Selling New Cars From The Service Drive | SDR #371

Welcome everybody to Service Drive Revolution. Hope you're having a great morning. I'm Chris Collins. Hoagie is here. Adam.

What's up everybody?

We have a great show for you today. Should we start off talking about Hard Knocks?

It was great.

Anybody watch the greatest leadership training available today?

I did. I watched it on the plane last night.

What, Adam, you hate leadership?

I don't hate leadership. I just missed the episode.

Well, it's good. The Hard Knocks is really, really fun. So it's the Seattle Seahawks this year. The NFL dropped the rule. So they used to have a rule that if you made the playoffs, you could pass on Hard Knocks. And in the new collective bargaining agreement, I think they changed that, or at some point it got changed, and they picked the Super Bowl champions— that's right, the Seattle Seahawks Super Bowl champions— to be on Hard Knocks. And it's an interesting thing to see a team coming off of winning the Super Bowl and now trying to figure out how to get back there. I think it's harder to get back there than it is to get there in a lot of ways. Don't you guys agree?

Yeah, totally agree.

Not too many do it. I know that your team, Hoagie, the Chiefs, have done it, but it's not common. It's not common.

Yeah, what's cool, one of my favorite things though with that episode was, uh, like there's just a vibe coming off a Super Bowl win, right? Right? Like, I mean, yeah, it was, it was, uh, it was fun. It was pretty cool. Uh, those rings are pretty awesome. Um, whoever designed their Super Bowl rings, like, really, uh, I don't know, they had some cool surprises with it. The way they, like, they hit that little button and it opens up into a stadium. And, uh, I don't know, it's pretty cool.

So you know when we go to cut, right? In the Beverly Wilshire in Beverly Hills, the— that jewelry store is in there. It's called Jason of Beverly Hills, I think is his name.

Okay.

And when Adam and I went there a couple of weeks ago, a few weeks ago, yeah, I went in there. They didn't— they didn't have it yet for sale. They have one that they will sell to fans. So there's one that's like, I don't know, it's like $20,000 and it has real diamonds. It's not the one the players get, but you do get your name on it. But your number is 12, which is the number for the fans. And then they have another one that has like Swarovski crystal or something that's like $1,500 that doesn't look that cool.

But well, and what's the reasoning that you do not get it, Chris?

I don't get it.

Yeah. Why don't you buy it? Purchase it?

There's a bunch of reasons, Adam. Like, I know you, you made the comment that if the Bears won it, you would buy one. And then I think you kind of backtracked, right? I don't know, but I'm not going to spend $20,000 on a ring that I didn't earn. I don't do anything as a fan.

That's right, backtrack. Yep, you got me.

I think it's hilarious. So one is the money, and two is I, I'm a fan. I didn't do anything. You were here, you were here at our Super Bowl party. I did nothing.

I ate.

Oh well, hey, I'm screaming. That's definitely something.

Did I smoke a cigar? I ate and smoked a cigar. I did nothing. But yell at the screen.

Hey, you're a lifelong supporter of, of the franchise. That's doing something.

Football's the best. I'm so excited football's back. It's, it's so nostalgic for me. Football reminds me of my grandpa. Like my— like I always say that to people. Like, I, I was born a Seahawks fan. My grandpa was so excited when Seattle got a football team. You know, they were an expansion team. I think the Tampa Bay Buccaneers and the Seahawks came in at the same time, and they never won. Like, through my, through my whole youth, like, I, I played Pop Warner football and got to play at halftime at a Seahawks game and meet the team, and we got to sit on the sidelines, and it was just such a connection between my grandfather and I. Like, he would take me to the games And Mariners too. Like, the Mariners never won. The Mariners have never won a World Series. But, you know, it— he would fall asleep listening to Dave Niehaus and just— who's a legendary broadcaster in, in Washington, you know, in Seattle, that would call the Mariners games. But yeah, I mean, I still can't believe the Seahawks won the Super Bowl. I think it's incredible. I love our coach. I, I would recommend that everybody watches Hard Knocks just from a leadership side. Like, I always watch that sort of thing, and you know, you can kind of see the teams that have been on Hard Knocks before that didn't win, that didn't make the playoffs. You could tell why by paying attention to the mannerisms and the behaviors. There was this interesting clip I saw the other day of Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger doing their annual shareholder meeting. Have you ever got— have you guys ever watched those?

Yeah.

