The Secrets to Recruiting Top Techs with Steve Hamre

Today on the show, we're going to talk to Steve the Hammer Hamry. He is the national recruiting manager for Lithia Motors. And what we're going to cover is what was it like recruiting technicians five years ago versus today? Should we tell customers the truth? The key to retaining technicians and will service advisors become obsolete in the future? That and much more. Coming up on Service Drive Revolution.

Welcome everybody to Service Drive Revolution. We have an exciting show like always for you today we have a special guest.

Very special, super special, Steve Hamray. Did I say it right?

You betcha.

How many people get your last name?

Most people just call me Hammer and I just go with it.

Hammer.

Kind of a cool name.

Yeah. Yeah.

And then as always, Christian, the in house math expert and comedian is here.

Yes.

Christian and I were talking to a guy a couple minutes ago and we threw out some numbers and Christian just like grabs the answer out of the.

Air and he's like, that's awesome.

He could figure out the ELR just in his head, like instantly.

You know, service managers can't do that.

No. I'm getting out my calculator. Well, my phone that has a calculator. And I was asking him, like, when you think about numbers, do you see them in colors or like, how are you? And he said he did, like, he sees colors, he sees numbers.

That's awesome.

So he's a little rain manish if you need.

I'm lacking in that area, so I'll have to.

Yeah, me too.

And just like rain man, I'm also an excellent driver.

Matt, you're not. Not even close. Today we're going to talk about two things. Should you tell the customers the truth and the. The marketplace when it comes to hiring and recruiting, which you're an expert at.

Doing my best.

So we're gonna try to lean on your expertise and you know, I'm, I'm, you know, curious how you see the future and what you see coming on the. The horizon because there's obviously a lot of changes and in, in that. It's great to have you back, Christian. Christian's been on the road for.

Seems like way too long.

Way too long. We missed you in the office. It's great.

Yeah, we were kind of talking about that. But the travel, now everything's opening up and we're back on the road.

It was, it was nice having everything to ourselves.

No more rose to yourself.

Yeah.

My bed. God, I like my bulldog. Yep. No, I miss my dog.

Yeah. Yeah. No airport delays. It was pretty great for, for about what, nine months?

Yeah, we. We really only had, like, it was like middle of March through June. We didn't travel at all, but, like, July through September, October. Man, it was so beautiful just walking in the airport three minutes before the flight takes off. Just like Chris would always.

Hotel upgrades were phenomenal.

Oh, yeah, I forgot about that.

I got a suite out at that H hotel at the lax and they bumped me up to a suite. Two different zip codes. I felt it was huge.

First class every flight, right?

Oh, yeah, it was.

So nobody next to you. Great. Now it's like people breathing on you.

The whole time, herded in.

Okay, so do you. Do you have an opinion on this, Steve? Should you tell customers the truth? Should you always, like, you're married, right?

Yes.

Okay. I understand that sometimes you're not going to tell your wife the truth. There's just certain situations. And honestly, your wife probably understands that. She doesn't want you to tell the truth. And so we could take a situation like, honey, do these jeans make my look fat? Maybe an opportunity not to tell the truth. If considering the situation right there just. There's situations where you would rather show love and empathy. And telling the truth isn't always the best scenario.

Right.

But with customers, I think one of my advantages against other advisors in. In the same service drive was that I would always tell the customers the truth. And sometimes there was a price to pay for that, Right? So, like, let's say. So I wrote service in the university district in seatt, right? And so these. These college girls would come in and they bought a used Jetta. They didn't know not to buy the 16 valve, like, whatever, right? And so they'd come in. In this Jetta gli. And the technician would come back and you literally, the inspection sheet would just Pages, pages. And, you know, so first of all, like, to do an estimate, like, that takes. I don't know, it could take 45 minutes an hour.

Absolutely.

And so most advisors just be like, the car isn't worth it. It's junk. Forget it. Right. And I actually. I don't know, maybe because I was young, maybe because I just felt like that was a part of the job. Maybe it's because my service manager, when I finally convinced him to let me be an advisor, he said if I dropped below 2.5 hours per hour, I was fired. So maybe that was a motivator.

That's. That's definitely.

There was something going on, but I would actually do it. And then I would call this poor college girl and I'd say, hey, you Know, we noticed some things with your. With your Jetta. Yeah. And, you know, I think I would go through them.

