It’s Time - Tire Season is Already Here!

Hey.

Welcome, everyone, to Service Drive Revolution. I'm Chris Collins, and this is Christian.

Hello, everyone.

Better known as Christian.

I like that name better. Harder for bubble tests.

Today we are going to talk about tire season. It's important that we get ahead of this, and we're going to talk about it. We also are going to read a letter from somebody in parts concerned citizen, which is funny in and of itself what that's about. And first, we're going to start off by saying, if you do not have your tickets for Top Dog, make sure that you get them right away. There's a good chance that I won't be there. I don't know that I'm gonna live long enough for Top Dog, but it will go on with or without me.

Well, I would say that your chances are good, judging by the office pool.

Nobody's the office pool. And whether I'm gonna make it or not, I don't know if I was.

Supposed to tell you that or not.

But I like the positivity.

October, you're in. No one's taken the under yet.

So literally yesterday, I was told not to lift weights anymore until I have my heart checked, like the plaque or whatever, because my blood pressure was so high, my cholesterol's the highest and my cortisol is the highest it's ever been.

Yeah.

And this is a guy who eats pretty good and has two trainers, sometimes three sometimes. And I'm going to get a new doctor.

I'm gonna get a second opinion.

But I might not make it to my 50th birthday. You know, my grandfather had.

A stroke when he was 51. And you're talking about somebody, too, that, like, ate steak and had a glass of milk for dinner.

Like. Yeah.

Not butter on everything.

None of which I do.

Yeah. My grandparents lived into their 80s and cooked with lard on a regular basis.

Yeah. And smoked and, like, the whole thing. Right. My grandfather smoked, too, and he was in the Navy like asbestos from the ammunition, all that.

Yeah. A lot going on there. Oh, that reminds me. How did the pumpkin stop smoking?

Ow.

Oh, he used the pumpkin patch.

I'm glad you're joking about me not making it to Top Dog. So I want everybody to know that it means a lot to me that you've tuned in. If we've met or spent any time together, I want you to know that it was really special, and I'm gonna miss everybody. But Top Dog is set up, with or without me, to have some amazing guests. You have John Taffert from Bar Rescue.

You have doc. I get to call him Bob, but Robert Cialdini, it is kind of weird calling him Bob.

The icon Bob Cialdini. You have Chase Hughes.

The tactician of human behavior and you have Matt Biamonte, one of my trainers.

Who also may be on the fence on employment.

If you can't get, if you have a chance and I'm not there at top dog, make sure you give him a hard time for me. Yeah, that it was his fault. Blame him for it.

I can do it.

I don't, I don't make it.

But it's going to be a lot of fun. We were, we were going through the agenda and kind of planning it out. Lot of content. It's going to be a great time. It will be an event that we are going to talk about for a long time. And before you go and get your tickets, I want to talk about one thing because we have a little special that only if you're listening to this show will you be able to get it. But it's kind of special.

Now. We're always looking on the social media. We have a team of people looking on the social media scouring and I guess actually all we had to do is check our email on LinkedIn to get this right. Is this an email on LinkedIn?

It was a LinkedIn message to you. Yes, sir.

Okay, so this gentleman's name is Dylan.

Hello, Dylan.

Dylan works in parts. Now let's set this up. Is that the proper modus operandi? Proper process or in Canada we'd say process to. This is. We have hotline. Get a pen or a pencil or pull out your notes on your phone and just come along with me. It's 8333 ask straight. So if you have a question.

Preferably related to our industry, but doesn't have to be.

Not at all.

I'm still waiting for the relationship advice 1. You call the hotline, you propose your question. Then what we do is we play it on the show and then we answer it. Right. We've been, we moved it to Fridays. Now we're doing the questions is drive. Drive bys on Fridays. That's right.

It's wonderful.

And I'm going to do it for you, Dylan, because you couldn't do it the other way. I'm going to do it for you. So Dylan emails us on LinkedIn and he says, can you answer on your YouTube channel why the parts department gets so much hate and always gets blamed for everything.

Being in parts the past eight years and seeing how service and sales Makes plenty of mistakes that then the parts department fixes for them. Personally, I'd like to understand why parts gets a lot of hate. Why they try to help everyone. Yeah.

Wow. Thank you, Dylan.

Dylan, your email is an example. 8333-ASK SDR. Put it in your notes, write it, call. I don't feel like I can. I can read this the way that somebody imparts, but I'm doing it for them.

