Why Service Managers Are The Dealers Of The Future (Service Drive Revolution)

Foreign.

Welcome, everybody, to Service Drive Revolution. We have a very exciting show for you this Monday. We hope that you are doing good today. We are going to talk about why service managers are the future owners, dealers, and general managers. We're going to talk about a new segment we are going to start doing this week. Of course, we're going to take your questions, some of your questions, honestly, a little disappointing. They're more like comments than questions. But we're going to. We're going to address them anyways.

And then first, I.

Had something really crazy happened last night. And then I want to talk about the weirdest thing you've ever seen in a car, Jeremy. In a glass.

No, we're not talking about that.

What's the weirdest thing I've ever seen in a customer's car?

I don't know. I always go to handguns. Like, I always feel like that's weird. Oh, I just left that there.

What's funny is when you have the tech, that's like, I refuse to work on the car. There's a gun in there. Like, that's always funny to me. Yeah, that's happened to me a bunch of times. I have to go get the gun, put it in the office. The whole thing. Big, huge bricks of weed. Especially Vickster's store.

We just smoked that because she was.

In, you know, up by San Francisco and a lot. I mean, I remember a couple times this one, seven series, like, you could smell it. You could smell the weed inside the building.

Yeah, because those are business people up there.

And the cash guns, same thing. What's the weirdest thing you've seen recently in a glove box, Jeremy?

Well, in a glove box, we actually opened it up and a rabbit jumped out of the glove box. So it was pretty interesting that a rabbit was actually inside the glove box and it jumped out. It's pretty interesting.

So you know that I'm trained in interrogation and I can tell if somebody's lying.

I've heard that about you.

Yeah. You're straight up lying.

I am not.

You know what else I think I could do?

Because one of the sexual toys that fell out of the glove box was called the rabbit. So I wasn't lying.

Oh, got it.

So was it a rabbit thumper?

Was a rabbit called Rabbit?

I think.

But a rabbit, that takes batteries, Right?

The funniest part, though, I had one of my texts walking by. D, man, I'm all, hey, D, come here. Hey, Customer wants you to diagnose this. And he grabbed it.

It was so he was touching the rabbit.

Yeah. And he didn't have gloves on. I did.

So that is not Covid approved.

Yeah. So how this came up, everybody is when before we, we started recording, I asked Jeremy, I held up my, my fingers like this, like a zero. And I said, you know, what is this?

I cannot believe you're sharing this story right now.

And then he goes into a story about how there were sex toys in a customer's car and this. It's super inappropriate, like Jeremy always is. And, and I was like, no, this is the tax rate in Nevada because we're thinking about moving our office to Nevada. And so it shows you where Jeremy's mind is. And then what? My mind is on saving taxes and your mind's on rabbits that take bad luck. Yeah.

Life is a thing.

Well, you're definitely having more fun than I am.

F u n. Hey, I got a question. So wait a second. Today's topic. You mean that you're. We're going to talk about the hard working service managers, service advisors out there and how they can stop working for the man and actually become the man. Is that what we're going to talk about?

Or the woman?

No, but you can, you can certainly make that point when we get to it.

I think I just, I'm really excited because this is like a transition for a lot of these guys and gals and there's.

That is not, that is not at all the point I'm gonna make. But I think your point will be legitimate and complementary to the point I'm gonna make.

You know what else is exciting, guys? So they opened up the new LEGO store the other day. It's back and reopening.

They opened up the new LEGO store. It's back from COVID Yep. They are opening up the LEGO store. Where?

I'm not sure, but people were lined up for blocks.

Get it, Jeremy. Cuz Legos are blocks.

I think the, I think the, the, the joke that I said was inappropriate for the show would have been better there.

So much better.

But we can't do that because we don't want, we don't want to be adults on, on Apple.

Great.

So Jeremy, I've been doing a lot of strategy sessions with, with independent shops and, and a couple of dealers.

We're gonna be busy coming out of this. We're gonna tell you that right now. We are busy. I remember when we came out of the recession in 2008, I couldn't handle the business. And now I feel like we're, we're.

