Well, and with the shift, they could go to a timesharing option. They don't have to actually sell the asset. So I fall for service departments. I follow who owns the asset and if they no longer sell the asset to the consumer and the consumer simply rents time, then I've got to shift my service department to get ahead of that so I can service the asset from the company that actually owns it. So this is something, this is future stuff that we have to be aware of. But it's going to be here before you know it. It's going to be here in 15 to 20 years. So we've got to be aware of it and start making changes now.
Yeah. And the UK sells, they sell a little over 2 million cars. It's not, it's not that huge of a market comparatively, but, you know, everybody kind of follows. So China is definitely the most aggressive when it comes to emissions.
Yep.
And saying no to the combustion engines.
And it will, it'll follow here. The US EPA will definitely follow suit and bring it here.
Thanks for watching this episode of Service Drive Revolutions Drive By. I hope it gives you something to think about over the weekend and inspires some new ideas and hopefully some new results. If you have any questions for the big show, go ahead and post them below in the comments. We'll be looking out for them and we'll answer them on the show. Make sure you subscribe and hit the bell icon so you're notified when we post new episodes. I'm Chris Collins and you can find me on Facebook and Instagram at Chris Bulldog Collins and I'll see you again on the next episode.
