How to Build a Top Dog Service Team in Your Dealership | SDR #290

Welcome everybody to the big show. Today we're going to talk about how to build a team of top dogs. Best in show. How do you do that? How do you build a team like that? There's also some fun stuff in the news. I talk about a recent service experience that I had and much, much more. Coming up on this edition of Service Drive Revol.

Walking. Walking to work the other day and I stopped at the store because I'm like, you know what I need? I need some new camo pants. But I couldn't find any.

Camouflage joke. Nothing funnier than a camouflage joke.

Let's start it off with a little camo.

I. Speaking of camo, blue camo.

We have somebody coming up on the. The podcast that.

Does electronic license plates.

Oh yeah. I'm kind of excited about this.

Did you see it online?

Yeah.

Okay. So one of the things I wanted to do before we had them on was I wanted to try it because.

I don't know, it was smart.

We don't do sponsors, you know, if something's good, it's good. But.

So I tell them like, hey, I want to. Let me buy one. Like I don't want you to give it to me. Let me buy one.

Don't want to be in the O column. I understand that.

The whole, the whole thing. So.

I had an interesting experience.

And I would like to. To ask.

You a question.

How many service managers out there.

Want more customer pay work.

But it's right under their nose?

All of them.

Yeah. So let me tell you about the story. So he, he says to me.

What kind of car do you have? I tell him I have.

Rover. And he says, oh, the one by my house is one of their, one of their dealers that puts these electronic license plates on. And so.

He make, literally makes me an appointment. Two days later, like the service manager calls and I'm. So it ends up being very close to where I lift in the morning.

So.

So my appointment was at 7:30, but I just left the gym at like 6:55 and went there and I was there at like 7 7:05. I pull in.

The. They. They do the system where they have the greeter do the walk around.

Yeah. So the pictures.

The advisor never has to leave their desk right there. Just that guy just standing there. Like everybody comes to him.

Nothing says connection like come to me.

Yeah. So, so eventually the guy gets to me and writes me up. He informs me that I have a recall aha. On my thing.

So he does, he adds that to the repair. So I'm getting The license plate, and I'm getting the recall done.

Okay.

Okay. I tell him I said, hey.

And this was funny because he was kind of a little bit of a smart ass. I go, hey, if. If anybody tries to discount this, Ro.

Please don't let it look, I want to pay full price. And he says to me, sir, that's the only way we do it.

And I was like, okay, but there's pretty good possibility that somebody's going to call you and try to take care of the bill. Do not do that.

Right.

Because they're coming on the show, like.

Right, right.

It's the whole thing. They kind of offered that. And I was like, no, I'll pay for it. Just let me. Just let me experience it like it is. But I'm not looking for any sort of handouts. But he's. He said, sir, that's how it is.

But whatever.

So then, by the way, that's the Mike. Winston. My Rover has been in there a bunch of times. First time I ever took it in.

So never. It's never been me that takes it in. Somebody else takes it in.

What do you think? So last time I got the wrong video inspection.

Yes. You got a jack. Old Jaguar inspection for your Rover. Yeah, I remember. So.

And I okayed the work.

That's my favorite part of that story.

But it wasn't my. It was. It was a different car. It wasn't my car this time.

What do you think? What do you think?

I got. I'm gonna guess they didn't call you. They called who took the car in last time.

No, you'd be wrong.

Oh, okay. That's great news.

So I knew going in.

You know how I was parking on the sidewalk here for a while?

Yeah, I'm aware.

Ends up that that scratches your tires. So I have bubbles in both of my right side tires and somehow the left. So the tires are shot.

Okay.

They have cuts in them. They have. They have a bubble in the sidewall. They are dangerous.

Supposedly built for the off road, but.

No, that's a city car.

Yeah.

Okay. So I know going in, not only is the rim scratched, but I need four tires.

Yep.

And it's. It's probably close to time. Just mileage. But the sidewall, the most dangerous part, is not good.

How do you think my video.

Inspection went?

I'm gonna say they didn't say a word about it. That's my guess.

Didn't even get a video inspection.

Oh, even better.

Nobody said anything.

Right. Why would they?

And I wanted to. So here's the dilemma in being me is I wanted, I really wanted to have the tires done. And I almost said it right up. Hey, could you throw four tires on it and do an alignment? And then I thought no, just wait and let's see if they recommend. Cuz the rim is scratched. It should have an alignment. It's been, you know, it's been a couple. That thing's a couple years old. It hasn't had an alignment.

No video inspection after they did one.

Last time on the wrong car.

