International Truck Update 22

Welcome, everybody, to Service Drive Revolution, our international edition. We have an exciting show for you today. We're going to talk about employee retention, how can we retain our advisors and our technicians. We're going to share with you what we see out there working and what isn't working, what's neglected, what's overlooked, and give you some. Some good ideas for that. It is important for the future. We also are going to talk about Adam shaving off his beard. Should he or should he not? Recently, everybody doesn't know this, but he tried out for the.

Rebirth, I guess you'd call it, of Duck Dynasty, and he didn't get the part. So now he's feeling like he needs to shave his beard and get rid of all his taxidermy. If you can see his taxidermy there in the background. We're also going to talk about incentives and pay plans and best practices for that. And everybody would notice Colleen's not here. Weird that parts hold. Wouldn't be here.

Was she invited?

Yes. Maybe a little belated.

We miss. We miss you, Colleen. But say. Say hello to Jeremy and Adam. Say hello, gentlemen.

Hey, everybody.

Hello.

So let's start off with. What are we reading right now? What? You know, books, podcasts. What is inspiring you right now at this moment? Are you reading anything new, Jeremy?

Well, I started something new because, you know, I wanted to. I didn't want to be the guy that, you know, was reading the same book month after month after month. That's just a bad look, Adam.

I'm also a little bit upset. No one's commenting on my new office here.

You need artwork, bro. It's kind of bare. I missed the cat jungle gym.

I. I just moved in, so, you know, but it's.

Hey, you need to at least just stack stuff on, like, the back so it looks like you're. You're in the midst that. That's. I'm going for that look.

Oh, you got. You missed the classic where I had the. The clothes in the background, right?

Yeah, I do. The dark dungeon with the, like, rafters and stuff.

My favorite was the cat. The cat condo or whatever you call that.

Yeah, let's. I'm glad that you appreciated the classics. Well, I'll come up with something new. Maybe it'll be a giant Chris Collins poster in the background and a giant international poster. Although I do share this office with my wife. So we have. That's up for negotiation.

I'm working on a Chris Collins calendar that your wife would enjoy.

It's not one of those swimsuit counters Is it because I don't want.

No, it's like leather, like leather chaps, like that sort of thing.

Oh, even better. I was thinking that's my. Yeah, you might be going that way.

Me, like chopping. Chopping wood and dolphin shorts, like stuff like that.

With a Santa hat.

Yeah.

Of value at any price.

But anyway, this is the book I'm starting to read. It's called qbq. It's about practicing personal accountability in work and in life. One thing that I've noticed since I moved into my new house is that I'm balancing all of my things at the same time and I'm not getting anything done. So I'm kind of hoping this book, and this book came recommended to me by a general manager of a dealership. He actually handed me a copy and, you know, said it really helped him out. So I'll give it a look myself. It's a very, it's a short book.

Short and to the point. So I'll probably have a good report for it on the next call because I don't like to let my books go from month to month to month because, you know, like I said, you have to be continually working on yourself. So. But again, it's QBQ by John G. Miller and. And yeah, we'll see if it changes my life and I stop becoming a bad employee, as Adam has frequently referred to me too, as.

So why do you, why do you think you're such a bad employee?

I don't know. You'd have to ask him. I mean.

Oh man, I don't even know how to respond to that.

You know what'd be really fun is to do like a employee review on the show and like just eavesdrop in on that conversation. I think that would be a blast.

Yes, we did. We did. And, and it didn't go so well. So we're, we're still in that continuous improvement phase, obviously.

Do you think you've seen improvement since the last review, Adam?

I, I think we've seen some slight improvement. I mean enough, enough room to, to move into another house. Right. So I think, I think that's fair.

What would be the, what would be the biggest things that we need to work on?

Well, up until last like 10, 15 minutes ago, I think we found out that he, he doesn't like to be talked at.

Yeah, he said he doesn't like books that talk at him.

I don't know what that means though. Does that like one of those like creepy pop up books, like when you open it up, it Just like, starts talking to you like those weird, you know, birthday cards.

No, I think it's the tone. The tone of the book.

What?

Jeremy, My kids, whenever my kids get one, they open it like next to my ear all the time. I don't like those books.

No.

Or cards.

But what you were saying is you don't like books that talk at you in tone. Right. Like that. Tell you what to do instead of like guided discovery, like.

