Why Dealerships Are In Trouble (Service Drive Revolution)

Number three, grassroots, community based. So we provide a faster option where the customer feels they have this personalized service experience. They don't have to wait four days for a phone call back from a service advisor.

What?

Yeah. Have you ever tried to get in touch with a live person at the service department?

Oh, yeah. That's a nightmare.

Yeah. So I pick up the phone at my shop. It's a great day of Freedom Autos. Jeremy, how can I help?

So more of a direct line.

Yep.

Less layers, you know. Press four for parts, press one for.

I only do that if it's somebody I know that I don't like. Thank you for calling Freedom Auto Repair. You've reached us during a very busy time. 4 parts, press 1 for service, press 2 if you're checking on the status of your car, press 3 if you're unsatisfied, go to hell and don't call us again. Click.

You have that?

I just did it right there. I can ad lib very easy. That sounded like a request.

You don't have that?

No, I could do that at times. This is what I bought the shop for, so I can have fun with it.

I don't know. Sometimes we're sitting around.

That was a joke.

Sometimes we're sitting around.

Tell your customers to go to the dark side. Anyways, okay. So yeah, we're grassroots community, I think. You know, the one thing I've had my shop for almost four years now, and it's the faces, the names, the relationships that we have with our clients. I feel that we do a better job becoming a part of their everyday life. Whereas sometimes at the dealership it's a once off or it's every year or every two years or just when the car has a problem. So it's a more negative experience versus a positive experience. I feel like we can actually become a really good positive source for that customer at a grassroots level.

Speaking of everyday life. So I'm walking down the road the other day and I pass a couple and it's a blind woman talking to her boyfriend.

So wait, the other day you're walking? Where are you walking?

Just out on Wilshire.

So you're out on Wilshire walking and then you walk up to a blind lady?

No, no, I walked past, there was a blind lady and her boyfriend talking.

I didn't know she was blind.

She picked him with her in the glasses and the whole night.

Did she have a dog? A seeing eye dog?

No, just the stick. She's probably on a list and she says, I overhear her saying to the boyfriend. I'm seeing another person and I left. I'm like, wait.

That could either be really good or really bad.

Oh, I'm seeing another person. So it could be that she's not blind anymore or it could mean that she's cheating.

Right. I'm hoping for the not blind thing makes perfect sense.

It totally applies to what we're. What we're talking about.

Right on.

What was your, what was your last one that you said? Grassroots.

Grassroots community.

Okay.

Now I do, I do believe.

That that is not an advantage that is exclusive to independence. We do have dealerships that are a part of the community and do a good job with that.

But I think more independents lean that way. More independents are part of the community, especially with dealerships. With consolidation, you have more groups, you have more.

I think, you know, I think it's because we understand it's our lifeblood. And I go back to when I got my first dealership job. I always had my own personal cards made up. I would leave tic tacs with the cards, you know, in the center console and I would create that relationship. I always walk the customer up to the cashier, walked them out to their car. I think one of the things I observed that the service writers that were there longer, that had that built in client base didn't work as hard at really fostering that relationship. So.

Yeah, yeah, but I feel like dealerships could they. There are dealerships that have. That isn't an exclusive advantage to independence. It's just independents think that way and they operate that way.

Right, but you do concede that point. Just that it is an advantage for the independents.

Right.

That's three for three.

I think independents use that, but dealerships could use that as an advantage.

So we're three for three now. Okay, number four, you have a weird.

Way of counting.

For three.

What's your oh for three? Holy moly. Wow. I better dust off my toolbox and get back to the technician role. I'm going to go to expense control. I think independents are more nimble and so we can provide a lower cost repair or a better value repair because we can actually move quicker in certain areas and actually control our overhead, control our expenses, rather than a large, you know, fixed offs operation. In a dealership where a lot of times the advisors have no control over any of that. It's out of their hands. Parts pricing is already preset, the labor rates preset, and the cost of overhead is preset. They have no control over it. So we can actually, you know, understand each Technician's efficiencies and productivity. So. So as I'm quoting out a job, I can know that, okay, technician number one, he can do this in this real time. So I can actually. My gross profit for actual hour can actually be higher, and I can manipulate that and actually control it better. So I think we do a better job at expense control, and that's an advantage that we have.