Yeah. And I think you made a great point, though, even in talking to your wife. And when I used to write service, I was probably a lot like you. But one time, I'll never forget, it was a 94 Jeep Cherokee, and it had that list. But I did it honestly, and I told the gentleman, I said, you know, I'd love to help you with all this, but I think a better idea is I'm gonna go get a salesman that I trust, and it might be time to move on from this. And that customer actually appreciated that so much and loved that car so much. He actually did all the work. And it was $6,500 back in 2003. I mean, it was crazy. But I agree with you on the truth part of it. I do think you have to take into respect of the customer and sort of how they're going to take things and maybe evolve your truth a little bit to fit what they want to hear or need to hear. But I think any good advisor's job is to prioritize as well. Right. These are the safety issues. These are the things that if we're going to drive our kids around in that car, we need to do. Here's the other things to prolong its life or do the maintenance.

But, yeah, and you could probably say that up front. You could say, hey, the car is, you know, 12 years old or whatever. It needs some stuff, but some are important and some maybe could be put off. But let's just go through it.

Absolutely.

And you could say that up front to ease the tension a little bit.

Told people, you know, you don't want to chop down the whole orchard.

Well, I forget, like, Cutlass or whatever it is.

And she. She wanted an Enterprise car or whatever. And I remember we. We.

Remember the first time I helped her. She got an Enterprise car. We did whatever. And then she came back with the Enterprise car, and she comes up to my desk and she goes.

So when you rent a car and you get the insurance, like, you say yes to the insurance. It really is insurance, Right.

Insurance that we stay in business.

And I'm like. I'm like, I. Yeah, I think so. Like, it's Enterprise, like. Yeah, but I think so. And she's like, okay, good. And then she walks me where she taking out the side.

So. She was the best. She was so funny. But I remember her car needed a bunch of work, and it was the same sort of thing. Like, I'M like, you know, it needed a lot of work. We're talking about, like, eight grand on a car that's worth two, right? And so same thing. I tell her, like, hey, it's time. I would not put any more money into this car. And she goes, no, I want to do it. And she had money. Yeah, she wanted to do it. And I even. I forced her to go look at cars. But you know what the weird thing was? The reason why she wouldn't get a new Oldsmobile because the shifter was on the column. Oh, that was her hang up. And she said, I'll be buried in this car. Like, when I die, they can bury me in it. But. But I hate the shifter in the middle. I want the shifter on the column. And there were no more cars with the shifter on the column.

They get attached to some things, and a lot of times, yeah, it's just one little thing in that car. That's their thing.

And I remember my service manager wanted. He wanted the money up front because he's like, this thing is not worth eight grand.

You got to give an $8,000 deposit.

I also remember that after we did the $8,000, a week later, she comes back and it needed a radiator.

Oh, that sucks.

Well, I remember, but we'll get it done.

I told her that the eight grand might not be like. I'm like, we're going down a road here. That once we pull the rope, we don't know what's coming with it.

We turn to stuff.

So she paid for the radiator. Like, it wasn't, you know? But, yeah, she was the best. Like, I just remember that. So the insurance. When you check that, you buy the insurance. It's real insurance, right? And I'm like, yeah, I think her name was Marilyn. I'm like, yeah, Marilyn. I think so. Okay, well, here it is. And that was the deal we had with Enterprise, is they would drop it off with us, we would call them, and then somebody would come down and get it. Right, right, right. That rep coming down. And I go, hey, the insurance.

I did that to the poor Enterprise kid.

So funny.

Lot of work.

I remember when I used to have the luxury of thinking, like, you guys and being honest with the customers.

You have to be honest with the customers.

And let me tell you why, because I have actually eyewitnessed an example of when we should not be honest with customers. So I'm in. Let's call it the heartland of America.

Texas, Oklahoma. Okay. Specifically, so you're on a cattle ranch in Oklahoma.

Yeah. I always like the joke that you do about where it's that kind of area where you can let your dog run for three days and you can still see it.

This is what I always say that about Odessa or Midland, Texas. Like, you can watch your dog run away for two or three days.

No doubt.

So we're in the store, and. And customer needs a whole bunch of work done to their vehicle. And the advisor was new, so he's like, well, I don't really know how to explain all this stuff. And he's like, you know, I'm gonna go and grab the technician and have him come and talk to you.

This is a smart thing to do.

Yeah, I think so.

You don't want to be a technician.

You have to make sure he doesn't bite. Right.

And I don't know exactly what's where.

Clearly a new advisor wouldn't pick the wrong technician.

No, never. So we go back, and they get the technician, and technician comes up, and customer looks at the technician. She says, what's wrong with my car? And the technician looks her right in the eyes and says, it's a piece of. That's what's wrong with it. You need to get rid of that thing.

And by the way, your looks fat in your jeans.