Yeah, like, you reader, you must suck at. You must be a procrastinator because you're reading this book.

Yeah, I gotta be honest. I don't like that either. Yeah, I like stories. And you know that I could see myself in that, I guess.

In the stories. Okay, so, Adam, the first one is just him being more. More.

How would you say this? Impressionable to authority. More agreeable with authority. Agreeable.

No, honestly, I'll go the other way. I like the fact that Jeremy brings items in there that's not necessarily agreeable. You need to have that adversity in discussions. So I'll give him that.

That's good.

See?

So, Adam, you know, you being the example and everything. What? What? Oh, you're not reading any new books.

Hey, I'm not. I'm not gonna lie, all right? I'm still reading the. The 12 Rules for Life by Jordan Peterson. I told you last show that I was going to kind of keep it, you know, keep the rhythm going. It's. It's at a snail's pace, but I definitely Trying to absorb a little bit more and not speed through them. Is that a good excuse?

No, Adam, that book is a snack. That book is like a two cup of coffee. Like on Saturday morning. That book.

How big is this coffee that you're drinking?

It's just a cup of coffee. No, two cups of coffee. That book is done. It's even like got big, big letters and lots of spacing. It's pretty easy.

Well, I suck. Thank you very much.

Let's just. You're not really. You're not applying yourself to it or. You know what I do when I'm in a situation like that with a book.

You just go to another one.

Yeah, because it means that book's not connecting. And to be honest, I didn't like that book. I mean, I love Jordan Peterson, but I thought that book was. It was a fulfillment of a book deal that he had to get a book out. But it isn't as good as the first one. It's not even close. I thought it was so shit.

Well, I mean, I Met I'm just wrapping up Rule 9. I really did not like the two prior to that. Personally.

Bits and pieces kind of resonate obviously the one that I spoke about last time with the, the kids and, and don't raise kids that you don't like. I think that's probably the, the one that really resonates with me out of all nine so far. But this ninth one I think I do like though or I know that I like is because I think this is kind of up into the continuous improvement piece that, that Jeremy was just kind of talking about.

You know, I think we all need to focus more on listening and when we can truly listen to others, I think we'll learn something that, that we didn't know before. So a couple things that he kind of, that I pulled away from it in this chapter is, I think we've said this before is like, you know, I don't, I don't care about being right. I just want to, I just want to win. Well, one thing that I wrote down is you don't want to be right, you just want to keep learning. So one thing that I think it's hard, honestly it's hard for me sometimes is that when I am wrong, I don't say thank you to the other person for like telling me that I'm wrong because I'm kind of sometimes trying to be right or what I feel that I know I feel like it is right. So it's kind of a, for me It's a catch 22. So I feel like this is kind of a little bit of self reflecting but I think that sometimes relates into.

Our shops and our management and when we talk about leadership in our dealerships or just reaching out to our employees as well of kind of listening to them. And I think we're going to get to this in a little bit. But one thing that I've noticed or I've been hearing about is and it's good that people are having these exit interviews, but why would we be waiting to an exit interview to listen to somebody of, of any sort of feedback or anything instead of really kind of trying to catch it ahead of time to where we have that opportunity to retain folks. Right. So I think that the majority of us could listen a lot better, including myself. So. So thank you Jeremy. I will take your feedback and I will have a new book next time.

Nice. That's very.

Hey Chris, remember Top Dog a couple of years ago you had a speaker there that basically said the golden rule is crap. And basically it says he said, don't treat others as you want to be treated. Treat others as they want to be treated. I forgot who that was. Do you remember his name?

No. Was it Glenn Lundy?

It was Glenn Lundy, yes.

I love Glenn Lundy.

Yeah, he's a heck of a guy.

But you follow him on Facebook, he's got like a wake up thing and then he's on that clubhouse. The club clubhouse is funny. It's like the world's largest conference call. Like, I don't know how people listen to it or like it to me, it drives me crazy. But he does a thing on there that's pretty good. You know, every morning.

I like this wake up thing that was really cool. Like every. As a little bit of background. Every morning at like 5:00am Is it 5:00am I think.

He, like, plays a bunch of music and gives an affirmation to himself and anyone else that's, you know, that's watching on that live. It's really kind of cool that he does that. It's really motivating.

Yeah, he's consistent with that too. It's great.

So you guys know from being here that I have a lot of books, right? You guys aware of that?

I do know.

