Post-Covid Pain w/ Mia (Service Drive Revolution)

Today on the show, we talk about how you can get in on the post Covid rush before it's too late. Mia visits us here in California. We debate service advisor, pay plans, base or commission. Which is better and maybe possibly. Christian finally gives me the cigar he owes me. That and much more today on Service Drive Revolution.

What's going on, Chris? Joan.

Not too much, man. How are you?

We have a special guest today.

We sure do.

The beautiful Ms. Mia.

Hello.

Came all the way down from the Northwest to hang out with us.

Pretty awesome.

Mia, you have a tremendous following, a couple hundred thousand followers. Do you ever have fans or, you know, whatever you would call them, people that are enthusiastic about what you do? Send you gifts?

Yes, all the time.

And do you. When those gifts are sent, do you get the gifts like they actually get to you?

Yeah, yeah, they get sent to a P.O.

Box. Interesting.

You're so informative about this.

I had a. A client, really nice guy, send me a cigar. Are you familiar with cigars? A gherkin cigar?

No.

Me neither. I've never tried it. Mostly.

I smoke other stuff, but, you know, you like to try new stuff, especially if you have somebody who's enthusiastic about a certain brand, which he's clearly enthusiastic about. The gherkin. I was excited to share that with him, you know?

Yeah.

Well, he gives it to Christian.

Ooh, fancy.

It's warm. Came out of his pocket. You want to feel how warm it is. Have you ever smoked a cigar?

I have.

You have?

Yes.

You say that like it's not something that you're gonna do again.

Probably not, because. I don't know. I mean, I kind of know how to, but every time I do it, I just choke on it.

This isn't a. This isn't a gherkin.

No, no, that's true.

What is a Baghdad? Sure.

That says so.

What does it say? I can't read it.

Trinidad. It's from Trinidad, but it is also a cigar from Florida. So I figured that maybe. Maybe the cigar that got lost. This could be a really nice surrogate. And just consider that from Paul.

I would like to kind of tell everybody not to change the subject, but to change the subject that we are running a contest inside of our membership group. Is that what you'd call it? So if you're on our. On demand or in our coaching, we have put up a short film called the Review, which we're very proud of, what we created, what the team did, and it's kind of a new way of training. It's more of a Short film where the lessons are built in instead of just a talking head kind of preaching at everybody. And we're giving away a PlayStation 5 to anybody who reviews it. Reviews the review.

Perfect.

Would you call that a.

What do you call that review? The review? A double entendre.

Double entendre.

Wow.

Something. So make sure if you're inside of On Demand, that you're checking for those links and the rules of how we're doing that. But I'm looking forward to seeing some of those reviews. And the PlayStation 5 is very hard to get.

Yeah. And we have one just for this contest. Right. And the contest ends soon.

Yeah.

Well, you gotta hurry up, because time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like a banana.

Mia's kind of cynical. She doesn't. Yeah, that was. You guys look like you need a little energy. Are you a big fan of energy drinks?

No. No, I'm not.

Okay, good. Well, I got you one.

Nothing like a little peer pressure to welcome you to the show. Mia, this is gonna be awesome.

Our. What would you call them? Our resident muscle head.

Yes, we would call him our resident muscle head.

Our resident musclehead who's a. Who's our trainer. Or I guess my trainer loves this stuff. It's called rain.

And. But it's a little bit. You're gonna feel like you're gonna have a heart attack.

Oh, that's fun.

But I just want. At the top of the show, I thought it would be interesting if you guys drank a little bit of this. So it's jalapeno something.

So it's spicy.

It's a spicy jalapeno strawberry.

Bottoms up. Me.

I'm sorry.

Bottoms up.

It's gonna be wonderful.

Jalapeno strawberry. It's not spicy, but I want to see a transformation. I'm excited to see through the show. If you guys start talking faster, maybe a higher pitch. If you have a hard time holding, like, holding still. If you're real fidgety, it might. Since you have ADD so bad, it might have the reverse effect and you might fall asleep.

That's true.

So.

Side of service Drive revolution. This is a science experiment. So what do you. What do you think about the flavor?

It's actually really good.

Yeah, it's great, right?

I don't like the.

The jalapeno and strawberry is confusing to my taste buds.

But it works.

Like, there's a lot of. A lot going on.

Yeah, it'd make a really nice cocktail.

Yeah.

Like, actually had a little tequila in it.

Or vodka.

Okay, I'm in.

Or Tequila.

Sorry. You're right. Tequila. Yep.

Also, one. One more thing before we get to our topic of post. Covid pain is if you're not inside of our Facebook group, there's a lot of fun stuff going on in there. And Christian's gonna read one of them here in a minute. But there's some. There's some great conversations going on that you're missing out on if you're not in there. So make sure you go to the Chris Collins, Inc. And request to be in the Facebook group, and somebody will help you through that. They will check your background, make sure you're not a consultant. Right.