And they didn't say that. I totally. I love that.

But. But at that point, I'm like, maybe we don't always need to be honest with our customers.

Well. Or we need to choose our words in explaining the car. But, yeah, I understand your point for sure.

Well, you don't need to be blunt. But you could be honest.

She was so. I mean, the thing I remember about writing service that way and calling the college girl and telling her, you know, your GTI or GLI or whatever it was, the Zejeda GLI, right. Needs $4,700 worth of work. They start crying.

Yep.

It's a whole thing. And then you hang up and you feel terrible for a minute. And then an hour later, they're like, chris, there's a guy on the phone for you. And you're like, hello, this is Chris. This is Tom, Janet's dad.

Oh, yeah.

So what does it need trying to do? No, here's the credit card.

Yeah, that's perfect.

And so dad doesn't want his daughter, you know, away at college. And so at the end of the day, you feel like maybe you did a good thing by telling them the truth. And dad wanted it all done because he didn't want to worry. And so I think telling the Truth, tactfully not. Your car's a pos.

And I think there's something to the fact that we also, with any kind of conversation we have, but especially with customers, is you can put them in a position where they're ready to receive it. Right. And I remember a lot of times there were certain things that I said, and as advisor, I'd say, now I've got a few things that we need to go over. I want to get through the entire list. And then after I'm done with that, if you have any questions. Right. And I also kind of had that thing, and it sounds like what you guys did too, where you turn something over to sales. And I would give the whole estimate. I'd be like, it's possible that the amount of the repair exceeds the value of the car, but you have to decide that. So I always said, I think the big thing that advisors need to remember is that it is not. They do not have the right or the responsibility to make a decision for a customer and what should or shouldn't be presented or bought.

Absolutely.

Like, they have to give that to the customer. And that's where the honesty thing comes in.

And I think prioritizing it is very important too. You know, you can make that list look less imposing by saying, hey, you know, if we cover these three things today, that car is going to be safe for your family. And then if you want, we can look at the flush or the, you know, the transmission flush or whatever else. But I do believe you need to present it all, you know?

Yeah.

Plus, that's the other thing. Let's say you don't present at all. And customer goes down to down the road motors, and down the road motors presents them with everything. Now they think that you had a terrible inspection, you're hiding things from them. Whatever else, I mean, if you tell it, show them everything. I mean, you can sleep at night, right? You did, you did your job.

If I ever questioned it, I would ask the technician to show me. So I would say, like, come let's. I'd get the keys, we'd go out to the car. And if I had to get on the ground and you know, with the flashlight, I'd be like, explain it to me. And you know, I would have technicians. If there's 25 techs in the shop, there might be a couple of guys at pencil whip cars.

Sure.

And so all I would do in that situation is I could prioritize for the customer. This is way, way off in the distance sort of thing. I remember My first couple of encounters with mpi, the digital thing, it would mark every, like if it was yellow and so you'd have text, it'd be like, well, the belt isn't perfect, so. Right. And well, the, you know, there's a little seepage.

Yeah.

And they, and so all of a sudden it's like this car needs $6,000 worth of work, but really it needed 500.

Right.

So checking.

And I think, I think an advisor's relationship with his tech or his team of techs is incredibly important in that. And it's sort of like winning fixes everything. You start selling for a tech, they're going to teach you more. They're going to be very open to discussing things with you. And that's a, that's an important task to put on an advisor to get not only those relationships with the customers, but you got to have the relationship with the technician. Right. I mean, it's hyper important for all of that.

Even if the techs just know that you tried and you communicate back with them. Like I'd go back and I would just say like, hey, they're thinking about it, but, you know, pull it off. And I tried just that. Because a lot of times techs don't hear anything and then they just assume that you, you know, you let it go. Absolutely. So that communication with the tech and that relationship is everything for you as an advisor. If they don't believe in you and they don't believe that, if they take the time, because it is their time, if they take the time to inspect it and you're not going to present it.

Well, when I talk to tech candidates, even at the schools now, I show them an MPI and I say, the most important tool in your box you'll ever have. You may not know this is going to be a piece of paper.

It's inspection form.

Pretty smart because that's what makes you your whole career. Right. It establishes trust. That's what we sell from. It shows the advisor you're doing your job. And I just think that that's an important point that they need to learn getting in.

Well, that's a, that's an amazing frame up front for them to, for you to plant that seed in their mind and that, you know, tool, because they're thinking tools are like pencil whipping it.

You know, you're not going to make any money if you do this and your advisor just throws it out and starts talking to the customer on their own and you're not going to make any money anyway.

