International Truck Coronavirus Update 3

Welcome everybody to Service Drive Revolution, where you gotta have faith. The faith, the faith, baby. Welcome, Jeremy and Adam to the big Show International. We have some exciting things that we want to talk about today. We're going to talk about the Murder Line, kind of a mysterious and fun. We're going to talk about our reading list. What things we're reading. Mine has nothing to do with business, but I still think it's relevant and good. We're going to give some shout outs and talk about the training that we have going on. Should we start with the reading list, boys?

Yeah, let's do it. Go ahead, Adam.

All right, I'll kick it off.

So I'm reading the Infinite Game by Simon Sinek. I think this, this book I just started, I haven't finished it. I'll be honest with you guys.

What is it called?

The Infinite Game by Simon Sinek. Oh, well, I'm waiting for it. Go ahead, Chris. What are you gonna.

No, tell us all about, Tell us all about it.

All right, let's roll with it. It's a difference between a finite game and then an infinite gain. So most of these games in life are things that we think of in terms of keeping score and there's a definite winner and a definite loser. And in terms of business, there's a lot of times there who's our competitors and who's winning. And it's consistently asked in today's environment and what Simon's trying to focus on is really the game of life and in business to focus on an infinite game which you're, there's no constant winner or losers. You don't know all the players of the game. Different players of the game can come at different consistencies. So one example that he kind of talks about is for having an infinite mindset is Apple versus Microsoft. So he goes in kind of an example and explaining how he's, he's gone to and spoken to people in Microsoft and you know, when the CEO at the time goes up there, he's talking about his competitors and how they're going to beat the competitors and their vision and everything. And it's all also about winning and driven performance, which is great, but they're always focusing on the competitor. Now from an Apple and an infinite mindset and I'll be honest, I'm, I'm more of a Microsoft type of guy. But what I, yeah, what I found this was very interesting is that Apple is always focused on the broading, broadening horizon and looking forward and not always focusing on their competitors. They're Always focusing on beating themselves and, and that's what the infinite mindset is truly how can I better myself and really compete against myself so that I can continuously move forward? And so Simon kind of goes into how to play. He has five key items that he's like working at. Right. And having a just cause is the number one that sticks out for me. Previous to his other books. You know, the finding the why I really think having a just cause stands out. It's really what do you stand for? And consistently looking at a vision in the future, not just from a who's going to win, who's a loser, but also always looking at how can I always compete against myself to do better. So I think in the, in the term of our current state and even without the COVID 19 and I think we've talked about this in previous videos, always talking about sharpening the ax and. Right. I keep saying that, but we have to keep looking at that infinite mindset of looking at things and how we look forward in the future. Because when we have to look back at this, it's how can we see what type of legacy that we've left. A more of a servant type leadership aspect rather than focusing on, you know, just the, the, the finite type performance based. So that's really kind of in a nutshell so far where I've gotten when with the book. But I mean it's resonating with me obviously. And I think that's something that we really need to look forward towards because we're going to move on beyond the COVID 19 and there's going to be other challenges that we are faced with. Right. But we really need to focus on what's going to be long standing and how we do business moving forward. And that's really what the true legacy of stepping up and leadership that we need to revert to. I think.

Yeah, that's great. There's a saying that I love that says it's a journey, not a destination.

Yep.

And we're never gonna put our feet up on the desk and be like, hey, we won life. Right?

Yeah.

So constantly working on it. There's two things. And I know Simon Sinek is really good at what he does, but there's two things that bother me about Simon is this was written in 1986.

That's what I was waiting for. I knew you had something.

It's not a new idea, Simon. And you don't. The thing that bothers me about Simon is he doesn't give credit. Like if I use somebody else's thing. I reference it. The other thing is leaders eat last.

Same thing, 1990 something. A little book called it's your ship was this whole premise.

A navy, you know, general or admiral or something, I don't know, whatever. Took over the worst performing naval ship and turned it into the best one. And one of his things was leaders eat last. So. Good stuff, though. That's.

I read that one, too.

Great lesson. So you know what I'm saying?

Oh, yeah, for sure.

What's yours, Jeremy?

Oh, I've got right here Zig Ziglar's secrets of closing the sale. This is like. Well, Zig Ziglar, first of all, he's like the OG of sales people. Like, he's a lot of the stuff that he.

