The Importance of Contingency Plans

Okay, Christian, let's. Let's ask the question that is on everybody's mind. This was brought up in our.

Facebook group.

This subject came up a few times.

The earth being recycled.

And we thought, recycled or flat earth.

Yeah, for sure.

No, the question is, should service managers be driving the shuttle? And so I think somebody posted like, hey, I. I drove the shuttle. And the response was, well, you got to do what you got to do. And that's great.

And show your people. Yeah, you'll. You'll do anything in the department. Yeah.

And so the question is, is that good? Is it good for a service manager to be driving the shuttle? Is it good for a service manager to be fixing the toilet in the new car showroom's bathroom? Is it good for the service manager to be.

I don't know, answering the phone?

Yeah, I think that the answer does that to that. Is it a question?

Should it. Should a service manager be changing the oil in a car?

A waiter.

What about washing? Should a service manager go back and wash the car? If the car wash is backed up?

Yeah. What else? You got more there, don't you?

So I was.

Should a service manager be riding the internal ros.

Oh, I see that.

Should a service manager be submitting warranty claims?

I feel like you're listening.

Should a service manager be fixing the leaking roof in a rainstorm? Because you were no help whatsoever when a roof was leaking.

And actually, it'd be funnier if it was a lightning star.

You would have sat here, your desk, on your zoom calls that you do all day.

Water could have been pouring on your head, and you would have just got a hat.

The worst thing is, is that water did drip on me. I just kept right now going, yeah, yeah. So worthless. I did not fix the roof.

Thanks for the help.

Oh, my God.

What if you would have got on the roof and laid over the top of one of the leaks? It would have stopped one of them.

Just taking it for the team.

Yeah.

And just drink the. Drink the rainwater, which I would glow in the dark afterwards.

So what are your thoughts? He's driving the shuttle a badge of honor, a sign of great leadership, or is it a failure beyond comprehension?

Let's see.

So.

I will tell you that I've.

Kind of got the mind that if it's a matter between the customer sitting there and not getting helped or the service manager does the ride, I would say the service manager should give the ride. Like, if there's no one else and you're just looking at a customer, like, if it Was me as a service manager. It would pain me to no end to see someone sitting around waiting for a shuttle ride.

Unfortunately, I can also tell you that as a service manager, all those things that you just asked before I learned what the role was, I did all that stuff and I thought it made me a good service manager.

You know, my earliest memory of you is.

I don't.

I've told you this before. It's clearly wasn't special for you.

Joke man. Sorry, sorry. I didn't tell it in the form of a joke. You might remember that, right? You getting up at like 2 in the morning and plowing snow at the dealership. And I remember asking you about it. Cuz that was before.

You know, I was a bad driver too.

I remember the. That, that time actually that I was in Chicago, I went to Nordstrom's rack and bought.

Rain boots because my feet were.

Well remember it would.

There was so much snow.

Well, the first time you came in though, it wasn't just the snow. It was record cold. It was like the middle of January.

I think you remember this snowed like 80 times that and you brought a coat.

But it wasn't even near enough.

No, it's not ready insulation.

And I think that we didn't even. I don't even know if you knew my name for five minutes because you were just so upset about how cold it was.

Was I?

Yeah, you were really upset.

But back to. Back to you driving. So you got up at like 2.

And I'd get up in 1 and be there by 2.

And then you would move the cars or how would you plot. How do you go about plowing? So you know the thing that surprised me the most about that was that we had to pay removal.

Like it was like 10 grand or something to remove the snow.

Yeah. Because you only have so many places to pile it. So you would actually.

There's actually come and remove the snow. And it wasn't cheap.

No, it wasn't cheap and having people plow wasn't cheap either. But yeah. So what do you mean you did it for free?

Well, no, if you hired plow companies to come in, it was expensive. That's why I did it.

Right.

But yeah, so I had a whole system where I clean out the aisles first and then I would move all the cars up and then I would plow behind.

Move the cars back while it's snowing. So while it's still like you're getting ahead.

Yeah. My favorite thing was is that Chicago is so famous for like snowing A foot and then going to negative 20. So then the, the. My favorite thing about ice. Yeah. Black ice. So my plow truck was like a 1992 Silverado rear wheel drive. Like there's two ways that people go with a plow truck in the northern areas. They either have like a planned plow truck or the wholesale truck that they can't get rid of and that becomes the plow truck. So we had the wholesale truck. But my favorite thing about that truck was it had no heat. So I had to have an ice scraper not for the outside, but for the inside. So imagine me, one hand on the wheel. Scrape, drop, hydraulic. Scrape, drop, hydraulic. Like, what could have gone wrong? But yeah, I had it down to a science.

