Chris Collins & Dave Anderson on The Future Of The Auto Industry

Hi, Dave.

How's it going?

Good. I'm so excited here to have my uncle, Dave Anderson, the. My uncle in leadership in the car business. And he's been a huge influence on me for, for many years and always enjoyed your books and your training and kind of, I think we're similar in the way that we cut right to the chase. Not a lot of fluff. I've always appreciated that about you. And right to the meat and potatoes instead of the fluff. So today I wanted to talk about. And I, because of your expertise, I wanted to talk about the future of the car business.

Sure.

And kind of where the car business is headed. And so I'm just gonna ask you some questions and I'll start with the first one. What do you think the number one thing is that's going to dictate the future of our industry?

You know, I think it goes back really to the who can create the best customer experience, whether it's in service, whether it's in sales. Everybody's making a pretty good product right now. All facilities are pretty nice right now.

They're reliable. The cars are reliable.

They are. People have available more training now 24,7 through virtual training than they ever did before. So there are all these resources available. It's who can convert those things into creating the best employee, employee experience. Where it has to start, obviously the employees have to have great experience or they don't. And then those employees creating a great experience for the customer. And that's what makes price less relevant. You know, you can't make price irrelevant, but if you create a better experience, it's less relevant. And that's where people are going to have to focus.

Yeah. And that's a common thing I hear, and I'm sure you hear too, is because of the Internet and the public's, that there's no gross anymore.

Right, Right.

But really it's a mindset. It always has been.

It is a mindset. And people can't get through their heads that customers will pay more for a better experience. Otherwise why would there be a first class cabin, an airplane? I mean, you're leaving the same place at the same time, you're getting to the same place in the same time. The guy five feet ahead of you is paying four times the money. Now why is that? Once a different experience, he's willing to pay for it. Why would there be a Ritz Carlton in the same town as a Motel 6? They both have beds and toilets. Both rooms are similar in size. Why is someone going to pay 600 a night, someone else is going to pay. 60 wants a different experience. Why would a car buying experience be any different than a seat on an airplane a or a night in a hotel?

Yeah. And it's the experience and the trust. I think the reputation that we have as an industry, sometimes just doing all that right. And making the customer feel good and trust us makes the gross irrelevant.

Well, there's a survey by Service Management Group that said if you can get the customer to say wow, okay, if they go past just being satisfied and being highly satisfied and getting that wow, they're twice as likely to return. They're three times as likely to refer others. They basically become your unpaid sales force. Most leaderships aren't training the people in the front, the back, anywhere to get that wow. They're training them in transactional aspects to get the deal done and get on to the next customer. And the people who really figure out how to convert those transactions into relationship building opportunities are going to be the ones that really come out ahead.

Yeah, I agree. How do you think the industry has changed since we came out of the recession?

Well, you know, I think it's changed in a lot of positive ways. There are a lot of blessings in that recession. Some of these guys had to actually get back to work. You know, they actually started to have to remove dead weight and cutting costs and bringing things back in line. You know, a downturn always exposes the sins of the good times. And so I never worry about a recession. I worry about wasting a recession. You know, not actually just maximizing the opportunities that avail themselves because no one else is paying attention. So people got their foundation stronger. They removed a lot of the dead weight. You know, they started focusing more on maximizing that customer base, taking care of that customer, following up with every deal. And so I think operations tightened up a lot since then. I think the product has improved since then. Problem is, things have been good for a while now and people are falling right back into their own sloppy habits.

It does feel that way in the last year. Right.

There's no doubt. There's no doubt. I every workshop when I have leaders in the room, I do a survey. Raise your hand if you've got dead weight on your team right now that you would not have had during the recession. 80% of the hands go up. And so I just have to remind them, if you have dead weight and you know you have dead weight and you don't do anything about the dead weight, then eventually you're the dead weight. Okay, so you're the Problem, you've got to fix it. But they don't see it that way because things have been pretty good.

Yeah, I'd be curious if you asked that question today in front of my, my top dogs.

We'll see.

I bet you get the same response. What, so you kind of already answered this already, but what potholes do you see besides complacency and kind of going back to the lack of training and really systems that we've come out of the recession with? What potholes do you see in the future?

