Chris and Coach Super Mario Answer Service Advisor Questions

Okay, we need an intro song for the questions, but in the meantime, just go ahead Mario, sing us an intro song.

No, it's like, like questions from the audience. Questions from the audience.

Oh, a little question. Questions from the audience. Question. Questions from the audience. We're listening to you.

Just like two chains. Unbelievable. Okay, so this question is from Sal Borgogna. Borgogna, sir.

Borgogna.

Borgogna.

Sal, you and anybody who submits a question on LinkedIn, YouTube or just email us directly inforisconsinc.com we're going to send you some swag. A service Drive Revolution T shirt, hat, coffee mug, maybe notepad, something like that, but some fun swag. So thank you for your question. This one is a mouthful but. But I'm gonna, I'm gonna read it. Try to, try to keep up here, Mario. This is hard. Hi Chris, I've been listening to your podcast since this summer. I've been in the auto business since 98. Started at Pep Boys, stocking shelves, then parts counter and in 00. So I guess he's saying 2000. I started working for BMW as a Parts Advisor in 09 and I started as a service advisor for Nissan. But after pay cuts I left and have been at my current dealership.

Chevy since 2012. This dealer is way different than I am used to. It is so focused on sales and we get little respect. Lol. But the owners never messed with my pay plan and in March of this year I was promoted to service manager. And just like you speak on your podcast, I never was trained to do it but we have been averaging 30k more a month parts and service. But I think we have more growth available. The shop is not huge. We have 15 bays and two quick lube plus an alignment rack. I have four quick lube techs but have been noticing exactly like you say, they are missing a lot of the mpvi. So I was. What is mpvi?

Multi point vehicle Inspection.

Geez. We just call it an inspection. So I was thinking of teaming three of them up with Atex and so the tech can look over the vehicle and mentor them but keep one in Quick Lube Bay for cars under 30,000 miles. Little skeptical because we generally have 50 appointments daily and some days 25 of those are Quick Lube. I have three advisors. What are your thoughts on a fourth? I'm trying to convince the owners it's the way to go. Also working on new pay plans for advisors right now I have it the way I've. It's always been 2,500 month salary plus 4 to 6% of customer pay and warranty labor sales.

I gotta underline these questions. There's too many questions in here.

I did very well on this pay plan making 100k a year, but I wrote up 20 or more cars daily. Well, I have lots of questions, but really curious about what you think about my plan with the quick loop. Thanks for your help. After Christmas, kids are expensive. Lol. I plan on buying your books and an extra copy of Million Dollar Service Advisor from my stepson. He's in Florida and working parts for Mini Cooper and wants to get into service. Okay, first of all, Sal, if you're making $100,000 a year, you can buy a $25 book, right? Geez Louise. In fact, you can afford $8 a day and buy our online Service Manager University Service Advisor training for all your advisors and all of these questions would be answered. But here's the thing, bro, is.

It would be really hard for me on this show to draw this out for you. You need to get in Service Manager University and do all the steps to figure this out. Because there's a couple things. One is if you don't have the right balance of the techs inspecting the cars and bigger yet, you need a process that you're growing your own techs to become better at inspecting. So those quick loop techs need a career path to become C or B techs within a year or so. So the way you're doing a quick loop isn't going to work no matter what you do. If you have veteran techs coming over there, there's probably a chance either you're going to pay them to do those inspections or it's going to be unproductive and they're not going to want to do it after a while. So you need to reset up the whole shop. Just the basic. You're asking us to give you advice on fixing something that is like it's. You're not going to fix it with a band aid. No, you need, you need the right structure in the shop. And so the structure that we set up in the shop is completely different than what, what you're, what you're thinking. And so that. That would be my advice. There is. I wouldn't do it that way. I would get into Service Manager University and learn how to lay out your shop. On top of that, you need to have pricing strategies in a system that you're creating more sales per customer coming through. And that's all about the customer experience. And so when you ask me, should I Add another advisor. You're leaving out an important element there. What are your hours in your shop and how many ROs are they writing? I don't know if you're open Saturday, Sunday, from what time to what time. So we need, we need more info.

