How To Get Your Technicians To Increase Production

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To service Drive revolution and your Friday drive by where we answer your questions. If you have a question, the phone number is 8333-ASK-SDR 8333-ASK SDR. And just remember, if we play your question on the big show, we're going to send you a cool little prize swag bag of stuff you can't buy. You can only get by calling in a question. I'm getting a little bit nostalgic in the sense that this is the countdown to the end of this office and pretty soon moving trucks are coming and everything's going to the new building.

And feels a little bit sad. But that's beside the point. Let's just, let's get to the questions.

I've been service manager for about 15 years. Been in the automotive business. Started as a tech and and worked my way up to a service advisor. Been in the business for about 23 years. I heard another podcast that where the automotive some of the automotive groups are pulling out the UVI process out of their shops, out of their franchise shops and putting it in another individualized building where they take UBI text and pull them and put them just in one building all together and do the UBI process in one centralized location.

I just wanted to know how that worked as far as if that was something, if it still brought profitability back to the department or if most of those groups are pulling that and putting that in money back in their own pocket, which we be profitable for the group, I realize. But it would take the money out of the service department. I didn't know if you had any experience with that. Love your show.

So if you, if you think about the used car recon or used car inspection part of the business, it's a controllable.

You know.

Controllable.

Business model and requires kind of a different process than the process we use with customers in the sense that the writing of those ros, the communication with the used car manager or in some cases you just have like an amount you can spend before you have to ask the used car manager. But those processes are more clerical and they don't require a normal advisor that's commissioned to do it. And it can also be a landing spot for different type of technicians. So a lot of times the used car technicians.

You know, are sometimes technologies kind of pass them by, but they're good at doing that sort of work that's more like just replacing parts, brakes, tires, that sort of thing. And you can, you know, because it's so efficient. The work that techs can run at 150%, you can pay a little bit less and, and have great quality and provide, you know, a great opportunity for, for technicians that don't want to go to training anymore or just, you know, are a little bit beat up or. It also in some models is a landing ground for technicians on the come up where you're mentoring them before they, you know, they go to the retail side. But you can control your cost of labor by, by specializing and making it its own thing. Now most of the time in groups when we set this up or that we've experienced when they have a central location, the ros are still written to the dealership that owns the car. So it's not like your whole, it's not like the group is buying the used car and then selling it back to the dealership. The RO is still posted to the service department of the dealership that the car is going to be sold at or the, each individual dealership has their internal advisor that is, that is riding the ros and then it's being dispatched to those technicians in a central location. But it's very rare that I've seen that that money is off the book somewhere else. It's just the efficiency of it and the cost control. And then, then maybe the biggest thing is you're going to sell more customer pay when you take internal out of the shop. And I know there's a lot of technicians watching or listening to this that don't like hearing that. But the truth of the matter is, is if we're always using internal to subsidize the retail work, the technicians inspections aren't as good. We're not reaching for as much as, as we could and there's usually a backlog on internals.

Or even worse, you, you're putting a customer aside to finish an internal or you're putting an internal aside to finish a customer car. Neither one's a good choice. Because used cars in, in a normal market, maybe not in the market we're in right now are depreciating and going down in value. So the quicker we can get them to the front line, the, the, you know, better off we are in the sense that they're a depreciating asset. So I always say like you can tell a good used car manager because they're pacing and chain smoking because their, their inventory every day is going down in value. So if it's not up there and it's not for sale, what, you know, we're, we have zero chance of making a profit on that over time. So. So specializing the used car process can be very effective in turn increasing your customer pay, sales and controlling your cost in the process. So great question. Next one.