He's the original gangster. I know.

That's what I was just gonna say. Oh, gee.

Yeah.

Who's the original gangster to? George Michaels.

If you want me to. If you want me to backpedal off this, I'm not gonna. He's the OG of salespeople.

That's great.

Anyway, this is one of the first sales books I read. It's really good. What I like about him is before people were really getting into the psychological aspect of selling, he was already preaching it. Like back when he was selling cookware, I believe that's what he started selling out. He started really paying attention to people and paying attention to what they needed to hear and what they needed to. To buy. And a lot of people, when they're selling low commodity items and they're selling things that aren't that expensive, they just think either it's going to sell itself or it's not. That's not really true. You have to do your work and you have to understand your client. If you're going to sell anything, it doesn't matter what it is. So a couple of good things from this, from this book that I really like is, first of all, I like sale. Selling is a transference of feeling. That's a really important theme. Basically, how you feel about your product is how your customer is going to feel about the product. So if you don't. If you don't sell enthusiastically, if you're not enthusiastic about what you do and about the service or part that you're selling, your customer is not going to buy it most of the time. So you really need to understand that what you're doing is you're transferring something to the customer, whether positive or negative. Zig Ziglar was really good at putting that out there. Another one, he did really well.

He was really good at making sure that the customer felt good about their purchase. So the best way to get a prospect to make a favorable new decision is to make them happy with an old decision. So if they're a recurring customer, compliment them on how their truck is upkept. Compliment them on the good decisions that they've made in the past. That will help, that will help with future sales. And the last one is paint them a picture. My wife actually, she sells a lot of different things, but she is exceptional at painting a picture for her clients. Like, basically, not only like this is the thing, it's how do you. How are you gonna feel when you have this thing, when you have this bag on your shoulder, when you're wearing this piece of jewelry? She's really good at that. She's always been good at that. And I think that's another really key aspect of selling. But this book right here has a lot of those concepts behind it. And that's, that's how I learned. A lot of the stuff that I know is by learning from Zig Ziglar, the og. The OG of sales people.

Yeah, the. The thing about those older sales guys is they all sold door to door, which I think is like the hardest. I think Zig sold pots and pans door to door, right?

Yep, that's what he did.

There's nothing harder than that. Walking up to a door and knocking like it's worse than cold calling. Because they really don't want you there, right?

Oh, yeah, for sure.

Oh, they just slam the door right in your face. I did that when I was younger in high school, canvassing doors, siding and windows. I've never been had so many doors shut in my face in my life. It was great.

I just canvass politically and people don't like it. I'll tell you that.

It's different. It's definitely different. And the. Now that the different generations. Right. Communication is definitely different. A lot of people like to go up the cell phones and everything. And now they're not really used to that face to face interaction in today's society. So now when somebody does come up to their door, they're like, oh, what? Who is it?

Yeah, yeah, yeah I'm never going to dance again Guilty feelings got no rhythm though it's easy to pretend I know you're not a fool should have known better than cheat again Mine is a new. A new Bukowski. Bukowski's been dead for a long time, but just about every year they come out with themes. The theme here Is drinking. So Charles Bukowski on drinking. I'll read you a poem called Drinking. It's in the middle of the book. Says for me it was or is a manner of dying with boots on and gun smoking and a symphony music in the background. Drinking alone. I mean, that's the only. Drinking. Drinking alone, being alone. Fitting the parts, feeling the parts. Of course, drinking can kill you. A cold shower can, or a painting by Goggin, or an old dog or a hot day. I would have to suppose that 1000 swallows crossing your marble overhead sky at once could do it. That's why I drink. Waiting for something like that.

I know it's not quite on the level of George Michael's lyrics.

That's. Yeah, that's a bit of a switch from. From old Zig, but, you know, wake.

Me up before you go go has a lot of depth.

It does, it does.

We're not planning on going solo or whatever.

He says inspirational words.

But now we're going to talk about the murder line chart. But you have to come to one of the classes to know what the murder line is. So a lot of people watching this don't understand the. The inside track here. Of what? Why you want to avoid murder. Most people are just letting murder happen.

