Lessons for Service Advisors from McDonald's | SDR #299

Welcome, everybody, to the big show. I'm Chris Collins and this is Christian.

Hello, everyone.

Today we're going to talk about what service advisors can learn from McDonald's. And this isn't, you know, service advisors that are so stressed and working at their desk that they're eating pizza. And McDonald's has nothing to do with calories and eating habits. It's a business lesson that could apply to just about anybody. There's some fun stuff in the news. We talk about Jet skis, cup holders, and much, much more. Coming up on this edition of Service Drive Revolution.

How you doing, Christian?

Better than ever.

Happy Monday.

I do love Mondays.

You're not like Garfield where you hate Mondays.

He hates Mondays.

That was just a marketing ploy to feed into the working class. In the paper.

Do you have a least favorite day of the week?

No, I don't even think about that.

Yeah.

Like, every day is what we make of it, right?

Well, I think of the thing you say that the opportunity of a lifetime comes once a day.

I probably have a.

Favorite day, I would think.

What's your favorite day?

Probably Saturday.

Okay.

Usually. Usually do something fun on Saturday.

I get like, Mondays and Fridays the best. But Saturdays on the. They're in the. It's in the top half for me, too.

I don't. Do we tell everybody about the leadership workshop? So we did the first one.

We didn't talk about what happened since, though.

It was great. Somebody who had their leadership, their executive team in there bought out all of August's workshop.

The whole workshop is sold out.

Yeah. Because the. The results were that dramatic. I do, I do kind of get the feeling, like, remember when we pulled it.

Yes.

Do you know the real leverage of this workshop would be if we did it for ourselves internally and owned like a franchise or something, Right. Oh, yeah.

That could be huge.

Like, think about if we buy, like, let's say we buy Christian Brothers or some franchise or manufacture, and then we only did it for them. They would take over the world.

There'd be a competitive advantage in all of the world. Yes.

Are we screening people coming in still?

We had been previously.

I think we still should. I don't think we should let anybody into it.

Well, we definitely screened last time, and I'm glad we did.

You're changing the subject. I think we should keep screening.

Oh, I understand.

Is it too much work? We should at least make them fill out an application and not just let them buy.

Well, and. Yeah, so I've. I would tell you that no matter what, everyone that applies for that thing. I get to know them.

So beforehand we have an idea. There's always a power.

I think the. The. It's going to pick up momentum. Like the book is picking up momentum.

Yes.

And then we're going to need to be more discretionary.

Yeah, I think that's okay.

Yeah, we can keep doing the thing. It reminds me of my friend Patty o'.

Toole. And Patty, what a segue.

So he used to. He used to go to the bar every night, and he would go in, he would sit down, he'd order two shots of Irish whiskey, and then he would get up and he would leave. And he does this four nights in a row. Bartender finally says, patty, you come here, you really don't talk. You have your two shots and then you go and. And you know, the bartender's like, why? Why do you do that? And he's like, well, I used to always drink with me brother, but me brother lives across the country. So now I just come and one shots for me and one shots for him, and I don't have him to talk to you. So I leave and I go home. And the bartender's like, oh, okay, that makes sense. So keeps doing this for a couple of weeks, and then he comes in one night and he just orders one shot. And bartender.

Yeah.

So the bartender goes, good Lord, Patty, is everything all right with your brother? And Patty says, yeah, but I quit drinking.

That's pretty good. Thank you. I like that. Where do they. What's the website for the leadership workshop? Is it I am Leader book?

I am leader book.com www. I am leader book.com do we not.

Own I am leader.com we also own okay. Net for marketing purposes.

I am Leader book.

How many URLs do we own?

Like, hey, buy that URL. Do you remember office? And you just bought a URL, though.

Sometimes I get emails from random people asking to buy URLs that we own. And I'm always like, well, yeah, I don't know, maybe. Maybe we keep them.