Right.

Because they don't want to follow.

I'd like to say you did good. And I don't know, do we really pick on parts that much? I'm not sure. Hold on for a second. Parts hold.

So continue on.

Here's what we're going to do. Dylan. We've decided to name a special four Top Dog.

After you, which is going to be bring your parts manager with you to Top Dog. Because I don't think we dislike parts at all. We love parts. I think that you're projecting this because when have we said anything bad about parts?

We may have said a thing or two that could be construed as not nice.

So if there, like, let's say there's a black Volkswagen Jetta driving by and I say, oh, there's a black Volkswagen Jetta, am I saying anything negative about the black Volkswagen Jetta?

No.

So if you call parts and they say parts hold, and then you point out that a lot of times when you call parts, they say parts holds.

We'Re really just reporting the truth.

But are we? Is that an indictment?

No, I don't think so.

I think that maybe there's a guilty conscience on the other side that's projecting.

It's also possible that Dylan's not talking about us. He might be talking about within his.

Well, how would I know that from reading his email? I mean, if he called in, he could elaborate.

He could say that. Right? Right.

8333 Ask STR Dylan is all you gotta do. I think we love parts, and we love parts so much that we're giving you a coupon code. So if you. If you want to bring your parts manager to Top Dog, when you get your tickets in the coupon area.

Type in parts hold and you'll get two for one. Tickets.

Bam.

Parts hold is the coupon code. You just got to type that in. Parts hold. All compliments of Dylan.

Because, Dylan, we love parts. There's nothing about parts we don't love.

I do think within the dealership world, though, sometimes parts can be the scapegoat.

I feel like you're projecting really yeah, yeah. No, if parts makes a mistake, they make a mistake.

Right? But they don't always make all the mistakes.

Nobody said always. It's like that X I have. That's like you never say you love me. It's like. Well, that's not true. I said it once.

Yeah.

Never.

Once is not never.

Yeah, never's a strong word, isn't it? I do think that sometimes the departments. Not always. Not every time. Sometimes other departments can use the parts department as a scapegoat.

Okay.

Is that projecting still?

I don't know.

We kid because we love.

Yeah, always.

We're all in this together. But remember, the discount code is parts hold.

It's been set up. I haven't tried it yet. I will later today. Go on and try and make sure that the code works. But when you go to purchase your Top Dog tickets, if you put in parts sold, it's going to give you two tickets. Bring your parts manager. We want them there. We are better together than we are apart. And there'll be a lot of content there for parts and it'll be a good time for you to spend some time, some quality time outside of the dealership. Together.

Yeah. I think that that's really important for leaders to do. That's a great idea. Parts managers, service managers together. What a raucous bunch. It'd be fun to see what happens.

We are going to do a limited run here. Coming up on the parts hold T shirts again.

It would be awesome if they could get the parts hold T shirts at Top Dog.

Maybe everybody that uses that discount code should get the shirt.

I'll make that promise. If you use the discount code Parts hold. We will. We will give you a T shirt also. We'll make sure in your gift bag that there's a parts hold shirt.

That's great. That's worth it. Just on its own. There are only three of those shirts in its existence right now.

We got to make some.

Yeah, we do.

So tire season.

Chris, Joan, Love it.

It's coming up.

It really is. Does this every year about this time.

Makes me think of a really impactful story.

That everybody should really pay attention to.

About the same time as kindergarten.

Is the girl punching you?

Is the girl punching me?

Which is professing her love. We all know that now.

Gonna be maybe two years after that. I'm about seven.

Okay.

My mom and her guy friend sit me down at one point and they. They inform me that they're getting married. And then upon getting married, they're moving to Mexico to be Missionaries.

You must have been stoked.

It was like a, it was like a corporate family meeting for a family that I didn't know existed.

The secretary came in and took notes.

All of a sudden I went from having no father to a redheaded stepfather. I like it. Who already at that age was shorter than me.

He's three, eight.

He was short, little Napoleon complex. And, and he came from a long line of pastors. So his father was a pastor of a big church that my mom and I would frequent. My mom would go to a couple different churches, but she went to that one often. I didn't know that she was going to that one often because she was dating the pastor's son that was soon going to be my redheaded stepfather. But.

Once you, you kind of marry into that, you become a pk, Pastor's kid.

Yep.

