How to Get Your Service Dept. In Shape | SDR #254

Welcome, everybody, to the big show. Today we're going to talk about how to get your parts in the service department in shape. We have a great analogy from Christian's life of adventures that we're going to show you some parallels and kind of go through the recipe, which I think will be very insightful. There's a lot of disappointing things in the news.

And. And we're going to talk about why we're talking like this. That and much more coming up on this edition of Server Driver Evolution.

Well, how you doing, Christian?

You did say that we were going.

To talk like this for at least a week. My truck's bigger than your truck and.

I got a bigger bucking basket.

You got one of those little city boy fancy cars.

Oh, yeah. I'm not. I'm definitely. I'm going against my roots. I should definitely have it for.

You lost your roots and your accent. Tell everybody why we're speaking in a country accent for a whole week.

The Morgan Wallen Hardy Earnest concert.

Well, it's the other way around.

Ernest Hardy, Morgan.

And how was it?

Okay, so one, I love the music. Two.

For all those shows that Morgan canceled because of his voice, I totally get it now.

What do you mean?

He was struggling?

Morgan?

Yeah. You didn't think that.

No.

Oh, gosh.

I thought Hardy was struggling.

Okay.

I thought Hardy has partied.

I think he's having, like, it's having a hard time with his success.

Oh, maybe.

I think Morgan. Morgan seemed kind of buttoned up.

Okay.

I thought Morgan, I think maybe what you're. What you're experiencing is him. He's not lip syncing. He's actually singing.

Yeah, he was definitely singing. There was no doubt about that. But. But I don't. I still. I think they put on a great show. It's fun to watch the audience respond to it.

There was a show those little kids by us thought that was interesting.

I think they're. They're part of the family or something. A lot of those people in that section we were in were family or backstage.

I did see Matt Liner.

There's a couple other people that I knew that I should have known who they were.

Does our audience know who mountain is?

Yeah, they're football guys.

Really? You know. You know what's really interesting is how many country folk come out in Los Angeles.

You. The place was packed.

Cowboy hats.

Yeah, there's nothing that says country like downtown la.

So what was your favorite part of the concert?

So my favorite part of the show. I enjoyed the pyrotechnics and the end. Whiskey glasses. That song. Can.

Can you sing a little bit of it for the audience, please? They might not be familiar.

I'm going to need some whiskey glasses. I'm going to see the truth. I don't remember. Probably making out on the couch with someone new.

You seem like an angel.

Yeah, you've told me before. The voice of an angel.

Voice of an angel.

You know what else I do? I tell jokes like an angel.

Yeah.

So you know that. You know that Elon changed Twitter's name, right?

Yeah.

Yes. They.

He's not. Well, he's had that name for a while.

Yeah. So he's ready to move it over.

He wants to be the Internet of everything or something like that.

That's right. So it's X now. But they stopped calling him tweets. They're now called Excretions.

That one's hot off the presses, folks.

That's right on the line. That's on the line of the bleep button.

Really?

Kind of. Yeah.

It's. Depends on how much you read into that. Right.

That's fine.

What did you think of the concert?

I don't know. So many things. I didn't. I didn't like how hard it was to get to the. To the seats. Like. Well, we didn't have seats. We were in the pit.

Right. Right in front of the stage, right up front. How many ramps did we walk down and up?

So whenever I've seen a football game there, I've never experienced that.

We took elevators.

The line for drinks. How long did we wait in line? Like a half an hour at least.

Yeah, we. We. And we tried three different lines for those seats.

Being vip, they should have had their own bar. And then the bathroom line, you had your own. Well, I guess we did have our own bar there on the side. We just didn't know.

Right. We got it on the. The. The first in. It was one of the very few times, I think, as a guy that I've had to wait in line to go to the bathroom.

But I think, like a country music concert like that, I want to have a couple drinks and I did not. I had one drink.

Yeah.

And then that just. I don't know.