I'm new to this. This Shopify thing. That. Which is kind of like the. The thing that we use to kind of facilitate our online business. And you probably don't get these, but I'll get these like in the middle of the night on a Saturday. Like, weird. Like, spammy. Like where there's a telecom where you can send messages. But, like, I feel like people think it's a dating site because it's. It's a random, like Middle Eastern requests for love.

Really.

In our shop. Our shopify inbox.

Should we play with that a little bit?

I'm. I'm all for it. I. I don't know if you know this, but I have a history of doing that, and it's really fun for me.

Do it and then we can share with everybody, like, see if you can set up a date in Bangladesh.

I can get pictures about that.

This is great.

It's probably a dude, though.

Stay tuned.

Be careful. That's funny. So I was just over the weekend jet skiing up in Washington at the lake, and I think I've decided.

That I'm gonna get the 325. Well, I think I decided a long time ago I was gonna get the 325.

I'm surprised it hasn't happened yet, but.

I was looking at the ones that are available for sale, and nobody modifies those with the stereo. And there's this other thing on there called, like, ifc. It basically is if you get, like, lily pads or something stuck in there, it will eject them. It reverses the engine.

Really?

Yeah, it works.

Wow. Okay.

Because we have it on one of the current jet skis, and it's come in handy a couple times, and it actually came in handy when we sucked up a rock. It spit the rock out, which is great. You run it through a cycle, it tells you what to do, and then poop. It pops it out.

But normally you do something like that, the jet's done. Right.

But the race one, you have to add those. Because people that buy that 325 race one are kind of snobby in the sense that, like, you don't want any more weight. Right. Because they're racing, I guess, or whatever. I don't care about that. I want the. I want the stereo. I have to have the stereo. And then I think what I'll do is I'll have them put the cup holders on at the dealership. Whoever I buy it from, probably way.

Better than you having to do it on your own.

Then here's the thing that I saw online.

Is people do the vinyl wrap on them. I. I really don't like the colors that ski do has. I'd really like it to be like a shark gray matte, maybe, or.

Oh, okay.

Something. I don't know. What color would you do a jet ski? Like, I want to flex a little on the lake. Like, I want to. I want people to be like, oh, okay, that's.

That's.

That person has a certain. I would do style.

Yeah. I would do a vibrant electric metallic blue.

Like a Corvette blue.

Like the Porsche. Blue like the light.

Yes.

Neon.

Yeah. They have a Corvette that's kind of like that.

Boy, the Corvette looks good. Every time I see that Corvette, it always makes me do a double take.

Yeah. We should sell more books.

What do you mean?

So I can buy a Corvette.

You would buy one?

I would seriously consider it.

I don't think they're comfortable.

No, no, that's true.

But I think there isn't really a convertible on the market right now that I like. Except for the. That Rolls Royce, which is ridiculous. It makes no sense.

I don't even think I've seen that thing.

It's the. It's the two. Two door convertible where the doors go the other way. They're like suicide doors.

So they. They open like this.

Remember? Remember at our old office, Neo. Do you remember Neo? He's like a musician. He had one.

It was always parked right there in ballet. And the doors go the other way. They're suicide.

Oh, was it. So if I'm going out, if I'm at the valet stand and I'm going out, was his always to the left?

Yeah.

Okay. Yes, I did see that car. That was Neil, the artist. Neo.

Yeah. He had a studio there. Huh.

Crazy expensive, though.

I can only imagine.

It's too much, right? It's a house.

Well, not a house here.

It's a house in Vegas.

Yeah, it's a house in Vegas. Christian's excited about. I'm engaging in a law firm that specializes in California to Nevada relocation.

I'm sure they're busy.

Yeah, for sure. But they help. They'll help you find incentives too. Okay, so we could probably get some incentives.

Yeah, that's.

We don't think about our business being as big as it is, but we're pretty. We're pretty big in the scale of.

Businesses. Like there's. Yeah.