Because sometimes they can sneak through by.

Go spy on you.

Yes, definitely.

There's a cut there. There is a couple people that we automatically, like, don't let into anything because they're just a pain in the ass.

Yeah.

We have a list, and I would imagine that they probably at some point will create another Facebook. And then, like, you almost turn that.

Into a show, like, where people. People are pretending to be other people on the Internet, and then they meet people.

What.

I think they call it fishing.

Fishing. You could have just said that.

You've been here most of the week, hanging out, and we've been working on some things together. They were kind of fun. What is the biggest surprise kind of coming in from the outside, not really knowing us coming into the office and the crew and the team. Besides Michael's jokes.

Top notch, by the way.

Yeah. Michael's jokes or sense of humor? Yes, all of it. What would.

And by the way, Michael's in charge of switching the board right now, if anybody wants who Michael is. But what's the biggest surprise coming in seeing us from the outside? Right. You're like. Because it's not what you see on the show isn't really what we're like. Probably.

Yeah.

It's not the full story.

Yeah.

Probably. That you guys are genuinely like, terrible human beings.

No, it's the opposite, actually. Like, the fact that you guys are just like, you. You're real. You know, you're not. I feel like a lot of people online or on TV or on YouTube or podcasts are so, like. I don't know. It's like a fake personality.

Take it till you make it kind of a thing.

Yeah. Or they pretend to be somebody that they're not purely for clout or for views. And you guys are genuine on both sides.

And that surprise you. You thought, like, I would be in a little more.

Like, tell me what you thought coming in, like. And you can Be honest. I don't. But what did you think coming in? You thought I would be a little more of a pain in the ass?

Yeah. Or a little scarier how though? I don't know, like a little bit more aggressive maybe when it comes to like, your. Your expectations. But you are, you are very aggressive with your expectations. But I was expecting that. But like.

Way more like in a scary way, I think.

Like, scary how?

I don't know how to explain it. Like, I didn't think you were.

What, mean?

No, like, I didn't think you were gonna be mean. I think I was expecting you to be a lot more imposing. I also wasn't expecting you to be as tall as you are.

Oh, I look short on the Internet.

You don't look short on the Internet. But you're abnormally tall. But I am also short, so I.

Like to say that we're normal. And he's abnormally tall.

Yeah. How tall are you?

Six, seven? Not that tall.

Seven. One.

No, I'm. I'm like, I'm a hair under six. Two.

Yeah. Then I'm just really short because that seems really, really tall to me.

Really?

Yeah.

Oh, that's. Okay, that's. I like that. I. I always think it's interesting when I meet people and they're.

They have an expectation of me to be different than what I am. So I'm asking that question and just trying to understand how I can make people more comfortable. Because I feel like sometimes I make people uncomfortable and it's not my intention, but I just show up in the room and people aren't comfortable. I have an effect.

It's the bulldog attitude.

Have a presence.

It can be intimidating. I wasn't intimidated. I was. I think I was just expecting you to be more intimidating. And you're so.

I disappointed you.

I'm so disappointed.

Intimidation?

No.

Okay, so the subject that we're going to talk about today is post Covid pain. And I've been saying this for a long time on coaching calls, that there is a pent up demand because traffic has been down and people haven't been driving as much. People have been working from home. Traffic is down, but the lid's coming off of that dude. And traffic is up. And now what we're seeing on our coaching calls and in the conversations we're having is we've cut back our support staff, we've cut back our advisors and techs, and now we're going from a situation where we were running out of work to we're booked out weeks and we can't handle. And like a little. Were you saying a little less than half of our clients are tracking to have best months ever?

Yeah, and not by a little bit. Like they're blowing old records out of the water right now. It's so much fun to watch. Like, it's, it's definitely something. I think that in general that the group would agree that they weren't as ready for it as they should have been, even though we've all been kind of talking about it for a really long time. But there is a lot of demand right now and it's just, it's, it's kind of a feasting time. So it's pretty cool.

Now the thing that I would say, and you, you guys jump in here, but the thing I would say here is, is you gotta remember a couple things. You gotta remember that the person interacting with the customers is the advisor. And you still have to approach this like we control the faucet. And if we think that advisors can go from writing 10 a day to 20 a day and we can maintain consistency, you're crazy. You have to either grow your systems and add more advisors and techs or you have to control the amount that's coming in. Now if you're controlling the amount of traffic coming in, in this situation, you're gonna get booked out. And once you get booked out past a couple weeks, your no show rate is gonna go up quite a bit. So I don't believe that from now until the end of the year things are going to slow down. They're only going to pick up because, and this is, this is being reported everywhere. Even though gas prices are high, people want to get the hell out and they are going to drive this summer, they are going to take road trips this summer. They are going to be moving around because people feel pent up and they want to get out and about. So more people are going to be driving somewhere on weekends. They're going to be going to parks, national forest, all kinds of things. Traffic is going to be way up. So you want to scale now, get ready now, add advisors and techs now because the traffic is not going to slow down whatsoever. It's only going to grow through the summer. This will possibly be one of the busiest summers across the board that we've ever seen. But you will miss out on that opportunity if you don't build the capacity to serve those customers. And what happens is if you don't get ready for this sort of thing is you're going to piss them off and they're never coming back. So you're going to have all this opportunity served up. It's going to be there and all you have to do is reach down and pick it up. But if you, if you're complacent and you think that with, you know, the same amount of advisors and the same amount of text, you're going to be able to over deliver and that your advisors can go from writing 12 a day to 25 a day and maintain a customer experience that's just acceptable. You're crazy. And we're not even talking about over delivering. What we really want to do is over deliver and be a hero to those customers.