We'Re gonna scale and It'll be fine.

I'm really, but really stoked this.

The thing that I was gonna say.

Is that the pattern that I am noticing.

Service departments across the board, whether you're a dealership or an independent, and I was going to talk to Russo about this is I think what I'm going to do is I'm going to run a coaching group for marketing where I'm going to take some shops and I'm going to take some dealers and I'm going to teach them how to do their social media. Because everybody I talk to, I need more traffic. I need more traffic. And like, literally, I'm talking to shops that are paying outside companies to do their social media that suck, that literally are putting up stock images and just doing the basics wrong. And they'll be spending 3,500 to $5,000 a month. They're doing pay per click ads, and they have no clue what they're doing. And for, I don't know, a fifth of what they're doing, we could teach them how to drive traffic into their service drives and the right kind of traffic. And so I'm thinking about doing that. I'm thinking about, like limiting it to like 15.

Taking 15 shop owners or service managers and meeting with them every couple weeks and giving them homework, doing their stuff. Maybe Russo will jump in and help them with, with some things and fixing their social media. But it's a disaster.

It is a disaster. I agree 100%. It's sickening to see the same post used from 100 shops and there's just no authenticity behind it. And here's the challenge. If you do it right, you can literally get 10 times the results for a tenth of the price.

The thing is, I haven't seen anybody do it right.

I have it in, everybody I've talked to. They're not even close. They're like, they're not even in the same country.

Well, it's too easy to stay with the status quo. So nobody's been pushing the boundaries. Nobody's been doing the challenge. They haven't challenged it. So I think the. I think you're absolutely right. I think you should do it, and I think the market is just right for it. I think most people are doing it.

Because they feel like they have to. Not because it's a tool that's super or not super. Not that it's a tool that's highly effective and can drive traffic. They're doing it because, oh, well, you got to be on Facebook and it's like, well, you don't have to be on. Honestly, you could probably turn your Facebook off. It doesn't matter. I'm like, do you get any clients from there? No.

Depends on. Well, it depends on which marketing channel is successful for you. So right now for our shop, 70% of our customers come from Yelp. So I could turn Facebook off. I don't think I've made a Facebook post in a long time.

For teach you how to make Facebook work.

Can I be your first client in that group?

Yeah, for sure.

Sign me up.

So then you can just make Russo do all your stuff for you. I know how you think.

It's called delegation, baby.

That's right, man.

Hey, Christian, your. Your joke was good. You just.

It wasn't that good.

It's not my best. It was just the opener was the warm up.

Yeah, he's got more.

Yeah, he's got a whole note card full of stuff.

How many you got? 1, 2, 3, 4, 5.

Should we. Should we go to questions? Oh, one more thing. Sorry. So this conspiracy stuff, Jeremy, I'm curious to hear where you're at with this, but I want to. I want to tell you about what happened last night. So downtown la, here, we've been hearing a lot of explosions and like, it sounds like fireworks. Like an M80. I don't know. You constantly are hearing fireworks. Every once in a while it sounds like a gunshot. Do you hear gunshots? Gosh, yeah. Yeah. Last night for some reason was really crazy. And you kind of thought like, the. The. The protesting and all that was slowing down, but it. But anyways, there was a huge explosion that sounded like a car bomb, and it, like, it kind of shook the building. And so I went outside, like, I got. I got dressed and I went outside to see what it was. And this guy down here on the bridge had like, I don't know, dynamite had exploded in his hand. But it looked like he was trying to blow up this bridge over the 1:10, like, anarchist cookbook kind of a thing, and he literally blew off his hand. He was running up the street with. No. With half of his arm gone. And the fire department, police, everything were here also. Just a little. He had gasoline in his backpack.

Are you serious?

Yeah, I'm dead serious.

He's probably lucky that. He's probably lucky that wasn't worse. Now that you say that, why doesn't.

That come up on the news? Why does a guy trying to blow up a bridge that blows up his own hand, like his hand is gone now and he has gasoline in his backpack. Doesn't make the local news or the LA Times that in and of itself, Jeremy is a conspiracy, if you were looking.