It's not enough for what it was.

Yeah.

And then getting out of there was. Was.

But I. I would say that when it comes to songwriting and marketing.

In.

A system, I don't know that those guys.

Don'T. It's very similar to Geffen, David Geffen in. What is that, the 70s, when he had the Eagles and James Brown and like.

Crosby, Stills and Nash, all that. Where he was doing the publishing the record.

Yeah.

Controlling the whole thing. The songwriting is incredible.

Yeah, it. To me, it reminds me of Motown.

And in Far and Away he didn't play all the songs I like, but Far and Away, my favorite song was the 98 Braves.

98 Braves. A really good song. I thought he did a good job with last night.

98 Braves, like who. Who else can weave sports nostalgic? All of us, because we all kind of had the Braves then because they were all on the Turner Network or whatever it was.

Yeah. So everybody saw it on tnt.

You saw it. And so we all know that. And then to be able to write a song that correlates that to a relationship and you know, we didn't always hit home runs, but blah, blah, blah. And I think that that's very clever. I like it when things are clever, but original.

Right.

It's not clever just to be clever.

So.

Yeah, I think that they. Yeah, I think all three of them have clever lyrics.

That's the second time we've.

Yeah, we're two years in a row. Yeah, it's pretty good.

I don't know that I wouldn't fly somewhere to see him.

I'd be curious what's. What that. What that concert's like in Nashville.

It's a good time.

Yeah, it's good. We had fun.

Hardy. Hardy's having a hard time. He didn't have a bass player.

Super weird.

And.

He had a new drummer, which. That drummer is kind of a YouTube guy.

And we saw him in the YouTube channel.

Yeah. He asked me where I got my wristband.

Yep.

And I said, hey, you're the guy from YouTube. And then he kind of looked at me like, don't say that. Kind of.

I don't know.

Yeah, it's weird.

The drummer. I heard you say the drummer.

Yeah. But I do watch drummers on YouTube.

Yeah. Way more than I do.

Okay, well, let's see it for a week. We gotta talk like this.

Oh, my gosh. I. You lost me this morning.

Okay, what's in the news?

First thing in the news is that Tesla has started to offer 84 month car loans, whereas their previous cap was 72. And if you're a fine member of the Canadian population, you can go 96 months on that bad boy. You can take an eight year loan on a Tesla.

Yeah. People are going to get creative.

Yeah. So essentially it's the.

They're just first, they won't be last. No. Everybody will start matching this.

Yeah, it's a response to the rising interest rates and that they realize that with the extended length of loan that people are pretty much payment buyers at the end of the day in a lot of cases. So they're picking up some, some extra people. They might, they might price out. But it just talks a little bit about if you want a Canadian Tesla loan 96 month, you get to do 7,500 down payment and your interest rate is 6.83 which I feel like that's not that bad for 8 year loan on a car. That's pretty good stuff. And then also in the news a little bit of a, kind of a be aware for.

The industry is that we've got the big three getting together with United Auto Workers starting to work on the negotiation for the new contract which is contentious every couple of years. So that affects essentially what they. This article is talking like you're really giving car information to a four year old. Just saying who are the big three? Ford, GM and Stellantis, which is code for Chrysler products, which includes Maserati by the way. And essentially that there's a lot of things that kind of have to match up so they don't go on strike. But even if they do, many manufacturers are not going to be affected and even on the big three, it'll take a little while before.

Just based on this information. But yeah, Toyota, BMW, Tesla, unaffected. But it could be hard to find fair trucks like, like a Ram 1500.

But yeah. What do you mean it's coming? So they're saying that the.

It's going to affect supply.

Yeah, because they don't have a ton of supply of 1500s and if they go down strike, there won't be anything to ship out. Whereas some of the other models they have a little bit of a surplus on.

We were kind of thinking about there's a lot of parallels between the transformation you've recently gone through in getting in shape and fixing parts and service departments like the recipe for.