And one of the— so they take questions, and one of the questions was like, how do you avoid getting ripped off in business? And Warren Buffett is like, you know, a lot of people get ripped off. I see it quite often. And he says, you know, we just kind of have this way of doing things where we pay attention to what people say, what they're interested in, how they behave, how they act. And that if you're really paying attention to that, it tells you who somebody is. And he said one of the things that is a, you know, red flag for them is if, if they're going to buy a business and the owner of the business says that it's easy to run the business, he's like, they're out. We know we're not buying that business automatically because nobody who runs a successful business long-term ever says anything is easy. Like, if they say it's easy, we know that they're just trying to sell us something and they don't plan. You know, we want somebody who understands it's hard work and is going to stay around because that's their, their model is they buy out the owner and then make them the CEO and give them a bunch of stock and then give them the resources to grow it. But they, they want this, the owner to stay around. And if somebody says, oh, it's easy, business is easy, they're like, okay, well, no, peace. They're not honest because it's not easy, you know. And he gives other examples in there just about characteristics and things like that. And like, for example, watching Hard Knocks, I think it was last year, maybe the year before, it was the New York Giants. And you see the head coach at the combine talking about doing the 40 and foot racing, and he's on his phone the whole time, and he's, he's not talking football, he's not engaged in what he's doing, he's not even watching the people on the field doing drills, you know, he's just messing around, he thinks everything is funny. Yeah, he's gone, he's fired. Like, you can tell by his— where he is spending his attention. Like, if you think about attention as, as commerce, as, as like a source of like revenue or, or money in a way. Like you're spending your attention, you're spending your money by where you put it. He was, uh, he was playing around, he was goofing off when his— you know, you're at the combine for like a week, your, your goal is to figure out who are the players we want to take in the draft, you know, even if that decision is made by the general manager, you want to be involved in it. You want to be a part of it as a, you know, as a head coach. So as a leadership—

I would just say as a fan of football and leadership, could be very, very, uh, insightful. Yeah, I haven't— I will watch. I want to watch it. Didn't have the time to have the, uh, the prime time releasing, but, uh, from what you shared I think it's, I think it's awesome. The clip that you played for the running backs coach has got me already intrigued. So if there was a commercial, they should just play pieces of that. And I tell you, I'm there.

And Thomas Hammock, right?

Yes. Yeah.

Hammock is the running backs coach. And in pre-production, I was playing it for Adam because it's so good and it's so funny. He's just so funny. But he's from Illinois, right?

Yeah, he's former, uh, from NIU, and he took them to a bowl game where Notre Dame, uh, actually that was their only regular season loss. Wow. So like, that's pretty huge, like, for, for NIU. Um, the Huskies, not, not super huge, but I mean, that's, that's a huge deal to, to be able to take them and, and participate in that. But that's all, that's a little closer home. I don't really think of Illinois as a whole, especially from college, to be like huge contenders. I'm sure there's a lot of U of I fans that never really grew up that way, but obviously Chicago. But I think that's awesome. He reminds me, just when you were playing that clip, of one of my football line coaches. And I won't repeat what he said, but it was very similar to that. Very similar. You put your beep into the dirt and you just keep fighting. And then I just keep envisioning the lineman drills with the chutes. Like, yeah, so I'm excited.

I'm having a little bit of trauma flashbacks, but I'm going to try to somehow get a recording of that and make it my, my ringtone in the morning that I wake up to. I just want him to yell at me. I want to wake up to him yelling at me about, don't wait, don't wait for the hole to open up. It's so good. Yeah. So I would recommend everybody, everybody watch that. It would be great if we could do some sort of thing with our coaches where we do like how we do book reports, but we do break that down.

That's a great idea because there's so much there. I was just going to add to that. When you're listening to it from a leadership standpoint, try to unpack what he's building. He's calling out the obvious right away. He's firing up their emotions right away. He's immediately coming with how their brand, which is really the Seahawks brand, is to be physical. And like, but, but yeah, you know, no part of what he was saying was just emotion. It all had functionality and purpose with it. And it— yeah, it's fascinating. It's fascinating to watch him go through it. I was, I was telling Chris too, like, it's not a He didn't write down that speech 5 minutes before he walked into that room.

No, he was prepared.

It had a pathway and an intention.

Are you talking about the one where he's talking about the Bulls and Michael Jordan?

Well, that McDonald's too. But no, I was still talking about Hammock. Oh, yeah.

But he'd been waiting to give that speech for a minute.

Yeah. Yeah, there's a lot of pent-up energy there.

Yeah, it was well thought out, dude.

It gets me excited for November 2nd. That's all I'm going to say.

Oh, for the— for anybody listening to this, Adam wants me to go to Seattle to watch the Seahawks beat the Bears at home on November 2nd.

Nope.

Yeah, so that's a big— that's a big, uh, big Ben Johnson and the Bears. I won't go. Why, Adam? Why won't I go? Because I'm not gonna sit there with somebody in a Bears jersey Seattle. People, all my, all my fellow Seahawks fans going, you brought this guy?