Yeah, you should also ask every tech coming in this next question, what dies but never lives?

Oh, should I ask every tech what dies, never lives?

What?

A battery.

God, I was hoping it would be so much more profound.

A lot of people have thought that before.

That's a common feeling around here with Christian's jokes.

Wait, there's not more.

That's it.

Okay.

That's awesome.

Steve obviously has a higher value for his time than the comedy.

Not true.

No, no, no, not at all.

That's so funny. Okay, Steve, let's let. So let's, let's talk about hiring and recruiting and should we, should we start back? I don't know, should we go back five years? Sure. So five years ago, what were the secrets to recruiting techs, advisors, service managers?

Great. Yeah, great question. So I met you seven years ago when you first came out and did a 20 group with us at Lithia Motors. And the difference between then and now is just substantial. Money was the key. Money was the key for recruiting technicians, for getting people to really look at vocation. Really, all they cared about was money. So to go seven years in the future to today, incentivizing and making techs want to look at your company takes a lot more than just their flat rate wage and even some of the benefits. They're looking at different things to incentivize them now. So they're looking at quality of life, so they're looking at their scheduling. So if you're a service manager now and, and you think that every tech's going to want to work six days a week, you know, from 8 in the morning till 6 at night, then there's a reason why you're not getting a lot of candidates to come and stay with your store. So creative scheduling. We have some, some of our stores now are actually doing three 13s and they align them in a way, such a way that sometimes that tech actually has like five or six days off before that three comes down around. Now, obviously you have to have the volume, the physical plant, and the team to support that. But that's one of the things is just incentivizing these techs. The other is to really play on the technology that's involved. There's a very good reason why we don't call them just mechanics anymore. We call them technicians. In fact, most schools, that part of the learning is tied into stem. So there's a lot with the electronics and what they've learned and make sure that they're going in the right direction to be able to, to handle it, to be able to jump in. And I really like going to some of the greater vocational schools around the country. WyoTech in general has really come a long way with new ownership and a new focus and see some of these recruits that they're getting and what they're putting into their brain, what people don't realize is they don't come out of us a vocational school. Plug and play. One of the great things that the vocational schools do is really kind of teach them how to learn because now we're gonna put them through all their manufacturers training, and on average that's another seven years, up to about $110,000 worth of investment from the dealership per. So we have to find that right candidate that's ready to get that training and move on. Younger. I hate to use the word millennials because now there's all sorts of different words for people of that age. But they're actually.

They'Re intrigued with that kind of learning and they're excited to learn more. So if you can kind of get them on the path to do that, that's great.

Take a step out of, you know, entry level techs, and now we start talking about season techs. And, you know, we've got a problem on our hands now, and I kind of equate it to the NBA. You know, we have a lot of guys and gals that are jumping from sign on bonus to sign on bonus to sign on bonus. And it can be very lucrative. So, you know, how do we attract those techs that already have that training to one of our locations? And a lot of times what we're doing is we're searching all around the country for where is there a mass emigration, where are there people leaving for, you know, en masse. Now we can tie in like a store that we have in, say, Twin Falls, Idaho. Maybe it has all those things that the person that's leaving a big city is looking for. We use that in our ads. We use that in our, you know, this is, this might, might set the hook on them. You like fishing? It's four rivers that go right through there. And here's how you do it. So looking outside the box, looking where people are coming from, why they're leaving a certain area, what would attract them to one of our areas, you know, those sort of things we're working on now.

So I, I'm going to unpack a little bit of that. So the, this happens all the time where I'll be talking to a dealer that's, you know, let's just say they're in Waterloo, Iowa. Right. And they will, they'll do that typical, you know, my market thing, and they'll say, well, it's hard to hire technicians here. You don't understand. You're in la. And I, I. What we have found is it's way easier to get somebody to relocate to Waterloo than it is to get somebody to come to, to la. Because if you think about in la, if you're a technician, you're making, let's just say, and let's say you're a technician. That's 28 to 30. Okay, so you're about to have your second kid. Right. And you're making what, $30 an hour now you're gonna make $30 an hour in Waterloo. Waterloo. But $30 an hour here doesn't even get you in the market of buying a house.

Absolutely.

