How to Succeed as a Young Service Manager

Should we end with questions? Do we have a couple questions from the audience?

We got some good stuff today.

I love that they're calling in now and we can actually hear their voices.

Yeah, it's fun.

Hi Chris, this is Cameron. I was just wanting to make a quick question. I, I'm 23 years old. I have five years dealership experience and I have three years service advisor experience, mostly with Chrysler Jeep, Dodge Ram, but also a little bit of Hyundai dealership experience as well. I just accepted a job with Midas as store manager. I'm pretty nervous about it because I've never had the manager position before. I'm 23 years old, their longest tech at Midas. He's been there for 20 years. So if you could maybe give me some tips on store manager at an independent shop, a franchise shop and also maybe give me. Because my long term goal is to one day be a service manager. So if you have any tips for how long I should stay at Midas until I become a service manager or anything that I should look for, any, any type of information at all I would really appreciate. Again, thank you.

Awesome. Cameron, thanks. Thanks for the question. So he's 23 and he's been in the business five years. So that means he started when he was 18.

Right out of high school, I would assume.

Right, right out of high school. So I'm taking it he's going to be an advisor at Midas right now.

He said he's going to be a manager, the store manager.

But then he asked what should I.

Do to be a manager, Service manager. So I think what he's saying is I'm hopping out of the dealer world to get into the aftermarket. Then I plan ultimately to go back and be a service manager. That's how I heard the message.

Okay, so the things that, that I would focus on as a new manager is the financials. If you can as a manager increase profits in sales, then you can name your price really at the end of the day. So it's all about the profitability. The profitability is driven by the customer experience. So you want to focus on systems, really have systems that are scalable and consistent. So spend a lot of time on doing things consistently. Fixing the systems and the outcome of your systems needs to be a great customer experience. That's easy. The customers need to perceive that that was easy. It's easy to do business now. That's a hard thing to accomplish as a new manager. But if you pay attention to the customer and are, you know, we're either Moving them closer or further away from where we want them to be in everything that we do. So make it easy to get in, make it easy to call and somebody picks up the phone. Make it easy to get the car repaired, make it easy to get out of there, to pay the bill, to find the car. All of those little things, right? We ruined the experience. If they come to pick it up and their car is gone or the keys are lost, that sort of thing, those are all systems. Or like our, our friends in Canada would say, the process, it's all about the process.

Could be the process process.

So systems focus on that, the customer experience, the financials and profitability. But if you can go into a business and increase profits, you're gonna be very popular. That's the thing I think that most people miss.

Yep, for sure. That's good. I also think too right along that vein, I think he was kind of alluding to like there's texts in his store that had been there for 20 years. And I think there was an underlining thing about like, how do I gain the respect because I'm 23 and everything like that. And the answer is right back to the financials, the business and a good system. Your techs will respect if you're creating a lot of work for them and also that the customers are happy and then they buy more stuff. The world goes around. If you understand the business part of it. That's how you get the respect of the techs in the shop.

The thing that I found, because I was always the kid, right, I was 24, going into service departments to fix them, and the managers that I was working with would be in their 50s or 60s. I was 29 when I became a general manager with 400 and something employees of a very large BMW Mini dealership. And what I found is they, they would say something about my age, but I just made it about the systems and the goal. And I tried to make the goal a mutual goal that we were working on together. And when they saw that I was fair, that I worked harder than them, I showed up. I was serious about what I was doing. I was educated, I was learning. I was open to ideas and I just wanted the results and, and I didn't need to be right. I just wanted to win. I wanted to get better every day and I wanted them to come on that journey with me. The age thing became irrelevant. So I think it's important if you're young to listen and to get everybody around you involved in the same goal that you're Doing it together. And you're, you're probably going to have a few people that have to go away. You gotta understand, you can't, you can't change people. So if you have somebody working for you that doesn't want to do good, doesn't care about the customer and doesn't want to get better every day, you might not be able to change them and you need to find somebody else, you know, and quickly. Like, that's one thing that I learned right away is I quickly had to move. I had a lot of sacred cows. I had to move them out of the way. So I gave them offices and big titles and I had to, everybody knew I brought in, I would give them this speech like, hey, listen, you're gonna, you know our nicknames, the country club. Because these managers have been used to selling. You know, there's, there's more customers than we had cars for a long time. Now we have more cars than we have customers and we have to have systems and accountability and we gotta ask for the sale and we, we have to have salesmanship and, you know, some sort of funnel to get customers to buy. And so when you see them sitting there not doing anything, I'm holding you to a different standard. You're on my team and so if I see you not getting up and saying goodbye to a customer, you not doing this, that I'm, you're gone and I'm getting somebody else. I need you to be the first one through the wall. You're held to a completely different standard if you want to work here with me. Because it was really easy in the beginning for people to fall into the country club mentality. And those guys had a narrative that, oh, he's young, he doesn't know what he's doing. He's got all these lofty goals, but he doesn't like. I remember my. So funny. I wasn't even general manager yet, but people knew that I was going to be announced as the general manager. And I get called into this office by the, you know, one of the sacred cows and he's like, listen, I just need you to know one thing. You know, our competition, 10 miles down the freeway, it just built a 40 million dollar building. And our building was built in like the 90s and it was old or whatever. When you say Santa Ana, you don't think luxury cars. We don't have the building, we don't have the parking. Like, oh, the whole list of why we couldn't, why we couldn't do it, you know, with the closed door and the very since whole thing and we did it.

That was not the narrative that won.

And you know, I had people that were untouchable that I couldn't do anything with. No matter what they did, they were on the life plan. So I had to be creative. I enjoyed that. I thought it was fun. Like I literally sent a manager home for three months and paid him just so he would never talk to a salesperson because I couldn't get rid of him. But I was better paying him to not be there than to have him there. So I just sent him on a three month vacation. Nothing I could do. He was a sacred cow.

Yeah, that's awesome.

But now I got an answer for that, right? I didn't sit around and feel sorry for myself. So just enjoy it. But people want somebody that's fair, that will listen, that wants to get better every day and then surround yourself with people that are like minded. Understand that when you run into somebody who doesn't want to change and doesn't care about customers, you might not be able to change them and you might just need somebody else. Give them every chance. But that's one thing is I've probably given people too much time in that scenario. And if I had to do it again, I would have popped them quicker.

And you would have been better off because every time you've done that, I bet you look back and you're like, every time you got rid of somebody that you were supposed to get rid of a long time ago, something better comes into its place and you're like, oh, why didn't I do this right Every time. I don't know how many times you have to learn that lesson about waiting too long.

Yeah, but is what it is. Yeah, but good question.

Yep.

Thanks so much for watching this clip of Service Driver Revolution. We're uploading new stuff every day, so. 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-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 now that's offers.chriscollinsInc.com I'm Chris Collins and I'll see you in the next video.