Is that a secret to you? No. So recently I've been buying a lot more books because we're starting a YouTube channel for our leadership thing. And inside of that, I'm going to do a series on books that I love, like some of the special edition books I have, and talk about them in context of the craftsmanship of it, what it meant, what's in it. And a lot of books that people wouldn't have or wouldn't have access to that I have in my collection, which we're starting to call the Bulldog Library. So one book, the publisher Tashin.

Made me a deal. And one of the first ones I'm gonna do is that Ali Goat book with the Jeff Koons art piece.

Have you guys ever seen that?

I have not.

So we've acquired it actually. It'll be here in a couple days through them. So we're gonna do a whole video on that book.

You know, so I've. I don't know. I'm also buying a Duchamp collection of all the books written on him that would normally be bought by like a museum. So I'm really kind of upping my collection of books in anticipation of doing these videos in this series. And so one book that I just got this morning that I like, I literally have been checking like twice a day to See where it is, because it came from England and then it's in customs and, you know, goes through the whole thing, but it landed today. There's only 750 of these made. They sold out instantly. And it's Andy Nyman, he is one of the writers for Darren Brown. Are you guys familiar with Darren Brown, the Illusionist?

I don't believe so.

So he's got some. Some great videos on, like, you know, he gets somebody to admit to a murder they didn't commit. He gets somebody to rob a bank or, you know, he. But he does these shows. And so this book is a lot of how they create the shows. And there's some DVDs in here, but none of this stuff can you find online. It's, you know.

So I'm really excited about this book and it's one of 750.

So because, you know, they're putting their secrets of how they create these illusions and how they get the audience to do different things. They. They mostly sell them in magic shops, so it's not available to the public. But the thing that excites me the most about these sort of books is it's a lot of psychology, right, in misdirection. Like they. They talk a lot about how misdirection is direction, if that makes sense. Like you're controlling somebody's focus and attention by misdirecting them, but really you're not misdirecting them. You're getting them to pay attention to a specific thing. So I don't know if that's of any interest to anybody, but I'm excited about it.

Chris, are you going to become an illusionist or magician?

No.

No.

I'm going to say, could you show us some card tricks?

You know, because I have. You and I have had conversations about it, that my interest in that really comes from that in and of itself, like, yep, I cannot. There's so many things about that that I can't believe. Like that the people at the end. And if you haven't seen it, I don't know, most watching this might not get it or like it, but the. At the end he does this thing and he's just giving people simple attention in a way and they're crying. Like how. And I think in society today, and we're talking about this in our pre production, is how people are on edge, right? And the combination of COVID and the news and everything, you know, that's going on, people are really emotional on edge. And I think social media plays into that. But people are Dying for real human connection and validation. And so to me, that is more interesting than the magic. The magic's irrelevant. How he does it is less interesting than the outcome and how people are so affected by it. And you know, I, I find in, in my, in my interactions with people that oftentimes like I might be the first person that has ever told somebody that they're good at something or like, you know, people just go through life a lot of times and they never get any sort of encouragement or validation to the thing that is important to them or that, you know, a lot of the pet, the dog training and customer service training really is about that. Right. Is people are addicts. They're addicted to.

Compliments, they're addicted to feeling like they're a part of something and, and that they mean something. Right?

Yeah, I'd agree with that. That's why I think that.

The videos, I don't even know, what do you call it? Film, Movie? I don't know. It's just like a live.

Production on it. I think it's just awesome, man. I really do. I think it really resonates. I hope that people can check it out. I know I've been trying to tell people, some co workers of mine to check it out because I think that it just resonates. Like you said everything that we were talking about a little bit, a little bit ago. It just, it seems like anything will set off anyone.

Regardless. It's just, it's an interesting dynamic or world that we're living in right now.

So let's talk about technician and service advisor retention. And why don't we start with you, Jeremy, and what are you seeing out in the field that is polarizingly obvious to what's working and what isn't working?

Well, I'm really excited to talk about this topic because it's something that's really close to me.

I've been visiting dealerships for about five years now. And before that, you know, I was working with dealerships on a different level as well. And one thing that always shocked me was.

The service advisor general attitude and the attitude towards the service advisors.

