How To Maximize Your Mobile Service | SDR #282
Chris Collins and Christian Lafferty discuss how to get the most out of mobile service in automotive sales. They explore the difference between just showing up and actually winning, and share strategies for maximizing this revenue stream.
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Welcome everybody to the big show. Today we're going to talk about how to maximize your mobile service. We're going to learn our new company motto here, which is extremely disappointing, but something that we clearly have opportunity to figure out.
The snake rots from the head. That's what I would say when it comes to that. And some, some news and much, much more coming up on this edition of Service Drive Revolution.
I don't know if you guys remember that Christian is training to be a bodybuilder. Remember the hiatus, the creatine hiatus? You never told me that you were drinking the creatine and the whole thing.
Yeah, so I just cycled off the creatine.
Oh, this weekend. When were you going to tell me this?
This whole time I thought you were a bodybuilder.
Yeah.
What are you now?
So now I'm training the invisible man. No, no, no, no. I'll go back to the bodybuilding. But right now I'm training for a 10k.
10K? Is that like two miles?
No, it's, it's 6.2.
Why, why does it have to be in the, in the metric? Why can't we talk American?
I don't know. It took me forever to figure out how many miles because then.
How many miles?
6.2.
So you gotta run six miles?
Yeah.
Why did you get off the bodybuilding and now you want to be a runner? It's a different body type.
Well, it's, it turned out it. I signed up for the 10k as a body experience, bonding experience with some of our co workers. So Kevin and Josh are running with me.
You're blaming it on Kevin and Josh?
No, I'm just saying that I wanted to participate.
You can't do creatine when you run.
So I was talking to my coach and he said that it's counterproductive and this is something that made a lot of sense to me. He's like, well, you're building the muscle mass and everything like that. And for every one pound of body weight that you add, you increase your pressure on your knees by seven pounds.
What does that have to do with bodybuilding?
Because if I'm bodybuilding, I'm building and.
I'm gaining, as opposed to send pictures to your coach of you like in.
A speedo every 21 days.
We should publish those. We should make those into a SDR book. Oh, progress.
Yeah. No, no, let's not just in Speedos.
Right.
On underwear.
But yeah, I do the same thing.
Okay.
Better.
Sometimes it's hard to look at those really Yeah. I always think I'm not as far as I should be. There's a couple of things that. I mean, I'm sure you. You feel the same way, but, like, I can see progress. I can see that it's a difference, but I don't look like the people on tv.
I'm just big.
Yeah.
I look big.
Yeah. My big thing is, is that that's.
The one thing I love about working with Eder, is chest and arms. Like, my arms look huge. Yeah. And we literally. I can't wear my sleeveless shirts on here because it's too intimidating. They say. Yeah. Who.
Who's they?
The crew, the team, your running partners. Like, it looks too intimidating.
Oh, that's so great. They've never said that to me before.
Speaking of saying things. So I went out to dinner over the weekend. Drago, by the way, it was so wonderful.
Drago is this Italian restaurant downtown that Christian and Patricia like, and I am just bored of it.
Yeah, it does nothing for you. But I really like it.
And I had swore, literally in la.
Yeah.
You could eat out.
Three times a day and have the best everything you'd ever. The restaurants here are incredible. The food here is better than New York, I think.
Well, I do think that New York pizza is pretty good. Remember when we had it in the bagels?
Like, the water saying in general, though.
Yeah. Okay, so. So.
So you had swordfish at Drago.
So had swordfish at Drago. And then part of the chicken. And then in the middle of the meal, this. This lady stands up and she says, oh, my God. Does anybody know cpr? And I stand up and I say, I know all the letters in the Alphabet. And everybody in the restaurant laughed except one person.
Did the person die? Yes, they died. You're a murderer. You're a joke.
Yeah, I do have. I do. I think I have. I just found out too long ago I have a certified CPR card.
Okay. So this. So just to circle back a little bit to clear this before we get to the news, because I'm. I'm curious that. I think everybody listening is curious about this too. And I think I represent the listener in this.
You do.
So when we were doing the bodybuilding, were we gonna. We were gonna compete, Right. Like, you had the idea that you were gonna go up and enter one of those contests where you go up on stage with the fake tan and the speedo.
Yeah.
And you were gonna pose. Yeah. And so now that's off.
No, no, it's still on.
Oh, well, not now. You're running. It's a different body type. Yeah. You understand that it's a different body.
Totally.