On the wrong car.

Yeah.

I never have seen a video inspection on my car.

Yeah.

But I've okay to a lot of.

Work.

Except the work that you really need. Oh my good lord.

What do you think about that?

Yeah, that's a shame.

Four tires in an alignment. Lay down.

Now.

Do you go back to the dealer? Do you go to a tire place?

I don't know if I'd give that dealer a shot.

Yeah, so that's my story.

I'm sorry that happened. Did they try to discount it anyway?

Discount what?

The plate thing.

Did he stick to it?

Well, I ended up paying the full amount.

I don't know if nobody tried to make any calls.

I'm not, I'm not sure too if the guy knows who I am. Honestly.

Yeah, not everybody knows.

No, he, he said like oh, I'm.

It's great to meet you Mr. Collins. You. I've written up your car a bunch of times and I've never met you, but I don't know that he knows.

What you do for a living.

I'm talking about.

Right.

Nice guy though.

Well, that works.

Yeah. What do you think about that? Is there anything fun in the news?

Okay, so this is important. Just be any, any you fans of Nissan. Nissan launches a new business plan and it says expect a broad base product offensive. Which is funny because I believe that some of their products already are offensive.

Like what?

Never been a big fan of like the Rogue, the Kick, the Sentra, the Leaf. Not a big fan of the Leaf either. They're discontinuing the Maxima, which is my favorite car. So I don't know. But new three year business plan, it's called the Arc. Aiming to reduce operating costs and improve competitiveness worldwide. New plan was to bridge Nissan's next business transformation plan going from 2020-23 and now they're trying to get to 2030 where they're going to hopefully get to high level of profitability is their goal. So I don't know, I just feel like their last few plans not so Good. Although when I looked at numbers for 2023, they were up like the Murano was. I can't. Maybe it was the Rogue or the Murano, like it made like the list of top 10 sold vehicles in the United States. But yeah, they got a lot of stuff they got to do. So they're going to try to increase sales in the, in North America by 330,000 units.

So. And then putting $2200 million towards an integrated customer experience. So it's. Yeah. So they're trying to, trying to get back in the game there a little bit. Good luck. Nissan. Started my career with Nissan.

My first new car was a Nissan Pathfinder.

Oh, I love those too. That body style that you had, those were. It was funny.

Even when I was selling 399amonth.

Yeah. But even when I was selling infinities, like those early 90s pathfinders, like every time we took one in on trade, they would never make it past the, the trade line.

Yeah. And then the other thing that's really interesting is so, you know, the EPA's got like this proposed thing where we're going to reduce emissions in the amount of automotive industry all the way up to, to 2030. And after they came out with all these guidelines, SEMA got to work. You know, sema, the sports car people.

They'Re also a lobbying.

So they lobbied and they literally got the EPA to completely reduce their stringent requirements for 20, 26, 27, 28 and 32. 2032.

So they just paid a little money.

And somebody got greased. But who knew that SEMA was a, was a juggernaut? So good job. Sema, more than nada, is doing more than nad. So yeah, that's what I'm saying is I like the actual. But their reasoning was essentially that shops can't keep up with the changes as fast. So there's going to be an issue with repairing cars that had different requirements. So I like that. But the manufacturers now have extra time to meet their future emission requirements. And that is everything in the news.

Let's talk about best in show hiring practices.

I know this is a. We could talk about this for an hour and a half.

One of them. One of the most important things I think that you could discuss.

Most of what I see out there, Christian, and I see a lot.

Is.

Kind of like.

The world that we live in today.

There is.

More of an equality of opportunity versus an equality of outcome.

Okay.

Can you unpack that for me a little bit?

People think that showing up.

Is the job.

Not the outcome.

Of what the job is meant to be.

So it's an extension of the participation ribbon era.

Yeah. Okay. So I'm a service advisor and you hire me as a service advisor. That is, that's basically what it is. It's not about me being a good service advisor. It's not about me collecting customers. It's about me, you know, I deserve, I'm entitled to certain things because I showed up versus, hey, I'm going to show up. And my role is to create an outcome.

Right. Does that make sense?

Makes a lot of sense.

What do you think about that? So equality of opportunity versus equality of outcome.

I feel like it's a recipe for disaster. The sites are too low.

I think that's how most people hire.

Yeah.

And so we get asked questions all the time. How do I, how do I fix my culture? How do I make people happy? I'm always like, please give me an example. When you made somebody happy, like you hold a gun to their head and be happy.

Most of. And I've kind of learned this.

Is.