Now this perspective is starting to change a little bit because it has to. But what I've seen and a lot of dealerships still, that service advisors and support staff in general are being viewed as a dead cost, like they are seen as a personnel cost to the dealership as opposed to what their value that they provide, which is basically the entire communication center of the dealership, especially the service department, to where if you don't have a good write up from the service advisor, the technician doesn't know what's going on. If you don't have estimates done well, and if a service provider is not able to sell the work, then guess what, your technician's out some hours and the dealership's out a lot of money. But I don't think dealerships have really been viewing it that way and they especially haven't been tailoring pay plans and incentives towards that end. And that's a paradigm that we need to change if we really want to a retain service advisors and sell more, but also retain technicians. Because one of the things that's always noted in the Carlyle surveys of technicians as far back as I've been reading them, is that service advisor to technician relationship is a big driver of turnover or retention, depending how it is. Because if a technician's frustrated, if they're not getting their hours, if they're not able to get the work through or get the approvals they need, they're gonna leave. You have to look about, you have to look at retention of service advisors as a bigger issue than just the one.

Just the one body in the seat. It's a bigger problem than that. So you have to make sure that you're compensating for performance and compensating in a way that service advisors and support staff in general feel valued. That's the topic. And it's a topic, as you can tell, that I'm very in tune with because I've noted this a lot in the service advisor trainings that we started doing back in 2019 and you mentioned this as well. It's that we'd inspire service advisors to go out and try something different, do something different, and they'd hit a wall right when they went back to their dealership.

And that's something we need to change generally. And I think we're working on it. But in general it's, it's, it's a slow effort.

I agree with you, Jeremy. I think that's where we kind of need a call to action to the leadership at the locations. Right. To give those advisors or writers the permission to kind of take down those walls. I also would like to see where we would have more of that coaching and mentoring from leadership at the dealers to show them where they fit in of the value of that whole process.

Process.

I don't think as all industry, we do that good of a job to show where people fit in into this process and where their value is. It's just, hey, do this, do this, do this, maybe write up more ros, maybe sell more hours. Now if you don't have some sort of pay plan in place. And, and one thing that kind of gets me at least thinking or like I'm caught in the middle of is if I was able to give you all the tools or these pay plans that you could probably pick out of 10 to apply. My question is, would you apply any of them? It's not, not necessarily. Is it going to be easy? But would you truly apply to or would you truly apply them to your business or tweak them to where it would fit the business? And I think that's where I feel like, well, we'll give them an additional, you know, whatever, 50 cents or something if they sell more right up. But like, or we'll give them sort of a bonus and the entire incentive plan of, you know, the, based off the tech efficiencies or whatever. I don't feel like from a service writer advisor's perspective, they really feel like their individual piece is really of added value. I think when they're just thrown into the, the whole pool of that sort of pay plan or incentive, I just don't think it works that well. I haven't seen it. And they don't feel that individual value. And I think understanding that and applying that is huge. If we can get, you know, more locations to, to have them and build on that. I don't know, am I, am I right or am I wrong?

No, I think, I think you're, you're right. I think too from the, the perspective of leadership in a, in a dealership, you have to really kind of understand what role do advisors and technicians play, right? So let's just take advisors, for example. Like business is all about solving problems for customers. And let's, you know, let's be honest, like in our industry, the, you know, the single owner operator is going away and at a huge disadvantage in the marketplace, right? So we're seeing more and more fleets growing, but less individual owner operators. And so what, what role does the service advisor play in solving problems for, for our clients? Because that's what it's all about. That's what business is about. And so the, the service advisor is really about retention, right? It's about them understanding our clients. Understand like, you know, every, every fleet, every dispatcher is a little bit different in how they want things done. You know, some, some clients, the driver's dropping off the truck, they're not like, they're all a little bit different. There's Nuances, there's ways they want the paperwork done, the estimates submitted, there's little nuances and differences between all of them. And so the advisor plays the role of retention with them. And so the way we treat advisors is they're disposable and they're a necessary evil. We don't set up the pay plans around what it is we actually want them to do. And the truth is if advisors are good and they stay with us for a long time, that's going to have our clients stay with us for a long time. They're good, you know, they're going to buy more new trucks. Right. So it feeds the circle of life, we would call it.

Right.