So percent of annual revenue. It's pretty crazy.

Yeah. And now with the leadership thing, it'll. It'll be even bigger. Yeah.

That's exciting.

The thing that's very touching about the. The leadership book is that the IM book is having the effect that.

We intended. So if you're not familiar with the I am leader book, it's actually two books. One is I am and then the second one is leader. The premise being that you gotta figure out your I am before you can lead anybody. And that's a. That's a summary. It's. There's a lot more to it than that, but people are very affected by that book. I haven't had anybody Have a conversation with me about the leader book. Everything has been about the IM and in the app. So it comes with an app.

In the app that's most of the conversation and what people DM me about too.

Yeah. And.

And then people don't believe it's me in there, which I think is funny. They're like, is this really you?

It is, it's. So I try to do a thing where like when they sign up I'll, I'll reach out and all that stuff. I've. I never beat you.

Oh. To say hi to them and follow. Really?

Yeah. Like I always go to.

I feel like I'm behind.

I look at their follow and I go. It says following. One person's following them and I'll hop on into. Like how is that possible? I got this thing like 45 feels.

It's starting to feel unmanageable because there's so many people coming in.

There's many per day now.

Okay, what's in the news?

All right, so I think the news is kind of going to lead us into our, our topic today. But a couple of brands. These are aftermarket brands but things that I kind of two that I look back pretty fondly on. Ricaro and BBS both filed for bankruptcy recently.

BBS wheels.

Yeah. So both kind of made their claim to fame providing like Ricaro is a seat company. So they have like racing seats for. I think that probably their most popular partnership would have been with Porsche. But a lot of track vehicles have Recaro seats. Like they got a really, really cool look to them. They look almost like.

Like way before they had those like gaming chairs. That's what they almost look like when they were in cars. I thought those really cool. And then, then BBs obviously. So both are German companies. But yeah, they filed bankruptcy because they've just, they've run out of money. The Recaro one is, is that it was independent investors took that took it over like four years ago and ran it out of dough after. And that company's been around for almost 100 years or something like that. It's pretty crazy. And I just remember BBS wheels just being the coolest thing. Like they had like three piece wheels. Do you remember that? Where it was like there was. We. It was one wheel but it was made of three different pieces and I was.

Which I never understood because it was one piece. I could never take them apart.

Yeah. I never tried to take it apart but I know that they said they were three pieces and you could see where all the like little Bolt things and the rivets were and everything like that. But yeah, I get fond memories of. Because I was, I was selling Subaru WRX back then when they had the BBS wheels from the factory on there. That was those pretty fun times. But yeah. So both those companies filing for bankruptcy, end of a legacy there.

But more, more mismanagement probably than the economy. Right.

I would suggest that that's probably the majority of bankruptcies.

Good point.

Thanks.

Okay. What service advisors can from McDonald's. So interestingly I, I saw this thing on the kiosks in McDonald's ends up that they started testing those in Europe a long time ago, but now they, they're pretty much in every McDonald's. And so if you haven't been into a McDonald's, it's, it's basically a life size iPad that replaces cashiers. You, you order your food and then I'm not sure, do they bring it out or do you get it at the counter?

Yeah, so you order, you can pay at the kiosk and then they have like the little like table tents, I don't know what else to call them other than that. And you like, so you take your table tent that has number 75 on it, you take it to the table, you put it on there and then they deliver the food out to you. Okay.

So it's very, very similar to a restaurant here in LA that we frequent called Lalas or Zaza or something. It's like a Mediterranean restaurant. They have the same sort of thing where you walk in, there's two of those, you, you order and then there's those little tents you put your number in.

Yep, exactly.

And then they bring it, they bring it out to you. And so especially here in California, they've passed some legislation that is forcing fast food restaurants to pay $21 an hour minimum.

21 or 22. Like it's a significant amount.

And I don't know if they get benefits also. I'm not sure, I almost am positive.

