Chris Collins discusses why service managers become great general managers in automotive retail. Service departments drive customer retention and sales, and as manufacturers shift to direct-to-consumer models, dealers need to prioritize fixed-ops to stay competitive.
So let's start this off by saying I'm a service guy who became a general manager. So I think I have firsthand knowledge of what this journey is like and what the advantages and disadvantages are. Also, we have made a conscious effort in the last couple years.
To promote the idea and really encourage the elite group. So our managers in our elite coaching group, Best of the best, the best of the best, to become general managers. Three of them did the last year and then one got promoted but didn't get the job until this year. So really four, right?
That's right.
And we, we encouraged it at every level. I don't know that in every case we can be attributed with the credit for it, but it hadn't happened up until then, so. And I would say too that we.
If nothing else, I mean the, the people got the job on their own merit. But I don't know that the idea nor the conversations would have happened without us really pushing it.
Yeah. The other thing that I would say is going into the next five or 10 years, as manufacturers go direct to consumer and the sales process becomes more automated.
What'S going to be left as the core of the business is going to be fixed stops. That's right. So fixed stops is going to take more of the center stage in the upcoming evolution of the industry. So there's an advantage for dealers or dealer groups to start thinking about fixed stops as the future leaders of the industry because that's kind of how it's going to go. There isn't going to be the same sort of salesmanship needed or involved in selling cars because they all kind of want to go to an order.
Method. And also like more and more manufacturers will probably go to some sort of subscription. It's just going to change. Right.
There's a lot of possibilities for sure.
So let's kind of go through the list of why.
Service managers make the best general managers. So the first one that I have is when I went from service to sales.
The thing that I had known, but it had never been in my face like I knew this, I assumed this, but because sales downplays it a lot and it's kind of the relationship is passive aggressive a lot of times between sales and service. I did not understand to what degree the service department affects the sales. Like a lot of times I think salespeople or general sales managers or sales managers because they don't understand service or general managers. Also they don't understand service. They make certain concessions for the fact that somebody bought a car yesterday, their check Engines, lights on, and they can't get in for two weeks.
Yeah.
They start to accept these things that aren't customer friendly, that affect the car deal, that affect customers perception.
Because they don't know how to interact with service. They don't know anything about service. For me, I knew how to fix service and bridge that gap because I came from service. And once I realized how much of an advantage it was in the marketplace when your service department was easy to deal with and made the customers want to come back, it sold more cars and your grosses were higher. And so a general manager that realizes that but doesn't understand fixed ops can't fix the service department because it's an unknown.
Right. They don't know what levers they can pull.
Yeah.
Okay, that's good.
So that was. That's the. The first one.
Okay.
The second one is, for the most part.
Sales departments are kind of like country clubs. Right.
Well, I definitely would tell you, from my experience of going from sales to service.
My interpretation was that service was going to be way easier. And I was wrong.
There's more structure.
There's. Yeah. I think that there's less ways to screw it up on the sales side.
Hence, you have to have more structured service. Right?
Yeah.
Because there's, there's more variable. So on the sales side, most of what is happening is good news. Like when somebody gets a new car, they're in the new car ether, they're excited. They're thinking about showing their friends.
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, 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.
