Chris Collins tells a new service lane manager that the best leaders master two things: the financials of their department and how to coach people. Many managers fail because nobody teaches them profit metrics, so they accidentally tank margins while chasing customer satisfaction scores.
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Welcome to this edition of your Friday drive by where I answer your questions. The pressing questions that you feel like would help you perform at a higher level or just reduce your anxiety maybe. The number, if you have a question, is 8333 ask SDR. That's 8333 ask SDR. And if we play your question on the show, we will send you a swag bag. I got a little drive by here. Say hello, Lola. Yeah, now I'm gonna have white hair all over me. Yeah, this is. This is one of my four bulldogs, Lola. We're filming this in my library at home because of construction going on at the office. So she's excited to be a part of this and she's going to help me answer this question. Okay, go ahead, play the question.
So, Chris, I got a question. What advice or tips would you give someone trying to be a service manager? I recently.
Got promoted from an advisor to service lane manager. I'm also dispatching.
And training the other advisors. I have three of them. All three are green.
One with the most experience only has maybe a year. She's pretty good. The other two never worked in a dealership before. I'm a Master ASE and GM certified technician for 15 years. I just took this job as an advisor back in February of this year. And about a month, two months ago, I got promoted. Lead advisor or service lane manager. And what did I need to do? We do not have a service manager right now. He got promoted to big stop manager probably about four months ago. So there is no service manager. It's kind of like I'm doing part of it, he's doing part of it. I'm in the shop. Technicians love me, advisors look up to me. I'm real good with customers.
Any advice, please help me out. Thanks, bye.
Lola has been replaced with bacon here. Their dogs are competing to sit on my lap and help you with your questions. Right. What do you think, Bacon? What's the key? Key to being a good service manager? Bacon says snacks. Having lots of snacks in your desk. So whenever a dog comes by, they're readily available. What kind of snacks? Bacon? Cheese. He likes Manchego cheese. Aged at least six months. Right, buddy? Now I'm covered in dog hair. So I would say you want to think about the role of service manager as two things. One is its financial, so you want to run a healthy, profitable department. And then the second is the psychology. So managing people is all about psychology. The number one trap that happens with service managers and the big reason why there's so much turnover at that position. Is the industry set service managers up for failure in the sense that we. We don't train them on the financials, we don't give them access to the financials, but we judge them on it. So even if you're working in a place where they say, oh, the financials don't matter, the profit doesn't matter, sooner or later it matters, and it ends up becoming the downfall of most managers. You're, you know, you're told, get me more gross. Get me more gross or get me csi. Well, you can. You can.
You can create more gross, but most of the time what happens is you spend your way into it. So you'll discount, you'll do other things to create the gross, but you're pushing the profitability down. And when you start losing a certain amount of money, you usually just get fired. And you don't really even understand why. And oftentimes you think, oh, I was fired because they didn't like me, or I didn't play politics or, you know, the cut the customer issues. But most of the time, you're getting fired because the department isn't profitable. And so the number one thing I would do is learn the financials, learn the keys to creating profitability. I had dinner the other night with. With a group that was here for a boot camp. So we do these boot camps for all our new coaching clients, and it happens every month. And then, you know, it was a group and a couple of them, I was, you know, asking like, oh, what. What did you think of today? Because Christian teaches it, but I was going to dinner with them, and they were like, oh, I just. I feel like I've been looking at the wrong things. Like, you know, I've just been completely blind to how this really works. And now I actually feel like I can go back and I have the leverage I need. And I understand why things that I didn't understand before I knew were there but didn't know how to change. I can just push them over. And so you need to start from a context of good business and profitability. No matter what anybody tells you that there's tons of people out there that will tell you different. But it's the number. It's the number one thing is you got to run a profitable department. And then the second thing is psychology. You gotta be a student of human behavior and understanding how to find the right people, how to. How to train and coach people, and, you know, how to get them to behave in a way that's conducive to.
A great customer experience more than anything else. So great question. Good luck in in that endeavor. I hope you're good. If you aren't in our coaching group or on our on demand, I would highly suggest that you.
Do that just because you know how you start is how you're going to finish. And if you go into it with the right tools, it's going to be really easy. If you don't, you're going to bounce around and.
Most likely fail because the turnover rate for service managers sadly is, you know, close to 50%. But thank you for the question. If you are listening and you have a question, remember the numbers 8333 Ask SDR. That's 8333 Ask SDR. 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 question on the show. That's 8333, ask SDR. For special deals on our books and training, head over to offers.chriscollinsinc.com now that's offers.com Chris Collinsinc.com I'm Chris Collins and I'll see you in the next video.