I'm the novelty.

You're edging on Cowboys fan status, Adam. We should be able to talk about someone else's team without you bringing up the Bears. It's okay.

I can't wait.

There is a world where we can talk about the Redskins or the Seahawks Or I can't wait to make the other coaches watch it, especially Victor.

It's worse than Cowboys because I wasn't alive when we went to the Super Bowl.

Do we have a Cowboys fan on our team right now?

I don't think so.

Is this the best team we've ever had of coaches?

Yeah, for sure. Yeah, I don't know that a Cowboys fan would make it through the game.

Can you make a correlation? Jesus. I just want to be part of the championship club, guys.

See, I connect dots. That's what I do. I find connections and stuff. And I never thought about that. Best coaching team we've ever had, and we don't have one Cowboys fan. Now somebody's going to text us on our team and go, I'm a Cowboys fan. Yeah, so funny. Okay, well, everybody should watch that. And, uh, there's one other little, uh, one-on-one in there that he does with, uh, number 3, our, uh, phenom safety linebacker that is hurt. He just had surgery on his foot, and Coach Mike has a one-on-one with him, and it's so good how he twists it because he— the, the kid's kind of depressed, going through rehab, wants to be out on the field. And then he's talking about all these things that people are saying about him in the media, and Coach just takes that and turns it around. It's pretty— it's a pretty cool intimate little one-on-one that we get to see into that I think is really cool too.

Yeah, that's what I like about that show. It really brings the human element to leadership as well.

Yeah, they've said in the press conferences that they've— they, after 2 days, they forget the camera's there and they're just functioning normally, which is the best. That's what I want to see. Okay, we have, um, today on SDR Academy, Hoagie's going to be teaching the secret weapon of systems, and then coming out of that, we're going to go into specific systems. I think just about every one of these systems that we're going to be teaching you is worth $50,000 a month in additional sales. Like you could directly tie a number to each one of the ones that we, we will highlight for you and teach. So that's coming up after this, this show. If you're not in Service Drive Academy, just go to chriscollinsinc.com, sign up for on-demand. And you'll get a link and you can get in there. But every other week we're going through and kind of teaching you how to be the, you know, the best leader in the service drive is what we're doing. Then I don't know, have we ever told the audience that— or our clients that we have Jefferson Fisher coming to Top Dog this year as a speaker?

No, I don't believe so.

So Adam and I had the, um, honor of seeing him. I actually got to have dinner with him at an event last year.

Yeah, yeah.

If you're not familiar with him, just go to YouTube and type in Jefferson Fisher, and he, he's an attorney from Texas that really digs into how you can word things, how you can overcome objections, how you can kind of neutralize a bully in a sense, or negotiation. He's really smart and really has a great way of nicely changing somebody's perspective in a way that doesn't create resistance but makes your point. He's really, really good at that.

Very smooth.

Yeah, he's got that Southern gentleman kind of thing.

I was going to say what speaks really well and what helps in digesting that is just his, his facial expressions as well that goes along with the message. But I don't— I mean, dude, he's grown up in, in a lot of different platforms, and I don't know many people now that, that haven't heard of him. Yeah, it's pretty exciting.

He's a good get. So he's, he's going to be at Top Dog this year and we're working on some other fun stuff for Top Dog, so it should be good. Then we talked about last week this fake news service advisor forum on Facebook that had a critique of us, me, but us basically. That is totally fake. It's some sort of plant. It's a Jeff Cowan forum. So the forum is run by Jeff Cowan. I don't believe that Jeff Cowan would, would be doing that on purpose, but it's so fake and odd that it's hard not to think that maybe he is. I don't know what it— so Adam went into the forum and looked around.

I went into the underground.

Do you think that it's a, a plant from Jeff Cowan, or do you think it's a random person making up the post?

I think it's a random person. But when you, when you read, there's like, I don't know, a couple hundred different postings back and forth. And I think we talked a little bit about this on the last one, taking some more time. Honestly, I love the feedback that the back and forth of all the other various people— there's more people telling them like please stay away from my operations because if you're like this, I don't want you working for me. So, it's like, we don't have to do much. I mean, there's a lot of just going back and forth and I think a little bit of a realization of looking in the mirror a little bit. And yeah, I think with change is always going to drive some sort of resistance. So, I mean, honestly, I don't— I don't know if it's him or one of their folks that work with them. It can be. I don't know. Is there any truth into any publicity is good publicity in a sense? I mean, it's just going to— I think the truth is going to come out in the fact of people going back and forth. I think it's actually kind of an interesting community that has the discussions because there's a lot of people with common sense that like there's not a You know, you're just not going to raise— no one goes in there, starts raising everything just for the fact of not having a value behind it. You can't just do that. And there's kind of some of those points. And there's people going in, I guess I'd say, going to bat for us as well. And what the— and ironing out the truth.

