How To Get Promoted At Your Dealership

Welcome, everybody, to the big show. Now, today, we're going to talk about how you can go from being a service advisor technician to being a manager. What are the steps? What are the things that you need to understand to accomplish that? Now, this might be the best advice, information that you've ever received in your life in that pursuit. So you're going to want to pay attention and take some notes. And then the other thing that we have going on that's kind of fun is we got the news. Christian's going to talk about what's going on in the news, and there's some little surprises in there. So that and much more coming up today on Service Drive Revolution.

I'm excited about this show today, but I am exhausted. It was leg day.

Yeah.

And. And so for those of you that don't work out or don't understand what leg day is, it's when you do, like, leg exercises, like squats and things like that. And for me, in the middle of that workout, I'm already craving fettuccine Alfredo. Like, I'm never hungrier than on leg day. It's the worst.

And it's gonna be the worst food that you're imagining yourself with. Like, oh, what I wouldn't do for fettuccine Alfredo right now.

Oh, it would be so good. I'm starving. I don't understand, too. Like, we always record these on leg day, so it's, like, hard to sit still.

Yeah.

I wish I could stand up. I wish I had a podium.

That's why I do my workouts at night.

I should skip leg day. I think I'm too old for leg day. Do you ever feel that when you're lifting heavy?

Anytime? I remember when I was lifting with. With the boys about a year, year and a half ago, and I remember watching our prison. Yeah. In the old prison yard, which is. Is gone. But the funny thing was, is that, like, the progression that the kids made, like, these guys. These are guys, like, in their early 20s, mid-20s and everything like that. And I'm in my mid-40s. And I remember, like, I would lift with everything that I had in me. And the next time, if I lifted five pounds more, it was like it was the end of everything. And then these young kids would hop in. Like, one time they do 145. Like, then the very next time they'd be like 180, like, benching, like, their.

Their ability to get full of growth hormones.

Yeah. So I'm with you. I don't know, like, how strong do your legs need to be. I guess, yeah.

At this point, who cares? I need to save my knees is what I need to do.

Yeah. Oh, you feel it in the knees? For sure.

Okay, let's. Let's talk about what's in the news today.

Could electric vehicles be the solution to surging gas prices? Spoiler alert.

Yes.

So essentially what we found is that 25% on this recent survey, 25. 25% of all Americans expressed interest in making their next car electric.

Yeah, that story's two days old. As of an hour ago, 99% of people that saw that gas is at seven bucks.

There's one guy that doesn't want an electric car, but he doesn't have a phone and he can't be reached.

Right.

But he made your survey. That's all.

My chick with her Tesla constantly is talking about how I don't go to the gas station. You know, whenever she drives my car and she has to put gas in it, she's like, I forgot what that was like.

Come on.

You forgot what it's like.

It'd be fun to, like, go to the gas station and pull in and roll down your window next to a big truck that's putting $180 and be like, oh, that's right. I don't have to be here and just pull out and leave.

We're gonna see $10 a gallon.

Yeah. I think they're. It'll be unprecedented. Yeah, it's going to. It's going to be a. It's going to be a shift of life for sure.

Yeah. Just in. 99% of people want an electric car.

Oh, my gosh. That's great.

Okay, you want to talk about the. The subject today? The big.

This is. Yeah. I think this topic is going to hit home for a lot of people looking to get to that next level, don't you think?

Yeah. So this was actually something that was asked, I think, on YouTube in the comments, how to. How to get promoted from an advisor or tech to manager. Like, if you're an advisor, you're a technician. What things can you do to get promoted where you are right now? Right. And, you know, the time kind of comes where you're working hard, you've been around a while, and you.

You know, decide like, hey, I. I think that I should be in charge, or I. I want, you know, someday to be the manager. For me, that happened mostly just by being the.

The recipient of all the bad decisions that the. The manager I worked for made.

That's good.

I'm like, I could do this better.

Right, so.

So whether it's just time and you feel like you eventually want to be in leadership or you are working for somebody who couldn't lead their way out of a wet paper sack.

At some point you're going to decide you want to be a manager.

Throwing the hat in the ring, if you will. Throwing the hat in the ring. Oh, you know what? There was another piece of news that I didn't tell you about earlier.

What's that?

So McDonald's has recently said they're not going to do services in Russia anymore. It's now considered a no fry zone.

That's funny. Took you a while to tell the first joke.

Carry on.

How to get promoted from an advisor or tech to a manager. So number one is you have to raise your hand and tell your.

Owner, general manager, whatever, that you want to be promoted someday.

So what you're saying is that owners and general managers are not mind readers.

Yes. They're not psychic. I have yet to meet a dealer or general manager or service manager for that fact. Now that. That we think about it, that was psychic. Yeah, Anything but most of the time, they're reactive. If you think about people in our industry, they're not even good at being reactive. They're usually late to that. So to think that they're gonna be. They're gonna be anticipating something that hasn't happened yet is. Yeah, that's. That's just, you know, wishful thinking.