Well, I think that the person that's writing the check for the expense is never far away from the desk. It's true. So I think that that helps out too. It's definitely.

Yeah, you're turning off the lights in the shop. You're like. Yep, you're paying attention to those little things.

So another advantage for the giving.

You're not giving customers amenities like shuttles, loan cars, coffee.

That's not true.

Fresh baked chocolate chip cookies. So, yeah, it makes perfect sense.

Wait, we're. No, no, no. That is not true. That's not what. We do all that. We provide all that.

How many loaners do you have?

Two. Yeah, well.

On my lot, but Herz.

Has like 5 million cars, 350 loaners or something.

You know the honest answer to how many owners I have is how many loaner. How many rental cars are in my city? Because it doesn't matter. I can't rent one from anybody. So we have an unlimited supply of loan.

Takes time. Customers got to go there. The whole thing.

Not really, if you do it right. Oh, my gosh, you guys are horrible. Okay, number five on my list.

Not the best.

Look, strategic marketing.

This one we can see. We.

Dealerships don't only have to market.

They're gonna have to coming up. They're terrible at it very soon. So you're saying the fixed offside of the service department doesn't market strategically?

No, dealerships just in general are terrible at marketing. Like, they think that marketing is putting on Facebook pictures of customers with their new car and buy four tires, get one free or lease payments. But they focus everything on the commodity. Like, imagine if Apple. All their marketing was hard drive and ram. Like, you can get a terabyte hard drive in the new Apple MacBook Pro.

No, they don't.

They don't even put dealerships marketing. They don't tell stories. There's no human connection. There's no vulnerability. There's no honesty. It's not authentic and it doesn't pull you in. It's. It's. They're. They. Most of the time, dealers do marketing because they feel they have to, not because it's Effective. It's very ineffective.

I would agree with you on that.

They're terrible at it. So. Yeah. Okay, so you got one.

Did I tell you guys about the search that I did?

You told us about the blind lady.

Yeah. Thank goodness, because I would have not forgiven myself.

Did you ever find out if it was her cheating or that she was healed of being blind?

No. I'm not sure. I'll ask if I see her again, though. But she actually called him that night.

And said, I can't see you.

Wait, what if she was cheating with you?

I can't see you anymore. Right. That would have been great.

Sorry.

All right, I digress. So back to business. It's funny that I'm reeling you two back end. That's interesting. So I did a search of Chevrolet Repair near me, and nine things came up as an option. And five of those things were. Were independent repair facilities. One was a truck shop.

One was a used tire place.

Nice used tire.

A used tire sale place.

Cash cow.

They have enough money to advertise, so.

They advertised ahead of anything else. And then the last two, remember, I was searching for Chevrolet repair, a Mercedes Benz dealer and a Volvo dealer.

Kudos to those two.

If we called them and said, I need my Chevrolet service, they'd say, we don't service those here.

No, it's, it's. It's funny, but I did this thing with.

With SCT in the southeast part of the country, and this guy Tony from Google was speaking, and he was showing that same thing that like. So he's just searching for tires. And even when a dealer did come up, it would be buy a new car. So it wouldn't even take them to a tire page. They were just trying to sell them a car.

And.

And the customer wants tires. Right. And you go, you can go to Amazon and type in tires, and it will sell you the tires, deliver them to the shop, and you can pick a shop and make an appointment.

Yeah.

Yep.

Super easy.

Yeah, the. The. The dealership marketing thing is a disaster. So. So with one out of one out of four.

No, but with strategic marketing, I think, you know, the, the core of this is to be rememberable and be remarkable. And, and through that, to be rememberable and remarkable.

Peter Piper picked a pack of pickled peppers. But the pack.

I think I said that correctly. I'm not sure what. Remarkable.

Rememberable.

Be rememberable and be remarkable.

I like that.