How many comments are on it?

Oh, dude, there's like a couple hundred. Oh wow, like back and forth. Yeah, like it's a series. There's lots of— I mean, I've been out of the Facebook game for a while, and so it's just like, oh man, like it's just kind of those things. A lot of thumbs up, a lot of thumbs down, smiley faces or whatever, the little emojis, people laughing. Um, someone— that's the thing, there's a lot of anonymous posts that go into there and be like, how can you be anonymous on Facebook?

I don't understand that.

I don't know. I guess you can post anonymous— anonymously. It's— I, I did. I'm telling you, I got out of that whole thing a long time ago, so to see this just makes me shake my head. But, uh, sometimes people just want to be heard in, in silos or whatever. I, I just keep thinking of the, the angry kid that's in mommy and daddy's basement a little bit that wants to drum up, you know, some sort of drama. But then yet again, there's— there are some cool, uh, discussions on there of people actually trying to help people. And I think that's what really should be happening in those type of forums, not just, uh, complain— complaining fest.

I mean, Jeff should just moderate it. If Jeff isn't the one doing it, he should moderate it. Yeah, like if we— if we had one of those, we would moderate it for sure. Yeah, I guess it is what it is. If you can be anonymous online, you can be, you can be very opinionated and make up all kinds of stories, right?

What do they call that, trolling? Yeah, I don't know, what do the kids say these days?

For sure. Yeah, it's funny. Okay, let's talk about the, the subject that, that we wanted to kind of highlight today, and that is how, how you sell vehicles from the service drive. And we'll I think one thing that we need to do in fixed ops is we need to run a really good department that's consistent month in and month out. And we need to help the other department. We need to transcend our department and help other departments prosper in these times because a lot of dealerships are struggling with sales on the front end. And there's a lot of opportunity in the service drive. And so I think at Top Dog this year, I was thinking about asking somebody that we know that their dealerships convert about 4% of their RO account into car sales in the drive. And I think the 4% to 5% is doing a really, really good job. But that's, you know, you're selling a handful of cars a day out of the service drive. And so I wanted to kind of talk about what I've seen work. And then at Top Dog, we'll probably go deeper into this and really have a step-by-step guide. But I think it's time for us to start embracing this and not waiting for sales to come and try to do it and go, you know, go out and seek it, seek it out and help. And, you know, most of the time What happens is sales starts that, they start selling in the drive and then it goes away. Like it only lasts like a month or two because you have to staff it different, you know, that sort of thing. So the first thing on my list of what makes, makes it work if you want to sell vehicles in the service drive is you have to dedicate salespeople, like they have to be dedicated to service. That's their job. They're there Monday through Saturday or Monday through Friday, whatever it is. They're in the drive. They're there. So they would be there for the shift meeting at 6:45 in the morning. If service opens at 7, which it does in most places, that salesperson is in the shift meeting. At 6:45, ready to go, communicating with the advisors, talking about what's coming in, that, you know, that sort of thing, highlighting customers that they want to make sure they get face time with. But it's a planned thing. They're dedicated. That is their, you know, their world. They live in service, not this, oh, hey, we'll schedule a salesperson in service every once in a while. That never works because sales usually runs at a different time. So usually sales opens at 9. Service has been going for 2 hours. It's a, it's a completely different business, right? So you got to dedicate them. The really big stores will also dedicate a manager. So dedicating somebody to, to the drive and then The service manager and advisors should, should be a part of that. Now, if I'm devising it, I'd have some sort of bonus for the advisors for their customers that bought a vehicle. They'd get some sort of bird dog and maybe there'd be some sort of override for the manager just to get, get the attention on that and the focus going that way. But the advisors for sure, because if you think about an advisor, loses the job if somebody buys a vehicle and they're not getting paid. And so you want to make sure that it, that they are compensated in a way for that that makes them look forward to it. Like they're excited about somebody buying a vehicle. And then the other part of that is understanding that you're getting the customer back, which is the circle of life, right? So when it, whenever, Sales sells them another vehicle. We get them again in service. And, you know, usually the trade cycle's 3 years or something like that. It's even longer lately, but getting them back. So compensating them on that. And then there's a bunch of stuff on the sales side that happens that if I was a service manager, I would, I would want to understand it. But depending on what software they're running, they have the ability to look at the cars coming in and see where they are equity-wise compared to what the value is of the vehicle they have, what, what sort of terms there are on like models. And, you know, is there a vehicle where they can have the same payment with, you know, not very much down, or are there new programs? Sometimes manufacturers will do pull-ahead programs. Where there's some sort of bonus that makes that, makes that sort of deal work. So understanding kind of how that math works, like really understand it. And then also understanding how a lot of the scripts that, that they will use for that is not so much about selling them another vehicle, but what they will talk about is we need your car on our used car lot because it's in high demand. That's kind of the thing that they will say is, hey, your vehicle is in high demand. It'd be a great time if you want to trade it in because we really need it, which makes the customer perceive that they're getting more value for their trade-in in that sense. So a lot of times the conversation starts with, you know, we need, we need the vehicle on the used car lot versus, hey, do you want to do you want to get a new car?