I feel like you're, you're joking on this. Like it isn't true.
No. So mile race. So the run is March 30th. From March 30th on through the rest of 2024 is body. Yep. So I'll start cycling on the creatine on.
So this race. Yep. Or whatever. You clearly aren't like you don't plan on winning the race.
No. You know how fast you have to run to win those races? No.
I have no idea.
It's insane.
But I'm sure you're not fast enough.
I know I will not. I, I aim to finish without walking is my goal.
So it's a low bar.
I don't know. I would say it's.
You don't have like a time you want to beat or.
Yes, I'd like to go under an hour.
Six miles in an hour. Yeah. So we're way off of the four minute mile.
Not even close to a four minute while. Yeah. It's way closer to a ten minute mile. It's a little under but because you got to go that extra point too. It's like 9 minutes and 41 seconds.
It's kind of anticlimactic.
Yeah.
Maybe not when you're doing participation trophy. Basically.
Oh my gosh. You're minimizing my run.
But it's a partition. Like if, No, I, I, if I speed walk the thing you're not getting.
Done in an hour.
Speed walking. 6.2 miles an hour.
I got long legs.
You do. But that's a lot of work.
So we'll see what happens.
So it's just a participation thing. Like there isn't a. You're not beating anybody. There's no, there's no bet between everybody.
No, I don't, I, I've kind of tried to got him into betting but no one's bet me yet.
I know that you try really hard to win.
I think it's up. Yeah.
You want to win more than they do. The, the kick into a bully.
Right.
They're tired of being bullied.
So I fought that bullying mentality and. Yeah. No, we're just going to have a lot of fun.
A participation award. It's great.
Yeah. It's making me feel great about culture.
Culture here is I've never run a race. I just don't want to walk. We're in a race and we just don't want to walk. That's where we're at.
Yeah.
That's the culture that we're breeding here. Not walkers.
Unbelievable.
We're not running.
We're just not to the point where we have a bunch of people winning races.
Okay. Maybe that's a possibility.
Winning a bodybuilding contest. Like, let's go.
Yeah. So we'll see what happens. March 31st, it's back on.
Like, I would never do something that I didn't think I could win. Like, if. If. If you told me about the 10K, I'm already out. Because I know I can't win that. Like, it's not even a thing.
Oh, and I see the victory in not winning. I can see the victory. And there is no victory. I think so. I think there is.
It doesn't even make sense.
It does hear what you just said. Yeah.
Because you're racing victory and not winning.
Yeah. The victory is not against other people. It's against yourself. I've never run a race before, ever.
Other than track in high school.
But this is an extended midlife crisis. I thought the car was the midlife. Is it an extended midlife crisis?
All I keep finding is that this midlife crisis just keeps going.
See, then again, there's. There what in winning. There's what?
Yeah, the victory isn't in winning.
Yeah, the victory isn't in winning. I'm going to write that down. Everybody listening to this. Write this down. This is the. The Vic. We should make T shirts. The victory.
If you can't see he really is winning.
I want to see what this looks like. The victory is not in winning.
H.
This is a lot like Jesus did not die for your sins.
Oh, goodness gracious.
The victory is not in winning. That's where we're at. That's where we've. We've come.
Yeah.
This is.
I really. I really do think it's unbelievable. No, I think it's great.
The victory is not in winning. It's a participation award. You just show up and they give you. They basically.
They get a T shirt.
You just pay.
Yeah.
To do a thing. Like it isn't. There's no winning and losing. It's just you're paying the thing and then you try not to walk. Basically.
Yeah. I like how you made it sound. All right. I'm excited.
It doesn't even matter if you wear dress shoes.
I'm not even remotely distracted by.
The victory is not in winning. Yeah. Where is the victory if it's not in winning?
The victory is in the. In the mental over participation. Yeah. Because running.
So it's a participation award.
Running 6.2 miles is not easy.
This is the problem with this country.
Oh, no, here we go.
Participation award. How do we part? I gotta look into participation.
It's not an award. It's a T shirt.
However you spell that. Award. Unbelievable. Participation award. Okay, that's great. You can take, you know, you can take a participation award to the grocery store and buy groceries.
It's a coupon, actually. You have to.
Oh, it's not enough. No.
Grocery store doesn't get you groceries.
No.
You have to pay for them.
Not in California. You can just walk out if it's under a thousand bucks.
That's true.
Yeah. You see, you're feeding this liberal mindset.