We won't be even delivering an average experience if we don't get ahead of it. So now's the time to hire and build. You can take a little bit of a leap of faith right now, I think, and hire more techs and advisors than you think you need. Although I would say in our experience, everybody needs more techs.

Yep.

It's still the number one discussion. And I think the big thing is knowing that there's so much work coming in this summer. Like you can get really creative with what the value is going to be of that technician this summer. So even things that maybe you might have done before in terms of offering incentives for people to come in, come on board your team, I would probably move that up even more. It's just really, really important for us to get the team in place before it gets crazy.

Because trying to train during that kind of rush is not helping anybody. And it's not productive at all because everybody's going to be too busy to train and then training falls to the wayside.

I have a couple friends that have just been driving. Like they'll just drive to Arizona. They'll just. Because they're just sick of being in the house. They just want to get out and they don't really even know where they're going. They just want to get out. And I think that this summer we're going to experience that. Families are going to go on trips, camping. All of that is going to. It'll be the busiest it's ever been, I think.

Well, even last summer was like that too. Right. So weren't RV shops having like some record years and stuff like that? With sales of RVs and the RV rentals were going crazy. I expect that same thing to be. Be actually worse this year. I think it's going to be amazing what our opportunities. But yeah, a lot of people are taking the road to nowhere Aren't they? I mean, they're just getting in and they're. They're going. It's pretty cool. Time for a road trip.

That's what I did all last summer.

Wait, so I thought that was going to be a joke, but was that a joke? Was that a Christian joke?

No.

Didn't that feel like a setup? Like, a lot of people are taking the road to nowhere? I would really say something about, you know. But what would be the punchline to that?

You let us down.

Yeah, totally. It's okay, though.

You caught me off guard. Yeah. I was like, oh, here he goes.

Right. So now I'm trying to disguise my segues.

Be really careful, you guys. Seriously, like, don't burn through customers by. By, you know, taking them for granted. Like, this is the time where you can build your rate, your retention, and your RO count, because you're going to have opportunity. But the things you need to focus on is answering the phone, being available when customers, you know, they're going to wait until Thursday to get their car service to go on a road trip on Friday. You need to build the capacity in order to get them in. You need to make it easy for them to get in. You need to make it easy for them to call on the phone. So think about all the little things. Like, those things matter. Answering the phone when somebody calls, being available for them to come in, spending time with them, actually calling them back or over calling them. You know, that stuff matters. So don't take it for granted. You. Everybody has a tremendous opportunity sitting in front of you, and it's how you plan and execute on that that's going to determine what happens next year.

I love it.

Yep.

Any closing thoughts on that? Mia, how's the energy drink feeling?

Fine.

I feel like all you did is sip it. I don't feel like. I don't feel like this is a scientific experiment.

Unless you like, well, if I chug it, I'm gonna belch really loud, and.

I don't think I want that makes for good podcasting.

Okay, so you'd want it. And.

No, I don't want to get the, you know, the fizzy feeling up your nose when you drink soda too fast. Yeah.

Like wasabi.

I guess since this has jalapeno in it, it would probably burn a lot if that happened.

No, it's. It's kind of like a fake jalapeno.

Yeah.

It never burns.

But it's there, though. It's kind of an interesting.

I'm impressed. I'm not gonna lie. Like, I would actually go out of my way to drink this, and I don't do energy drinks.

I actually just recently stopped drinking coffee.

I'm so sorry.

That's all right. I switched to tea, but I noticed every time I'm drinking the tea, I get this horrible pain in my eye. So I went to the doctor and I told him about it, and he's like, you need to take the spoon out before you drink.

Mmm.

How'd I do? Good.

That was pretty good.

I was thinking about doing it while you drank to see if I could get you to spit the.

Let's not do that.

Spit take. I can do a spit take if you want.

All right. I don't even know what it is, but I'm in.

It's an on command spit. I was gonna say. I didn't even realize that that was gonna be a joke, because at first I'm like, you have coffee right there.

That's the brilliance of what Christian does. It sneaks up. You don't even know it's gone.