Well, most of the high performing teams that I've either been around, I've created and, and been a part of or that I've studied. And I think that that new Dynasty show, the miniseries, Dr. Patriots, about the Patriots, is kind of.

A story in line with what, what I'm saying is it's, it's the island of Misfit toys in the sense, you know, I'll kind of give you two pivotal moments in, in my journeys that made me stop for a second. When you're talking about hiring and re analyze the idea of just you making a decision on the interview in front of you versus a lot of other, a lot of other things. So the first one was we were doing some leadership training with a very popular leadership trainer in automotive and he came out with, we were buying all his stuff. I would have him come out and talk to our team. All that.

He partnered with somebody who did these personality profiles.

Okay.

So it was like a pre hire personality test that was supposed to help you determine whether people were right for the job or not.

Okay.

And they were selling these in like packs of 25. So.

Okay, so 25 tests you bought.

Yeah.

Okay.

I'm sure he was affiliate for them or something.

Sure.

And so there was this moment where I was like, well, if he's saying it, let's just do it.

And then I started to think like, okay, but he's an affiliate. He might just be doing it for the money.

They're kind of they were kind of expensive. And so I was like, hey, what I want to do is let's test our top salespeople, our top advisors, our top techs, and look at.

Where they. Where they are in this thing. Now, according to the. The profile, we would not have hired most of them if we use that personality test and not determine.

And not most of your people. Most of your good people. Right. Like, the best we're talking about here.

We were number one in the. In the country, if not the world. And new car sales. We were doing crazy numbers.

Yeah.

So you. I don't know. There wasn't a week that went by where we weren't touring people through that because people came from all over the world to see what we were doing. Right. And so.

That was that. We ended up not doing those, in a sense, because they're like, oh, our. Our process is better than what this thing is in. In a sense. And our process was, if you didn't have a track record of outcomes.

A very strong track record of outcomes, go somewhere else and get a track record of outcomes and come back. Because this is the big leagues. So.

We would tell people all the time, like, go work somewhere and be number one on the board and then come back. But right now, you're number six. And number six there is number 22 here.

Like, right.

Then we're not looking for number 22s. Right. And so that made me kind of analyze this whole, like, top performers. Is there a formula now? The second one is. Early on, when I started this. This company, we were doing our. Our top dog competition. So the advisors all compete against each other. We were a much smaller company, but we had an annual event, an annual top dog. And all of the advisors would come. That doesn't really happen anymore. But back then, all the advisors who come, we would have it on a Saturday, Sunday. And you're talking about.

70 advisors, and these are all the top ones in the comp.

Yeah, you didn't get to come unless you'd won the competition, if I remember correctly. Right.

At first, I think maybe it was. It was close to that. Yeah, it was something like that.

In the. In those. The advisors were very engaged in that, and they also, year after year, would look forward to coming and seeing the. The advisors. They were competing.

We did this thing where we would have the advisors kind of do this roundtable for us where all the managers and myself would talk about what we're going to have the top performing advisors in a room. What questions should we ask them so we can learn and improve. And you know, so we would ask, we would have a series of questions that were prepared and ready to ask all of these advisors. You know.

And I remember very, very distinctly looking at that group of advisors and kind of like going the, like, I have never seen a group of more introverted, awkward.

Not really social people ever. Like, they're not outgoing. Like you think a top advisor is an extrovert. They were all very quiet and introverted. They were all very shy, quirky, quirky, Very, very self aware and like.

And you're talking about advisors that put up huge numbers. Like some of those advisors had literally perfect CSI month in and month out.

Yeah. Like for a year.

Numbers you wouldn't even believe. Right. Like we're talking about advisors that were writing 400 and something. Thousand in parts and labor in a month. Just nutty, nutty numbers.

If you met them. If I think if I put any one of those in a room and you can think of some of them right now, you can, you can imagine who I'm talking about. Awkward.

Yeah.

They wouldn't do good in a job interview. They would almost be shy.

Yeah.

But when it comes to taking care of their customers, they've got a system. They got a system. They make friends, People trust them, they like them, they come back. Back. Right. They're part of the family, they're part of the conversation when it's time to buy their next vehicle. Like they're in on that conversation. Right. And so.

If you're trying to build a team of best in show and by best in show, what we're talking about is high performers.

The environment feels a lot different than what you think it feels like. It's a lot quieter, it's a lot more awkward and weird. It's. Nobody's super happy coming to work every day. There isn't this like, oh, everybody, it's a party every day. It work like people think or they want or they crave. I don't know. I don't know why managers say how do I make my people happy? It's irrelevant. How do you get them to do their job as.