Yeah, I am. What's wrong with this country?
All right, see, but you think it's a joke.
I don't. I. I feel like while I'm running that thing, it's not a joke at all.
Great. Is this what all the, Everybody in the office, the. The. They all think victory is in the victory.
I would say that.
I would say the narrative around here.
None of the three of us are looking to win the race. So it's true.
You understand that the word race insinuates that there's winners and losers.
Yeah, I suppose.
It's not a group walk or a group jog. The. The race, like war insinuates that there's a winner and a loser. Right.
Yeah.
Like, I won the war. I lost the war. I won the race. I lost the race. Where, where did you come up in the race? Oh, I was second. Okay, well, you lost, Right? You. What is that Ricky Bobby saying?
Like, if you're not first or last.
Yeah. And we're not. That we're beyond that. Like, that doesn't even matter now. We don't even keep score. It's just, we just want to participate. The victory is not in winning. That doesn't make any sense. What do you call that when a sentence doesn't make sense? Like it's a contradictory, a confusion statement. Because victory insinuates that somebody won. But then we're saying, like, somebody won but nobody won.
Oh, someone's going to win.
Yeah, but you, you're not trying to win. It's way outside of what you're trying.
I'm trying to do better.
Be some guy from Kenya.
Yeah. I'm trying to do better than I've ever done.
I don't know those guys from Kenya. They don't want. They don't run the two mile race.
No, they're. They're marathoners.
Yeah. 26 miles.
Yeah.
Which is what, 400 kilometers?
And they might be able to run 26 miles faster than I can run six miles.
Not in winning, Christian. No, it's. I don't know where victory is anymore. I'm confused.
Oh, just imagine this example you're setting for everybody. We don't want to win. Listen, what we don't want to do around here is win.
We just don't want to participate. Yeah. And if we're last. But we don't run, don't walk, we still won. Okay. Yeah, I get it.
Moving on.
Yeah. What's in the news? Oh, good.
Like, we don't care that. That this show is any good. Right. Like we don't care that. That it's.
You know, probably the number one show in automotive, like, Lithia Stats Lithia race today. Just put it up and then.
Feels good to put it up. So it doesn't matter if anybody listens to it. Yeah, no, it's not in the winning.
We're gonna change our company motto.
No, no. I'm. I'm in shock right now.
Oh, I'm not gonna get past this one. All right. Lithia. Lithia.
Thank goodness.
Here. So you would think, but this is how you know it's a publicly traded company. Lithian Driveway report record fourth quarter revenue of 7.7 billion. A 10% increase. So they do talk about. Yeah, they do talk about net income in here, but what do you think happened to net income?
It's down. Why is it down?
But the. The revenue went up. The. The profit went down, which was so funny. I mean, they still did pretty well. So they made 216 million in the fourth quarter in net, which was down.
Quarter. Yeah. Which was stores.
Do they have 500? I think. Is the number somewhere really close to that?
Okay, how much did they make?
200. 216 million.
Okay. Wait, how do I do that? 216.
No, no, take two. Yeah. 216 divided by 500.
Okay. I got 216 million divided by 500 divided by three.
Yeah. If you want a.
Per month, per store divided by 3. 134.
Not that much.
Yeah, not that great.
But the 77 volume over qu. Or I call this. The victory is not in the winning.
For Lithia, too. You and Lithia could get together and.
Oh, my God.
Okay, so 44,000 in net.
Yeah.
So apparent restaurants.
Apparently, Lithia is subscribing to the Christian Lafferty success model.
The victory is not in the winning.
The victory is not in the Winning. Oh my gosh. So that's the news for today.
That's it.
I got more.
But the victory is not in the news either.
I feel sorry for everybody on a Monday listening to this. I'm apologizing already, but I have a huge problem here in my company that I gotta fix. No, let's see, let's see the next one.
You know they're gonna get off here and they're gonna be like, oh, he's got no drive.
You have no drive.
That's what they're gonna think after all this.
It's okay, I promise. I think I have purpose.
I think I know what it is.
Okay, I'm ready.
I think that.
It'S, it's more about you doing it with people.
And you've scared people off by being too competitive. So now you, they've won. You've resolved to being average for the group, which is what happens to most people in life is they settle because they don't want to stick out too much because you were scaring people with how competitive you were. And you would rather be accepted and liked and have approval than to beat the living whatever off of people every time you go up against them in some game of trivia or two mile race or whatever it is.
Right?