So the fake segue was actually a setup for that joke.

Hey. Yeah, it was good. Well done.

Thank you.

Yep.

So another thing that we've asked Ms. Mia to do is to do, like, your little countdowns. I'm huge fan of. Of your stuff on TikTok, and you just crack me up. So today we're going to talk about the difference between base, class, place, base plus commission versus commission.

Yes.

And this is specifically for advisors.

Service advisors. Whether you should pay them a base plus commission or straight commission.

Yeah.

So tell. Tell us your thoughts on this.

You know, being in service for the past 10 years and working on both sides, where I've worked dealership and I've worked independent, and I've had both pay plans or pay setups or whatever you want to call it. Just for my personal experience, when I worked at dealerships that were set on that full commission.

Pay plan, it just. And maybe it's not even the commission that's the problem, but it always created such a cutthroat attitude between everybody, which I obviously have a problem with. I don't think anybody really likes the cutthroat, you know?

So what percentage of the pay do you think should be commission versus base?

I'm trying to. Trying to remember how it was at my last shop, but I don't remember off the top of my head, so I couldn't tell you.

You're not really one to worry too much about the pay thing.

No, I do. It matters.

I still tell you my pay Plan for being an advisor 25 years ago.

Wow.

Because I used to just sit there and figure out every day what I was tracking to make.

Yeah. I mean, when I was working at the last dealership I worked at, I made. I want to say it was 1.8% gross off of gross. And then this is a completely other topic. All the male Advisors made 2.3, so.

Really?

Yep. So. And maybe that's why I also have a problem.

How many female advisors were there?

It was just me. I've only. I've only been the only. Ever been the only female in service.

I've got clients where they're only females.

I think it's a collar.

I have never seen where the pay plan for a female advisor was less than a male. Ever.

That's usually how it was. Where. I mean, I'm from Colorado and I don't know if they're less progressive there. They could be, but I was. Yeah. I was always the only female and I usually made less or I was on a different pay plan. Even if I had more experience. It was so weird.

And I was Colorado less progressive?

No, I don't think so.

I feel means they are.

Well, I think that all. All states have their goods and bads. Right. Like we can probably find it.

What's, what's. What's good about North Dakota?

Everyone's really sweet there.

What's bad about it that if you.

Want to collect 100 people, you actually have to get everyone in the state to volunteer to come to the same place at the same time.

Have you been to like every state?

What's good about Alaska?

The northern lights. And also it's a great fishing industry.

I feel like you read that in Wikipedia or something. Have you been to Alaska?

No. So it's one of the few states I haven't been to.

What states haven't you been to?

Okay, so I've got Alaska, Wyoming.

You've never been to Wyoming?

Nope.

Idaho.

Maine.

Oregon and Washington. I'm almost done.

I'm sorry, what was the second to last one?

He said it wrong. Oregon.

Oregon.

What is it again in Oregon? So Oregon and Washington.

It's not origami.

That's great.

I've probably almost been to every state twice.

Wow.

I have a lot of catching up to do.

How many states have you been to?

Not enough. I could count on my hands how many I've been to.

Okay, so what do you. What do you think about her position on. So we. We need to table the whole idea of that females would get paid different than males, because that seems.

Seems crazy. So let's just talk about commission and, and base.

Yeah.

It is crazy if it, if it happens. But like I said, I haven't witnessed that happen, so I don't think it's that commonplace. I think that's an isolated, weird, nutty thing that you experienced.

Then it could also really quickly boil down to when I was a new advisor, I didn't quite have the backbone that I do now. And I don't think I had that authority or advocated for myself properly. So it probably could have been partially my fault of letting them walk all over me, you know, because I would never allow that to happen.

Now, I don't know. You're at a huge disadvantage if that's the pay plan because you also run the risk of, you know, getting terminated if you complain about that or whatever. So that's a weird situation to be in. But I'm just saying that is fairly isolated in that I've. Most of the time the female advisors in a drive when we're doing a pay plan are the top performers. And there was. You would never. It would never even cross your mind when we're changing a pay plan that you would pay a female less. What you're trying to do is figure out how to make the pay plan so they're okay. You know, because a pay plan change is always hard too. Nobody likes it.

Yeah.

So you're always trying to navigate how to sell them on it. Not that there would be a different one from. I don't even know how. How you would come up with that idea that the male and female pay plans would be different.

And I just don't understand what the. Is it really worth it to save the like,.5%? Like, I don't understand the logic would be such people that. Yeah, it's horrible.

Well, they, they would. In my experience, all of those employers told you that you're not allowed to know everybody else's pay.

Well, in my experience, that never happens.

Everyone finds out what everybody else pays.

It's almost like they leave that. They leave whatever meeting and, you know, group text everybody.

Yeah, I'm pretty. They send pictures of their paper.

So whoever that, whoever that leader manager is, is extremely naive. And I, I have a gherkin cigar I'd like to sell them kind of warm.

