A YouTube clip (hosted by Chris Collins) about bridging understanding between parts and service departments. Chris explains how parts managers are often underappreciated, describes a training course (created with International Truck) requiring parts and service managers to learn each other’s financials, and introduces a new KPI—Service and Parts Operating Profit (SPOP)—to measure combined departmental profitability and compare performers via dashboards. The chunk also describes the coaching program levels (including three criteria for elite status) and closes with calls-to-action (phone line and offers URL).
Questions this video answers
Service and Parts Operating Profit (SPOP).
1) Have a really high net-to-gross; 2) Customer satisfaction numbers above the market/region by a certain amount; 3) Win the manager advisor comp (benchmarked against other advisors).
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Also too, though, I think that's true with a lot of.
A lot of things in the sense that, like, you know, just take for example, people consuming this show, right? So people are going to consume parts hold. They. They're interested in their day. They wanted to provide them entertainment, value, community, whatever it is, but they don't a lot. They don't have a lot of patience for it if it doesn't. And they have no idea how much work goes into it. They have no idea that I don't know how many of the ones that we recorded are we throwing away. 3. So they have no idea what it takes to make and nor do they care. And so I think that that's true with service managers and parts managers is at the end of the day, parts managers are fighting their battle and they. It's just human nature to tend to believe that you have it worse than somebody else in that sense. And maybe as we all get older and grow, one of the things that we learn because we've done different positions, right? Like you've worked in parts, you worked in service. You start to understand that in any position, to perform at a high level and provide value is hard. And there's a level of sacrifice, you know, to be a good porter. There's a level of sacrifice, right? So if you're talking about any sort of leadership position to be a good leader, it's not about you anymore. It's about the, you know, the team and the outcome and all that. And so it's, you know, I think parts doesn't get the appreciation because it is thought to be more of a simple, you know, commodity transaction, but having the right mix. And also just how hard it is now to hire people in parts because.
You know, like when you came up or when I came up as an advisor, we were like, oh, wow, here's a career that the harder I work, the more I make and the more I can succeed. And me succeeding really just comes down to me, which is like a cool thing, right? There aren't a lot of politics or games to be played at that level of a dealership. Now if you're in a group and you get up to management, maybe there's more politics, but just at that basic, you know, this industry has provided all of us with, with a lifestyle and opportunities that were based on our efforts, right. More than anything else. And so.
I just think that's probably underappreciated when it comes to the parts thing.
So I would say two things on that. I think that's why Well, I think one of the benefits that could come out of this is that service guys would ask questions of parts guys that they would come away with from the Parts hold podcast and they would ask questions. And the same could be true for parts guys to ask the service guys questions to understand the business and understand each other's business. Maybe there's something that a service guy picks up off the podcast that a parts guide just skims over because it's something that they naturally do. So I think that there's a value in that and on the control aspect of it, I think that's, there's some, some avenues that we're approaching on the podcast and talking about specific areas that maybe parts managers haven't thought about in growing the business.
Yeah. And I, I would say that we've seen this evolve in the sense that our, our relationship with International Truck. One of the things that I think it was probably Jeremy there, who's a really big advocate for the dealers and really smart and.
Wanted parts and service to work together more. So we created a training course that was about.
Service understanding parts and parts understanding service, starting with the financials. But the managers had to do it together. And the outcome of that was when they did it, the results were incredible. And so we were trying to now incorporate that in our coaching on the car side in the sense that we've created a measurable called spop, which is service and parts operating profit. And when you talk about fixed absorption, a lot of businesses don't have a body shop. And so it's kind of like a hit or miss thing. But the one thing we do have and everyone is S pop, which is service and parts operating profit. And so that percentage of gross is a. Is a powerful number. And so including parts in that. And it's incredible just in the short amount of time that we've done it, how just shining a light on it has made it improve.
Absolutely.
Like anything you give energy and focus improves. And so, but it's just so fun to look at the dashboards and see like, so if you're looking in a service dashboard and you see like, okay, the net to gross is 30, but the S pop is 40, then that means the parts department's probably 50% net to gross or it goes the other way. But I'm always like, you can tell who's the higher performer of the two by looking at the S pop and then that, that department and you know, just, just shining a light on it makes it improve. It's just, it's magic how that.
Finding some identity in that.
Yeah. And so that's a big evolution. The other thing too, before we get to our list of.
Does the. The parts manager matter and kind of the subject today, another thing that we've seen happen is in our coaching group we have levels. So when you come in, you're at level one and then you move up and then eventually you can get to elite status, which is hard to do. It's really hard to do. And there's three things that you have to do as a service manager to do that. And we should develop this for parts. We should be thinking about this. Right. But.
You have to have a really high net to gross. You have to have customer satisfaction numbers above your, you know, your, your market or your region by a certain amount. And then the third one is you have to win our manager advisor comp. Or your advisors are benchmarked against other advisors as a, as a group. Right. That's the hardest one to do is to win that. And if you're not in our coaching group, you might not understand, but it's, it is really hard to come into coaching and win that because there's so much talent, there's so many groups of advisors, just hitters row that, you know, managers that have been in our program for a while that just have an incredible team of advisors and to beat them is, you know, can seem impossible. And so one of the things that you have to do as a coach is you have to.
You have to convince them that it's mental. Thanks so much for watching this clip of Service Driver 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 offers.chriscollinsinc.com that's offers.chriscollinsInc.com I'm Chris Collins and I'll see you in the next video.
