A short Q&A episode from Chris Collins (with co-host Christian) responding to Mike, a service advisor at an RV/power sports store in Idaho, who asks for the best straight-commission pay plan. Hosts recommend keeping a base due to seasonality and propose a simple split: roughly 40% base pay, 40% commission, and 20% bonuses (production/customer-satisfaction tied). They advise keeping the plan to one page and framing it to show benefits to management/owner when presenting.
Chapters
Foreign.
To the big show, this is your Friday drive by. What happens on Fridays is we answer your questions. Whatever's pressing, whatever's bothering you, we. We give it a shot. And most of the time, we give pretty good advice. Most of the time. Not guaranteed, but definitely not guaranteed. The phone number is 8333 ask SDR. That's 8333, ask SDR.
If we play your call in the big show, we send you a swag bag of different stuff. There's a little parts hold. The popular merch right now is parts hold. I'm surprised more parts managers don't call in.
Yeah, I think that when it comes to the training, they ask great questions. When they're doing the face to face then person training.
Parts managers don't have phones.
Parts managers are not afraid to ask questions. So they just gotta dial, dial out. Don't.
3, 3, 3, ask SDR. Okay, let's go to this week's question.
Hello, Chris and Christian. I bought all your books for my team. I've also seen all your videos and I work at an RV power sports store in Idaho. My question for you is, what's the best setup for a straight commission pay plan? Can you break it down? I make a base plus commission, but I'm constantly number one in sales and my ELR is holding up. I think I can do a better pay plan. Help me, please. Thank you so much, by the way. All your assistance has helped me. Thank you, Mike.
I feel kind of bad because I feel like he's saying all the books you guys have written. But I think it's really important for everyone to know that I have never written a book and I didn't have anything to do with those other.
Don't you think that's coming, though?
I would like to write a book.
Yeah. What do you want to write a book on?
So that's the big decision. And I think that after watching what it takes you to write a book, I want to make sure I pick the right topic.
You don't have to. You don't have to do it the way I do it.
You don't think that I would want to make it that, like, that impactful.
What you're going through in your care for the.
What I meant. Oh.
I think that everything you're going through is the way that you should create a book. I've never once thought it wasn't the right way.
You can. I could write romance novels and not put that into it. But if I'm really trying to help the industry. You've got to have a baby or give a baby or kill a baby or some sort of baby analogy that. I don't know.
You give a piece of your soul.
That too. But you know, it feels really good when it's done.
It's almost done.
Yeah.
Like I can see the finish line. There's only a couple more things to do.
You. You're not a hugger, but I'm going to give you the biggest hug.
I'll give you a hug. Yeah.
Yeah. It's fun. It was fun the other day when everybody got to see the prototypes of it.
Super impressive. It's different than anybody's ever seen ever.
We might have those in our hands this week.
Isn't that crazy? Like how now it's. It's real.
Yeah.
Just for everybody listening that doesn't know. It's not one book, it's two. Four books.
At least. Maybe more than four when it's all said.
And it's not like a normal book. It's big. Like more like a coffee table book. It's written more in the style of an art book, which is hard to understand, but when you see it, you'll understand. But it's more of a page turner. Like you could. It's the kind of books like you could just open it up to any page and it would make sense.
Right.
Pay Plan for a service Advisor and Power Sports.
Do you have thoughts on this already? I have a couple.
Well, the first thing is I would have a base just because of the seasonality.
Okay. So we're on the same page.
Yeah.
So normally I don't advocate for high performing advisors to have a salary because I think it. They cut your commission. Power Sports. I want to. I want to kind of smooth it out especially.
What did he say? He was in Idaho.
Idaho.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Beautiful part of the world.
So then. So then I. I would say the base the way that I would design it. And I'm having a hard time here. Is Mike making his own pay plan?
It seems like that. Right. Which I like him already if he's trying to suggest his own pay plan.
Yeah. But it also could confuse him too. I'm not sure.
Maybe. So let's simplify it.
So I'd probably have the base be 40% of the pay. Okay, so let's say that you just for a nice round number, let's say you made a thousand dollars a month, which isn't legal or possible or whatever, but 400 of it would be the.
Base and then 600 would be commission based.
So I would probably do the other 400 would be commission and then 200 would be bonuses.
Production bonuses, customer satisfaction. It's not really.
It doesn't really exist in power sports. So.
It does. And I might do my own like Google reviews maybe. I don't know. Internally there'd be something. There'd be some sort of. There has to be some sort of tie to customer.
Yeah. You can do your own surveys with most of the CRMs and all that now. So that would be. So 40 of it would be the percentage. So you can kind of back into that. Right. So 40 the base, 40% the percentage and then 20 bonuses.
Okay, I like that.
So I hope that answers your question, Mike.
And also when you present this to. I'm guessing you have to present this to the service manager, GM, owner, everything like that. Make sure that you make a big deal of how simple it is because I would guess that whatever pay plan you're on right now is not as simple as it could be.
Yeah. If it can't fit on one page, it's not a pay plan.
Yeah. So I think that. Use that as your guiding light. And another thing, this is really unique thing where an advisor is trying to come up with their own pay plan. I really like this idea, but I think that if there was a way that I could tell you if you want to get this thing approved, I would also point out how the house can win with the pay plan because I think that that's probably one of the things that would attract people. It's like where if you set a pay plan forward and it's only good for the advisor, nobody's going to approve it. But if you really want it to get approved, you have to point out where. Where they win too. Where it's better than the old pay plan. But I do think he can get this done if he presents it right.
Thanks for the question, Mike. Everybody else have a great weekend. We'll see you next time on Service Drive Revolution. Thanks for watching this week's Drive By. I hope we gave you something to think about over the weekend. 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 dot. Chriscollinsinc.com now that's offers dot chriscollinsinc.com I'm Chris Collins, and I'll see you in the next video. Sam.