And it's a huge advantage for us. So when we're setting up incentives and pay plans, like I talk about this in my book, the millionaire service advisor is if you want to be a successful service advisor, the secret is to stay in one place, in one dealership and, and collect customers. And your role is to be a customer collector, understanding that the more customers you collect, the, the easier it is going to be to increase your numbers because of retention. Right. When people are comfortable and they trust you, then the whole transaction is quicker. It's quicker for the tax. Right. Like how many times have service advisors that are really professional and really good, they have clients that are like, you know, what it, do what it needs, get it, get it back and you have a, you have leeway, you have equity with the customers and trust. Right. Which saves time, which makes the shop more efficient, which makes the clients perceive that things are easier and, and more efficient. And so our pay plans for advisors don't feed to that advisors income doesn't grow with their portfolio and with their retention. Right. If they're not, if they don't have some sort of commission and we're not planting the seeds and the idea and that you're, you know, how you become successful and really good at this and make more money year in and year out is by connecting with and taking really good care of customers. They're disposable and they're hourly and there's no connection whatsoever to their performance and their, you know, their ability to connect and get customers to trust and like us and come back. And I think that that's the thing with the advisors that we miss more than anything else. Is there a necessary evil? And we look at them more like, you know, they're moving paperwork around and we miss the human aspect of there's human connection on the other side. And the bigger the fleets get the more important that is, not the less important.

Yeah, I'd agree with that because I think I've even heard. I get the perception that it's. They'll look at a frontline or service advisor is like all they're doing is like transactions, you know, like you said, shifting around the papers and, well, you're adding more additional items onto them or this or that or the other. It's like, okay, well, let's take a look at that. But also part of the process is, I mean, they can make or break a relationship even if it is a fleet. Right. For a local terminal, all it's going to take is a bad relationship and it's going to escalate fairly quick.

Yeah. And I think that we think about the physical part, but we don't think about the emotional part that they're managing. They're managing how the clients feel. And that's the part that we're missing. And for a long time we've had this take it or leave it kind of mentality, but that's not a, that's not scalable and it's not going to make you dominant in your marketplace.

I agree. Especially with the high volume, like cities or, you know, shops or whatever. I mean, there's still an emotional tie in the way people do business.

Absolutely. Especially in our industry. I think our industry is a little bit even more than automotive in that way because you're working with less people. So those individual relationships are even more critical than ever.

Yeah.

It's funny because at a dealership level, you know, I hear a lot from a lot of dealers. You know, we know our customers, our customers know us, and that's true. But on the other hand, your customers that, you know, like interacting with the same people at your dealership, and that's your advisors. So to your point, Adam, you might know your customers, but your customers know your advisors. And they don't want to see a rotating cast of advisors over there. They want to see the same person they can depend upon that they can trust so that you don't have to keep going back with, you know, individual changes on estimates or. Or keep disappointing them because they're not making a grade.

Yeah, that's good. So then how do you think, Jeremy, pay plans and incentives work into that?

I think honestly, an individual performance component would be great for an advisor. Maybe not a commission system, but it can't be just hourly, like.

A commission based upon incentives having an incentive component based upon. Upon sales. Also, if you have a customer service, if you have a customer satisfaction indicator having a component for that. I think honestly it all comes back to the metrics that you care about from advisors and tying that into your pay plan. It can't be just hourly. You're not going to get the results you want. But on the other hand, I haven't seen commission work straight commission work that well in heavy truck either yet. So you want to have a balance.

Yeah, well, I, you know Jeremy, to your point that you just brought up, I think so far what I've hearing from some of our, from our dealers is they have mostly commission based. So it's not individual performance, which I agree with you, I'd like to see a little bit more of. And that's something that we try to kind of foster out there as well.

You know, also it's, I think I'd be curious what, what our thoughts on, on how like what could we provide as far as advice to some of those dealers that might try to dabble into the individual performance. How would they convert from a commission to an individual performance? Because what I'm hearing is like a couple have, why have this so and so person is kind of individual. But I don't think you really can just have a couple people and you know, half and half. I know we talk about that sometimes with the, the technicians on flat rate versus, you know, hourly that you might have to have a system in place that does that. But I would have to assume you'd have to put a system in place from a commission over to an individual performance or explain everything and then launch it.

So let me, let me ask you a question, Adam. Like what, what are your thoughts on capitalism versus communism?

Is that a true question?

Yeah.

My thoughts. Capitalism all the way.

Okay, so where have most of the groundbreaking inventions in tech, in health care and diseases, in medicine?

Basically, where do most innovations come from? Communist societies or capitalist societies?

Capitalistic societies.