The better question is this, though. When he was running by you, did you give him a high five?

Well, I wasn't there when he ran by security here at the building. One of the guys who's really nice was. Was visual. He was visibly shaken. He was really upset. And he was telling me what happened. And the guy was screaming, help me, help me. And his arm was gone and there's blood all over out there on the street still. But he ran up. He ran all the way up to the Chase building and ran in and was screaming. And people on this app called Citizen were like, how did he run that far? But I guess when those sort of things happen, you get crazy adrenaline. But he's. He's got gasoline in his backpack, a quarter stick of dynamite or half a stick of dynamite, whatever it is, and it blows up on him. What in the world is going on? That. That's okay. And they're talking about defunding the Police Department, cutting $150 million from the LAPD. What is your take on this?

Well, I think there's definitely a lot of conspiracies at work here. And, you know, to answer your question about why isn't the local news covering it, it's just not on their agenda. They don't want to cover the real deal and get out on the streets and see what's going on. You know, when all the protests were going on, I watched the news pretty much every day. Channel 7, Channel 4, NBC and ABC out of LA. And literally they both recovering the same thing. And. And it looked like it was totally planned as to the message they were bringing to the people. So, you know, my advice for you guys is get the heck out of LA now before you can. While you can. Before they lock down the passes and don't let you guys out. Yeah.

What is this, Jeremy?

So I'm holding up zero taxes. Zero taxes in Nevada, sir.

No, zero people trying to blow up a bridge in Nevada over the 110. That's what it is.

That's because Nevada doesn't have any bridges.

Yeah, they do. There's a bridge when you come out of Cosmopolitan, right?

Yeah.

Going back over to the Aria.

Those aren't called bridges. Those are people movers, sir.

Guy might have tried to blow it up.

Guy with the dynamite could have done a lot of damage to that little walkway for sure.

Yeah.

Okay. God. We're ready for your. Your questions. Summer questions. Summer Comments?

Yes. God has many questions.

Make sure you inform them that if you. If you post a question, not a comment, a question, we'll send you some swag. T shirt coffee mug stickers. We got new cool little stickers that are pretty dope. Have you seen those? The mini stickers?

Yep. With the dog on them.

Service driver of a Lucian. Do they have a dog on them?

Maybe. I'm thinking of a different sticker. There's. We have cool stickers.

We do have cool stickers.

Yeah.

God doesn't think so, but I do.

God's like, come on. I just want to get this comment.

God loves the baby stickers. Thank you very much.

God's trying to not be so loud because Michael is yelling at him. Then he comes through all the microphones.

He can't help it.

Trying to be like, muffled God. Three quarter God.

75 God.

70, yeah. 75 God.

Would that just make him a prophet then? Not necessarily God.

No, He's God.

He's God. Okay. Yeah.

Oh, you know what's funny is if Jesus and Aquaman had a fight, I think that Jesus would walk all over Aquaman.

Tell us. God's son like that.

Yeah. I was laughing even before you started that joke. That was great.

God, I'm sorry.

That's okay.

God's cool with it.

This first question comes from our email.

Chris, when it comes to MPIs, it's like pulling teeth to get them done. Is there a way that you have used to get them done to make it easier for me? I've been a service manager for six months, and I haven't made a dent in those numbers. Let me know. Thanks for the advice.

Yeah, so I'm working on a course for this, actually, that I think you. You will enjoy. It's called leadership. It always. It always confuses me when managers say, oh, my. My advisors won't do walkarounds or my techs won't do inspections. And I just, like. The first thing that comes to mind is I wonder, like, who's in charge? Who's leading?

I would have a hard time admitting that personally. Like, I just would like, you. You got to go get a mirror, and you need to look in the mirror and do some analysis of yourself and your leadership skills because you're in charge. And what you just said is, the people that you allow to collect paychecks, that you allow to come in and work for you every day won't do the thing that's most vital for the company to be successful.

I don't get it. It's like we own a casino but we don't allow gambling.

