A short YouTube conversation between Chris Collins and Christian about mistakes service managers make when hiring and running service departments. Key claims: many managers hire "warm bodies" who merely know payroll systems rather than actively recruiting top advisors/technicians; strong managers actively recruit talent and customers. Collins argues most service managers are not marketers, often feel entitled to sales-provided traffic, and neglect customer retention — despite losing roughly 80% of customers after warranty. He states it typically costs about $50–$100 to acquire a new customer and that keeping existing customers is cheaper; therefore marketing and retention should be priorities.
Questions this video answers
About 80%.
About $50 to $100 per new customer.
Chapters
Hiring compromises, the way that you said this is they hire somebody with a pulse.
They're just checking the pulse.
They know ADP or they know Reynolds, whatever it is.
They make compromises in hiring because it's a, it's a warm body. They're not actively recruiting. Most of the time. You, you, you ask a manager that's been fired, who are the top five advisors at your competition? And at your competition could be in the same auto mall or it could be across town, whatever. I don't know. The good managers are people collectors. They're asking every tech they interview who's the best advisor. They're asking every advisor who's the other advisor there. They, they are constantly trying to figure out who the best are and get them to come work for them. They're. They're customer collectors because the best advisors, the best techs, create an environment where everybody's kind of on the same page. And there's like a certain, there's a certain professionalism and enthusiasm for our industry.
Yeah, they're like, they move around as little units. If it's time to go, they go as a group.
So hiring people to pulse is number three, number four. And this is going to be a bigger. More service managers getting fired over this in the next two years.
They are not marketers.
Most service managers take for granted the fact that the sales department's handing them customers. They, they, they almost feel entitled to the traffic. It's like, you know, even though we lose 80% of those customers after they go out of warranty, we feel like we're entitled to those customers. And we're not marketers. We're not marketing. We're not getting new customers that didn't buy there, let alone retaining. Because here's the thing. You want to know what happens, Christian, when you get good at marketing?
There is a big aha moment that happens when you get good at marketing that blows the top of your head off. Do you know what that is? And if you don't, it's okay. I'm going to tell you.
I don't know. Tell me.
You realize that it's cheaper to keep the customers you have than to go get new ones.
And yet we lose up to 80% of them instead.
And we think it's okay for service advisors to write 24 and for customers to be booked out two weeks and for, you know, you can have it in any color you want as long as it's black.
But if we focus on the customer experience and making people like and trust us and Come back. It's actually the cheapest form of marketing that there is. But until you go out and try to get good at marketing and understand that it cost you 50 to 100 bucks to get a new customer to come in and then you got to retain them after that, it ends up that just taking care of what you have is better.
Yeah. Retention is definitely the key to the future.
We got to be marketers in the future. You got to pay attention to marketing. You got to understand it. It's an art. It's not a. It's. It's not a one plus one equals two. It's a one plus one equals ten. If that's what you make it be. There's alchemy in marketing.
It's.
It's managing psychology, perception, image, understanding your customer and their, their deep, deep rooted trauma and motivation. Right. Like you want to understand why that guy that, that drives the M3 has his shirt open and is wearing a big gold necklace and a pinky like.
They'Re trying to tell you something.
You want to be heard.
Yeah. They're not buying the M3 because they're taking it to the track. They're buying the M3 because they want.
People to, to know that they bought an M3 and they've got it.
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 offers.chriscollinsinc.com now that's offers.chriscollinsInc.com I'm Chris Collins and I'll see you in the next video.