Yeah. And today, now more than ever, that, that's pulling really well. Uh, people are shocked at how much their car is worth today. Like, um, people that bought a new car a few years ago, close to COVID, don't know what that thing, what that thing's worth today. And so that, you know, that, that piece pulls really well. I'd also underline when you see this work very effectively, you know, part of having dedicated salespeople and then being a part of the shift meeting and all of those things. They become part of the service department. If it's somebody that you're rotating a schedule where a salesperson just has to work service 3 days out of the month or something, they're still just, you know, from the other side coming over to the dark side. And both sides view it as kind of a, you know, inconvenience at best. But when they're part of the department, like our service scheduling process, I've seen Several people use equity mining within our service scheduling process, and the advisors have a process called pregame where they're going over their ROs and looking at the opportunities, checking history and things like that. And there ends up being a pregame for the salespeople that are in service also, whether it's equity mining or looking at the vehicle they have and kind of preparing for that. And when there's that level of preparation with that over on the service drive, Like I've been a part of a lot of trying to sell on the service drive, but if there's dedicated people and it's set up as part of your system, the, uh, the engagement with the customers is way more organic. Because it's a weird thing to come in for service if you don't set it up right, you know, and me try to sell you a car. There can be a level of it where that little voice in the customer's head, uh, when they go to a car dealership, there's that little voice in their head, you know, that, that little thing of skepticism. And, and it gets louder when they feel like they're being sold to or something. And there's a way to make that whole process, you know, very organic. But if it's something you're just going to try and you're going to make salespeople go over there every so often and stuff like that. So, yeah, that, that first one goes along with these other these other two, but I don't think you can emphasize that piece of it enough because I think that's where a lot of people get it wrong.

Yeah. And I think you make a really important point there, Hoagie, in that like when Dealer Tire has somebody dedicated in the drive, we sell more tires. When we have a body shop that has somebody dedicated in the drive, we sell more bodywork and windshields and just the focus. And, you know, that human connection makes, makes the sales go up. You know, there's, you know, it never doesn't. It's, it's 100% that that works. So it's the same sort of thing. And then, you know, we've, we've also had clients. So we have this system in the Drive where we're, we're adding customers' vehicles and the color of the hat is the advisor that they're for. The time on the hat is the time of their appointment. And we just have this system that kind of takes away decision-making for the customers and is very organized. The advisors come out, meet the customers at the, at the vehicle. One of the things that could happen in our system that I've, I've seen work really, really well a couple times is that we, we pre-mark those pre-writes of the customers that the salespeople have, you know, tagged as the ones that have equity that might be interested in a trade-in. And you can put a different colored hat beside the other hat on there so they know that's them and the salespeople can greet them also. Or you can put a little flag on the hat. So there's these little flags you can get that you can put on them, but just marking them so we know that they're one of the customers that the salespeople need to talk to and kind of as an advisor facilitate that introduction. Now it helps a lot too, just in the customer's experiences, if the person calling to confirm the appointment. Now if you have a BDC calling to confirm appointments, that's great. But on the vehicles that have equity, having the salesperson call and confirm the appointment and then mention that, hey, your car is one that we've highlighted to have equity and be something we're looking for on our lot that we have interest in.