Right. And I think that that's.

We own a water filtering plant and we don't allow water.

It just doesn't matter.

We own a gasoline refinery, but we don't allow oil or gasoline anywhere in our refinery. Like the two most, like what do advisors do? What do technicians do? And basically like, I don't know, I don't understand how it's negotiable. Do you have a joke for this?

No. To me this is a one of those dead serious topics.

Yeah, Serious is a heart attack. It's leadership.

I have an acronym for him.

Constant and never ending training. And it's. You know what was interesting talking to you guys in the lead in right now when you talk about this pressure of business that's coming in our shop, like car count has just exploded this week and we're seeing it at every shop and every dealership. Numbers are just going crazy. When you have this immense amount of pressure, it's really going to test your systems. So he's a product of his systems and unfortunately the systems aren't built properly. To keep the reinforcement training that needs to be there. There's a lot of reinforcement coaching that needs to be done and, and you can't just train it one time and think that they're going to get it. You've got to constantly go back, monitor, rehearse, record, see the results and go back and retrain it. And you may have to retrain everybody three or four times in a six month period until they finally get it. Because everybody's going to go back to their old ways. So remember, you can't fall backwards into your old habits. You've got a constant never ending train.

Yeah. And so, you know, let's say I come into your service department or any of us do, and we're going to try to fix that. So we're going to do a couple things. The first thing we're going to do is we're going to find the techs that want to do it and we're going to hold them very, very close. If I don't have that, if I don't have anybody that's going to be my model, I hire that person. When I hire them, I tell them, listen, all these guys might not be here in a couple months. I'm holding you to a different standard. You're going to inspect every car. You know, you're going to be the model. This is what you're going to do. And I might bring in One or two new techs to do that. Meanwhile, I'm going to start coaching everybody up. I'm going to play games, I'm going to have contests for inspections. I'm going to, you know, we're going to sharpen our knife. We're going to like practice, practice, practice. I'm going to make it fun, but at the same time the accountability is going to start to creep up and, and then I'm going to get rid of somebody. I'm going to draw a line somewhere and it's just very quickly going to become non negotiable. But I wouldn't be able to function if that was a negotiable. Like it just.

It's anarchy and you can't allow anarchy. So I would totally start to close the box, but it wouldn't take that long. I'm talking about weeks, not months.

Agreed. I put my seal of approval on that. Boom.

That's good though.

Okay. God. What's the next one?

This next one comes from YouTube. Before COVID hit, I was gearing up to go more digital. But now that we are closed and after watching your video, I've decided to do a 180 on digital and bring back old school hands on customer service. I feel like this could be such an opportunity to distinguish us from the pack and keep going into the future.

No question, that was a comment.

Congratulations.

On the right path. Going straight ahead.

All right, what's the next one? Gone.

This next one also comes from YouTube. I feel like this content is seriously underrated and under viewed with. With how many disastrous service departments there are, I would think more people would be flocking to this stuff. Maybe it's because a lot of advisors are still part of the older generation that is less in touch.

Thanks. Is that my mom? My mom posted that.

It is not your mom.

No, but I again agree with.

Thank you for the nice kind words. Very sweet.

We also agree that we'll have work for a really long time.

This next one comes from Facebook. I saw your video about psychopath business partners. I just had the rug pulled out from under me by someone just like that and created a scenario where he got all the control and got all other partners to side with him. And he took me for all my money, which was almost 30k and countless time and energy spent helping him. Jesus, when will they lose?

So I, I believe he's referring to a Business Outlaws episode, not sdr. Right. Because Big Mike and I talked about that a couple times on there.

So yeah, I'm getting, I'm Way better at pointing out psychopaths. I think I've gotten rid of all the psychopaths in our company because I had a couple. The last one a kind of.

Still lingers a little bit, but is gone. But yeah.

We'Re psychopath free here. It wasn't easy though. Those psychopaths are hard to get rid of.

Oh, they're. They're leeches almost, right?

They are.