Yes. And if you do, that customer will share their experience with the world, and then that story organically will drive more business back to you, that's what customers want. So that's just a little nugget that you can use on either side of the fence that you're on. Number six, I have bonus one here for you guys. SOS stands for.

I'm testing you guys. Speed of service. This is a definite advantage that independents have over dealerships is speed of service.

Once again, it's not, it's an advantage that they.

Yeah, I guess they, they execute on that advantage. But it's not that the dealerships don't have that advantage. They just don't.

They don't think of it as a thing.

But I know it's important to the customer.

Like I get it, but it's paramount to the customer. Like time is greater than money. Today it's. No, here's the thing. You take, take a two week time period, you're going to be without your car for two weeks. Okay?

One scenario is it takes 95% of that time for the shop to figure out what's wrong with the car. And they call you, you know, 13 days later, 13 hours later, and say, here's what it is, we'll have it fixed in five minutes. You're not very happy. The other one figures it out in five minutes and says, I need two weeks to fix your car. You're fine with it. Why?

Because you know what it's going to take to fix it?

Certainty. You've given the customer certainty. There's. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. But speed of service. I am a firm believer that this is a KPI that we do not track as an industry that we need to track. We need to find where the bottlenecks are in our production. After all, you say it really well, we're a factory. We have a labor factory out there. So how fast does a car get into inspection diagnostic? Once it's done, where's it at in estimating? Once that's done, where's the approval? Then where's parts? And you know, the parts manager is always going to mess that up. Next is servicing, then QC and then delivery. So every one of those touch points, you know, we have this on our online platform. It shows you how to customize it for your shop, but identify where the roadblocks are, how to fix them, and then get that car through faster so you can make more money.

It's good. So I think this was fun. This was very fun.

But here's the but that just means everything. I said software, that's an eraser.

No, I think, I don't think that at all. But I I do think that it's interesting because we've, we've talked about this before, is when you're sitting with the independent shop owner and you're sitting with a dealer or a service manager in a dealership, they both think that the other has an advantage. And what we know to be true is that the advantages in your ability to execute on the opportunity in front of you, neither one, neither one's advantage is enough to put the other out of business. But there's so much opportunity for dealers to do a better job and for independents to do a better job that really the, the advantage is up to the beholder and who wants to execute. And it comes down to execution and mindset more than anything else. Yep. More than whether you're a dealer or an independent. More than what market you're in, what brand, what, whatever. Right. It's. It's how you think, what your self image is of yourself and expectations of yourself and then how well you execute what, how good of a leader you.

Are with the resources that you have. Absolutely.

Yeah.

And how well you control what you can control and stop talking about the things you can't control.

Yep. You can be a performer in either arena.

Yeah. Which we see all the time.

Yep. And it's fun and it's exciting to see that those are both possibilities. That industry is plenty big enough for everybody.

Yeah.

That does it.

Right. It's just doing what's in front of you. Do you agree with that?

Execution. Absolutely.

Execution is more important. And I mean, you would understand that more than anybody because you worked in both.

On both sides. Yep. And you see it, you see some guys and gals that they thrive in the dealership environment, then they just, they're not able to make the leap to the independent because they don't have as many resources behind them. So they struggle in certain areas. And then you see some guys and gals that can't make the transition over to the dealership world simply because they're, you know, used to being a lone wolf and calling the shots themselves and being nimble and not having to do paperwork and getting by and all that stuff. So it's a little bit different, you know, two different worlds. I think you can thrive in both sides. But I think I proved my point that my list was a little bit better than yours.

I think the opportunity of a lifetime comes once a day and everybody has that opportunity. So execute on, on your opportunity and that's how you'll be successful. One doesn't have the advantage over the other, but that was really fun.

That was awesome.

So post, post in the comments. If you have some advantage that you feel like Jeremy missed for independence, put it in there. We would love to see your thoughts on it, but I hope everybody agrees with us that it's really on your ability to execute in your mindset more than anything else. Thank you so much for watching this clip of Service Drive Revolution. Now you can catch the full episode 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 @chrisbulldog Collins and I'll see you again on the next episode.