I'm—

I want to, you know, meet you tomorrow when you come in. So you're coming in at 8, I'll be around. My name is Chris Collins Collins, that sort of thing. So you can have those customers get their confirmation call from the salespeople, which is a nice little warm introduction with, you know, under the premise of we're reminding you about your appointment tomorrow. It's very casual versus predatory. 'Cause a lot of times you kind of, like you were saying, Hoagie, you get this like, kind of like, oh, whoa, I'm being sold something versus, oh, they're trying to, to help me. And so using the salespeople to do the confirmation calls is a, is a really good way of, uh, you know, kind of softballing that and making a friend in that way. Uh, those are the, those are the biggest ones on my, on my list. Then, you know, but like anything, it's, if you dedicate people to it, You're going to learn and you're going to get better over time, but it doesn't take that long. Like it's a pretty linear process. The opportunity is just coming in every day. And it really is unbelievable that we're not doing this. I believe, and I've, I've said this for a very long time that I think car dealerships in the future will not have salespeople and will not have service advisors. They will, they will have portfolio managers. And you will have somebody who has 200 customers assigned to them. They handle their, their trade when, when their trade cycle is done and they want another vehicle, they handle the service appointments and, and writing up the service. All, you know, all one person doing all of it. It's one relationship. Cause the thing that, that we run into is we have different relationships. So if, if If they like the salesperson, but they don't like the advisor, that dramatically diminishes our chances of getting them to buy another vehicle from us. And in the same way, if they don't like the salesperson, like I ran into that when I was a service advisor, is I would introduce a customer who really shouldn't be doing the repairs on the car. Like the, the repairs that they need to keep that car functioning the way it should. Exceed the value of the car. And, you know, in so many words, or it's very close. And so you would tell the customer like, hey, you know, it needs $6,000 worth of work. And that kind of exceeds really what, what the car is worth. What I would suggest is talk to somebody in sales and trade it in and get, get, you know, get something new. And if you use the $6,000 that you would spend on this on a down payment, you'd just be in a much better situation and I would introduce them to a salesperson and then the vehicle would get towed out and they didn't sell them the car and I didn't get the work. And so, you know, the, that relationship is so important that if you have a salesperson that's at the shift meetings every morning is kind of basically a part of the service department. If we're tracking how many cars we're selling out of the drive and everybody is vested in that in some way. Even if it's tiny, that just makes the world of difference. And that's where I see that this just becomes portfolio managers, because it isn't that hard to, to write service in today's world. And it isn't that hard to sell a car. Like, they're kind of the same. They're the same thing. And if you just think about what a, what an advisor produces in gross, and and what a salesperson produces in gross, if that's one person, you would have one, you know, somebody producing a tremendous amount of gross. And you have these scenarios on the front end where salespeople aren't, there's not enough gross in the cars or enough volume for salespeople to really make the kind of living they used to make at certain brands. And so you just have tons of turnover and salespeople constantly and nobody ever— you don't have the sort of career salespeople that you used to have before. I mean, they still exist, but it, it isn't— there aren't a lot of younger kids coming in and becoming that like they used to. And so combining those, those two jobs will create a scenario where you can make a really good living, take really good care of your customers, have, you know, have, uh, portfolio of clients that you're serving and feeling really good about what you do every day and producing gross in a way that benefits the customer because they, they don't have to go to two different places. It benefits the dealership tremendously and it benefits you because you can make a really good living doing that. So I believe that that's where it's going to go.

There's a couple of questions from the audience. So one of them says, So focus on the handoff or focus on the relationship with the service team? Focus on the handoff or focus on the relationship with the service team? So I'm not sure when that question came in, but I think part of the answer to that question would be what part of what makes it organic is what you mentioned about having the salespeople make the appointment, appointment reminder call. Um, but I, uh, I don't know. I think it's, I think it's both, but that's the question. Focus on the handoff or focus on the relationship with the service team.

It's both for sure. That's why I think those salespeople, when we've seen it work really, really well, and it's mostly high volume dealerships that, that do this, which is a shame, but when it works really, really well, those salespeople are in the service. They're a part of the service department. They're there. It's where they live. They, they exist. So, yeah, it's— but, you know, just think about it from the terms of if you were a customer, how would you feel? How would you want it to be? What, you know? And so if you have a relationship with your advisor and your advisor is making the introduction, that's probably better. If they're calling, if the salesperson is calling and saying, hey, I just want to remind you, we have you tomorrow at 8:30 coming in for service and you're with Hoagie. Yeah. Okay. And the customer confirms saying, just, you know, one other little thing I want to mention. My name is Chris and I have seen that your car is in high demand, you know, on our used car lot. And I don't know if you've thought about selling it or trading it in, but I'm going to say hi to you tomorrow. And, you know, just think about that. Just a light little touch on it. No pressure. You don't got to make a decision now and let it start working. Let it start cooking. What they're thinking is, oh, how much is it worth? You know, you could even say that like, it's worth more than what you think, Hoagie. Yeah, right.