It's pretty crazy cuz they feed off of the drama and so they just, they keep trying to gaslight you and make stuff up and they lie if the truth is better. But.

Yeah, we'd almost do a whole.

Did that happen?

We can almost do a whole show on gaslighting actually.

We really could.

Holy cats.

The thing that I come back to with that though is it's all my fault. I allowed it to happen. The older I get though, and the more I give Big Mike a lot of credit because I didn't really understand it until he really started pointing it out. And then I really went to work on, on learning it and figuring it out and read books on it and I just going back in time, like, can't believe how many, how many psychopaths I've. I've dealt with because I'm a, I'm a codependent. So like I try to please people and I get taken advantage of in the worst way. And it's all about boundaries and, you know, holding your line. I pride myself on trying to be really fair and like this last psychopath we had working here, they took advantage of that is, you know, I let them, but they did.

So.

Yeah. Do you want to add anything to that, Jeremy? I feel like Jeremy is probably better at this than, than I am.

No, I'm just kind of disappointed in the questions this week.

It's like they're more like comments.

Yeah, exactly. So I have a challenge now. Here's the thing. I'm gonna be on vacation for two weeks. So we're going up to Yellowstone. Totally stoked to spend some time with the family. And I am going to give $100 bill to the best question that comes in over the next three weeks that we read live on the next SDR that I'm on. So 100 bill coming your way.

Throwing your own skin, driving you to ask a good question. Are there any more?

God, there's one more comment, but it's not a question, it's a comment.

And it comes from YouTube. I left a family owned small service center and used car dealer to go work for a BMW Dealership. They told me that they don't rip people off. Then three months down the line, I got multiple complaints from the manager that I wasn't selling enough. I will not tell a customer they need a 5k bill on a 1k car. After telling the manager that the place was an overpriced scam center, I asked for my job back at the small independent family run center and went back. The way you talked about it in your video was the normal. Tell them it needs something even if it can wait another two years. And to me that's not acceptable.

So this is another comment.

Yeah. Okay.

No, Lang, we have never, we have never, ever, ever condoned overselling a customer. In fact, we're in the hundreds of how many times on this show I've said, if you wouldn't sell it to your mother, don't sell it. And treat customers like family. So you're kind of a dick.

Like you want go. What I would do if I was you, Go start your own show. Don't listen to our show.

That's not going to happen. Hey.

So we have never condoned overselling anything to anybody.

No. Our job is to educate and inform the customer and fully disclose everything the car needs every time it's in and help the customer make a good decision based on their goals for the car. So something that is due in three years is going to be labeled as green on the checklist. That's not even going to be brought in the conversation. So I don't know what this guy's smoking, but I think he's way off base with his comment.

Yeah, I mean, there's definitely service managers that might take over a BMW store, a Toyota store, or anything that over recommend and, and aren't ethical. But I, you know, you shouldn't work for them. I wouldn't either. There's no way I would service drive where I was told I had to sell things that customers didn't need. The thing is though, is from your tone, I, I can't tell if you're a pain in the ass or if you really are ethical.

Right.

No. Yeah.

I think.

The floor is yours. Go ahead, sir.

So based on there was a little more to the comment than what God shared with us today. I think the thing.

Read this. Yeah, you're checking.

Well, thanks for sharing the insider knowledge with us, bro. Like, so.

So there's something that's really natural to you guys having no clue what's going to happen before it happens, which is a lot of fun. It's kind of like My jokes, like I have all the jokes prepared, Jeremy, but I don't tell you a darn thing because it's great to see the look on your face when I tell them. But I do believe that word ethical is being used in convenience in this whole comment. Right. So I think that what our responsibility is, Jeremy, have a band of people that are service advisors out there that feel like the ethics and the truth is to not tell anybody anything and just assume that the cars are going to live forever and they don't need any kind of preventative maintenance. But if you've worked in a shop before, you know that's not true.

Oh well, the stats, like whoever this person is, can't argue with the stats that preventative maintenance saves people money in the long run. In fact, a lot of manufacturers under recommend, like let's just talk about BMW and power steering fluid. There's literally metal chunks in the racks and the racks on a lot of BMWs are disposable at 100,000 miles and they never, they don't recommend to replace the fluid. Right.