That they have access to benefits as well.

And so the, the general consensus is that most fast food restaurants are going to go to this kiosk.

Technology.

Yeah, you can basically run, you can run a dining room with one or two people as opposed to eight people. So it just makes sense that they would do it like that. You just have food runners.

The thing that's fascinating about it though, and we've talked about kiosks for service advisors many times. We've had people come on here that, that have startups that are doing that and they.

They never really have data to prove anything one way or the other. It's always kind of vague to what you know. And no, I don't think anybody in the automotive space is committed to it. 100 that I know of.

I've not seen it where it's active. Like I've seen.

It's kind of like tablets. They do it for a minute and then they go away from it.

Yeah, I've seen stores where they've got a program where like the car drives over and it does like a pre inspection, then they walk over to like a tablet. But an advisor still kind of guiding them. But I don't think I've ever seen a fully integrated kiosk service drive before.

The thing about McDonald's that's fascinating is they.

Not only are saving on the personnel expense.

The customer experience is pretty good. Nobody, nobody dislikes it. Although I will say that my parents don't go to McDonald's because of that.

Oh, because they don't want to use the thing.

Well, they, they feel intimidated by the thing and they're in their 70s. Right. So I don't know, I don't know how common that is. I'm not sure that my dad would.

Probably say the same thing.

Yeah, I don't know what the average age is of somebody eating at McDonald's.

I don't either.

I haven't been in a McDonald's forever.

I think that they market towards kids so it's par.

Taking their kids in there like the Happy Meal and that sort of thing. So I don't know about traffic and if it's affected their business that way. But on the other side of things, when you talk about average per customer, it is dramatically increase their average sales per customer because the kiosk is presenting things in a way like there's just psychology in this. Like that they're presenting it in a way that people are buying more food, they're selling more desserts, they're selling more nuggets as an add on. They're selling more like of the super size than, than they were. The, the thing that they were talking about in this thing that I saw was that there's people are having remorse when they get their food because they've ordered way more food, their tray is stuffed full and they're doing things on the kiosk like they do on Instagram. When you like something, then it, there's a confetti that's thrown. So when you like add something on, there's confetti where they Put the price of everything, the total is way at the bottom, like down by your crotch. So you'd have to look down to see it.

That you spent $48 at McDonald's.

And then even when you go to pay, when you're done, when you go to pay, the price of what you're buying, buying isn't there. It's a choice of do you want to play with a Carter? Cash is like really small.

Oh, okay.

So they're encouraging you to pay with a card. All, like, all of the psychology that's going into that is effective. And then on top of it, they also have AI that's learning people's behaviors so they can split test what works and at what times. And then we talked a little bit about the fact that McDonald's and some other restaurants have tried pricing strategies where the prices change depending on peak times. So the prices will go up during peak times and will go down during low time, you know, low traffic. One, to maximize your gross margins. But two, to encourage people to come when there's nobody there.

Right.

In a sense, like, like if you owned a skating rink and Tuesdays were always dead, you'd start having ladies night. Yeah, you, like, you would, you would try to have some sort of an event. So people are going to start to learn that the prices are different at low time. So they're going to go during happy hour or, you know, whatever it is. Same sort of psychology. But the, the thing that I was thinking about in reference to service advisors in these kiosks is it is really hard to get a group of humans, not just service advisors, humans, anybody, to do anything consistent enough that you could have any sort of, you know, feedback loop where you can adjust your, your approach to selling or the psychology behind what you're doing in order to find out effective patterns that you can increase your margins. Right.

Yeah, because there'd still be too many variables with humans anyways. Like, the kiosk actually makes it really, really factual. There's another thing that, that is, I think, a really big irritant for people, not just at McDonald's, but anywhere. And I think this is another thing why I think kiosks are kind of taking over is I would suggest that with kiosk, order, accuracy is impeccable.

Yeah, that too. There's no human error.

