Q & A | Training Service Staff Without Sacrificing Output

Foreign.

Welcome to your Friday drive by. This is where Christian and I answer your questions. The questions that are burning through your mind that you're like, hey, if I just had the answer to this one.

Thing, life would be clear.

I could win. I could be somebody. And the number is 8333 Ask STR. That's 8333 Ask STR. And if we play your question on the big show, we are going to send you a swag bag that has all kinds of fun SDR and parts hold merch.

Highly sought after.

Highly sought after. In fact, so sought after we have a backlog of calls. So we're going to double up. So this is a twofer.

Two for.

We'Re gonna blow both sides of your brain.

We're gonna do two drive bys in one today to try to get to some of these. So let's go to the first one.

I'm only, I'm down to one master tech and I've got a couple young guys that are, that I want to develop that are talented but how do I get them to do training without sacrificing tech proficiency? Thanks.

Hey Tim, thanks for the question. So the thing that happens when you're struggling to train your technicians, it also means that you're probably struggling to get the work done that you have, have more work than you have capacity. Right. And I think in a Kia dealership, one master tech could be dangerous in the sense that you have a lot.

Of big jobs, engines specifically.

So to me the answer would be to hire another tech so you have the capacity to train and get ahead of it. The other thing is when you're, if you're struggling to do training then you're going to be struggling to do inspections. You're going to be struggling to do add on work. There's, that's there because if you don't have the time to train, you don't have the time to, you know, do the rest of it. You always want one more technician than you think you need because you'll find capacity. You'll take drive ins in the summer from people out of town. Like we'll figure out how to keep them busy. It's like if they, if we build it, they will come. But if you're trying to teeter on the edge of something and you're running up against capacity, you're always going to struggle in different areas. So the, you know, in every situation you want one more tech than you think you need. So I would hire another tech that's.

My answer, that's pretty good. My grandpappy, he used to.

Old grandpappy laughing, used to say a.

Lot of things to me. But I remember one thing he said to me before he died. He said, hey, are you holding on to that ladder?

And then a another thing he said is, you never want to be penny wise.

And I just got the letter, I just got it.

I was gonna keep going too.

You killed your grandpa.

So I love the delay.

So he also said, do I have.

Early Alzheimer's or what's going on?

No, I thought the delay was perfect on that, but that was good. But he also said, you never want to be penny wise and dollar poor. Yeah, and I always think that, and I've heard this before because of the situation, like you said, the answer is that he needs one more than he thinks he needs. But when it comes to training the young techs.

If you're hesitant to give them the training that they need, you're really being penny wise and dollar poor. And to Chris's point, what I think you're training, if you're not getting them the extra expertise that they need, is you're, you're training them to live in a fight or flight world where everything's an emergency and like that. There's no, there's no system for like, we're actually doing things in a scalable manner. So you really have to look at the long game when it comes to technicians. And what would you invest in someone that's going to generate, on average, you know, $180,000 in gross profit a year for your store? So I would invest a lot in that person and not have, you know, have very, very realistic expectations, very realistic timelines and set them up for success. And if that means that you have to give up a couple of hours so that they can go train for a day or whatever, and you have to do that a couple of times a month or, you know, three times in six months or whatever, then just consider that that's time really, really well invested.

Yeah. Just the question is insight into something else for sure that we're asking.

Yeah. What he's got is that he' production issue and he's also the, he's thinking it's because my people aren't trained well. It's because you don't have enough of the people that can help you with.

All the hard stuff that get another.

Master check and, and grow that other one. You can win both games.

Thanks Tim, for the question. Let's go to the next one.

I need to know how to establish the. The grief with the customer, the walk around.

And so on and so forth. If you give me some pointers on that, I greatly appreciate it.

Thank you for the question, Ton, and for calling in and listening to the show. So form equals function. In this scenario, the. The first thing is you want to set up a system in a scenario where it encourages it, right? So really take a look at how often customers are coming in. Like you're going to have drive ins, right? But you can figure out what percentage of the customers you write every day are appointments versus drive ins. And then on that information you can spread out the appointments, but you want to give yourself 20 minutes in between customers as much as you can. So if you're booking customers every 10 minutes, it's going to be really hard. But 20 minutes seems to be the right amount of time to be able to engage with a customer, call and update a couple customers and then write another customer. So controlling the schedule and the times. Now, when we set up a bdc, one of the things that we will say at the end of the script with the customer when we're making appointment is, you know, do you know where we look, we're located, do you need directions? And then we have an appointment right before you and one after you. So the closer you can be to your point in time, the better we can take care of you. So we're just. And also service drive judo that we have. If you're not in our coaching or on demand, you probably don't know what that means. But there's a process in the service drive that we do also that kind of forces this form equals function. So but you want to control that part of things. Then the next part, I think is just this is all about you and your presence and your ability to control, right? So you can sit back 200 yards and watch a service drive from far away, from far enough away that you can't hear what anybody is saying, but you can see the body language and you can tell the advisors that are in control and the ones that aren't. The ones that aren't in control, the customers are on their cell phone, they have their back to them. They're not engaged. And so you just need to take control. And the easiest way to take control is just to tell the customer what's about to happen. So, hey, we're going to go out to your car, we're going to check it out together and then come back in and write a repair order. Follow me.

It's not a question.

Just take Control. Start telling people what to do and they just, it's, it's an unbelievable thing. But they will do what you tell them to do. Yeah.

So.

So have you ever gone, gone and seen an orchestra play before?

I have.

Okay, what does every orchestra have that keeps it on time?

Conductor.

I think of the single.

Did I get that right? Yeah, ring a bell thing when I get it right.

That was a great job, Chris. You got it right right out of the gate. So I think of like the single point advisor, the one advisor that kind of runs the whole store I think is special person typically. Right. So they are a conductor. And I think of it this way. So the techs are like the, the woodwinds, the customers like the strings and then like support staff and stuff like that. Those are percussion that they kind of just keep the time and keep things moving and flowing and everything like that. So the service advisor is the conductor. So I think that what you have to do is organize your orchestra so that everyone's in time with each other. So the greatest thing that I would say is that customers for starters have a huge amount of empathy for the single advisor. I've also noticed that the techs in a lot of cases have a lot of empathy for the single point advisor. So what I would say is that playing, looking at your 10 hour day as a concert that's being played and that the, you know that the woodwinds are going to be playing at this certain time and then you've got time where you're going to take the strings and then the percussions just kind of keeping things going the whole day. Treat it like that and everybody will be way more successful and way more efficient. The other thing that I would tell you is the biggest fear that single point advisors have is that if they have a line of three or four cars, they'll make those three or four cars that are beyond the initial one. Wait. And I would tell you that in almost every case I'd be like, hey Chris, I've got three cars right behind you. I'm just going to run and make sure that they know that I see them. I'll be right back with you. And you go and you do a quick intro to the. Just touch them really quickly, then come back and then you continue the, you continue the symphony. So over communicating with text, with support staff and customers is the best way to make that show run by yourself. Think of yourself as the conductor.

Great, great answer. Cool. Well, thanks Todd for the question. Thanks Tim for the question. And remember the number is 8333 Ask STR. And 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.

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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.