It's from Trinidad and doesn't say Gurkha on it at all, but it's a Gurkha.

Okay, so what's your, what's your take before. Before I tell you mine? What's your take on the base plus commission versus commission. And I am wondering if you will have the same opinion. Hoping. I'm hoping to God, Christian, that you give the right answer here. That's really what I'm trying to say.

Oh, the right answer.

So don't mess this up.

I'll do my best.

What is your feeling if you're an advisor, Little base plus commission or pure commission?

My preference is to work off of pure commission.

I will see myself out. I'm just kidding.

Tell me why.

So my belief was always that if I was on pure commission, I could always beat any kind of salary that was out there. So I knew that the harder I worked, the better I took care of customers, the more I executed, making sure that the experience was phenomenal, that the sky was the limit in terms of what I could make. And I think that. And maybe that's the thing, is that the pay plan that or the advisor that's attracted to that pay plan is that person that wants to shoot for the sky and thinks that everything is their opportunity. Nia would. I would challenge you that. The whole no teammate thing, that's way more of a personality and hiring issue. I would only hire people in that were part of the team and saw and loved customers so much that they couldn't handle seeing another advisor not take care of a customer. So when there was a time for you to hop in and get it, you would. But my belief is that I think that if I'm an advisor, I want to create my own destiny.

Right.

But I would say one other thing to the getting along thing too. But back to the pay plan thing is, you know, we've in our lifetime created thousands of pay plans for service advisors. Probably you know why we put a base in a pay plan?

Tell me.

To keep the advisors from making too much money. Okay, so if you just think about this for a second. If you. If you're writing service and you get 5%.

And you write $200,000 in parts and labor, what are you making?

I failed math, so 10 grand. Thank you.

Okay, let's say you have a base of three grand, but you're getting 2%. What are you making?

Seven.

Seven.

Good job.

So it's a way for us to.

Control the upside for the advisors.

You're doing crazy numbers. 200,000 in parts and labor, which is really good for an advisor. You're up there, you're in the top 5% of advisors, but you're making 7 instead of 10.

And then your lower performer is not making that Much less when it's a salary thing, too. So I think that that's the hard part, is you reward me.

The other.

So we put minimum requirements in that kind of COVID the bottom. So the minimum requirements protect us at the bottom, but we strategically would put a base in there to keep the advisors from making 12 or 15 grand.

That does make sense. And I actually. I never thought of it that way, but I think a lot of this boils down to the fact that our experiences are so vastly different, whether it's because of where we grew up or that kind of stuff. Because in my experience at the dealerships where I was full commission. I mean, I. I'm sure every advisor would say this, but I worked my butt off every single day and tried to get along with my team. And I'm sure you guys have all heard the TikTok stories of, you know, terrible teammates who, you know, stab you in the back and everything. When I worked at an independent shop that had a base plus commission.

We had a much smaller volume because we were a small independent. There was just two advisors, so me and my co worker, and we were easily combined selling 150 to 200,000 on parts and sales a month, just between the two of us. And the base was small. Like, if it was just the base, it was not nearly enough to live off of. And then the commission was 0.5 off of.

I don't remember what it was off of anyways. But we kind of. It was a team effort where I didn't just make the commission off of what I sold and vice versa. It was pooled. And I made so much more money that way and sold a lot more that way. And that shop hit like 2 million in sales for the first time in history because of that.

But I think a lot of that does boil down to how the team works together.

Okay, so let's talk about that for a second. So what. What is the purpose at the end of the day of a. Of a service department? Like what. What determines a good outcome?

Like, at the end of the day.

Yeah. By the end of the month or the end of the year, the end of a lifetime, it's all the same. I wish I would have a Christian joke right there.

There's one in there somewhere waiting for it. Yeah. No.

Oh, okay.

But I mean, what drives profit? What drives growth? What drives progress in a parts service department? I mean, really, you can say any business, but specifically.

What'S the important outcome.

Of what we do?

Customers satisfaction.

And so I've seen many times a Toxic work environment that had a great customer experience. In fact, some of the number one dealerships that you'll see in this country that we've worked in or worked with that are iconic and huge. The behind the scenes is super, super toxic.

Really.

And people are, you would call it stabbing in the back.

Yeah.

But the customer experience is incredible.

And so you have to understand that from a 10,000 foot view of profitability and caring about customers.

The two aren't connected. And this whole thing.

That happy employees equal happy customers.

Sometimes, sometimes it would be the ideal way, but it isn't always true. I mean, it's a little bit of a trick bag because if you spend too much time.

Well, I wouldn't even say that. The problem with that scenario is that a lot of managers are lazy and not good at recruiting. And so if you have this team of boobs or whatever you call them, what would be a better word? Numb nuts or something like you have a team of numb nuts.

Yeah.