So you're talking to a human. I remember, you know, when I was younger, like it was just a guarantee that you get through. You get your bag out of the drive through and. And you just know something's not Going to be there. Right. Because they ordered it wrong or whatever, they input it wrong. But the kiosk thing makes accuracy even better too. So thinking about that from a service.

Perspective, and then you know what the other thing is, is that there's no issues on volume because.

You just have to open kiosk, but you can add.

As many kiosks as you want. And if they write, if they, they're serving the customers as fast as the customers can put in their info, there's no limitations on how fast the kiosk or how many customers it can handle. Where service advisors, you know, we found that past 14 a day, service advisors start to take shortcuts. They don't follow up, they don't have time to call customers, they don't have time to, you know, call on the inspection sheet. It just, there's a, there's a diminishing return on humans where kiosks, they don't, not only will they, will they present consistently, they also can handle as much volume as you throw at them. The humans become the limitation. Right?

Yeah. The kiosk could write 24 hours a day.

Like there's a thing in the military with jets where human pilots are the limitation of how many G forces they can handle because they can design jets, they can, can turn and create more G forces. But having a pilot creates a, you know, a limitation in a sense. And so now they have drones, fighter drones that don't have pilots and they, they can outperform a regular jet and.

No one dies if it gets shot down. That's the thing too. That too.

Right. You're sitting in, in Nevada in a room with a joystick and a camera. So I was thinking about that too. And then just in the sense when I was writing service, I always thought about testing things. Like when a couple things that I can remember is when I got asked to do advisor training, I started to think about the difference between me and the other advisors that were there. And I just picked this one advisor, the lowest performing advisor. He could only write like seven a day. He avoided the drive most of the time. Like he was always, you know, hiding somewhere. I just remember like one of the things he would say to people is, did you have, did you have an appointment? And you could just tell people's body language was like, like it just was off putting. And so I would not do that and I would just say, hey, how are you today? And then you could tell the body language was like, oh, this person like is treating me more like a friend or whatever. It is, right. The other thing I remember with, with Subarus and the Subaru Loyale had a head gasket that would leak six months after you replaced. It wasn't really a gasket.

It was like the red stuff.

Yeah, but what is that stuff called? Because it would get hard.

Yes, it was like a liquid gasket, silicone thing. It was a silicone that would harden. Yeah, they called it gasket and gave you a tuba goof. Yeah, yeah.

And so those things would leak constantly. They would leak antifreeze, right? Yeah, coolant. And so when I. And it was about, if I remember right, it was about 12, 1200 bucks in eight hours to do them or something.

Way more than that now. But yeah.

What do you mean?

Well, I just think that was back in the 90s, right. So now a 12 hour job is.

I don't think it was 12 hours. I think it was like eight. I don't know. It was a good ro. Right.

Take it all day.

Longer for they all, they all leaked eventually. And so I would call customers and I would say, hey, you're, you know, your head gasket is leaking. Whatever. I would say, I don't remember. And they'd be like, how much? And I'd say 1200. And they'd be like, no, it's okay, whatever. And then I don't know, maybe my closing ratio on those was like 1 in 10. And then I remember we had a clinic and I sold like seven in a day because people saw it. So what I did is I made a deal with the Subaru. Text is when I had one and it was leaking and the customer was coming to pick it up. I would call and say, hey, your car is ready. When are you coming to pick it up? And then they would tell me and I'd say, okay, I want to show you something when you come in. And then I'd walk them back in the shop and I would show them in. My closing ratios were almost 100, I think on those because once they saw the leak. But I had to learn how to get the car down in case they said no. I had to get it off the lift.

Okay.

Because the texts were gone down yourself most of the time. Because, you know, I was writing service in the city and it was, you know, people came early and came late to pick up. But I just remember thinking about things as a feedback loop in a. In like, okay, I've done this and this isn't working. What could I change about the thing that I'm doing to Create a different outcome. I kind of always think that way in every scenario. Right. Part of our culture.

