Rude Service Managers

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I'm a service manager at a mom and pop place. I order all the parts, answer all the phones, bill it, build estimates, and sell ros. We have a shop foreman, four mechanics, and eight lifts. In the last year, we've gone from averaging 36,000amonth to 125amonth. And I was just wondering if you could give us some insight on retail fleet split, whether it should be a 70, 30, you know, something like that, or just any tips and tricks. We've kind of grown a lot faster than we thought we would, and we just want to get a handle on everything, organize everything and just kind of get a handle on our business and continue to grow. So we figured we reach out to the experts. Love the show. Thanks for all the tips and tricks. We probably watch it every day, so.

Thank you for the question, Cody. The idea that there's a formula for retail versus fleet is really more based on the kind of business you want to design. There's, there's a lot of shops out there that are doing 100% fleet. That's how their business is designed. And they scale and are very, very profitable. There's also dealers out there that will sell mostly fleet and they're doing, you know, they'll sell police cars and then they'll actually put the, they'll, they'll retrofit the cars with the sirens and everything that that specific government department wants.

So really it's, what do you, what do you want to design? What do you want the outcome to be? The thing historically is that the retail has a higher margin because usually fleet, you negotiate a preset price and so if you're, let's say a year ago you negotiated 1,25 an hour and you got technicians making, you know, a pretty good clip or you hired in some technicians that are making more per hour than you had previously. That can cut into your gross profit. But I would say sometimes in those scenarios you're just going to raise it the next time and you're going to, you're going to have a little lower gross profit on those tax for a while. But when you renegotiate it, you can negotiate a higher price. Retail is a little bit different in the sense that you could change your retail prices tomorrow and the customers don't really know because they don't have a pre negotiated price with you. So they're just two different business models. I love both business models.

The thing about fleet sometimes is almost more captive and they need whatever it is pretty quick, right. Because it's usually companies or government agencies and downtime is affecting them in a negative way. So I don't, I don't have an exact formula for it, but.

You can always grow both. And so if you're 70, 30 right now, try to see if you can get your retail to 50 and be 50, 50 by expanding your technician count and your availability. Maybe.

This year make it a goal to get good at marketing retail. To get more, more retail in would be a good exercise for you and for your team to do. But there's not really a formula. It's just well executed business on both fronts and it's kind of up to you to guide where you want it to go.

I'm new to the auto industry as a service writer and I used to be a service writer at a boat dealership. So I'm three months into this. My service manager that I was hired into was let go about a week ago and they have hired a new service manager who has no experience and he is 24 years old.

He's really rude to the customers by talking to them, telling me to get a deposit of $500 for certain people. I don't know really what to do.

About it because you're anonymous. I'm going to call you Jane Doe if that's okay. So Jane, there's maybe two parts to this question or two answers. One is, you know, a 24 year old kid coming in as a manager that, you know there's going to be a level of maturity that probably isn't there.

You know, I was 24 fixing service departments and I certainly in hindsight could have done things a lot different. But you just learn with. With time. So you're going to have to either.

You know, just accept the idea that you're going to try to contribute to the manager's success, or you're out, and then you're out. And I guess going over his head is. Is a step. I would just say be honest about it and tell him the truth of how you feel, and that might help him learn and get better. On the deposit side, I'm very familiar with wanting to get deposits for a couple reasons. So sometimes in some areas, customers.

Will not want to pay for things. And so getting a deposit up front is pretty common, even if it's just for diagnosis or we teach a technique. And if you go back and listen to some previous episodes about repair authorization, we explain it. But oftentimes getting an authorization up front from a customer.

Gives us money to work with, which then saves the technician time also, you know, so we're not calling the customer, trying different things, especially for problems that need to be diagnosed and might require putting an O2 sensor on and retesting or putting a hose on and repressurizing this system. So I can tell you a story. When I was a service advisor, I had this. This customer. She was the greatest. She was probably in her 70s, and she drove an older Cadillac.

I remember one time she came in and had rented a car from Enterprise, and I. She waited for me when she came to pick up the car, and I was like, hey, how are you doing? And every, you know, everything's good. And I was going to walk her to the cashier, and she pulls me over to the side and she whispers to me, she goes, hey.

When you buy the insurance on a rental car, is that insurance really work?

I was like, what do you mean? And she showed me. She. She had taken out all four corners of the Enterprise rent a car.

And I was like, I just. I said, so you bought, like, you let them upsell you on the. And she's like, yeah, I bought everything. And I was like, yeah, I think you're okay. And she was. But it was so funny and so cute. But her car became.

A problem in the sense that it wasn't worth what it was going to cost to fix it over time. I think she needed like $11,000 worth of work on the car. And I told her, I said, you know, the best thing here is for you to get something else, something new. So I took her and I showed her the. We had Oldsmobile at the time. That teaches you how old I am. And Cadillacs and She hated them because they had the shifter in the center and she wanted the shifter on the column. And so she said, I'll be buried in that car.

Do whatever it needs. I remember. So at the time, my boss said, I want. She's got a prepay because this car isn't worth it if something happens to her or, you know, she decides for some reason that she doesn't want it. We can't sell that car for $11,000 because it's worth 2,500, even with $11,000 of work put into it. But I remember her telling me she was going to be buried in that car. She spent 11,000. I told her that that was the beginning. And she ended up like a month later spending another 2500. And I felt so bad every time. But she was happy, and she loved that car and didn't want something else. So. It's very common to get a deposit up front for many reasons. I wouldn't. I wouldn't make that the hill you die on. Awesome. Thanks for your questions. Remember the numbers. 8333 Ask SDR. And we'll see you next time on Service Drive Revol. 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 Chris collinsinc. Com. Now that's Offers Chris collinsinc. Com. I'm Chris Collins, and I'll see you in the next video.