Right. So I was a pk. I was a PK mk. So as a pastor's kid, missionary's kid, which if you like, you compound the trouble. Like if you're a pastor's kid, you're trouble. But if you're a pastor's kid and a missionary's kid, you're. You're going to turn out bad, like big trouble. There's a good chance you're going to spend a lot of time in detention and you're going to be a disappointment to a lot of people.

So besides getting in a lot of trouble being a pastor's kid, you participate in the behind the scenes activities of a church. And so when we would come up from Mexico in the summer, I would work in my step grandfather's church. And one of the things that I got to do was help with the offering. So the way that the service would go is they would start off with like praise and worship. So the band would be up there, people would be singing, then there was a prayer. Then after praise and worship, there would be announcements. And then you knew once the announcements were done, the, the offering was going to happen and then the Sunday sermon was going to happen next. Right. So there was a sequence event. So I knew when they were doing announcements, I would head all the way to the, the left side. And so the left side of two long rows of pews.

Yes.

There's an aisle down the middle and then two aisles on the sides and I would be on the side. The aisle in the middle would be two, you know, older gentlemen that had a cart. And once the offering plates were full, they would start an empty one.

Okay.

But all I had to do is grab the offering plate and Hand it to the next row.

Yeah.

But it was a very fun responsibility for a kid. You felt like you were a part of it. It was, you know, it was cool. And you also, like, at a very early age, get a sense of people paying tithes. Like, some people put cash in there, some people put a check, some people do nothing. And then the. You can see kind of the judgment going on, too. Like, there's a little bit of a he.

You know, everybody's watching to see what everybody else did for sure.

Fascinating.

My parents always did the envelope.

Yeah. So the envelope usually is tax deduction. Right. So you're putting your name on there, and then you're getting something that you can turn into the IRS to then get a tax deduction. I forget what that form is called, but the other thing that I remember. So after the offering is taken, those carts with. With all the offering plates, right. They're these big brass bowls basically, with red velvet on the bottom. Those all go back into this room in the back of the church on the side. And then the money's counted, right. And my step grandmother, mother was the one that would count it. And I remember once asking my stepfather, like, how much money is that? And.

Just in cash, I mean, I think it was like 10 grand or something. And the cash was less than what the checks were. Right. It's a pretty big church, but just as a kid, like, seeing them separate the. The envelopes and the checks and then the big mound of cash was, you know, an interesting thing to experience as a. As a young kid. And so that. That would happen. I was a part of that. It was really fun. I felt like I was contributing. It was fascinating to see it all work. And I understood the basic premise of tithing from, you know, from.

The Bible and Sunday school and everything. And I remember one time.

Church is over and the adults are cleaning up and I think I'm playing and my. My mom is there, and I remember my stepfather, my step grandfather, and step grandmother are right next to that door. That was the room where the tithes were counted. Right. And everything was logged in a book and the whole thing. And I remember they're talking and she mentions that the tithes were less than normal. Like the donations were down. Like it was a slow day at the church.

There weren't a lot of marks on the board.

If that makes sense.

To put it in terms of step grandmother. We need more alignments.

Yeah.

And then I remember my step grandfather said, well, it's time. And then they said, it's time. And they said that back and forth. It's time. I didn't know what it's time meant at the time.

But come next Sunday, I found out what its time meant. So the praise and worship happens and then the announcement happened. And I'm ready. Like, you know, you're just a kid. You're like a little soldier. You're ready for your, your task, your job never happened. No offering was taken. And then my, my step grandfather goes up to give the sermon. And the sermon starts off with, you know, about how people have. Accomplish things that they never thought possible. Their wishes had been granted. You know, how they'd, they'd. All the people had all of a sudden gotten lucky. And it was all tied back to the fact that they tithed. And then there's a part of the Bible that talks about.

I want to say it's Mary Magdalene, but I have this totally wrong. She gave money even when she couldn't afford. She gave more than she could afford to give. And she was blessed. And the whole message is that when you tithe, you're blessed.

Yeah. It comes back exfold or whatever. Right.

And then after the sermon, the band went up and then the tithes were taken. So there was a shift in.

The order of things. And I learned from my stepfather being a pastor in Mexico that it's time to means that you have to remind the congregation that they need to pay their tithes and how important it is to pay your tithes. Right.

That's it.

Because it's a, it's a, it's an honor system in a sense. Even though the Bible says to pay your ties, you still got to remind people. There's a lot of lessons in this story. It's really a leadership lesson more than anything else.