What a great lesson for the advisors of today is that I would guess that 9 out of 10 or maybe 99 out of 100, would just say, customers don't want to buy it. They would never think that they could change their approach.

Right.

Get a different result. It's more like, nope, I showed them the mpi, I presented the thing, and nine out of ten say no. And then.

And then there's a percentage that will say, oh, because the prices are too high. Or they would have some other excuse to.

Yeah, but I think that that's as far as they would make it. But the thought of even changing your presentation method or even the fact that, like, once you see coolant spewing out of your engine, it makes you hard to say. It makes it hard to say no because you can kind of tell that's not supposed to happen. But yeah, so that. That thing, like, if there was a piece of advice for an advisor would be, don't just accept the no. Think about what you could change to make it, you know, try something different to see if a customer sees it different. Yeah.

You know, another thing where people kind of see that in motion is we've had people come to a master class when they sign up for coaching, and they end up coming years later because, I don't know, maybe they're. They've been promoted to general manager or they're in charge of more stores, and now they're bringing their. Their new service manager, whatever it is. But they end up coming to a masterclass years later, and they're like, oh, it's completely different than it was when I first came. And it's like, well, yeah, we've learned a lot. Like, we're judging the outcome of that by how quickly people go back and implement and get results. And we're constantly trying to change what we do in order to affect that. So, I mean, how lame would it be if we're doing the same thing for years and years and not trying to improve or not learning anything that seems. Seems ridiculous.

Yeah, well, it's. It's definitely not in line with what we're teaching. But I would tell you that this month's master class will have stuff in it that didn't exist two months ago.

Oh, yeah.

We. Every class we do, we look at.

It and we're like, we have a meeting after. We're like, what could we do different? We're paying attention to the results. We're Paying attention to what people are doing in the room. All of it.

Y.

And we're going to do the same thing with leadership. Like, it's. It only has value if it affects the end outcome, not if people feel good in the room. I think that's one of the hardest things for people to get over is they're like, well, they were excited after a workshop or whatever, and it's like, that's irrelevant. Like, maybe they shouldn't be excited.

Well, the one. The my favorite one is the one that just wants to go back and get to work.

Yeah.

Like, they stick out like a sore thumb. And then you follow up with them, you find.

But they're antsy thing.

Yeah, they just want to.

They can't sit still in their chair. They're like. But excited and pumped up isn't like, I always hated that when people would come out of a sales meeting all pumped up and then they did nothing. They still sold nothing. Like. Yeah, it's not about. It's about teaching and having like a road map. Right?

Yep.

So I don't know. I thought about that in that article in reference to advisors, and they're. They're attributing like 2.1 billion to that thing, to that software.

That's a lot of freaking money.

And just like, ask yourself, like, am I doing the same thing I've been doing forever? Like, how many things have I learned from and changed? What am I. Am, you know, what am I trying to affect in the outcome that could be much better for the client? Right. And how is my behavior and my actions and my, you know, my routine? Because a lot of times advisors just.

In a routine, but really they have 14 opportunities every day to learn and get better.

Sometimes 25.

Yeah, sometimes it's hard to glean all the stuff off of the 25 a day, but. But at 14 a day, you have a.

You have a sample size.

So I. Whether you're a manager, advisor, dealer, whatever it is, I would challenge you to think about that in the sense that how much have you evolved and changed and what could you do? Like sit and think about it for a minute? Because it's probably a lot of. A lot of areas, personally and professionally, that you're just in a routine and you could do something different and start thinking about it as a feedback loop, as an outcome. If people are disenchanted or they don't love you and they're not coming back and your retention is low, then you probably should change something earlier in the process to affect the outcome later in the process.

Simple. Make it a little more scientific. Yeah. Math is a good way to explain it, too. Good stuff.

Yeah, that's it. Thanks for tuning in. 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.