Chris Collins and Jeremy address how to manage a technician who gets defensive and walks out when criticized. They recommend setting clear expectations upfront, building trust with positive feedback first, and drawing a hard line on leaving the job. They also explain that an 11% net-to-gross ratio is slightly above average but well below the ideal 30% target.
Voice of God, do we have some good questions this week?
The Voice of God has excellent questions.
Question number one. As a fairly new manager of an independent repair shop, how would you deal with a technician that will not take any type of criticism? He gets mad and walks out. He comes back the next day and apologizes.
But.
But I still lost a lot of time and service because of him.
I know what you're going to say, Jeremy.
Fire him.
No.
Ah, dang it. That's my instinctual response there. What would I say?
Calling his wife.
How do you know the guy's married? I'm just assuming he could have a life partner.
Same thing, isn't it?
It is, yes.
Yeah. Calling his husband or his wife, whatever, and ask them to help.
That's playing the trump card.
Absolutely. That kid.
Were you gonna say fire him?
Yeah. There's tons of technique. I saw like, four ASC Master certified technicians on the side of the street.
Those were homeless people.
Oh, they must have stolen the jacket from somebody else. I know where this question comes from. Gene in Florida. Great question. The challenge here is nobody wants to lose a technician. And the talent pool for technicians is dwindling. So even if you're at a dealership or an independent, this is a real world scenario that happens all the time. So if you have a technician that doesn't want to take and he's labeled it criticism, Is that correct, Voice of God?
Yes.
Okay, so it's not so much constructive feedback. It's criticism. Nobody likes criticism. You gotta understand, we're dealing with human behavior here, and you have to manage that behavior. So the thing I don't like is the fact the guy walks out in the middle of the day. That's just not good. But then he comes back and apologizes. So maybe his heart's in the right place. He just doesn't know how to deal with his emotions. So maybe we need some sort of therapy. I bet Obamacare could underwrite that, right? What do you think? Oh, boy, oh, boy, here we go. What do you think?
So I think that in order to be able to do the criticism with the technician, what I would want to do is I want to pull the whole thing back. One, I would explain that the behavior is not acceptable. And then the second thing I would say is before you make a withdrawal, you have to make a deposit. So you have to connect with your people. You have to look and say, here's what I expect out of you. And if you're not doing this, or if you're doing this, then there's kudos or there's corrections to be done and then say, there's going to be times when I'm going to give you corrections. It's because I care and I want you to be the best version of yourself that you can be. And I'll need you to accept that criticism, grow and learn from it. But what I would do is I'd make some deposits first before taking the withdrawal out and the criticism. But the other line in the sand is that like walking off a job and storming out like we're not in.
Preschool, almost as bad as throwing a wrench.
There's not much of a difference.
It's the same tantrum.
Right. So it's the same behavior. And a lot of times that comes from us not having enough deposits before we're trying to coach people.
Yeah, great point. I think a lot of times too, we hire people, we don't actually set those expectations up front. And we think just because they are a technician, they have 15, 20 years experience that they know how to do it. Well, they may not know how to do it our way. And we still need to treat them like a new employee and walk them through every step of the way. The challenge is where do you find the time to do that though? But I think you're right. You've got to set the stage what's acceptable, what's not, and then you've got to make some positive deposits and make it happen. Good. Great question. Guess what we got coming for Gene? What? A hundred bucks and some swag.
Nice.
Wow.
Good job, Gene.
Good job. This next question comes from email. I recently asked the service director after interviewing an advisor if the advisor asked what our net to gross percentage is at. He informed me he did not. I then inquired what we average month to month, and he told me we stay around 11% each much each month. My question is, how bad is 11% and what percentage should someone's dealership push to achieve? Thank you for your time.
So 11% isn't bad. It's a little higher than the national average. So it's not bad.
The goal would be 30% plus. I hesitate to say just 30 because it seems like we say 30 people hit 30 and then they put their feet up and kind of quit. So you know as much as you can while having high retention and taking care of customers.
Absolutely.
So it's a balance, right?
Yeah. That retention is going to be the barometer to your reputation's out there. So don't worry. Customers will give you the feedback on the pricing model, too. And when the value doesn't exceed, you know, when the value is not there with the pricing, that's where you'll know.
So I think that's super important to say is, is that don't always assume that your price is too high. I'd say first thing I'm looking at is the value proposition because are you meeting what the expectation is of the price? So I don't think it's always that your price is too high. I think it's sometimes that you're not doing, you're not following through on the promise.
Absolutely. Absolutely. So, yeah, 11% could be a great number if you were getting 3% six months ago, right? Yeah. It just depends on where you're telling you this.
If you're losing money, it's harder to get from losing to break even than from 11% to 30% nets of gross. You're. You're doing more right than you're doing wrong.
Yeah, absolutely.
Thank you so much for watching this clip of Service Drive Revolution. Now you can catch the full episode of on YouTube, iTunes or Spotify or wherever you consume your podcast. If you have any questions, go ahead and post them in the comments below. Make sure you subscribe and hit the bell icon so you're notified when we post new episodes. I'm Chris Collins and you can find me on Facebook and Instagram at Chris Bulldog Collins and I'll see you again on the next episode.