You know, I think that, I think complacency is the biggest pothole right now. It's the biggest pothole again. Facilities have been upgraded, training is available better than ever before. Everybody's making good vehicles. You know, all this is in place. The biggest pothole I see and it blinds me, I guess to the other potholes is the complacency. And see, a lot of dealers don't even know what it means. They think it means you're lazy, so they never think it's them. But that's not what complacent means. It means you're calmly content and you're smugly self satisfied, which is exactly what happens when things get good. And so as prosperity rises, urgency falls. As prosperity rises, intensity wanes. I don't see any bigger pothole right now. I mean, yeah, China's making cars and this. Listen, you know, again, if you create a great experience, look what Starbucks did. Everybody was making coffee. Where couldn't you buy coffee? You can get coffee out of a machine. You can get coffee at a five star restaurant. You could get it out of a roadside diner. That's a hole in the wall. Coffee was a commodity. People say, well, cars are a commodity. Everybody's making them now. They took it out of the commodity business by this, by staging a distinct experience. And so I don't see the increased competition as a pothole. If you're focusing on the experience, you can make the customer, the competition less relevant as well. You know, add so much value, the competition loses its relevance. So I go right back to complacency. It's this sense that all the Cs are calm. Why should I train as hard? Why should we follow up as much? Why should I, Why should I get in my poor performer's face? He's been with me 20 years and he's loyal. We're doing pretty well. Let's just steady the ship and keep going. And a lot of these guys are going to wait until the bottom falls out again before they get up the rear ends, put their coffee down, and start doing their job every day.

Yeah, it's funny too, like with the addition of electric cars, so China is one, but, you know, maybe Apple's gonna make a car Tesla. And I've been censored in.

When I've been asked to speak, one of the things that they asked me not to talk about is Tesla. And it blows me away because to me, it's opportunity to get better.

That's right.

Why should we be scared of it?

See, that's why I don't see that as a pothole at all. I see it as an opportunity. I see that as something people should be embracing and rising up to that and figure out how do you make that work for you, not censoring it. What a bunch of nonsense that is.

Yeah, just like a recession is opportunity. If you really are good at what you do.

Well, the best time to fix the roof is while the sun is shining. Okay. I mean, this is the time to be taking advantage of those opportunities to be strengthening your foundation, to be holding people accountable, to be training the heck out of them. So when things turn back down again, and eventually they always do, you are positioned to create such an unlevel playing field for yourself. The you get far more than your fair share.

Yeah, no, I agree. How do you think businesses need to adapt to the millennial generation and kind of how they're different? How should they be approached? What should be changed?

You know, it's interesting, in our inner circle, I have three millennials that work at our office and it's a two way street. Number one, an employer has to understand what makes people tick. Whether they're a millennial or whether they're someone from the greatest generation, it doesn't matter. You gotta each person tick. You can't treat them like cattle. What's really important to the millennials? Three questions you better answer in the workplace. What do I have a chance to become by working here? What do I have a chance to become part of by working here? And what difference do I have a chance to make by working here? We do a very good job in our workplace of addressing all three of those really big concerns. Everybody wonders about those this generation is more concerned with. Will I grow? Will I become more? Will I become part of something special? Do I have a chance not just to make money, but to make a difference? We do a great job of addressing those concerns. We have a very special mission. We have a very unique culture where people really get to contribute. And they're very Very engaged. At the same time, my millennials understand I'm not going to drop the bar to accommodate them. Okay, I have a bar. They're going to stretch up to the bar. They need to lose the notion. All this smoke they had blown up their backside going through school about how unique and special they were and how they're going to change the world and understand that. Listen, in the real world, not everybody gets a trophy. I don't care about your 12th place ribbons here. You're going to get rewarded for stepping up, not just for showing up. You will be held accountable. You will care about other people. I'm not going to get into this narcissistic nonsense where it's all about you and you think you're the center of the universe. We have teamwork, concepts. We have teamwork, core values. And. And you will live up to that model or you'll have to go away, because I'm not going to drop the bar down to accommodate you. And so it's really under. It's important that we understand what makes them tick and we address that. But at the same time, they need to understand what makes us tick. They need to understand my generation. In my generation, you pay a price. In my generation, you get what you earn and deserve. You're not going to become entitled. In my generation, you're held accountable. I have the gold. I make the rules in my company, and that's the standard you're going to have to live up to.