So what would you call a pay plan that is a group pay plan and not individual? Would you call it communism or capitalism?

If it's by group, it's going to be socialism.

Yeah. So in my experience the individual pay plan is way more effective to attract the type of individual that wants to really perform. And the socialist is more about fitting in and getting by and not pushing the boundaries.

Not trying to do anything crazy or really do anything extraordinary. Right.

But how does a dealer. So for our listeners or viewers, how do they go and make that change or you go to more of a capitalistic society?

So what happens in my experience is they go to a Capitalistic pay plan, an individual pay plan. And what happens is a customer comes in when that advisor isn't there. Or they have two shifts, right? They have a late shift and an early shift. And then the late shift doesn't want to cover for the early. Or something happens and they throw the baby out with the bath water, right? The baby out with the bathwater. So I think that a hybrid in the beginning is, is the best, is where you're going to have a base and then you're going to get a small percentage of the group and a larger percentage of your individual. And then your, you know, how you lead and what you accept as behavior will kind of become law. So if there's ever a situation where somebody doesn't take care of somebody else's customer, you got to punish it. You got to make it into a big deal. It's not acceptable. You have to have what we call a murder line of what is acceptable or not. But.

The individual has to be able to make a difference in their pay by performing. So I just think about when I was an advisor and I was 19, right?

And this. There's a couple stories that really, that really stuck with me and understand that I worked at a dealership that was a disaster. And the manager I worked for would roll like around 9:30. He, he was smoking a bowl on his way in because I, when I was a porter, I would clean his car and he had blow and weed in his car. Like he. And then he would leave at 3. Like he was a terrible, terrible boss for, you know.

He just, he was. And so it was chaos. It was total chaos. And so he managed by reaction. He didn't have a plan. It was just reactionary. And the, the saying was the first one to spin him wins him. Have you guys ever heard that? First one to spin him wins him. So I'm commission, I'm a service advisor. And I realized that I can come in early and write the night drops, right? So I would get in there an hour before everybody else and I would write the night drops and then I would call the customers. Like even if it was 6:30 in the morning, I would just call them and hey, I got your car. I'm gonna put it in the shop. I need you to. Okay, you know, diagnosis. Cause I had to have something to work with, right? And they would be all ready and they'd be first in line and dispatch when we opened. Then I figured out that I could come in on Sunday night and write the night drops for Monday because there Are always more night drops over the weekend. Right. More toe ins, that sort of thing. And so because we weren't really open, Saturday was like not really a day.

So I would do that. I would come in often when I could. I would come in on Sunday and write the night drops also. So then the service advisors complained because there were, there were eight of us. So there's seven other service advisors. They complained that I was hogging the night drops. And so then, you know, Mr. Wonderful. Now there's a new memo. The night drops will be distributed by management. So now think about this for a second. He comes in at 9:30. Nine, 9:30, whatever. He. So the night drops. Now wait for him to come in. And then he would put it on advisors desks. Now, now the customers have been calling for two hours to check on their, on their vehicles. Right. And then the advisors would have it on their desk, but they're doing other stuff. They would. Oftentimes it wouldn't get written until 2 or 3 in the afternoon. Oftentimes it would get forgotten about completely. And then there would be customers calling and you didn't know. Like let's say you answer the phone and you're like, hold on, let me find it. And you can't find the night drop. They haven't written an ro yet. You don't know which one of the eight of us have it. So you're just telling a customer like, good luck. I don't know what to tell you. I see it out there, but I don't know where the paper. Like it was just a disaster. So then he's getting all these customer complaints and that happens. So then guess what he does? He goes back, goes back to me coming in on Sundays and writing night jobs. But he throws the baby out with the bathwater and then it's worse. And so.

You just really want to understand that the focus of a capitalist pay plan is to drive the ingenuity and enthusiasm for the customer experience. Not to make it fair, not for everybody to get along, not for everybody to sit in a circle and you know, hum a little tune together. It's how can we, you know, retain more customers and create an environment where customers come in, people are fighting to take care of them.

Which I think in turn actually helps build the culture anyways.

Yeah.

As a result. Right.

Because it becomes about the customer in the end.

Right.

Yep.

Well, you want the high performer to drive the culture, not group think.

Yeah, there you go.

That's a good way to put it.

Exactly.

Thank you for the explanation. I, I still feel that people are in our network, want to go that, that route. I think it's just like we said before, kind of applying and getting and maybe taking those additional steps or just taking the first step.