Too many unknowns there.

But we have a formula for that and a formula for how many they should be writing a day. Now you're saying you have 50 appointments a day, but that doesn't tell me how many you're writing. So if, if you're, if you have 50 appointments, are you writing 75? Like what, you know how many ros at the end of the day are we actually writing your pay plan? Is, is not how I would do it. I, I never understand why dealerships complain about their parts to labor ratio being off and completely falling off the last, you know, five to seven years and they're paying advisors only on labor. It's crazy. It's ludicrous. Like you, you probably know this from being an advisor. So a customer has an extended warranty, extended warranty says we're gonna send you the part.

Whatever. Like you miss out on tons of part sales by not paying the advisors on parts. Every RO has a part, so they should get paid on parts. So lower the percentage and pay them on customer pay and warranty and then pay them on internal. I don't understand why you would want a customer's first impression to be advisors that aren't paid on internal on a Monday when sales promised them a bunch of stuff or they just bought a car and they got to come into service and everybody's walking around it and they don't want to write it up because they're not paid on internal. And if you're going to say, well, that's what their salary is for, or that's, you know, that's their job, or oh no, my advisors don't do that. You're crazy. They do do it. They're doing it every day. They're walking by internals. I hear it all the time, I see it all the time. So you probably know that from being an advisor yourself. But pay them on customer pay, warranty, internal parts and labor and don't pay them on gross. Gross is ludicrous. We control the gross with our pricing strategies. Be a better manager. But this whole thing where everybody's paying on gross memo. Advisors don't know what gross is. They don't know. They don't understand it. You're paying advisors on something. They don't understand sales. They can figure out what they're tracking to make anytime very easy. It's crazy. It doesn't make any sense.

Was there another question here that I missed, bro? You need help. I don't know, say the name of your dealership and shame your general manager. But they're not setting you up for success. So for $8 a day, you can get into our on demand platform. You have service manager University, the best advisor training in the industry. You can put all your advisors on there. You get technician training. So we train your techs how to sell time management, how to, you know, increase their flat rate. There's pet the dog customer service training in there. There's technician tree recruiting in there.

So good stuff.

Yeah, it's worth way more than $88 a day. It's worth thousands of dollars. Your ROI on that will be maybe the best investment you will ever make in your life. Even better than if you bought Apple stock. I mean, it just will be because you're asking all the right questions. But you're going to mess this up if you don't have the right direction. And the best time for you to learn this is right now, when you're impressionable. I would take a manager like you over somebody who has 30 years of experience working against them, who asks questions like what happens when it doesn't work and they're just stuck in their ways and they don't want to change. You're ready to go, you're motivated, you have the right ideas and the right ambition, but you need training. It's crazy.

Next question.

We're here to help.

Didn't mean to rant there, Mario. I'm sorry, Albert Dish.

Do you believe that the parts department should contribute to advisor pay as long as we are paying the advisor on labor and parts? So here's the thing, Alberto, then this is a great question.

The truth is, is every manufacturer has an accounting manual. So take for example, the accounting manual for General Motors. General Motors does a parts transfer and that covers the what the service advisors are doing or offsets the the service advisor. So a percentage of the back counter's gross gets transferred to the service department. A BMW financial statement, for example, splits the advisors, the warranty administrator and the cashier with parts because they're selling parts, right? Warranties claiming parts, so they split it that way. So what you want to do is you want to go to your office manager and you want to say, I want to see the Mazda accounting manual. And then it's right there for you. It will tell you what to do. So it isn't on. This isn't about my opinion. It's about how the financial statements are set up. Some are set up with transfers, some are set up to split the advisors. And so Mazda will have that in their master accounting manual of how you should account for all the expenses. It'll be right there. And that's how I think you should do it.

Just because that's how they set it up. Second of all, if you're in a 20 group or you're comparing numbers with another Mazda dealer, it's best if you're following the right accounting practices. So. Good question. But I would, I would give you the homework to go to the accounting manual and see, see what it says. That would be the best form there.