Sure. So you've tailored the competitiveness way back in an effort to endear people, to try to make them feel included. But there is an element to that, a byproduct of that. Well, there's two byproducts. One is you're building consensus. Okay, but you're building consensus with losers in mediocrity.
Yeah, okay. Yeah, I like where you're headed with it. So we need to hire differently if we're going to start racing like this.
Or, or, or pick something else to do. Like maybe why not just have like a, hey, we're gonna watch 10 movies in a weekend or something like that. Like, gosh, yeah, that would be hard.
Yeah.
But at least there's 10 and you know that you like if you only.
Watch nine, then you're a loser.
Okay, this is, this is.
Yeah, it's been a.
Figure this out.
Yeah, you got it all.
You're tired of hurting feelings.
Oh, I don't know. I still got some feelings to hurt.
Eventually.
We're not talking about your love life. We're talking about here at the office.
I don't really have. Okay.
Nothing else in the news. That's it.
No, let's leave it at that.
Okay. The sub. The other subject today, the victory is not in the winning is the first subject. The.
Real subject is how to maximize your mobile service.
Really hot topic lately.
Yeah, it's a great one, too. So, you know, we have quite a bit of experience with this in.
Automotive truck and heavy truck. Right? Yeah. We kind of probably seen it from quite a few angles. And also a lot of fleet. It's an interesting thing in a sense, like more and more people are doing it, but just like anything they started, it doesn't work. And then they're abandoning it very quickly because if it's not working, it's a. It's a heavy expense.
And a liability too.
Yeah. It's probably easier to do it wrong than do it right. For sure.
Yeah.
So when we're talking about how to maximize your mobile service, the. The very first thing is the mindset.
Right.
Okay.
It all starts with the mindset. I am. I'll tell you a little story.
When we were doing the training, this is years ago when we were doing the training for heavy duty truck, I went to a couple, I think they were Freightliner dealerships when I went to a bunch of Freightliner dealerships. But I was trying to understand how it worked, you know, how it works.
I remember the story now.
And so I'm at a dealership in Oregon and I'm talking to the manager and we. We're talking about the fact that they sell a lot of school buses, but the school buses are. Most of the school districts are hundreds of miles away. Right. And they. The schools struggle to get them in for warranty work. A lot of these schools have their own techs.
Right. For their basic maintenance. Right.
And so whatever. But they struggle to have warranty work done. And so they save it all up for the summer when they're not being used. And then there's this like huge influx of buses trying to get in to.
Get repaired, which the truck shops couldn't handle, if I remember correctly.
And so I brought up the idea of having a mobile and mobile truck, and we. We've seen people be wildly successful with mobile. Right. So in the back of my head, I know that that works especially for that. Right.
And.
The other thing is, in that scenario is you can hire a mobile driver that lives 200 miles away. Like, they don't. The idea with mobile is they don't have to be at the dealership.
That's right. Right.
So it gives. It allows you to geographically.
Expand your customer base, if you will.
And the manager said to me something of the effect that that would never work. I don't remember exactly what the excuse was, but that. That would never work.
They, you know, this and that. The other thing.
Oh, they didn't try it and it didn't work.
Well, they said they would. They would have too much downtime or.
15 reasons why it won't work.
Yeah.
Okay, got it.
Then literally, because we're going like, you know, dealership to dealership. Literally two hours later, I'm in another service department.
I even remember the town that you're in. Yeah, Fife, Washington.
No, no, this one was in the middle Oregon.
Oh, I thought it was the. Fife was the other one.
So you're in Oregon.
Oregon. We're going up the five.
Okay.
So we started south, and now we're like, middle, middle Oregon. And that guy had, I think, six mobile trucks.
Like, I don't know, 40 miles away. And they. I asked him, I go, what is the efficiency of the text on the mobile trucks? And guess What?
He said, 110.
Yeah, you remember? And I said, well, how do you. How do you achieve 110 with travel time? And he goes, we charge for travel time. So the texts are flagging for travel time. Yeah. Interesting.
I think it's great.
Never work. And so just from, you know, what we do, going into different businesses is, I think the main thing, the main ingredient of any business that's successful is the mindset that it can work. And you're going to figure out how to make it work. And you're going to be. You know, a mentor of mine once said, people are either open or they're closed. Right. You're either open or you're closed. Two ideas. So one manager's closed, one's open and ends up. The one that's open is very successful. So when it comes to maximizing your manager.
