How to Handle Rogue Employees in the Auto Dealership

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Welcome everybody to your Friday drive by where we answer your questions. Today you are in for a treat. Subjectively, you are in for a treat. So we're here for our top dog event and we're recording a bunch of SDRs and drive bys while we have all this talent in one place. So really quick, Coach Hoagie, everybody knows Chris Joan.

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And then I'm Chris Collins. So remember the number is 8333. Ask SDR if you have a question. That's 8333. Ask SDR. If we play your question, we will send you some swag. It can be service swag. Parts hold swag. Right? Either one, whatever, whatever one tickles your fancy. Okay, let's get to this week's question.

Good morning, this is John Cullen. I've got a situation I'm not sure to how to handle. I had a sales manager pull his car out of my shop because he thought we were too expensive when he was getting an internal rate. Then he tells me in front of other employees, no, I don't pay markup on nothing. I pay dead costs, everything. So pull my car out of your shop. Anyways, off to the side. He's been asking all my guys to do his brake job on the side. I come in here Saturday and his cars in the air on one of my hoist and he's getting his brake job done by one of my technicians. Who rides around in the nepotism clause with these guys. How do I handle it or do I just need to look the other way?

Okay, John, thanks for calling. We love your calls. Anybody want to take this one? Before I say what I think, I.

Think the first thing is the technician.

Goes, fire the technician.

Fire the technician.

I agree, there's. I would have nobody working in my shop that was doing things on the side. It makes zero sense for the business model. We have no way of controlling anything if everybody's doing whatever if they're running their own business. It doesn't just not even logical, doesn't make sense. So fire the technician. That would send a pretty good message. What about the. What about the used car manager that only pays costs?

I definitely think, I mean the service manager wouldn't have a ability to fire the used car manager but as a gm. And it would have to be a conversation with the gm. The sales manager's pulling the technicians and having them do side jobs and he just calls the technician to lose his job.

Yeah, there's so many, there's so many problems with this. So first of all, if, like if you're a dealership, right. And you're selling a used car, part of the reason why people would come to you to buy used cars, because you're standing behind the car. If the service department isn't, if you don't have real technicians inspecting it and doing the work, then long term, so it would appear that this used car managers maybe one of those guys that just bounces around. But long term, that isn't going to be the best thing for the dealership because their cars are going to come back, people are going to be unhappy. You're taking shortcuts.

Most of the time. When this comes up in the field and you guys deal with it all the time. When used car managers are complaining about the labor rate or whatever it is, when you actually do the math on what they're talking about, you're talking about another hundred or $200 per car. If you're losing a car deal over $200, you're not really a used car manager. Right. Because we're not talking about thousands of dollars.

And you also got to decide what kind of dealership you are. If you're buying really edgy stuff and then trying to take shortcuts, that's not, that's not a long term model either. Right. Because it's how you buy that determines how you have to recon too. There's a lot of, a lot of things to unpack there.

Yeah. I think that guided discovery breakdown is always really important in that conversation where, you know, say you're a dealership and you're at two hours per RO internally. So you said something key there. I think that I don't want to fly by too fast. If they're at two hours per ro and say you raise the internal rate 50 bucks or something like that, like to your point, 100 bucks. It's a hundred bucks.

Two hours times 50 bucks is on.

Yeah, yeah. And, and, and it's always interesting to me too, when you look at the average dollars per ticket internally and stuff like that as well that, you know, if you ask a used car manager to guess what it is, a lot of times he'll say something, you know, two or three times what it is because he thinks every single thing's getting a set of tires, everything goes. So there's just a lot of, you know, facts to consider over the feelings of it and what's best for the, the store overall. Right. Because there's a profitability aspect to that for the store overall, if the cars are getting reconditioned properly.

Yeah. And for the dealership overall, those used cars, if the customer perceives that we're a business they want to, you know, come back to, those cars are either going to go out of warranty quicker, they're going to break more because they have higher mileages and they're older. Right. So for the dealership as a model, you want to set those customers up to have a perception that's favorable. And taking 100 or 200 shortcuts does not pay off in the end. When you look at the, the value of a customer over the lifetime of also them coming back and trading in and getting, you know, something else. So how many times does somebody start off buying a used car? Like let's say in the BMW world, they buy a used three and then they, three years later when they get a promotion, they buy a new three and they lease a new one. Then they get a five and then they get a seven. You know, it's a, there's a, there's a method to that madness of moving customers up in the, in the cycle. So that's why the numbers keep getting bigger on those cars. Yeah. They expect you to move up and people expect, when they're committed to a brand like somebody that's committed to Mercedes or BMW or whatever it is, they in their head attribute their success in life with, hey, I'm going to get an X5, you know, or I got a promotion, now I'm the executive, I'm going to get a 7 or I'm going to get an S class. But they, they literally, you can watch it like it's just, they grow with the brand but you kill all of that when you're taking shortcuts and you're not thinking about the long term game and you're just living in the now. Which, which is part of the reason why our industry gets in trouble is used car managers playing those games. Like, you got to think long term.

Yeah.

I think one other thing.

Yeah.

Charge the customer the 200.

Years.

You're not paying for that, you're not losing 200. You can add the 200 to what the customer pays. So ultimately the customer pays for their own success.

Yes. Yeah.

Like it's worth 200 more if you do it right.

Yeah.

Well, what I was going to say is on that too, like not to, we, we're talking about the growth of that in terms of the customer relationship with us, but also too for him. Let's go Back to what we said about the tech. Like, what kind of culture are you trying to establish in your shop? You know, like, got to let them know. Because obviously, I don't think at this point the used car manager really has a ton of what it appears to be respect to say, hey, I could just go back there and do my thing. Like, he has established this is my department. Like, this is how this goes moving forward. This is how this is going to work. And stop that immediately.

There's so many layers to it.

Yeah.

I can't. I can't imagine a used car or used car manager walking into my department and dictating anything.

Correct.

Daddy's home. Like, right. Like. No, that doesn't.

Right. Yeah.

There's a. Who's that guy on that got fired from fox? Tucker. Tucker Carlson. He had this great. I don't know if I like Tucker or not, but he's a great storyteller. And he had this story. He was talking about politics today, and he said, you know, what happens around my house is when the kids are misbehaving or something's going on. When I get home, all that stops because dad's home. And he goes, that's the problem with our country is there's no. There's no leader that, you know. No, it just does. That isn't how it works. Like, there's no scenario where any of that kind of behavior is acceptable because there's an Alpha in the room that is dictating how good business functions and how, you know, it's. It's order. It sounds like John's got chaos, not order. But, you know, John, to really, you know, be honest with you, you. You're the start of that.

Right?

You're allowing that chaos.

Yep.

And I would not. I would not allow that chaos. Like, I said, I would fire the. If a technician was doing anything on the side. And I'm not saying, like, hey, we have shop night and they're working on their wife's car. I'm saying if they were taking money in my shop for something that I hadn't approved.

I can't imagine a world where that's okay.

It's just what else is going on if that's happening?

Yeah, what I thought. You pull that string and the whole thing comes. Yeah. Funny. Great question, John. Thank you so much. Remember the numbers 833ask SDR. And we. We hope you have a great weekend. 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 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.