What's Your Dealership's BIGGEST Advantage?

Okay, next one on my list. And I know this is a huge advantage.

I disagree completely.

You haven't even heard it yet.

I can already predict for your.

Do you know that that's the definition of something that's difficult? You're disagreeing before you've even heard what it is. So I have two and a half more here.

I'm just trying to stonewall you so you'll forget it and say something.

Well, I wrote it down, but you know, it reminds me of my grandfather.

Yeah.

See how easy that is to do?

How's he doing?

So they have built in traffic in a dealership. The service department in a dealership has built in traffic because they have, they have to come back for the warranty. There's recalls. So you don't have to be good at marketing. You're basically, you can most of the time live off of the marketing of the dealership and what they're doing for new cars and the fact that they bought their car there. But for the most part, you don't have to market like you do with an independent shop. Independent shops have to market. They have to spend money on marketing. The amount of money in an independent shop that you spend on marketing is maybe 10 times what a dealership service department would. And on top of it, let me you agree to that, but let me even just kick you in the cojones one more time is most of the time the little marketing marketing that a dealership does is co opt by the factory and so they get money back. So let's say they spend $3000. They get a thousand or fifteen hundred of it back.

Right.

Your silence speaks.

No speaks. I have a story to share for you. So I. About.

About your grandpa.

No. This reminds me. About 28 minutes to the east of us is a town called Norwalk, California. And there's a Volkswagen dealer there that took me six months to get hired on. And I remember my first day opening the service drive door and walking out and there were like 53 Volkswagens sitting on the drive waiting to be written up.

Yeah.

And customers were standing there and it was required.

No marketing.

Oh, they're just there.

Yeah. You don't have to be a good service manager. You don't really even need marketing in your toolbox most of the time. If you're at a good dealership that sells a lot of cars, I agree it is dependent on the car sales. Like if, if a dealership isn't selling cars, then it hurts them. But for the most part you have built in. When you Open the doors, people are in line to come in.

Yeah, I think I just want to make this very important distinction. So when I was 19 years old, that's when I got started full time as a service advisor. Six years in the Independent. Took me six months and 43 dealerships to get my first dealership job. And the reason I did that, I left a family business, you know, moved on from that and wanted to go work in the dealerships because there was this thought that the dealerships were the authority, like that was the bar. And I wanted to see how they did it over on that side of it. One of the things that I think we have to understand is the dealerships work on a certain segment of cars and then as the cars age and get older, that can transition out to the independent. So a lot of times we're dealing with a different repair, a different type of car, different mileage. So a little bit older. And I did learn the dealerships are great at pattern failures. They see the same cars over and over again and it's definitely an advantage. So the built in traffic, I think as a consumer, if I buy a Toyota and you have Toyota on your wall and you're backed by the factory, there's that inherent trust that's built with it. So yeah, I think you do have built in traffic. So. Yeah.

And you.

Yeah, four for five.

Like if you play.

I think I'm five for five. But it's okay. I didn't give you the second one, the next one.

So the half on that one was. Then you get the money back to co op.

Right.

So any marketing that they do is, is most of the time offset if they use the right logo or whatever.

Yeah. And so for service managers out there, how can they use this as an advantage and you know, propel their dealership to another level? Can they be smarter on their marketing? Should they market to auto repair consumers?

Yeah, but they don't. They don't.

They just kind of do whatever the program is. So what happens?

They don't even understand marketing.

Yeah.

In the dealer world, what happens is represented.

Actually that should be one of yours. You should. One of your advantages for independent should be. Let me get you a pen. Should be that you understand marketing. So if car sales, if there was ever a worldwide pandemic and car sales dropped, you would know how to market.

Stay tuned next week because you'll find out where that ranks on my list. I already had it written down.

Okay. Just saying, I gave you one ahead of it. So not only, not only am I Five for five. But I gave you one, so that one will be mine on that list. Right? The kind of. The last one I have here is that dealerships embrace. Embrace technology. And a lot of that's driven by the. The factory. Right. But we did a little test, so I'm not. Jeremy, I'm not coming here to try to convince you of everything. We. We back our data here with case studies of real world.

Trial and error. Right.

Facts.

And. So what did. What did. What did we find about? Let's just say, hypothetically, you own what. What kind of car? Any.