Yeah. So back to my question. Should a service manager drive the shuttle?

If it's symbolic, yes.

What do you mean by symbolic?

So if it's the showing, if it's a one time, one off thing that you say, this customer cannot sit here. I'm going to take really, really good care of them. And then after that you have to say, okay, that can never happen again. And you come up with a contingency plan. I'm okay with it. If it's their job description, that's a problem because you're missing out on too much.

Let me, let me ask you a question. I'm going to ask this question. I just want the answer to sit there. I'm hoping you answer this right.

If a customer of ours is unhappy and it gets to me, how do you feel?

Awful.

Okay, let's just let that sit for a second. When I was the general manager of a humongous BMW store down the freeway here, and I implemented a new system which was customers cannot leave without saying goodbye.

To a manager. So the salespeople were not allowed to let customers walk without a manager backstopping.

Was that a fireball one? Would you fire somebody if they did that? If they didn't turn it over?

Yes. But it never got to that. We sent a couple of people home.

Yeah.

And that was all we had to do. But we would have.

Yeah. Yeah. It didn't.

I guess it's like. It's like playing poker. You have to be willing to. But you hope that it never comes. Right, Right. Okay. So salespeople are not allowed to let a custom. What would happen is a customer would come in and they would demo a car. They would get presented numbers and then the manager would look up and the customer was gone. And then you'd go to the salesforce. Hey, what happened to, you know, what happened to Christian? And they would go, oh, he's going home and talk to his wife or, you know, whatever.

Yeah, whatever the thing.

And so we were. We were of the opinion, or I was of the opinion that if a manager talked to the customer before they left, we. We might. We might sell more cars.

Yeah. Did you guys used to call that? We called it the broom. You broomed.

Called it.

Swept him off the lot.

Called a manager backstop.

Oh, no, I'm talking about when you let him go without him turning over. My favorite was when people would let people go after a demo drive and didn't know their name.

You know, we figured something out later that was way more effective than this. But this is the analogy that applies to.

Right. But I do know the other thing which I think is brilliant.

Throwing their keys on the roof is way more effective than a manager.

They're not leaving.

What we're talking about is amateur hour compared to the real thing. So who do you think was my biggest problem or the biggest obstacle in implementing this new rule?

Your managers.

Correct. The managers. And so the managers would. On a Saturday when we had 40 customers in the. In the showroom would completely fall apart. And then they were just trying to maintain, you know. You know, just get by, basically. Yep. But the system is only as good as the contingencies you have for it to be effective.

That's right.

Correct. So the time when we have the most customers, the system was the least effective.

And so we. What I did is I told everybody, we're going to get here at six o' clock in the morning, we're going to practice this. And they thought that was a crazy concept, but we did. I used Cones as customers. Not joking in the showroom with Cones, his customers. And we came up with a system that should they be. Should they be too busy to backstop a customer? We would get the Internet sales manager.

Yeah.

And then should we be so busy that she couldn't come down? We would get a couple of the fleet managers that previously were on the desk. And then. Then we would get the general sales manager. Then we would get me. And then we would actually get the owner to come down and backstop a customer.

Oh, gosh, I hope it never got to the owner.

It didn't. And I think it got to me once or twice.

Good.

But it was the now when it got to me. And let's go back to the question I asked you. If a customer. If an upset customer got to me here, you would feel bad.

If you're in a situation where you're driving the shuttle or you're backstopping a customer and the people around you aren't really nervous that you're doing their job for them, you have a much bigger problem than should. You drive the shuttle, and maybe in a moment of desperation, you'll hop in the shuttle, but the whole time I'm in the shuttle, I'm telling myself this is never going to happen again. I'm fixing this. This is ridiculous.

Yeah. You cannot be the backup.

This thing is broken. If I'm driving the shuttle.

Yeah.

I. I am a failure as a leader. I have completely lost control. All contingencies have failed, and now I'm taking direct fire.

So, I don't know, you can make what you want of that, but if you want me to summarize it, no, you should not be driving this shuttle.

Yeah.

Thanks so much for watching this clip of Service Driving Revolution. 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 to offers.chriscollinsinc.com now that's offers.chriscollinsInc.com I'm Chris Collins, and I'll see you in the next video.