Chris Collins answers questions about service advisor pay, warranty communication, and staffing. Some advisors exceed $100k depending on market and skill. One caller's shop runs 25-30 tickets daily with 10 techs and 2 advisors, netting $41k a month.
Do we have any good questions this week?
The voice of God is here and has many questions.
Question number one. Hello, my name is Chris. Imagine that. And I'm with a Space center automotive. I was wondering if you had any literature on pay scales for service advisors and bookkeepers in particular, that it's not uncommon for advisors to gain over 100 grand with certain. Certain skills. Thank you for any information.
Advisors make exactly what they're worth. That's what I would say. It's different per market, per brand, per shop, all that, but you make exactly what you're worth.
It's also important to point out that the humor is infectious. God was even funny right there.
God, we need you to be serious with these questions.
God is always serious.
Stop trying to joke.
All attempts at humor are unintentional.
Question number two.
Question number two. I have a question. Imagine that. Is it the responsibility of a service advisor to inform their customers of any or all warranty issues that directly involve their vehicle? Is it their responsibility to let the owner know their is an active warranty for a part in the car that may become faulty and the car shut down?
These questions are terrible. I think so, yeah. I guess, like if you notice something while the car is in warranty and you're doing an inspection, you. You should tell the customer. Yeah. Now some manufacturers don't want you to do that. They don't want you to upsell warranty.
So there's a balance there. But for the most part, I would treat it like it's my mom's car. And if it was my mom's car and there was something under warranty that needed attention, I would tell her.
I think too, that God was talking about, you know, if there's a part that maybe has a warranty type extension, I think that that could lead credibility because if you're the person that has all that information, you share it with the client. You. That's really the job of the service advisor is to educate. And if we've got information, I don't know why we would hold it back. But there's definitely a fine line between identifying items that have failed and really actually trying to pick out warranty for one's personal benefit. So you have to. You can't go too far on the other side of that. But anytime you have information, my belief is that we exchange it with the clients. Yeah.
Okay. This next question comes from. Sorry, not sorry, Canadian.
That's actually Sorry, not sorry.
Yeah, they're not really sorry, sorry, not sorry, Canadian.
Hey, guys, Loving the podcast. My Biggest issue right now is my GM doesn't feel we need a third advisor. We write 25 to 30 hours a day and are growing. I'm adding a film install bay tech next week and replacing him with another detailer. I just interviewed and hired a new factory trained tech bringing our shop body count to 10. We have we net 48% of gross up from 42% year over year. I moved from parts manager to fixed manager last year and we currently average 41k net per month this year. And I'm struggling to keep up with my own day to day responsibilities. I feel like my GM doesn't trust my judgment or is expecting more water from this rock. I'm getting frustrated with the frozen pay plan and so are the advisors Covid excuse. And I'm struggling with the glass ceilings I keep hitting any ideas before I take a hammer to said stealing. Also can't wait to sign up for some training once this pay freeze BS is sorted out.
Yeah, so the, the first thing I would say is if you want get, you know, contact us at infohriscollins Inc. And schedule your general manager and yourself to do a strategy session with us. And we'll kind of go through that and try to try well successfully. We will make the case for less is more and that the customer experience will get you more per repair order and it will help your retention and the customers will come back which then in return will help you sell more cars. So we can help you with that. I love the specific numbers in your question. I really love that. In no way does an Advisor succeed writing 25 a day. There's no way. You can't communicate, you can't over deliver, you can't make friends. It's too much day in and day out. You could do it every once in a while for a day. But if that's the reality of an advisor, the other thing I would say is a rule of thumb. You guys might want to write this down. The rule of thumb is three texts for every advisor. So I can instantly see when I see that there's 10 techs and two advisors that there's obtainable increase in dollars per ticket just by adding another advisor. Because you're going to lose customers because we can't present what is needed. And also the phones aren't getting answered and all that too. So just, just the increase in in how many more people you customers you can bring in by answering the phones and having that other advisor is, is life changing. So yeah, reach out and we'll help you with that.
Good question. Question number three was pretty good.
Glad we stuck the landing. That's it for questions this week.
He's on fire.
God is on fire. He's funny. I love it. Thank you so much for watching this clip of Service Drive Revolution. Now you can catch the full episode on YouTube, iTunes, or Spotify or wherever you consume your podcast. If you have any questions, go ahead and post them in the comments below. 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.