Improvement, the recipe for wanting a better outcome and then getting that outcome are very similar in a sense. And even though we fix service departments and parts departments.

Oftentimes we don't realize that those same things apply in our own stuff. Right?

Yeah, exactly.

We don't always drink our own medicine. And I think it's interesting and I think our listeners will think it's interesting that the recipe is pretty similar to what you did or what we would do if we went into a dealership to fix it. Right?

Yep.

And so the first thing I think off of the top is you wanted a different outcome. So you felt unhealthy, you were heavy, and you wanted to get in shape. So what specifically was the outcome that you wanted?

Yeah, so I had in my head, I wanted to lose 45 pounds. That's the number.

45. So that's pretty aggressive. So we would say, like, dealership would come to us and they'd say, we want to have the best customer satisfaction numbers, and we want to be 40% net to gross. We want our processes to be smooth, and we want it to look easy.

Yeah. So I would say that that's the thing that probably that that's lofty.

Right. You 45 is lofty. Like, there's a lot. There's a lot of dealerships that come to us and they're like, hey, we just want to break even, or we just want to not have so many unhappy customers or whatever it is. But with £45, I think you're. You're aligning yourself with kind of a pretty ambitious.

Goal.

Yeah. And I think that where I've felt the healthiest in my life and what I recognized was that, you know, just being healthy in itself, you can't just like, just eat nothing and lose a bunch of weight. Right. You have to have a system to it. And then the other thing that you recognize is that if you just do one part of it, it's not near as effective as you fix the whole. That's where I think that.

I think before the system, you got a coach.

Yes.

Okay. So the. So you had the want, and then the first thing you did is you went and found somebody who had a proven track record of helping people do this that you bought into, because I've heard you kind of explain it for some reason, whatever it is, you had a lot of. You had a lot of belief in this person to do what it was. So, same thing, somebody reaches out to us and says, hey, we want to do better. So they find a coach, and that comes before the system. Right. Because I think oftentimes what happens, and now it's going to happen to you, and it probably already has, is people look at your transformation and they. They just assume that you did it on your own or you had super hyper discipline that nobody else has, or that you got lucky or that there was a change in your. But the truth is you intentionally went and found somebody who has a recipe, who has a system, and then you applied that recipe and that person. Just like we kind of understand when somebody comes to us, their variables and it's not, you know, it's not a straight line. Right. Everybody's a little bit different. So you, you find this person, this coach. Right. So how did you find, how did you find him?

Just through a different kind of, like, I would say like a mastermind type group that I was with. He was a guest speaker at one of the things that, that I was a part of.

And you just instantly believed in his.

Credibility from the second that he said something. It was. That makes a whole lot of sense. And that I'd been doing it the hard because it's not. I've lost weight in the past, but clearly after.

Did you pay them?

Yeah.

Okay. So I think that's another part of this. Interestingly enough, the people that get the best results are the people that pay the most because you're just more committed. Right.

Free advice is just free advice.

Yeah. You have nothing vested, so you personally pay. So you found the coach and you paid for them.

That's right.

Which is going to make you take it a little more seriously. Right. And so then once you pay them, you are given a system and is there like coaching calls or how does it work?

Yeah. So it's all, it's all virtual. But the thing that really reminds me of the stuff that we do with our clients is that there's a daily accountability report that I have to submit.

And you do it every day?

Every day, Weekends, everything. I'm weighing myself on the weekends. I'm reporting my food, everything like that.

Okay. So we, we, obviously this, this guy has a proprietary system and we're not. This isn't about giving away, not at all his stuff or whatever. But the thing that surprised me from the outside looking in is something that he did, did, made you.

He told you a story or gave you a system or a belief or something, but your beliefs changed, which then changed your behavior because you were doing fasting and stuff that would on the outside appear to be hard. And you were, you were saying it was, it was easy, like, no, it's no big deal.

Commitment. Yeah.

You started telling yourself a different story.