That's good. Yeah, you gotta let them know for sure.

Most of the time, the elephant has to be in the room, has to stand up and start knocking stuff over before people in our industry decide that they need to think about changing.

Oh, wait, I just thought that was a furry wall.

The later the better. Like, wait as long as possible to change. So you got to raise your hand and tell them now what. What sort of things Christian happen when you raise your hand and you say, hey, you know, I think that I want to be a manager someday.

So I think the best possible thing that could come out of that is that when you raise your hand to your GM or your owner is that they become your mentor. That's when you really start to get into, you know, the general manager saying, well, okay, one of the things you have to understand is the statement. And then they take you in and they start to mentor you and explain how the business really works. Um, I also believe, side note is that even if you're. When you're an advisor or technician, I think understanding financials makes you a Better advisor or technician, too. Like, there's no downside to learning financials, but I love the idea of raising your hand and getting a mentor.

Now, I've had this happen two different ways. And you should be able to tell by the reaction when you express this, where you sit. Because I've had, you know, kids come and say, hey, someday I want to be a manager. And I'm like, okay, well, I'm going to start treating you like that and I'm going to teach you some things and I'm going to involve you in situations and I will, I will, you know, make time to start explaining why things are happening and, you know, give really, really specific feedback to them in the effort of mentoring them. But I've also had people come and say, hey, I want. I want to be in management. And in my head, I'm going to God, no. Like, you are the last person, you know, that we would ever want in leadership or management. So, you know, depending on their reaction, it'll tell you how you're perceived. That's a good point, because there are people that, that want to be in management that, you know, aren't going to check a lot of these other boxes that we're going to talk about. Like, for example, number two that we have on the list is, is being positive. Right?

Right.

You're. You're not going to get promoted if, if you're not perceived as somebody who's positive, who sees the opportunity instead of the problem. If you're always focused on the problem and the negativity, that is not somebody that you're going to want to promote into leadership. So understanding that to be a leader, to be in leadership, you. Your perspective has to be about the opportunity and positivity. If you're focused on negativity, that's excluding yourself from the opportunity. Right.

So if you're the tech in the shop that's always complaining, well, the computers don't work, the. This isn't in the right spot, or this should be better, or parts. Does this, like, hold?

Well, that's probably okay.

That's probably fair. Yeah.

So anything but that.

Yeah. If you're talking about that and not about ways to be more efficient in the shop, you. You might need to kind of change the way that you're controlling the narrative because people are listening.

Nothing makes you lose your authority more than being negative.

Agreed.

Okay, the next one, Number three is consistency. You gotta be consistent. So, for example, somebody comes to me and they say, kris, I want to be a manager someday, but they don't show up on time or they're, you know, let's say they're a technician.

They.

And they have a lot of comebacks. They overlook things. They. Their attitude is inconsistent. Right. You don't know which one you're going to get. Like they have split personalities.

Oh yeah.

I've seen that before in so consistency in your work ethic, in the actual execution of the work that you're doing, the outcome of it, your attitude, your positivity. You know, we have that saying how we do anything is how we do everything. Consistency is a big part of, of moving up because people want to follow somebody who's consistent. They do. You don't want to follow somebody who's inconsistent just because of the fact is it, it makes you feel insecure because you never know what's going to happen or where you, where you stand.

Yeah. You're not sure if you're going into a volcano or up the mountain. Right.

Number four is that you're. You're gonna have to understand that it's the company and customers first, not you. You're gonna have to make a transition and understand that being in management or leadership is a very selfless endeavor in the sense that you gotta put the company, you gotta put the customer way ahead of yourself. And frankly, you got to put your employees ahead of you too, in a lot of ways.

Yeah. So right along that. One of the things I see managers or newer managers struggle with the most is the thought that their employees sometimes make more money than they do. So the truth is, sometimes hopping up the ladder into management is a little bit of a pay cut. So I think that you have to kind of completely change the way you flip. And it's such a 180 because as an advisor and as a tech, there's a little bit of selfishness. Like you gotta fight, like you gotta fight for your ros. You gotta fight for your hours. There's a little bit of looking out for number one in both of those jobs. So we're asking you to completely reprogram. But just understand that that promotion might be a pay cut in the beginning. In the end, it always works out.

Yeah. It's common for somebody to get promoted to service manager and then they realize that one of their advisors or one of their techs is actually making more money than them.

And.

And they hyper focus on that. And they don't focus on all of the things that they can control, how they can maximize their pay plan. They're just focused on the fact that somebody's making More than them. And they assume that because you're the manager, you should automatically make the most money. But that just isn't how it works. You have an opportunity most of the time to earn more money, but you're certainly not going to achieve that by focusing on what others are getting paid.

That's right.

It can be a big stumbling block and I think a lot of ego is.

Involved in that.

Well, I think just in general, I think when you get promoted into a new job, ego couldn't be more of an enemy. Humility is the thing you want to take with you into that chair.