Yeah. And I think sitting around and complaining about the millennials isn't getting anybody anywhere. We have to get better as business owners or as leaders and learn how to engage them and get them to buy in and feel a part of it.

Absolutely.

But at the same time, yeah, we can't. We gotta keep score.

Let's face it, Chris, there's. There's losers in every generation who get entitled, you know, who blame who, who make it all about them. It's just that is more typical of that particular generation. I'll also say this. They want engagement. Engagement is all about getting emotionally invested in the goals of the company. I want people who want that engagement. I want people who don't just want the job. And so you have to give them a chance to participate. We have two meeting rooms in our offices. We have a conference center, and then we have something that we call the living room. It's very informal. There's couches, chairs, very comfortable place. There's a sign above it that says, none of us is smarter than all of us. That's where we brainstorm and that's where we go. And everybody can speak up, everybody can contribute. Every idea is a good idea until we find the best idea. And those people on my team have helped me create such great ideas. See, I haven't personally going to confess something to you had a great idea personally in years. I'm due, I'm thinking maybe this is the year. But I've had some good ideas that I will throw out there to the team and they will make it a great idea. I'll say, this is what I'm thinking of doing. Shoot some holes in it and they see that they get to make a difference, that they get to contribute, that they get to take ownership. I'm not dictating things down to them. See, as a leader, you got to know what you're good at and what you're not good at. I can write and I can speak and that's it. And some people would say, well, you can't even do that. But that's all I can claim. Okay. And so I'm not good at technology and marketing and accounting and all these other things. So I depend on them. And if you try to micromanage that generation, that's where you're going to lose them. If you'll engage them, they'll bring a lot to the table.

Who's your mastermind that.

You go to? Or do you have like an inner circle?

I do. And it's kind of odd. It's an eclectic group, you know, it's made up of different people from different fields. The people that I really mastermind with, well, one of them is Maxwell. In fact, I'm going to be speaking with him in, in Fiji next month. He's. I'm on his board and so we communicate a lot. He's one. He has a very interesting perspective. High ranking pastor at a large church is somebody I mentor and who mentors me. We were in the same mastermind group, an executive in the LAPD. There are 10,000 officers and we're training some of their people. There's leadership teams, but they have a really unique perspective. A Big Ten basketball head coach is part of someone who's in my mastermind. And so I've got someone from athletics, someone from law enforcement, you know, someone from the religious world, and then someone from leadership like Maxwell. So it's really, it's an interesting group.

You just need a doctor and a lawyer.

I just need a doctor and a lawyer. No, they would probably charge for being.

There, but I have a doctor in.

Mine you have a doctor and yours. Good.

No, they. No, you get perspectives. You get. I don't know that it's. That he doesn't charge for it, but you get a. You know, when you're in a mastermind, you kind of let down your guard.

Sure.

And so you get better advice, I think.

Sure you do.

Because you're. You have that closeness. Because the mastermind becomes very close.

It does. It does. And I think that's where you can really have impact and get impact.

Yeah. You can be really honest because the walls are down.

Yeah.

Which I always encourage. Like the meeting you're going to speak at today for me. Always encourage them. You got to let it. Let the ego go.

That's right.

Because the more vulnerable you are, the more you'll get out of it.

That's great advice. And if they just understand the part that disturbs them the most has the most to teach them, you know, that's a little nudge. That's always a good thing as well.

You learn that as you get older because you're kind of.

Or.

I was scared of that more when I was younger. You have a book coming out. It's your 13th book, and it's not Rocket science. Yes, I love that title.

It's not Rocket Science is the name. Main title, and then the subtitle is 4 Simple Strategies to Master the Art of Execution. Find. A lot of organizations have plenty of goals and plenty of strategies. They can't convert them into results. And that's where execution comes. And so it's a process that you follow to actually take it and convert it into results. That's where the ball gets dropped. That's why people get fired. They have vision, they have strategies. They can't get it done. You got to fix that. You got to get it done. So the book will address that. It's been a lot of fun to write it.

I can't wait to read it. And I really appreciate you speaking at this event for me.

Well, thanks for thinking of me. Having me come out is great.

It's been great. And I'm really looking forward to the day with your group out there, Chris.

It'll be fun.

It will be.