That's right.

So a lot of times with what we do, somebody comes into our coaching group, they come to boot camp, and when they learn the system, they start telling themselves a different story because they see it different.

Yeah.

So you started seeing your health and.

I don't know, lifestyle different.

Yeah, that. I was doing it the hard way before, huh?

Yeah. See, it's even the way you describe that is like, that's a huge change in belief because I think if I went back in a time machine, which I'm working on.

I'll let you know. There's a. There's a waiting list for the DeLorean, so I might have to use a Prius, but.

If I went back in my time machine that I'm working on, and I was like, hey, Christian, you. You would say that you were. You were doing it the easy way then, and now you think you were doing it the hard way. So for sure, that change in perspective is what's dramatic. Right. Like, that happens whenever we do a boot camp.

The. So just to. For the audience, the way that the boot camps work, most of the time, sometimes I'm. I'm not here, but most of the time, I. We go to dinner, and. So you're doing the boot camp here in the library, and then we go to dinner, and I'll ask. I'll be like, hey, what did you learn today? How do you feel? Or whatever. And they all kind of get quiet, and they're like, I don't know why anybody didn't teach me this before. Like, I've been doing it. Like, it makes so much sense. Like, it just. It all just got easier.

Like, that's great that they think there's.

Like, all this weight. Right. Lifted off. And I felt like you kind of had that same thing as you had this kind of bounce in your step from this new system of not eating, starving yourself to death, which you were excited about. Yeah. Unfortunately, our thing that we're teaching isn't. I don't think it's that dramatic. It's not as dramatic.

Oh, it can be.

Well, we're not asking them to do something that. Well. I think it's the understanding of where the levers are and what's important that's dramatic, but I guess it's the same. Yeah. Okay, so then you. You have a coach, you have accountability. Same recipe, right?

Yep.

You learned a system, and in that system, your beliefs changed. For sure. You saw it different, and then when you see it different, it's just naturally you're going to then change your behavior.

Right.

And your actions change. Right. And I think, too, is you had some success. You lost some weight early on. And I think one of the most important things from the boot camp is they have to have some early success coming out of boot camp, because that gives you confidence, Right?

Yeah. Just a little one or two little wins.

Yeah.

And I think that that's a really good lesson for anything. If you're trying something that you would consider difficult or life changing is you've got to stack the deck for yourself.

Yeah.

The person you're playing is you. And almost everything that you're trying to make better.

Truer worms have never been spoken. It's you, you versus you. Okay. So then you're having some success. People are now noticing because I've heard people comment about how good you look and then you, they ask you what you're doing and then you tell them and the, the whole thing. It does seem to me that you, because you've been doing this a little while now, this isn't a.

About seven weeks in.

Yeah. It seems to kind of be a new way of thinking.

Yes. I would say it's a, it's a very sustainable lifestyle.

Yeah.

It doesn't have to be a diet that you're on for two months. Like you can always do this.

Yeah. Because what's interesting about it is you, you aren't, I don't know, you're not eating that good. Like you're still eating carbs.

And it's, it's very much like.

It's not like special food being delivered or something.

No. And I think that that's one thing that, you know, another thing that I kind of think about a parallel between the coach and.

You know, that our coaching in the automotive industry plus the coaching that he's doing for me is he's looking at the results and then saying, okay, so you missed something in the system. Go back and figure out what it is.

Yeah. You can't unlearn it. Once you, once you kind of know it and it's worked and you've had success, it doesn't really go backwards.

And if you follow the system, it works. It's not rocket science.

Yeah. And then, so then at the end of it, I would say too is.

Has affected other parts of your life in a sense that when somebody comes into the coaching group and they feel kind of beat down or whatever it is and then they start to have success that is contagious to other areas of their life. So their relationships, they become a better parent, like we always say. They become a better citizen.

Yes.

Because their self confidence is higher and they feel like they have a toolbox that will. That that system of figuring things out applies to any area you want it to.