That's true, that's true. And maybe we should describe what murder means in our service world. It's. Murder is basically not allowing. Not having any kind of minimum standards. So nobody knows what the laws are, what the rules are. Technicians are getting away with murder, service advisors are getting away with murder.

So absolute chaos.

Yep.

The inmates are running the asylum.

If murder wasn't illegal, you would have probably killed your kids already this morning, right?

No, not at all, not at all. Wounded, maybe? I don't know. I don't think so. My kids are pretty good for the most part, until they come.

That's not what. That's not what you say when the camera's not on. But. Okay, well, in one of our huddles.

They were running around shirtless. I mean, it sounded like they were doing pretty good.

At least they had pants on at the time.

I mean.

The murder line is that it's the opposite of chaos. And a lot of managers are allowing their people to do whatever they want, and they have no line, no structure. And so the opposite of chaos is having structure, having order to the chaos, and so having minimum standards.

Right, Absolutely, absolutely. And that's what this chart enables you to do. So this is one of the simplest diamond edge action plants. It seems like it's complicated but it's not. It's located within our service department Performance Measurement Action Plan. So it's got like a bunch of different charts in it, but the one I'm talking about, it's labeled the Proficiency Tracker. Right now, we're going to get around to naming that something better, but right now it's the Proficiency Tracker. And what this chart enables you to do, we're actually going to put up a screenshot of it so you can actually see what I'm looking at. But what it does is it ranks all the technicians by efficiency, from most efficient down to least efficient. So you can. So the technicians, they'll be able to see this on a monitor. They can see where they stand overall, with. With relative to not only all the other techs in the shop, but the average as well. So it's a really easy way to communicate. Basically, here's how we're all doing. And also there's a line on here. Normally it's the goal line, what we call it, but why don't we just call it the murder line? So basically, this is the line of minimum standards that we consider you to be proficient in this shop. So it's got a line going all the way across it. You have to be above that line if you want to consider yourself above standards here in the shop. So you can put this on anything. You can put it on a monitor, have it displayed in the shop. Every technician will know where they stand and you can either put them on by their tech numbers or their names if you want to call them out directly. It's a really easy action plan to do and I think it will have huge effects for your service department. What gets measured gets managed and what gets communicated gets managed. That's what you want to do here. It's not hard to do. Every shop should have this.

Yeah. And if you, if you talk about. When we going around and talking to managers, you would say, like, what's the. What's the least acceptable amount of hours that a technician can flag in a day? And they'll say six. Well, they've got tons of techs that are flagging two.

But it's not the technician's fault that's flagging to. They don't know that there's a minimum requirement. They don't know what the. What is expected because we're not telling them. We don't have clear, defined, you know, murder lines. And so that's the premise is coming up with, hey, you know, maybe we don't expect you to flag 12 hours in a day. We would love it if you did. But you can't come into work, work eight hours and only flag two. There has to be some, some level where water finds some sort of even ground. Otherwise those guys become the ones running the shop. And the, the complacency and lack of having clear, defined expectations gives way to chaos.

It creates a different environment. Right. I mean, it, it, it just totally can change the whole spectrum of how the whole shop is ran. And what you hold, what you find.

Is that all of a sudden when you, when you create that they're doing six and you're like, well, why didn't I just make it seven?

Because they, they were allowed to do it before because there weren't clear defined rules. It wasn't that they weren't capable. It's not that the technician that's flagging two hours isn't capable of six. It's that we're not holding them to a standard. We don't have standards. We're, you know, we're just leaving it to chance. And so that's the.

Some technicians probably don't even know where they even stand. Right. As far as the standards, like you were saying, maybe they don't know that they're only flagging like three or four hours versus, you know, eight plus.

Yes. Some shops aren't even, aren't even tracking it. The other thing that comes up is once you have those expectations, you'll find that the technicians actually are trying to get more time. They're making sure their stories are better so they can claim the right amount of warranty. They're making sure that they're getting paid for stuff and not giving it away and they're protecting the house. But when that doesn't matter, there's no clear expectations. They can do eight hours worth of work and charge an hour. It doesn't make any difference to them. So it also cleans up your back end a little bit and gets rid of a lot of that waste. Because we're seeing, you know, in some shops, 30 to 40% of just waste where we could be flagging hours. And we're not because we're not writing correct stories, we're not paying attention to the details.