And then you're like, well, I want to make my team of numb nuts happy because then they will make the customers happy. It ends up, at the end of the day, it's impossible to make numb nuts happy. They're never happy. In fact, all you do is make them more entitled.

Yeah.

So they get more entitled, the customer experience gets worse. And at the end of the day you're like, well, I read this leadership book that said happy employees equal happy customers.

Love your numb nuts.

And it's like, well, the thing that they forgot to tell you.

In that book is that you need to recruit people that aren't entitled, that have an internal locus of control, that are performers. And the problem is most of those managers, their image of themselves isn't that they have super talented people working for them. Most of the time, leaders hire people that are like them. And so you got all these numb nuts sitting around going, happy employees. And sometimes you come in there and throw a bomb in the middle and. But does that make sense?

It does.

It's a complicated thing, but many times I've seen a toxic environment that produces an amazing result.

Yeah. I mean, you and I have discussed this in the past about. I always root for the underdog. That's just what I do. But I don't disagree with what you're saying. I think I just view it differently. So when I think of happy employees, like a manager making their employees happy, I'm not talking about them kissing their butt or doing whatever their employees want to make them happy. I'm talking about a true Team environment where you can trust your team. And it's not just between manager and employee, it's between the whole team. And I know that, you know, in the past I've said that I got screwed over so many times that I stopped caring about the family feeling between me and my team because it was just. It never worked. And I think that there's still a part of me that desperately wishes I had had that, because at those dealerships where I was struggling like that, if my team and I actually truly got along and actually worked together, the sky could have been the limit. So maybe it was more so less about commission versus salary and more about the experience and how that affected my opinion of it. I don't know.

If you kind of look at it from a micro scale though, we're talking about the same thing, but maybe I'm not explaining it right is that some of the best service advisors out there will run everybody else over. They don't want you talking to their customers. When I was a service advisor, I didn't want anybody talking to my customers.

They would go to lunch, I would get the tow ins, I would get there early and get the night drops. And I guarantee you there's a list of advisors that if you talk to them and they said, oh, you wrote service with Chris Collins. They would say he was super aggressive, wasn't a team player, whatever, whatever. But it's so hard in a service department to just. Especially the ones I worked in that were so messed up. It's so hard just to take care of your customers, let alone worry about your doofus workmates that show up late, complain, don't really. And so that's what I'm trying to say is there's environments where you have four or five really, really strong advisors, that their sole focus is the customer and they run everybody else over and they're there to make money and they don't care, but they take really good care of their customers. But they're not the best. They're not the best collaborators.

So my question is, where do we draw the line with that? Because.

I don't necessarily.

It depends on who we are.

Exactly.

So if we're an advisor looking for a tribe, then that wouldn't be the environment. But if you're a manager or somebody running a shop looking for a great customer experience and profit, you might care less about everybody sitting around playing bongos, taking care of each other. Does that make sense?

Yes.

In every situation where I've been convinced to put the advisors on a communal communism Pay plan, it's backfired. The numbers and the customer experience has gone down. Okay, and what happens when I, so I literally, when I do something like that, I literally do try to understand.

What, what are the, what are the strings that are being pulled here that create this outcome?

Right.

And so when you, when you put them on a communism pay plan, I remember this happened to me in a dealership here where they convinced me because they, we were running three advisors on four tens and it was during construction and it was like, well, this one advisor doesn't have as many opportunities but they're covering, they were like a swing shift, right. So we're going to put them all in a communism pay plan. And I was like, it won't work. They're like, come on, you know, blah, blah, blah, you're closed minded, whatever. I'm like, okay, we'll try it. So we do it and.

After it didn't work and I kind of dig in to try to figure out why.

What do you think is the disconnect in the customer experience if you're paid on a pooled CSI bonus? The three of us, right, so we're three advisors and we all split our CSI bonus three ways. What do you think is the disconnect that you don't follow up with my customer?

The motivation isn't there because the way.

It'S sold to me is well, Mia is going to take care of your customers when you're not there. That's how it's sold because she's pooling, she's part of the pool of the pay that's going to get divided by everybody. But in actual reality you're so busy with your customers, you don't care about my customers and it's still an inconvenience and you're not going out of your way to take care of my customers. And also it diminishes the value of the CSI bonus to a degree because you don't affect it directly. Because I affect it. Christian affects it and you affect it. For you to over perform is diminished by a third.

So back up a little bit because in my experience, every dealership that I've worked at, everybody did affect the csi.

No, I'm saying your pay, your CSI bonus is only affected by a third because if you move, if Christian and I, our CSI stays at 90 and let's say the difference in the bonus is $500 between 90 and 92 or 93 or whatever. So Christian and I are 90 and you go to 93, you're going to split that $500 with us. You don't get it directly, but if you get it directly, you'll go to 95 while us two boobs will still be at 90. And so it's diminished by a third. So you're at. Whatever extra effort you put in is diminished by whatever the. You know, I worked in a service drive where the pay was split by five advisors. So if I wrote 200, I never wrote 200,000 there, but if I wrote 140 and the other guy wrote 40 and another guy wrote 60 and 70 or whatever, does it pay for me to ride 140 if it's diminished by a fifth?

