SDR Navistar International Truck Update

Welcome everybody to Service Drive International Revolution. And I'm here with Adam and Jeremy. How are you guys doing?

Doing good.

Chris, what is that on the board behind you? What kind of secret Da Vinci Code are you guys writing back there?

The solution to life. This is the answer to all of.

Our questions and world's problems.

The meaning to life. That's awesome.

Yeah, we put Stave underneath it too, so nobody erases it while we're not in the room.

So I.

I, you know, I've worked with a lot of companies and I, I can't, I can't express enough how amazing International is for, for their dealers. And the training and the passion that you guys have for really helping service managers and advisors. I mean, it's just unbelievable how you guys operate and how you think and you know, often for me it's hard because a lot of times manufacturers aren't in line with their franchisees as far as what, you know, what the purpose is. But it's so fun. And so we just had our first service manager training here. And what was the feedback from the managers that were in the pilot one that we had?

It was extremely positive. We do surveys after every single one of these sessions that we do and we had a five star rating. Honestly. They loved the interaction. They liked some of the concepts you taught, like murder line efficiency, basically. I mean, I remember I was in the session as well and what I really liked was the transformation of the managers during the session, where they came from. Okay, this is another Navistar training. They're going to talk at me for another couple of days and I'm going to walk away and do whatever I did before. That's not the impression I got from these managers. They opened up, talked about their operations, talked about what they thought would work from these things and what they didn't think would work. They really got out of the mindset of I am subject to my environment. Instead they were like, okay, I can take some of this, I can use some of this and make more money. I can make my customers happy. I mean, it was something I observed and Adam would.

Yeah, I think that's a good point. I think our service managers and actually a lot of our dealers are really used to us going into their service locations or having some of these trainings where we're talking at them. I think they really saw this as an opportunity maybe at first, okay, I have to go to this type of training and Nava starts requiring this. But I think I'd say even midway through the first day they started Seeing the opportunity where, no, this is not our traditional type way of training. Right. We can open up, we can share ideas. It's not a normal, just 100% classroom. We can get up, we network, we talk, we discuss our concerns, and then together, collectively, we figure out a solution to those. And even out of this, from the survey results, you know, we're getting some buy in for us as our team to come out to service locations that might need some support in actually implementing some of these action plans. Right. Or these work plans. Right. That we came up with or that I should say service managers came up with. This isn't Navistar forcing it on you. This is their own ideas, personalized, where we can help them achieve their goals.

Yeah. It's amazing how in our industry, as much gross profit and as much of an influence on the outcome of the business that service managers have, they have very little training. And what we saw in the room was kind of magical that when you share some of these ideas and how you can improve your efficiency, how the financial statements work, how you can increase your effective labor aid and price things, the managers took to it like water. They were like, oh, why didn't anybody ever tell me this before this? I get it, right? Because the talent is there. We just haven't cultivated it. Because we spend so much time on sales in the front end, we kind of neglect the service managers. But there's so much talent. I mean, I'm so blown away by the talent of the managers out there. And if they just are given some tools and some encouragement, it's life changing. Like they become better leaders, better, you know, better fathers, everything. It's amazing. It's really powerful.

What I like about service managers especially is that, I mean, we've all worked as technicians at some point. We came up through service, so that comes with a natural urge to take care of the customer and to try to make sure that you solve the problem. And I think that because our service managers have that experience, in most cases we want to take care of customers, we want to solve the problem, we want to make money for the dealership. But as a manufacturer, we struggled in getting that information out. It's really important to make sure that you have a good background in financials, that you have a good recruiting strategy and that you know how to build positive framework or culture in your service department.

Well, understanding where those numbers come from. Right. I think what I've noticed being out in the field and working with our dealerships is that we have a lot of you said really Great service managers out there and they have a lot of good experience being in the dealership, being in this industry. Then one thing that they, some of the things they struggle with is somebody says, all right, you have to hit this number. They might not really truly understand what makes those numbers or how to calculate them. And I guess what I like about our training that we came up with here is it's not your fault. We're here to support you. Check the egos at the door. We're here to work together. And if you don't know how the numbers are calculated or how they're figured out or what feeds into them, let's figure those out. So when you go back there, you can really be the champion of your service location and embark a lot of those different entities to the next service manager.

Yeah, and so we're doing these live events where we can do that. It's a safe place, we can go through everything. But also we've created this online platform where a lot of those resources are in there too. So if there's a formula you don't know, we've tried to put a lot of those in there where you can just go watch a two minute video. And you, you have that as a resource also. So you have it on both ends. So if you don't remember it or you just want a quick reference, it's there. You guys have previewed the, the online stuff that we've created for, for everybody. It's pretty great, right? Yeah, yeah, I'm, I'm really excited for them to see it. It's going to be fun.

Well, that's awesome. Well, I think we should keep doing these, these updates monthly and maybe, you know, create some sort of contest or hierarchy of performance as we go to reward, you know, some of the managers that are performing at a high level. But man, it was so fun. I can't wait to do the one coming up. How are people signing up? Is the, you know, are people signing up or are we having to chase them? How is it going?

We are getting tremendous response to these sessions so far. Again, if you're not certain about how to sign up for these, it's under the service manager path. It's course number 9,000, 341. And this is service manager specific material. This is not intended for advisors, service manager specific. But we have only three openings left in our next session at the end of February in Ontario. After that we are overbooked in Atlanta. We are close to being booked in Lyle, which is our April session that's actually going to be held at the Navistar powerwall, which is our.

Essentially it's a one to one screen so that we can bring up a truck in real time. It's a really cool room. So I'm really looking forward to holding a session in there. But we only have seven spots left there and then after that we're filling up really fast. So I would recommend as a service manager, if you haven't signed up for one of these sessions yet, or if you know service managers that haven't signed up yet, get on it right now. Get on these sessions.

You're going to be not only pleasantly surprised, but you're going to come out of this with a different outlook on your own business, a different outlook on Navistar. It's going to change your life.

Yeah, it's transformative like you said.

Yeah, that's awesome. So what do we have to do, Jeremy, to get you to grow a beard? Because Adam and I kind of have it figured out.

Being that me and Adam are obviously best friends as we're sitting right next to each other. I don't know, I keep trying to do it and then the itching drives me crazy and I can't stop thinking about it and I just.

Shit. I asked him the same question, Chris. I asked him what, two, three days ago?

Yeah, you did.

I go, what's it gonna take? You know, like, you know, if we start keep doing these videos and these training sessions, you just gotta, you know.

You'Ll never, you'll never be mistaken for a female if you grow a beard.

Are you saying it's happening now?

Well, it could happen. The possibilities are higher, the chances are higher if you don't have a beard. And also being there in Illinois, like doesn't your face get cold? It's like a face warmer. It's a shock absorber.

It is, yeah. I can tell you as soon as I shave, if I shave it off, it's like 15, 20 degrees cooler.

I guess I like to be the, I like to be the handsome man with the stubble, but we'll see how it goes.

The George Michael stubble.

Stubble trouble. Jeremy, stubble trouble. That's funny.

We could different example also. I mean George Michael, but that's also fine.

I think that words George Michael for sure.

Well, thanks. Thanks you guys. Everybody watching this too. We're excited to see you at these live events and we put together a great program for you and like were saying it's transformative. So don't miss out. You don't want to miss this chance.

Absolutely. Thanks, Chris, for coming on.

Yeah. Thank you, Chris.

See you guys soon.