That's the right question.

Yeah. How do you get them to be passionate about doing their job? Not make them happy? You can't. But you wouldn't perceive anybody to be happy. You would perceive them to be focused.

Yeah. They're not unhappy either. Right. They're just, they're, they're, they're, they're business.

Yeah. But if you're focusing on their outcomes.

That'S, that's where the, the, the rubber meets the road.

Yeah. And the thing that I noticed about that group is they were always looking for another advantage. None of them were happy with where they were at.

Well, they love sharing ideas.

How are you doing this?

How do you log? How do you, what do you say when you call technique?

Right. But it was anytime you were the fly on the wall and you're just listening in, they were always talking about an experience or a thing they're doing or something they want to try next or whatever it was. But they weren't, they weren't talking about the Bears. Right. They were literally. They got them all together and they started talking about work.

Okay, so then if. And I'll just give you a couple clues. But performers behave in a certain way. They talk in a certain way, and they answer questions in a certain way. And you don't need a personality test or anything to kind of tell this. But let's. I'll just give you two quick examples of.

Ways I would start to determine whether somebody was a performer or not. And I'll use an advisor and a tech as an example.

Okay.

Okay. So.

For an advisor, the easiest way to tell if you have a performer or not is when you're interviewing them. Say how many techs are going to follow you?

If it's more than three, you got a winner.

Wow. If it's one, you might have a winner. It's the guy that looks at you and is like, what? That's what scares me.

Yeah.

Because good techs are going to follow good advisors. Right. Best indicator.

Now with the technician.

The, the question that I like, that kind of tells me if somebody is a performer, I want to see their, their sheets or their time card, that sort of thing. Payroll, depending on the state you're in. You can't always ask for that, but some sort of proof of performance. But the thing that tells me a lot about Attack and whether they are teachable and they learn and they're self aware is tell me about a recent comeback and how you handled it. And if they say, I don't have comebacks, they're a liar.

Yeah. That's the scariest answer.

Yeah. But if they talk about how they took responsibility, how they fixed it, how they learned from it, that's somebody that there's a start of something there.

Yeah.

If they're self aware and they can admit that they make mistakes, that's way easier to deal with than somebody who is trying to give off this mask of perfection. Right.

I like it.

So just to recap where we're at so far is if you want to build a best in show, Top Dog's high performing team of advisors and technicians, the first thing you have to understand is they're not extroverts, they're performers. And the only way to tell if they're a performer is history, past performance. Right. That's really the way. Now the second thing that happens is we have managers that aren't performers trying to build a team of performers.

And the glitch in the Matrix is that this thing is like a mirror.

Yeah.

Most of the time you're going to hire people like you, that you like. You know that self esteem book that we're reading? It says in there that you are just. It's a natural course of evolution that you are attracted to people with the same self esteem that you have. Right.

Makes sense.

Broken people are attracted to broken people. High performers are attracted to high performers. And lumpy Charlie Browns in the middle are attracted to lumpy Charlie Browns in the middle. Right. It's just what it is. And so you're a mirror and you are attracted to. In an interview or in recruiting or whatever, you're attracted to people like you. If you're not a performer, that becomes a problem. If you haven't done anything incredible, if you're the one saying, oh, it's my market, it won't work, you're making a bunch of excuses. Nor were we saying on the other show, like the guy that says, well, I'm not good at this or I'm not good at that. Right. I'm not good at teaching, I'm not good at games, I'm not good at hiring. I'm not.

Those are all indicators of somebody who doesn't see themselves as a problem solver, somebody creative that is going to create an outcome no matter what. It's somebody that gives up easy. It's somebody who learned helplessness is built into your operating system. That's how you think. In a sense, you give up very, very easy. You expect life to be a disappointment in a sense. So that mirror thing is you're going to attract what you are. And so if you're not a performer, it's really hard for you to attract performers because you, you wouldn't recognize it if it was sitting in front of you.

Yeah. And then the performers know you're not.

And so then you revert to I like them, they know Reynolds and Reynolds. They know whatever. Like, it's all about ease of, ease of integration, which is equality of opportunity. Right.

That's right.

It's not about an outcome, it's not about performance.

It's just about how easy is it to get them. Can they write arrows tomorrow? They don't have to be good arrows, but can they write them tomorrow?

Yeah, because we're just. We're just grabbing the cat by the tail and letting us drag it. Us drag us around.

Yeah. Can I give you a different approach? It's also a sports analogy, but I've definitely done this in my career is a little more like the money.