The first step is to start measuring your numbers. I mean, understand what your sales are per advisor and then from there starting to track and communicate that knowledge. That's step one. And then from there you can start popularizing a pay plan based upon that. But yeah, I think step one is starting to measure your sales per advisor and then move forward from there. That's step one. If you're not measuring your individual sales per advisor, start doing that right now.

Establish the murder line.

So now let's think about this in relation to the shop, right? So let's say you go out and you hire a flat rate tech and let's just say you have 10 technicians that have been hourly. We're not really tracking or posting their performance. You know, maybe we talk about it once a month or every couple weeks, but nobody's really driven by performance. Your efficiency is probably what, 60, 70% in the shop, maybe lower. We see it, I mean, we've seen it as low as 40, right? So your efficiency is low. You go out and you hire a flat rate tech. That flat rate tech is going to be a bull in a china shop because there's a bunch of things going on that are going to cause chaos. The first thing that's going on is when you have a shop that isn't incentivized by hours in flat rate or by performance, the advisors can give stuff away. There's no, nobody's looking up times really. Nobody's like fighting for more time or for the right time for a job. Right? You just kind of, you're doing it. And there's a general sense that we're trying to do the best we can, but they're not fighting for the time. You put a technician in that environment, that's flat rate, he's going to tell the advisor, no, you need to get me diagnosis. This pays five hours, not four. You know, and so now all of a sudden it's like, oh, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, this is too aggressive, what's going on? And we end up saying, well, flat rate doesn't work because it's too crazy, you know, but you just have to understand that it's two cultures colliding. It's capitalism and socialism in a sense. Like I'm, I'm dramatizing that a little bit, but that's what I've seen more than anything is they're like, oh, the flat rate didn't work. And it's like, well, yeah, because it cleaned up your paperwork and it made you actually, like, figure out what things should pay. And, you know, you have to close out your paperwork so they can get paid. Right. Like, how many dealerships do we see where there's ros open for six months, like a year, the manager closes the month. And that work, you know, we're carrying over 200 ros. If the technicians are flat rate, it forces you to close out ros so they get paid. And so.

The. To me, there's more of an upside to that because we're actually running the business in a. In a tighter, you know, more.

Economical, you know, way. But it's change. And so people hate change, and so they end up throwing the baby out with the bathwater there, too.

Very true.

So I would agree.

Don't go flat rate.

That's the message. That's what I would say.

It's a long journey, but the first step is reward your. Reward your people for performing. Recognize your people for performing. And then from there, I mean, you're gonna have to fix yourself. You're gonna have to look at your process and what everyone's supposed to be doing. And if they're doing it, that's the first thing my team looks at when we're there, when we're visiting a dealership is what's your process look like? And do people know what they're supposed to be doing?

And a lot of times they don't.

Yeah, most of the time they don't, and that's okay. But if you really want to run your business like a business, if you really want to go out there and eat your market, you need to. It starts with you. It starts with you and what you measure and what you prioritize and what you communicate.

Yeah. Make it about, you know, the customer, set up the pay plans, the incentives to drive the customer experience and their emotions, not treating them like just another number. How can we make. How can we create a scenario where the customers feel good and we're driving their business? We're an asset to their business, and they have an advantage in their marketplace against the competition because their trucks are up and going, because they're back on the road quicker, right?

Yeah, absolutely.

Because if we're solving that problem for them, then. Then we're always going to have business. We're irreplaceable in the marketplace.

It's good, good stuff, you guys. Well, I hope Adam, you find time to read a book. I vote no on shaving the beard.

You say you vote no.

I vote no. I'm pro beard. I don't know if you knew that.

I couldn't tell.

Maybe next time we can talk about this Bears Seahawks game that has me very upset.

Yeah, I'm upset, too.

Maybe we can do a whole section.

Jeremy.

I'm looking at Jeremy looking behind a.

Book that talks to. Talks at you, tells you to go.

Go to the game. That's one of the. That's written by Adam Cray with the forward by Chris Collins.

Yeah, I've been told. Go ahead.

It's fun. Well, that was great, you guys. Thanks. We'll see you next time. Hopefully Colleen will be available.

We'll try to. Let's try to get a deal around, too. We'll talk about something. Talk about some fun stuff.

Awesome. See you guys. Next time on Service Drive Revolution.