But it, you know, at a young age, I understood that there's just certain things that you have to do to gear up and remind people or plan for something that can be represented by the term it's time. And so we do the same thing in our industry with tires, but most of the time.

It is way too late. Tire season hits us like a freight train. Even though we know when the freight trains coming, we, it comes at the same time every year. But we most of the time are caught. Surprised.

Yep.

Or we just, we just accept that that's our reality.

And this always blows me away with clients that we have that actually charge to store the, the tires and the rim. So, you know, service departments in the southern part of the country are not going to understand this.

No. But they Still, I think that nationally, a lot of the, the manufacturers run specials in the fall and spring. So I do think that there's a push for tires even in the South.

No, what I'm, what I'm saying, you.

Understand the.

Summer off and put winter on.

Because, I mean, I worked in Washington, which the weather is terrible, but you don't store rims and t.

Like you do in Illinois or parts of Canada, that sort of thing. But there are service departments out there just for everybody who doesn't understand this, that will have an extra set of rims and tires for our clients that they pay to store. We store for free, whatever it is that they will come in and get their winter tires put on and they just swap. But what happens is they get completely bombarded by all the customers coming in, wanting their rims and tires to be swapped, that they don't have time to inspect anything. They don't have time to recommend an alignment. It really is just to hold on and do the best you can for 45 days.

That's it.

And then that. Then it happens again when they come off. Right. And so what we know is we could get ahead of that and we could pre make those appointments with our clients. Right. We could gear up for it. We, you know, there's a lot of things that we could do instead of waiting for the phone to ring, waiting for it to be too late. And then we usually don't do that. And so what Christian and I are trying to tell you today is it's time to start planning now for tire season. Don't wait until it's too late. Get ahead of it with your marketing. Get ahead of it with your inventory, with how many technicians you have available. You know, we don't need our $35 an hour diesel tax doing tires. Like, let's gear up and get some people in place. Let's get our marketing in place and let's make tires a big deal and let's have a system in place where tires end up equating to a lot of alignments and brake sales also because customers are going to need alignments. And when we have the wheels off, let's look at the brakes.

Just take a peek.

Yeah. And if they need it, let's tell them that's it. We're not, we don't need to over recommend. We don't need to oversell. All we need to do is create an opportunity that if they need it, we're available to do it. And we're not overwhelmed with. And we have the Capacity in the shop to do it. So we're going to need to add a couple more attacks. Let's be ready for it. Let's make this the greatest tire season ever. Let's have some fun with alignments, with the advisors. Let's make it into a big deal. Let's get ready. Let's talk about it for months.

Because everyone loves to talk about tires.

And let's not let them go to Costco to buy their tires.

Hurts every time I hear that.

Yeah.

I go to Costco for my tires.

Let's get ahead of it. And if you're not in the tire business, get in the tire business because that's the future.

Yeah.

These electric cars have tires and it's about it.

They're going to eat them pretty fast. I have the feeling they do.

They're twice as fast.

Yeah. Yeah. Well, thank goodness that hopefully we'll be around and there won't be a lot of tire sales happening online anymore. You know, and that reminds me, at what point did you know this was going to be a joke? Like right when I spoke.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Because you come in with this, like, this authority.

Right. It's just very different, isn't it?

Yeah.

So what do you call two monkeys that share an Amazon account?

What do you call two monkeys that share an Amazon account? I don't know.

No one's ever asked you this before?

No.

Oh, prime mates.

That's pretty good.

Thank you.

I like it. Fun. So what did we learn today? We learned that Dylan didn't call 8333 ask SDR, but we still named a discount after him. Courtesy carrying the weight for the parts department. Trying to help out. We answered his question. We read it on the big show.

We.

We also created a special discount code. When you purchase your tickets to top dog, if you put in parts hold, you're going to get an extra ticket and a limited edition parts hold t shirt. So we'll be calling you to ask you your size.

Yeah. And I'll let you know. They're slimming and very comfortable. They don't chafe at all.

And the last thing is. It's time. Get ready now for tire season. Let's make this the biggest tire season we've ever had. Let's make it fun. Let's get excited about it. Let's put some energy and some focus into it. And do it. Let's do it. And we'll see you next time on service drive revolution.

Thanks so much for watching this episode of service job revolution. We're uploading new stuff every day, 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. Sam.