Because it's lifetime or whatever. Yeah.

So I don't, if it was my mom's car I would tell her replace the fluid. There's going to be metal chunks in there and you're going to have to buy a rack. And it's like that with a lot of manufacturers because the manufacturers try to get customers to perceive that they never maintained them. But the truth of the matter is, is the cars aren't disposable at 10 years or 100,000 miles. The average car on the road right now is almost 13 years old, the highest it's ever been. And if you think a 13 year old car didn't need its fluids changed at some point.

I don't, I'm not a tech, but I'll tell you there's, there's a lot of texts that'll tell you that that's not, it's just not factual. But what else, what else did the guy say?

Well, I have a comment there's another side to look at this. So it goes from a small mom and pop over to was it a dealer? Is that correct?

A BMW dealer? He said.

Right.

So.

And then they, they judge you based off of your sales ability. Right. So your KPIs now become. Sales are the highlight. Now here's one of the things I've discovered working on both sides of the fence. The A lot of times some of the independents can create a business model that is working on older vehicles and then they're triaging and just become a repair shop. And then the cars become a little bit older. So the maintenance is kind of out, you know, is taken out of the equation. But when you go to an expert and you have expert technicians that understand these cars and inside and out, down to every nut, bolt and torque specification and they know how to make these cars purr and just seeing there's differences that come out of what's recommended, what's not. So it possibly could be that the advisor went over to this new place with a bunch of experts and just was overwhelmed with what they were recommending and felt that this stuff didn't really need bent one. In fact, it actually did, and it's going to provide a better product for the customer. So there's a lot to this that we just simply don't have the answers to right now.

Yeah.

Anything else that we should know about this guy?

Maybe. Maybe not about this guy. But I do think it's important that I tell everybody that. That I wasn't.

That was your question.

Like, that was your question.

You. You laughed before the delivery. This is really getting challenging.

Conspiracy theory, Jeremy, is that was your question.

You were the one that actually sent that in.

It's not even a question.

That wasn't me.

These are the worst questions we've ever had.

It's been.

I know.

That's why.

Question segment anymore if we don't.

No, we are. That's why I'm breaking out the cat.

Holy cow. It has been busy in Hesperia.

Send your questions in.

It would appear that Jeremy's been to a strip club before.

Yeah, he made it rain for sure.

Have you done that in a strip club?

Cracker barrel.

Will you come visit me in Vegas?

Yeah.

Strip clubs there.

No, I won't go there, but I'll.

Go to Vegas, you know. You know, Jeremy, that.

That this year Covid has kept me from taking my one month vacation in the Bahamas.

Well, I'm sorry to hear that. You typically take a month off in the Bahamas every year.

No, normally I can't take that vacation because of time and money.

So this year it's Covid.

It ruined your imaginary vacation.

Yeah, exactly.

I get it. Down with COVID Down with COVID Okay. Are we good? God. Is that all the comments?

That is all the comments. God is going to crack a beer and put his feet up because they gave him a headache.

I agree. Thank you, though. Good job. Sorry about what Christian said about your son.

That's okay. He's a problematic child.

Why are service managers, the future.

Owners.

General managers, leaders.

In transportation.

I don't care if you're a truck dealership, car dealership, an independent shop. Service managers are going to be the new leaders in the industry. And let me tell you why.

Because most general managers or dealers came from the sales department. They know nothing about service. Their egos are tied to how many cars they sell.

So when they wake up in the morning, they're thinking, how many cars are we going to sell today? If they're sitting in a bar and you're like, how are you doing? They're going to talk about how many cars they sold, what their front end, what their back end. Gross is. Most of the time, they know very little about service. In fact, I wish I had a dollar every time a dealer had told me, can you just take my service department so I don't have to deal with it? Like, literally. They only have it because they have to have it, right? And so as the industry's changing and manufacturers are doing everything they can to go direct to consumer, and as we're going through this and factories are to starting.