Right. And I'm not necessarily like, it's not the communal or the, I guess the communist pay plan is what you call it. I think that was just like a one off situation. But even if it was base plus commission just for that individual too.

Just from my experience, and maybe it's just because I'm a very optimistic person and I'm very.

What'S the, what's the word? I care about everybody even if I shouldn't, you know, even my teammates and stuff like that. There's, there's, there's such a, like when I was talking about, you know, where does, where's the line like morality wise with that? I mean you can be the bulldog, you can be aggressive and you know, just go to work and do your thing and you know, run over all the other advisors. That's fine as long as you're being honest. And that was always my biggest issue is that all the problems that I had at dealerships where the commission was so cutthroat and you had those advisors that were, you know, they were very aggressive and strong personalities, which is totally fine, but they were using dishonesty in order to be that way. And that's where I, well, that's, that's.

On leadership because it's really important that that stuff be in writing. Right? Because a lot of times what happens is. So let's say that the rule is that if you offer something to a customer and they come back within the next 90 days and get it, get the work done, it goes back to the same tech or advisor. All that stuff needs to be in writing and there needs to be a leader there that enforces that. But most of the time that stuff is not in writing. It's a who feels what, when, and it's an emotional decision. And I hate emotional decisions. Whenever I'm dealing with salespeople or anything like That I put that stuff in writing and I let the paper make the decision because, like, you know, we'll have scenarios with salespeople where like, you know, we, we six months ago, somebody we talked to and then they. Today they buy, but it's a different salesperson and all that. It's in writing. And so if you haven't followed up with that customer in a certain amount of time, it's open. And you can, you know, you can say that it's not fair, whatever. But we all agreed to it. We all sat down and we agreed at one time that that's how it was. And so I think that that fixes that issue is if it's in writing and you have a leader that is very black and white, that these are the rules we stand by, then I think, I think that's easier to navigate if it's vague and emotional. I don't know that I could work in a place like that too long just because I would get. I would.

That was the issue.

And, you know, it's hard to overlook day in and day out buffoonery. I've been in places where advisors would go in and change the RO to their number.

I've seen that before too. It's horrible.

I've talked about this so many times.

And I don't share that that's on the leader.

And honestly, after, like talking about this with you, I think you have changed my mind a little bit because you have helped me realize that maybe a lot of this just boils down to bad leadership.

Well, just having a different pay plan for females versus male is weird.

That's a whole other conversation.

I wouldn't expect that leader to also run a fair.

No, it's not fair to begin with.

Anyways. Yeah, you're right. I think it just boils down to leadership because when I think about it, the independent shop that I worked at where we had a lot of success as a team and you know, all that, the shop manager was probably the best shop manager I'd ever had. So that probably did have. That did have a lot of.

Probably more to do with it than the pay plan itself. I think that that's the thing is that the pay plan sometimes becomes the, like, scapegoat for the horrible environment that we're in. And we were like, oh, it's because the pay plan, but it's not. It's because of all the people that are. It's the, the rules, the system and the culture. Right?

Yeah, I guess that, that, that is, that is a Very good point. I think there's a lot that needs to be worked on in order to truly make that full commission base or the full commission pay plan, like really, truly work. But once again, that just boils down to the fact that my experience has always been terrible on that front and then great with the base plus commission. So experience can change your outlook too.

Yeah. And also I think you do have to understand that.

The man with a hammer. To the man with a hammer, the world is a nail. I come at this from a perspective of an advisor that knows how to perform and knows how to create numbers and create customer enthusiasm and loyalty. And. And so I'm going to have a different mindset and approach because I'm not trying to placate to the lowest common denominator. And so I go back to what I was saying earlier is it is about selection because, you know, a lot of these guys, they read these leadership books and it's like, oh, you know, happy employees equal happy customers. And it's like there has to be a conversation about who are the employees, because there are a lot of employees that are entitled.

Yeah. And I don't disagree with that.

When you have a culture of entitlement, you can't give them enough. I've, I've dealt with it many times. No, you give. I've, I've had shops where like, you, you gamify and you give somebody $100 bill, and I've literally had them say, well, I can't. Nobody takes a hundred dollar bill. I need 20. And it's like, it's never enough.

Wow.

No, that's happened on several occasions. Like, it's never good enough no matter what you do. So in that situation, you have to consider.

The group that you're dealing with because it isn't a one size fits all. It's a little more complicated. In this leadership book that I'm writing, I kind of, in the beginning do this flip where I give myself permission in the book to tell the truth about this stuff because I feel like a lot of this, you know, John Maxwell, leadership is half the story. It's not really the truth about what's going on. If you want a culture of performance.