Let's say a Chevrolet.

Let's say you own a Chevrolet in Los Angeles and you want to make an online appointment.

Out of 10 independent shops, how many shed. How. How many independents will allow you to make an online. Just here locally? In our little case study that we did, our scientific. We're not finding a vaccine for Covid. This isn't, you know, just convenience for a customer. How Many out of 10 do you think you can make an online appointment, by the way? Chevy dealer. 10 out of 10. So every dealership that you can hit here in LA with the rock and probably Orange county, in the Valley, you can make an online service appointment. How many independents do you think you can make an online.

2. Oh, you're wrong.

20%.

But that reminds me of my grandfather.

Yeah.

How's he doing, by the way?

He's not around anymore.

Dead.

He lost some weight. Yeah, Okay. A lot.

Four out of ten. Four.

Four. Well, that's better. I've always felt that the independent world, independent repair shop world is about 10 years behind in technology when it comes to consumers and stuff like this.

You just conceded. Do we need to keep going on technology? Wow, that was too easy.

Well, but there's.

So I'm six for six.

We could do a whole show just on consumers and what they want in their services.

Yeah, but what's the title of the show today is Shop Dealerships versus Independence. Who has the advantage so far? I'm six for six.

Five for six. Five for six.

Christian disagrees.

You pay him.

So. Yeah, he could go anywhere. He's talented guy. Handsome and talented.

Yeah, hold on. Before you get to that, this reminds me.

Why don't cannibals like clowns?

Why don't. That was a terrible segue.

Next time maybe you guys stand up for me.

You know what this. This technology reminds me of is cannibals. What? And then what?

Yeah, why do cannibals not like clowns?

Yeah, why do cannibals not like clowns.

I don't know. Why don't they like clowns?

They taste funny.

That's pretty good.

Thank you.

I like it. Good job. So also because the factory, right. So let's say you're a Chevrolet dealership. Chevrolet, the mothership, the big Chevrolet in Detroit.

Right.

Will go out and make deals with appointment software.

They'll make deals with website companies, they'll make deals with inspection tools.

You know, it's interesting because I've gone to, I've traveled to a ton of trade shows in the last 10 years. And when you go to the independent shows and then you go to something like nada or some of the dealership shows, the different levels that the companies play in. So the companies that tailor to, you know, their products are tailor fit for dealerships. They sometimes don't even want to talk to an independent shop. Yeah, it's just the dollars are just so right, you know.

Well, in the factory they'll go to, you know, an online appointment company and say, hey, if we give you all of the Chevy dealerships in the country, then what, what kind of price would you give us? Right. Where independents are kind of on their own.

And, and it's you guys, you know, you talk about the appointment. It's getting an online appointment. Most independent repair shops, when you go to their website, it's going to say please select your date, please select up to three times and then a member of our company will get back to you.

Yeah, it's a form for the call.

Right. And I always liken it to, you know, when we could go out to eat at restaurants and sit down and have a sit in meal. If we wanted to go to dinner tonight, we would go to the app and actually book the appointment in our reservation right there. We wouldn't want to wait for the maitre d to call us back. And that's what independent shops do a lot of times is they don't have the technology to deliver that what the customer wants immediately. And we live in a mobilized planet. Customers want what they want when they want it. If you don't give it to them, they're going to go find somebody else. So looks like you're five for six.

Yeah. Also like running loaners, they'll have software for that. Tons, tons of different things.

So there's a lot that independents can learn from dealerships. However, there is an independent advantage to this as well. We'll talk about that next time.

Cool cliffhanger. So make sure you put, put in comments advantages that you think dealerships have over independents that we missed because I think the audience is going to come up with some good ones that even help my case. Something that I'm going to be like, oh man, I wish I would have thought of that. Right?

One of them is going to be that. They're still open.

Thank you so much for watching this clip of Service Drive Revolution. Now you can catch the full episode of on YouTube, iTunes, or Spotify or wherever you consume your podcast. If you have any questions, go ahead and post them in the comments below. Make sure you subscribe and hit the bell icon so you're notified when we post new episodes. I'm Chris Collins and you can find me on Facebook and Instagram at Chris Bulldog Collins and I'll see you again on the next episode.