Yeah. One way or another, when you're coming up and the, when you get promoted to manager, you're going to eat some humble pie. Just is what it is. The next one is number five, it's not fair. You're responsible for all man's sins. That if you're thinking that things are fair, that they're an even exchange, that there's work, life, balance, that you're going to get praised all the time, that people are going to notice what you're doing, that you're going to get a thank you, that even. That you're going to get a good job, like well done.

It's not going to happen. No, it's a, it's a lonely, thankless thing and it's not fair.

You're the quiet one in the back of the room, off the camera for sure. Yeah.

You're going to take the blame for all of the problems and you're going to give away the credit for all the successes. Yeah, that's really how it works. And so it's not fair whatsoever. Number six, you have to focus on the customer satisfaction and understand that.

From the position of a, of a service manager, the dealership in the dealer world is judged on csi. It's how the manufacturers look at you. And from a group.

You know, depending on how big the group is, a lot of times groups can't buy more dealerships until they fix their csi. So CSI and the customer experience is, is a big part of the equation. Like you have to be able to provide a consistent and, you know, above average customer experience or you're not going to last.

Yeah, I would say that it's so interesting. I always think back to, like the groups that we work with and our conversations with the leadership in those groups. And I would say that CSI sometimes is number one over profitability. Like they're very close to each other and especially those stores that are in high acquisition mode.

Yeah. But we see That a lot. We get brought in to help with that. A lot of times they're like, I, I looked at one last week where they were 40% net to gross. Very profitable. But the CSI, yeah, very inconsistent, high performing dealership, but huge store. You're not going to, you know, it's going to affect your relationship with the manufacturer in a negative way. If you, if you can't provide a consistent experience to the customers, then number seven here, that is kind of our last one in what, what we came up with is if you, if you want to, to get promoted, I would, I would approach it this way in the sense that I would imagine myself in that position and then I would sit down with a piece of paper and I would write down like, okay, if I'm a really successful manager here, where I'm working, what is it that I would have to act like? What would my confidence have to be? What would I dress like? What would be, you know, my overall attitude? What would I have to be good at? I would make a list of what you are as an idealized version of a successful manager leader and then create that. Now become that now like start dressing like that. Now start acting like that. Now start, you know, expecting very little praise and understand that it's not fair. Start, you know, being, being an example, being the positive influence when everybody else is negative, seeing the brighter side and things like reverse engineer what, what you should be today to get to where, where you want. So don't think from here forward, jump ahead a couple years to when you're succeeding in your kicking ass and think about the characteristics, the mindset of who you are and then adopt those. Now start now.

I think that the, the big thing with that is the dynamic of you and the group of employees has to change. I think it's way easier to do it. I think in hindsight, you know, as I, as I moved up, is that doing it earlier rather than later is easy. Right. So you and I both know is when you get into leadership, like the dynamic and the social dynamic outside changes. And I think as a person that's trying to get into that next level. So what I always think about is that if the employees are all like a flock of sheep and if you just are like everyone else, every one of the other sheep, how would you ever stand out? So you have to do something different. So I think about like, so let's say everybody's getting together and going to the bar and Friday night after work and they're going to have a few beers and all that other stuff. And, and you kind of have to be the early out because you're going to be to work early in the morning. You have to kind of do that thing that stands out almost to the point where your co workers recognize it that you're on kind of a different level. That'll help to elevate you when you become a leader because they already know that you're kind of doing things differently than they are. And that stuff, those habits I think really, really start to magnify to the universe that you're ready for that leadership position. But how you act, how you look, so important.

Yeah. And I would say too, and this, this isn't, this isn't about me when I say this, but I know it kind of could, could appear that way is I really would read Irreplaceable Service Manager the book. I mean, that's kind of how this question I think came about. Was somebody reading the book and then, then emailing me. But.

That book is written to start you off on the right foot. Like the, the systems, the approach, all of it is in there. And I know people have said to me many times like they've, they read it three times but it's a really easy read. It's, you know, the information is very condensed and to the point. But read it two or three times and you'll be ahead of most managers out there because most managers out there have had very little training. They've learned through tribal knowledge and they're just copying what they've seen other people do or what they've, you know, heard from other people. But they really don't have a basic understanding of the business and how profit and a customer experience, a positive customer experience is created.

Right.

So that's where I'd start. Good stuff in, you know, get good at selling tires and alignments because electric cars are coming.

They are on their way for sure.

Awesome. So we'll see you next time on Service Drive Revolution. Thanks so much for watching this episode of Service Drive Revolution. We're uploading new stuff every day, so make sure you subscribe and click the bell icon so you don't miss out. If you have a question you'd like us to answer on the show, call 8333 asksDr and we'll answer your question on the show. That's 8333 ask SDR. For special deals on our books and training, head over to offers.chriscollinsinc.com now that's offers.chriscollinsInc.com I'm Chris Collins, and I'll see you in the next video.