And, and the people that are doing this well, it's, it's— you know, probably a whole nother topic of this that's equally as important to anybody operating a store today is the people that are selling good out of this service drive are also acquiring very well out of the service drive, which with what you're paying for used cars today, like you just can't afford to get them at the auction anymore, hardly. Like it's a racket. And And there are stores that are, that are doing this very effectively. And that's an important dot to connect also. When you're doing this effectively, it just so happens that there's stores out there that, uh, are sourcing all their cars externally and not through the auction right now. And it just puts them in a, a crazy competitive advantage. Um, so that, you know, that's another piece of this. Um, last question, Chris, what is your opinion of new vehicle service package programs? So I think like, you know, when I'm buying a new car, I'm buying an oil change package or a maintenance package, something like that.

So the thing that we want to do, and I've been counter to most of the, you know, opinions out there, which is normal, but, you know, I started working in a service drive where the customers were not making appointments for advisors that was an open floor. And what I have always tried to set up is forced relationships with customers where I'm all— I'm having the BDC check who the previous advisor was and putting the customer back with that advisor because it creates familiarity, right? If you see the same person over and over again, even if you, you know, even if it's not some love match or overwhelming chemistry, you get familiar and you start to trust the person. And in service, trust is the thing that we want more than anything else. And so I think that kind of forcing that familiarity is the secret to it in that way. What was the question again, Hoagie?

How do you feel about new vehicle service package programs.

So the reason why I said the thing about familiarity is those new service packages create familiarity. So if you have 2 or 3 free oil changes, it's going to, you know, not force you, but it's going to entice you to come in and use those, which then you're familiar with the service department and you're, you're just— all of the stats tell you that if you get them to come in, a couple times, they're— you're going to be the place that they, that they come. And so oil changes are really, really effective. Now, the, the one thing that we miss in this, like, as an industry, which is terrible, is one, we miss the introduction to service. It's rare that anybody does that good. But we also kind of forget that when somebody buys a car, there's so many things going on. You could tell them like, hey, you have 2 free oil changes or 3 free oil changes and this is worth $300 and you call this number to make an appointment. You could be really thorough in going through that and finance or whoever's doing it for them. They will still forget because there's just so much going on. And then they got their new car and the new car smell and You know, it just, they don't remember. And so the, the way to make it effective and to get customers to actually use that, because I mean, I've seen stats where it's like 50% of the customers don't use those sort of things. Even the free oil change is nuts.

Yeah.

As high as like 60%. The, the thing you have to do is you have to have somebody calling them and reminding them that they have that. And so, you know, a really effective thing to do is having somebody, as soon as they buy the vehicle, send them some sort of email. This works especially in like dealerships that sell trucks or vehicles that people are going to go out and buy wheels or lift kits, or, you know, they're going to modify them. And you just say like, hey, I'm, you know, I'm from service. I'm your liaison. Remember, you have those free oil changes. And then have somebody call. Like, it's really easy to— like, let's say it's, it's a store where the, the customers are due for oil changes 6 months or 6,000 miles out from buying it. So at 5 months, I would be calling them, making an appointment for the next month and reminding them, don't leave it to chance. So you can just, you know, run everybody that we sold 5 months ago, and we should be calling them this month, reminding them that next month. And, and emails are good, but phone calls are better. Like, emails go to spam. Like, you, you know, that's a good first, first line of defense, but it's not— your closing ratio and open rate on those is going to, going to be Less than 50%.

And I may be assuming, which I know assumptions can be dangerous, but with that question, when I get that question a lot, it's kind of a, hey, the maintenance programs are, they don't pay well or something like that and they're hurting us, things like that. But take 25 CPROs that have those maintenance packages on them. And add something to the ticket. Go look at the declines, uh, from your multi-point inspections and add one or two of those items to the ticket, and then see what— see if that ticket looks like a winner or loser at that point. Um, so the maintenance programs aren't the enemy. I know a lot of times they don't pay what we want them to pay, uh, but they're not the enemy. The, the one-item RO is the enemy.

Yeah, good point, Hoagie. That's good. Any, any other questions?

Nope, those are only, only ones we got so far.

I was curious, guys, so coming more from the, uh, commercial side, um, how often do folks or dealerships actually sell from the drive intentionally? Is it just, uh, you kind of brought it up, Chris, a little bit earlier, is that we try this and then it kind of is thrown out? Or if they're way more intentional, like, is there a lot of groups or stores that are doing this and they just don't do it consistently, or they wait till issues arise, like, like currently right now in the market, the sales are down.

Well, we have, we have a lot of clients that ask us for help with sales, right? Because we, because of what we do in service, they will ask us for help in sales. And the, the, the difficulty of, of running a sales department is having a manager that's good with process and systems, which is, is very rare. Then second is finding salespeople because salespeople don't make a lot of money in this current setup. Like they could work 60 hours and that there, there isn't a lot of gross in the cars. And so it's, it's a hard gig. Like a lot of dealerships are kind of playing, they pay salary now. They're paying the salespeople a salary and it, you know, they're, they're not making the kind of money that. They, they used to make. And so it's hard to dedicate salespeople to the service drive when you can't get them on— you can't cover your floor.