I've been in the automotive industry for about since I was 19 years old. I started out as a dispatcher and my way up as a service advisor. I left the automotive world recently because I was tired of having lazy, comfortable mechanics. They got their minimum hours needed and they were happy with that. I was not happy with doing the minimum. I wanted to grow and I hope to increase our profits in production. Instead I got a service manager who told me to leave his precious mechanics alone. I felt overlooked when it came to innovation. I don't let my gender get in the way of things, but being in Texas, it has a lot of pushback with the older gentlemen. I'm 26 years old now. I have been given the opportunity to be a service manager for a different company. I am nervous and need coaching to be an optimal manager for all parties. What advice and guidance can you give me?

Great, great question. First thing I would say is I would love to have you in our coaching program.

Because I would love to interact with you and kind of help you with some fundamental.

Things that will will be scalable for you going forward. So let's talk about that and see if we can't create that. But one thing that I would say in reference to that is I do not go into a shop ever anymore because I learned this the hard way and try to increase the production with the existing text. I always add text. So somebody told me early on when I was learning how to run a sales department when I was a general manager. So, you know, my experience was service and I was trying to figure out the front end and I was asking somebody for advice. I think it was at a 20 group and the guy arguably was better at selling cars than we were at the time. And I was talking about all the things I was doing to improve the average sales per salesperson and he stopped me and he said, you know, you can spend a lot of time trying to change people's ambitions, but the truth of the matter is is their parents did that to them. And if you got a guy that's okay with selling eight cars and you think you're going to turn them into a 20 car guy, you can spend your life doing that, but you're not going to be successful. If you want to sell more cars, go out and hire better salespeople, but you have to add salespeople if you want to sell More cars. And he was right. Like, he was right. Like, you're not going to change a guy that's okay with selling eight cars because that's their identity. And so when it comes to technicians, if you got a technician that's okay with his 40 hours and that's all he wants to make, and he's happy with that, you're going to have a really hard time changing their identity. And, you know, you're not going to convince them to go out and run up a bunch of credit card debt. And even if you did, as soon as they pay the credit card off, they're. They're still okay with only flagging 40 hours. Right. So what's better is to get good at the hiring process and hire in technicians that want to run at 150% that their identity, their ambition is to maximize every opportunity and, and put those technicians in the same, same shop so you can survive with those guys that are okay with 40 hours. I wouldn't have a lot of guys in my shop that are okay with 30 hours. Like, there's got to be some sort of line that is unacceptable when it comes to performance. But you kind of got to accept people for who they are and then go find new people that have more ambition or more what you want it to be. And over time.

That'S how you'll create a culture. But you're not going to create a culture by imposing your will on people that don't have the same ambition or the same ethics, the same outlook on things. And that's something we tend to do when we're young. Right. That's how I got the nickname the bulldog was. I was trying to impose my will on everybody, and to some degree it worked. But there was a lot of, lot of collateral damage in the end that, you know, now I've learned how to navigate that with, with very little collateral damage as far as I'll just go out and recruit people that'll do it. And then the people that are there will decide, you know, where they want to be, but it'll be their choice. But there's plenty of technicians out there that want to work for somebody like you, that are ambitious and, you know, you can go find them. So don't spend a lot of time trying to fix the people that don't want to be fixed. Go out and find people that share your same ambitions and your, you know, your outlook on things, and then it's a part of their identity. Because it's really hard to change people's identity.

You don't have permission to do that in the sense that what it would take to do that would be, you know, basically locking them in a cell and controlling what they eat, what they watch, how they think for long periods of time to reprogram them from whatever trauma or upbringing they have as a kid. And we're, we don't, you know, we're not in that business. So it's just way easier to go find people with them with the, you know, outlook that you want. But great question. And I'm gonna have our team reach out and see if we can't hop on a call and help you because I'm, I'm excited about your future and I would love to help you get off on the right, the right foot. So thanks for the question and I hope everybody has a great weekend and we'll see you next time on Service Drive Revolution. Thanks for watching this week's Drive By. I hope we gave you something to think about over the weekend. 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 question you'd like us to answer on the show, call 8333 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.chris collinsinc.com now that's offers.chris collins inc.com I'm Chris Collins, and I'll see you in the next video.

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