Well, does it help to flat rate detect the tickets though, as well? Right, Chris. And so you know what's coming up front? Yeah, we have some service locations that definitely do a, obviously a better job than others on flat rating the tickets up front. So they know kind of a standard even when they receive the ro. And that's Another best practice that we need to try to kind of adopt.

That's a good one. Well, that's great. Jeremy. What? So we got some shout outs.

Yeah. So we're gonna do a couple shout outs on. We've been talking for the last few weeks now about sharpening the axe, getting ready for when we, when we get back to some sort of norm. Right. So Bill Cosby, one of our CSE's that are out there, field reps, doing a good job, trying to promote that within his area of responsibility. And then today on one of our calls with the field team, you know Deb Harris working over with Hill International as well, and they got a service manager, Joe Mazur is doing a phenomenal job and some of the best practices that we were just laying out today and being leaders out there and stepping up and getting ready to kind of attack this new norm or try to develop the narrative to control what the new norm is going to be or just best practices in general. Right. And it's pretty exciting and I'm sure we've got a lot of other service locations that are doing the same thing and some, and love to hear more about it. So kudos to you guys.

Good job, you guys. Yeah, and we're, we're also, we're taking our, our service manager training online. So we're taking the live class and we're doing it online during this crisis, this Corona crisis, which should be, should be very fun. We're using Zoom. It's still, there's going to be a lot of interaction, a lot of one on one. But we're, we're going to be doing them so make sure you check the dates and, and see if it's available. We, I mean I hope we're back up and going by July or August in the live ones, but we got to play that by year and do what's safe and smart for everybody. But in lieu of that, we're going to try to do them online so we don't miss anybody.

Absolutely.

We can't become complacent in this. This is really a time to push forward and step up. So it's going to be exciting.

Yeah.

We're going to innovate and we're going to keep going. It's gonna be fun.

Awesome.

Well, great, great stuff, you guys. I love it. I love the reading list. That's really fun. Like I'm gonna go back and watch some old Zig stuff. Great storyteller. Like those guys totally OG like just base. It's just basic fundamentals Right?

Yep.

Really good stuff.

Awesome. Anything else, you guys, in closing?

Well, there's one thing that I wanted to leave everybody with, and it's. I don't remember who said this exactly, but culture is not everyone in your dealership or everyone in your company being happy. Culture is defined standards, a defined and a defined way to operate that everyone understands. You remember who said that, Chris?

No, but I agree with it 100%.

You did, dude.

Oh, well, I think people mistake culture. They think culture is Google giving everybody free lunch and paying for their dry cleaning. And it's like, no, that's a perk. Culture is clear, defined rules and structure. Because the opposite of culture is chaos. Not, you know, not unhappy employees. And what you have to understand with that is if you have a strong culture, you'll attract the right people. But you have to be open to the idea that you might have a couple people that aren't the right people right now. And if you're chasing pleasing underperformers and you're trying to make them happy, you're not going to be able to make them happy. There's just certain people out there that'll never be happy, no matter what. I mean, I know, you know, I've given spiffs to advisors or texts before, and I give them $100. And I literally had a guy once go, I can't break this anywhere. I'm like, I just gave you $100. Like, I can't make you happy. That's a personal thing. What I can do is create an atmosphere in the business that is fair, that attracts high performers, attracts people that have a passion for customers and a passion for. For business. That's what I can do. I can't make people that don't care, that don't want to perform and are miserable and always make bad decisions. I can't fix them. I can attract the right people. So part of it, too is understanding that you might have to upgrade your roster in order to have a strong culture. Because free lunch for everybody. Just going to entitle people. That's all you do is entitle them in the end. Right.

But you have to continuously kind of look for those type of people. Right? You can't just, oh, I got them. All right. I'm good. No, you got to continuously looking for those folks.

Always recruiting.

Which. Which we discuss in our. In our training, right?

Yes, we do.

Awesome. Thanks. You guys have a great week. We'll see you again next week. If you have anything in your reading list, put it in comments. We'd love to see what books you're reading during this. We'd love to hear from you, too. We'll see you real soon.

Thanks, guys. Thanks, Adam. Thanks, Chris.

Thanks, guys.