You're sitting in traffic for 45 minutes to an hour each way. You, you have the frustration of the school system. You know, if you want to go do something on the weekend, you got to drive an hour and a half to the desert to dirt bike or to the mountains. Now you go somewhere like Iowa and you can fish, you can dirt bike in your front yard, you can have a couple acres of Property, and for $30 an hour, you can, you know, you can own property. You all of a sudden are in control of, of your life. So there is it for us. It's way harder in a bigger market to recruit techs, especially downtown. Like you're talking about downtown Chicago, downtown Seattle. It's harder to get techs to want to fight that traffic. That's where I see the premium and the alternative work schedules. Four tens work in those situations. They're like, okay, I'll do it four days a week and then I'll drive to Issaquah, sure, or whatever, but I'm not driving six days a week to downtown Seattle or downtown Chicago.

Exactly. And I think you're looking for a little bit of a different animal. You know, we have, I believe, seven dealerships right. Downtown LA with DTLA Motors and, you know, to recruit them. You're looking for somebody that, you know, wants that constant inflow of customers. They're never gonna have to wait for work. They can flag, you know, 18, 19 hours in a day. If they know what they're doing, they're, they can work their butts off for those three or four days and then, like you said, get out of town for a little bit and get back. So you have to know exactly what that dealership is good at and some of the things that would incentivize somebody to work there. And then you also have to find the right person. That LA is something that doesn't scare them off and it's something that they enjoy. And we do have techs that like living in the city and that's their life. They could never think about living. Where I live in Klamath Falls, Oregon, little small auger, close cultural community. So, you know, it takes a lot of work for a recruiter to do the homework and then be really talking. I try to get my recruiters now I have a team of five to tour all their stores at least quarterly. And one of the biggest things I do and tell them is get immersed in that culture of that store. Figure it out, you know, because you're going to be recruiting people there. You want to be able to answer some of the questions that won't show up on a webpage or anything else. You know, how that team works, what they do together and how they work together. How's that culture look? And it changes from service manager to service manager. And one of the things Lithia does that I think sets us in front of a lot of things we do let our service managers and our general managers run their individual business. So we're not like a corporation where everything's the same. So in order to stay on top of that, my recruiters need to be in those stores, get a taste of that culture and figure out that there might be two stores across the street from each other that are very different in the way they're run.

But your recruiters are going to see a different point of view than the people that are in the store. That's the other great thing with that. Right. So I can't tell you how many times I'll be in a store and they'll be like, yeah, there's nothing special about this. But then I'll see like this gorgeous lighting in the shop and it's like really, really clean and it's a beautiful service drive and like a never ending pile of customers and stuff like that. But they're in the, they're in the business all day long. They don't see that. But your recruiters coming in, they need to take, take note of that. I would probably say that I'd have a physical note on each store. We do what some selling advantage. Selling advantage.

Look out back behind the shop. There's some grills sitting out there. Oh, you guys must do, you know, barbecue. Yeah.

Team building.

Yeah. So those things we can help sell.

Yeah, yeah. In those smaller markets too oftentimes the service manager has been there 20 years and that's where they've been. So they don't understand that when you come from somewhere else, they really do have something special.

Absolutely.

It's just their day to day.

Right.

You know, burden to carry. They don't understand that if they went somewhere else, it's harder.

Right? Absolutely, absolutely.

So having the outside recruiters come in with a different perspective helps bridge that in a sense. Right?

Yeah.

I mean, and you got to think about the pay in downtown LA. I mean 30 bucks an hour for a tech. It's a really nice two bedroom tent on Figueroa.

I can't even imagine.

What do you, what do you think about the homeless here?

So, you know, I travel all around the country. You know, we have stores in 23 states now and it's, it's certainly not just Los Angeles that's having that problem. Now if you go to Seattle, if you go to Portland, quite a few other places.

Is it worse than Seattle?

I wouldn't say it's worse, but it's certainly on par. And Portland is, I would say that Portland may be a little bit worse actually than la. Just where they're letting them go, it seems like la, you know, there's, you know, underpasses, they're always there. And Portland, they seem to be like taking over city parks and stuff that really wasn't set aside. And I don't really, I'm not trying to put an opinion on. Right. Wrong or indifferent on it, but I mean something's got to be worked out where we, you know, we help them but we also are able to have businesses and people to enjoy a park and that sort of thing.

I would have thought for sure that LA would win like the homeless Olympics.

I will say I haven't been all around so I. Let us.

Later, let us drive you around, we'll drop you off a couple of places now.

What do you think, Steve?

Come back and pick you up in an hour?

Go have a mess cooking party at MacArthur Park? That'd be awesome.

Yeah, I don't. The thing with the. I know here the thing with the homeless thing is the, you know, the. It's too complicated for elected officials who really have no experience fixing anything.

Right.

It's a popularity contest to get elected.

Absolutely.

Like our governor, he's really good looking, but he has not.