And I think that that's the punchline is that there is a world where you can be healthy in all areas.

And also I think that discovering that you've been doing it wrong for so long also opens you up to the idea that you might be wrong in other areas and you're more open.

Yeah.

It just creates more like, don't you feel like, because you feel better, you're more open to ideas and open to trying things?

I think so. I would say that's probably something that. I think that I might be a little bit different than other people because I'm never, like, if I've been doing it wrong the whole way, I'm not mad at myself afterwards. I just really, really excited to find that there's a new way. Like, I don't have to be mad about what I did the last two years. It's all about, what can I do now? Because I've got new information.

Yeah. That's hard to do. I don't think I'm as good at that as you are. I'm mad.

I'll be mad. But it's really shortly. Because what benefit do we get out of that?

Yeah.

It doesn't make you lose more weight. It doesn't make you run the business better.

Right. That's good. First part is having a want, like wanting to change, because without that, none of it matters, right? Yeah.

If you wanted to be really brutally honest about that, it's like admitting you're fat.

Yeah, that's a.

That's a tough sentence to say.

Yeah. Because we spend a lot of time justifying what we're doing, Right?

Yeah.

And then finding a coach.

Learning a new way of seeing things, then that will lead to new behaviors and actions that get you some wins, that raise your confidence, that then make it stick.

Yeah. And then you transfer into the rest of your life.

Yeah.

Yeah. We always can upgrade the system.

That's the recipe to getting your parts and service department in shape. They're very similar. So if you find yourself in a position where you're not happy with the results, you feel alone and you feel up against it, which we're seeing more and more.

As the service department becomes the focus in the dealership, that more people are reaching out for help.

Get. The sooner the better. The sooner you see it a different way, the sooner you're going to have a new roadmap, a new architecture. The sooner you're going to have those wins, and the sooner you're going to be validated by people noticing that you're affecting the world in a different way. And it's just more fun. Yeah, it's more fun.

I think that's really good advice for parts and service managers, is to just remind them that the spotlight's coming, whether they're ready for it or not, it's just a little bit easier to be ahead of it.

And I mean, the turnover at service manager is 50% or more. Nuts. Nuts. Because you can't say that 50% of the managers out there are bad or don't. You know, they just. The industries let them down. They don't have the roadmap.

Right.

Because once they do it all, it all gets a lot simpler.

You know what's funny is in that, going back to that boot camp is that on average, half of them say they've never had service manager training before.

Yeah.

Which is ironic because that's also similar to the turnover radio ratio.

Yeah. No, the industries let them down completely. It's an interesting thing that we're kind of the only ones out here doing this the way we're doing it.

Yeah.

I think that one of the things that makes our thing unique is we've been there, so we have empathy for it. Like, we don't. We don't. A typical consultant would make themselves valuable by pointing out what you don't know.

We want to.

We want to get you to where, you know as quick as you can.

Because when it hurts them, it hurts us.

Well, we are, as a friend in a community. Yeah. And so it is. You know, it does feel good when you do a boot camp and they're good people. Like, they just have never been told.

Yeah, it's. It's really rare that we meet somebody in boot camps that we're like, oh, yeah, that person's great.

Yeah.

It just doesn't happen very often. We're. We're fortunate to have a lot of cool people in this industry.

So let us know if, if we can help you. Infohriscollinsinc.com Go to Chris collinsinc.com There's a 1, 800 number on there, however you can reach out. We're on Instagram, LinkedIn, Facebook. Are we. We're on X.

We're on X also. Yep, that's TikTok.

I don't know the TikTok, but there.

There'S some funny stuff on there.

And beyond that, I appreciate you guys tuning in. Hope you have a great week. And we'll see next time on Service Driver.

Thanks so much for watching this episode of Service Job 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 8- 333, ask SDR 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 that's offers.chriscollinsInc.com I'm Chris Collins and I'll see you in the next video.