Mm-hmm.

You know what I mean? And so it would be like— a parallel would be like, we want to dedicate technicians to internal, but we're backlogged in the shop right now. How are we going to pull 2 techs out and dedicate them to internal when we can't get techs to work on customers' vehicles. Same sort of thing is it's a leadership thing. Like the managers in sales aren't, you know, always that good at process and systems and holding people accountable. And then salespeople are kind of coming and going and there's a lot of turnover. It's really hard to then just dedicate somebody and focus on that. You have to have a really strong system in sales and then add this on it. If you don't have a strong system and then you try this, it just becomes an afterthought. You're just shifting salespeople over there when you can. And it's not a when you can thing. It's a every day. That's your job. You're looking today, you're looking at what's coming in tomorrow.

No, I— yeah, go ahead.

Oh no, that's fine. Well, it's just, it's pretty polarizing in places where it works and where it doesn't. And it becomes one of those things where, uh, if you bring it up, a lot of people are like, yeah, we tried that once, it didn't work. And I'm like, okay, yeah, I'm sure.

I mean, how many times have you heard that?

Yeah, well, and that's, that's what I was going to say though, like, with you guys kind of reviewing this is, uh, it's like a bridge within the commercial truck, right? There's mostly fleets. So you were talking about Chris and, and owning that entire relationship and having, you know, um that portfolio manager, we'd call them like probably a customer client manager on the commercial truck side. But it's that I've been in so many situations where service helps sell the next truck. Now, that might be a statement that might be able to be stated, but no, I actually saw it where there was intentionality behind it because the particular owner or the amount of vehicles, if it was a fleet or whatever, Hey, it's probably better to get it out of earlier trade with the residuals that were happening in that sense. So like, I just saw kind of the bridge between both sides that was very interesting because there's ways to definitely sell the next vehicle for the customer's best interest, whether it's— I keep thinking if you're trying to get a mom with a family out of a vehicle that is high mileage, that has a really costly repair. It's kind of safe and reliable vehicle type of thing. I know, Hoke, you say a lot too when it comes to the maintenance piece of it, right? But if those repairs are very costly, get them out into something that's more safe, dependable, and reliable and, and, you know, not spend all that money. It's the same thing within truck. If the residuals and the repairs cost so costly, the service side of things, if having that, that sales, you know, mentality in the sense of actually working with them and partnering can definitely be a good selling point. I just, I made those connections. I thought that was great.

On the other side too is like the thing that we miss is like the guy's got a Corvette from 2 years ago, but the new one came out and it has more horsepower. Like, I mean, I experienced that a lot running a BMW store is that they want the new M5. There's a, there's a handful of people that just want the latest greatest and they don't, they're not even aware that it's out until you tell 'em or, you know, they drive it. And I think on the heavy truck side, the parallel is what we hear from parts is like a lot of people won't come here for service 'cause the service department does a terrible job, but they're still buying their parts from the parts department, right? And how many times does a fleet sales manager have to go back in service and intervene and get a truck to the front of the line. Imagine if that bridge was closed and it's the same, because those fleet managers are— they're like, they're not going to buy another 1,000 trucks from us if we can't get— like, you know, nobody's called them back for 2 days sort of a thing. And that's, that's where we, we miss the customer experience because To us in our industry, they're two completely separate departments, but to the customers, it's one experience. Yep. And that's where we miss it. So thanks everybody for hanging out with us today. We are, we are going to shift over now to the Academy. Hoagie's going to be teaching about systems. I'm excited about this. This is going to go for, for a few sessions going into specific systems. That you can leverage in your drive. And yeah, that's it. I encourage everybody to watch Hard Knocks and we will see you next time on Service Drive Revolution. I know from experience that a lot of our dealers, owners won't invest in training for fixed stops, but 8 service managers in our coaching group have been promoted to general managers. Something that doesn't happen enough in our industry. Proof that when you're given the right tools and the right mentorship, you can do amazing things. And I'd like to personally invite you to something that should exist already, but unfortunately it doesn't. And that's a live fixed-op academy, a mentorship, a community. But what it really is, is a service drive revolution. Anybody can afford it. Anybody that wants to invest in themselves. We are going to teach what we know about running a healthy fixed-op service business. Our average coaching client performs well above the industry average, and a handful of them are in a league completely their own. In fact, if I told you their numbers, you wouldn't even believe it, they're so good.