Personality Management in Your Service Drive

I've recently taken over the service department at a local auto service center where service is only about a quarter of the overall gross. I was brought in to the same place about 10 years ago to do the same thing, consult and troubleshoot. I left about seven years ago, it was called again recently. And again the department is back to the same old, same old business, right? The techs run in the garage, no systems in place, blah blah, blah, same old stuff after about three months, place has been up about 80% over the last six years. It's been in the red about three of those years and broke even about three years. After changing the culture, implementing systems and procedures, the department is up 80% again. Like I said, already week to week and on pace for 1.2 million. Which is just naturally what that shop will do without advertising and marketing. Just getting back to the basics, outworking everyone until they follow your lead. You know, the same old story. This leads me to my question. Through all that hard work, there's still one major hurdle. This shop, a tech who is again the cf, holding his apartment back with a steep salary and horrible productivity. I've managed to work around them, running the shop as efficient as I could with six other guys. That's the same technician that my second week there says to me in the garage in front of all the other techs and the owner that I should stay up front because he runs the back and I run the front. To which I replied, no my friend, I run both. So you'll be seeing a lot more of me out here. The owner has been blinded by his own loyalty, in my opinion, to a five year employee who's been telling him what he wants to hear and chasing off other competent techs over the years. The owner's defense, he's not a service guy. He is running three quarters of other, you know, the rest of the gross this overall company sees, and I would mention it, but it'd be too specific for this application here. I've managed to keep our cost, leave our net in line, worked around this tech to avoid misdiagnosis of customers, vehicles. I mean, he's not even in the ballpark most times. The owner is now asking questions about this tech salary versus productivity, which my response a few times has been, you know, we've gone over this a few times. I've suggested that we dismiss him. My third week here, again two months in, again three months in, after starting to realize that this owner maybe has a small soft spot for this guy, kind of eased up and learned again to work around this guy. And this guy's defense, he's got a sweet thing going there. He knows I know what's going on. If the owner wants to put up with it, fine. But, you know, at some point, I start feeling guilty, and other technicians are bothered by this as well. This guy's got an ego, and he's rude, and again, they got to fix all his mistakes. And he was supposed to be the guy there. So do I just fire this guy and save the owner from himself?

So I would go at this a different way. So whenever we go into a service department, there's always that guy. Usually that's not unique, and I'm sure you've experienced it also. And they're just kind of marking their territory. They know that.

They'Re not as good as what they're being paid, but their bills and everything else are matching what they're being paid. Right. That's one thing that will happen is even though somebody maybe doesn't deserve what they're being paid, their bills and mortgage payment will catch up to what they're making pretty quick. And so I would make it about the. I would make it about the production and the quality, and I wouldn't make it about the person it in the beginning. So I would, you know, every week, I would do a. An Excel spreadsheet, and I would have everybody's efficiency and their cost and what the gross is on every tech.

And I would just do like, you know, a performance hierarchy, and I would give that to the owner, and I would actually give each tech their individual one. So I wouldn't, you know, you don't want every tech to see what everybody else is making. But I would also have a board in the shop that listed out every day the efficiency. And then the next thing I would do is I would not protect the guy from comebacks. I would give him diagnosis. I would. I would treat him in. In the way I dispatch, just like he was in a tech and the best there. Then I would create a comeback sheet, and every time he had a comeback, I would give a copy to the owner and to him and put one in a file every time he has a comeback. So a comeback sheet would be like, you know, the RO Number, what, what vehicle, the original concern, and then what was wrong with it and the fix and how much it costs to fix it. And I would, you know, if. Even if that technician had to spend a couple hours, I would relate a cost to that fixing it. And I would start tracking comebacks and then let the facts kind of work themselves out. But most of the time, when we make it about our feelings and politics and jockeying for position.

It just gets uglier. It doesn't get better when you make it about the results and the outcome. Sometimes they will fix themselves, and other times they will go away. If it gets to the point where it's ramping up, I would call the owner in and I would just have a blunt conversation, and I would say, does this guy have naked pictures of you? Is there something I don't know because the evidence is the evidence and I don't understand, but I wouldn't do that for a couple months. I would, I. I would go with the.

The strategy that he probably will either tune up or go away. If you just make it about the outcome and not about anything personal or politics, that sort of thing.

Yeah, I think that that's the big thing is when you make personnel decisions, and especially about talking about getting someone going down. If you are, you know, doing it and playing the politics, it will almost never end. How you think it's going to, like, I've never seen where we try to save someone from themselves and they come back later and be like, I'm so glad you did that. What ends up happening really is like, why did you do that? Because what I heard from the, from the voicemail is that the owner, kind of, this person has the ear of the owner a little bit, which is a pretty dangerous position to be in if you're the person that's in charge of trying to get rid of them. Because I don't think that, if anything, it would kind of put you into the political exposure. The only way to do this right is to do it by the facts and the results, like there's no other way to. And really that's how we should be doing human resource decisions in general. But I definitely like the thought of the comeback sheet is really smart.

Yeah. And I think too, like, if you take a little different approach with the guy, you might want to pull him in closer and actually, like, take him to lunch and be honest with him about what he's doing in a very calm way. Like, just like, you know, hey, I'm here to turn this thing around. And like, you're either on our team and refer to yourself and the owner as us, because if you're there for the performance of the business, it is us.

It's not a territorial thing. It's an outcome of your efforts. But make it about the outcome of the efforts. But ask him about his, you know, his his ambitions and what's going on. Is he struggling with something and bring up in a subtle way, like over lunch, like, you know, you've had a couple comebacks recently.

Don't you think that somebody at your level should be double checking their work? And you, you might by pulling them in closer and having a little empathy and really trying to understand him instead of just meeting his resistance with resistance. You might be able to fix them too, because, you know, there is a value to, to a technician if you can fix them.

Yeah. The best case scenario is not that that technician leaves. The best case scenario is that they flip and become your. Become your teammate.

Yeah. He's. He's telling you with his actions, if you listen, that he wants to belong, that he's looking to feel important. His. His whole driver. There is ego and, and somebody stroking him. So stroke him. Like, who cares? Like, I don't. I think one of the most important saying sayings in business is.

If you're listening to this, Christian's eyes, I pointed at him. I said the most important saying in business. And then I pointed at him like, hey, what is it? Like, this is a test. And his eyes got as big as grapefruits.

Which is, I don't know where you're going, but I'm hoping once you say it, I'll know.

I'd rather win than be right. I'm not looking to be right. I'm looking to win. So I don't need to be right. I'm not right a lot. I'll listen. It's like people who, who are like, oh, you should never talk politics. That's because they're stuck in their opinion. I'll talk politics because I want to understand. It doesn't take that long for me to figure out that you don't know what you're talking about most of the time. But I still have great conversations with people about things that I learn a lot. And even if I don't agree with them, it's fascinating to understand why they, why they see it the way they do. Like how their parents did such a terrible job that they ended up that messed up or whatever it is.

And so I don't want to be right. I want to win and think the same thing with him. Like, if he's a tech and you can balance out the score and balance out the pay and figure it out, the truth is your friend. Just go with the truth. Create a hierarchy of performance, create accountability, and then encourage him on the other end. And he'll either come or he won't. Thanks so much for watching this clip of Service Driving Revolution 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.com Chris Collinsinc.com I'm Chris Collins, and I'll see you in the next video.