You have to look at it from all sides and understand that there's a lot of moving parts that affect the outcome. It isn't just a one size fits all or a, you know, dog whistle that the rule of leadership is this. You know, it's a little different, really fun conversation. So remember, if you're inside of our Family enter to win the PlayStation. Give us a review for the review. If you're not in the Facebook, go there. If you have questions that you want us to answer on the show, remember the hotline is 8333 Ask SDR. That's 8333 Ask SDR. And this is fun. This is a fun conversation. Get ready for the, for the summer bust. Grow now, prepare.

It's all about preparation. Do you have a joke in closing, Christian?

Yeah, I do, actually, believe it or not.

Thanks everybody for tuning in 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.chris collinsinc.com now that's offers.chriscollinsinc.com I'm Chris Collins and I'll see you in the next video.

40. If it's diminished by a fifth, right.

And I'm not necessarily like, it's not the, the communal or the, I guess the communist pay plan is what you call it, that I think that was just like a one off situation. But even if it was base plus commission just for that individual too.

Just from my experience, and maybe it's just because I'm a very optimistic person and I'm very.

What'S the word? I care about everybody even if I shouldn't, you know, even my teammates and stuff like that. There's such a, like when I was talking about, you know, where's the line like morality wise with that? I mean you can be the bulldog, you can be aggressive and just go to work and do your thing and run over all the other advisors. That's fine as long as you're being honest. And that was always my biggest issue is that all the problems that I had at dealerships where the commission was so cutthroat and you had those advisors that were, they were very aggressive and strong personalities, which is totally fine. But they were using dishonesty in order to, to be that way. And that's where I, well, that's, that's.

On leadership because it's really important that that stuff be in writing. Right? Because a Lot of times what happens is. So let's say that the rule is that if you offer something to a customer and they come back within the next 90 days and get it, get the work done, it goes back to the same tech or advisor. All that stuff needs to be in writing, and there needs to be a leader there that enforces that. But most of the time that stuff is not in writing. It's a who feels what, when. And it's an emotional decision. And I hate emotional decisions. Whenever I'm dealing with salespeople or anything like that, I put that stuff in writing and I let the paper make the decision. Because, like, you know, we'll have scenarios with salespeople where like, you know, we.

Six months ago, somebody we talked to and then they. Today they buy, but it's a different salesperson and all that. It's in writing. And so if you haven't followed up with that customer in a certain amount of time, it's open and you can, you know, you can say that it's not fair, whatever. But we all agreed to it. We all sat down and we agreed at one time that that's how it was. And so I think that that fixes that issue is if it's in writing and you have a leader that is very black and white, that these are the rules we stand by, then I think, I think that's easier to navigate if it's vague and emotional. I don't. I don't know that I could work in a place like that too long just because I would get. I would.

That that was the issue.

And, you know, hard to overlook day in and day out. Yeah, buffoonery. It's. I've been in places where advisors would go in and change the RO to their number.

I've seen that before too. It's horrible.

I've talked about this so many times and I don't want to.

That's on the leader.

And honestly, after, like talking about this with you, I think you have changed my mind a little bit because you have helped me realize that maybe a lot of this just boils down to bad leadership. And it.

And, well, just having a different pay plan for females versus male is weird.

Yeah, that's a whole other conversation.

I wouldn't expect that leader to also run a fair. No, it's not fair to begin with.

And yeah, anyways. Yeah, you're right. I think it just boils down to leadership because when I think about it, the independent shop that I worked at where we had a lot of success as A team. And, you know, all that. The. The shop manager was probably the best shop manager I'd ever had. So that probably did have. That did have a lot of.

Probably more to do with it than the pay plan itself. I think that that's the thing is that the pay plan sometimes becomes the, like, scapegoat for the horrible environment that we're in. And we were like, oh, it's because the pay plan, but it's not. It's because of all the people that are. It's the. The rules, the system and the culture.

Right, Yeah, I guess that.

Is a very good point. I think there's a lot that needs to be worked on in order to truly make that full commission base or the full commission pay plan really truly work. But once again, that just boils down to the fact that my experience has always been terrible on that front and then great with the base plus commission. So experience can change your outlook too.

Yeah. And also, I think you do have to understand that, you know.

The man with a hammer. To the man with a hammer, the world is a nail. I come at this from a perspective of an advisor that knows how to perform and knows how to create numbers and create customer enthusiasm and loyalty. And so I'm going to have a different mindset and approach because I'm not trying to placate to the lowest common denominator. And so I go back to what I was saying earlier is it is about selection because, you know, a lot of these guys, they read these leadership books and it's like, oh, you know, happy employees equal happy customers. And it's like there has to be a conversation about who are the employees, because there are a lot of employees that are entitled.

Yeah. And I don't disagree with that.

When you have a culture of entitlement, you can't give them enough. I've dealt with it many times.

I've had shops where.