Chris:
Today on the show. We talk about how you can get in on the post COVID rush before it’s too late. Mia visits us here in California. We debate service advisor, pay plans, base or commission, which is better. And maybe possibly Christian finally gives me the cigar. He owes me that in much more today on service drive revolution.
Christian:
what’s going on, Christian. Not too much, man. How are you?
Chris:
We have a special guest today. We sure do the beautifulness, Mia. Hello came all the way down from the Northwest to hang out with us. Pretty awesome. Mia, you have, um, a tremendous following. Well, a couple hundred thousand followers. Do you ever have fans or, you know, whatever you would call them, people that are enthusiastic about what you do send you
Mia:
Yes. All the time.
Chris:
And do you, when those gifts are sent, do you get the gifts like they actually get to you? Yeah. Yeah.
Mia:
Interesting. You’re so mad about this.
Chris:
Um, a client really nice guy. Send me a, uh, cigar. Are you familiar with cigars? A Gherkin cigar? No, me neither. I’ve never tried it mostly. Um, uh, I smoke other stuff, but you know, you like to try new stuff, especially if, if you have somebody who’s enthusiastic about a certain brand, which he’s clearly enthusiastic about the Gherkin. I was excited to share that with him. You know, when he gives it to, he gives it to Christian
Mia:
Fancy
Chris:
It’s warm came out of his pocket and I want to feel a warmness or you, have you ever smoked a cigar? I have you have you say that, like, it’s not something that you’re going to do it
Mia:
Probably not, because I don’t know. I mean, I kind of know how to, but every time I do it, I just choke on it
Chris:
This season.
Mia:
No, no, that’s true. I went Baghdad. Sure. So what does it say? I can’t read it Trinidad. It’s from Trinidad. Uh, but it is also a cigar from Florida. So I figured that maybe, maybe the cigar that got lost, um, this could be really nice surrogate. And just consider that from Paul.
Chris:
I would like to kind of tell everybody not to change the subject, but to change the subject that we are running a contest inside of our membership group is our, what do you call it? So if your honor on demand or in our coaching, we have put up a short film called the review, which we’re, we’re very proud of what we created, what the team did. And it’s, it’s kind of a way of training. It’s, it’s more of a short film or the lessons are built in instead of just a talking head, kind of preaching at everybody. And we’re giving away a PlayStation five to anybody who reviews. It reviews the review. Perfect. Do you call that a, what do you call that? Either you are double in Tundra. Wow. Something. So, um, make sure if you’re inside of, on demand that you’re checking for those links and the rules of how we’re doing that. But I’m looking forward to seeing some of those reviews and the PlayStation five was very hard to get.
Mia:
Yeah. And we, we have one just for this contest. Right. And the contest ends soon. Yeah. Well you got to hurry up because time flies, like an arrow fruit flies, like a banana
Chris:
Me. It’s kind of cynical if she does it. Yeah. You guys look like you, you need a little energy. Are you a big fan of energy drinks?
Mia:
No. No, I’m not. Okay. Good. Well, I got a little peer pressure to welcome you to the show me. Yeah, this is going to be
Chris:
R uh, what would you call them? Our resident muscle head.
Mia:
Yes. We would call it my resident muscle head or resident
Chris:
Muscle head. Who’s uh, who’s our trainer, or I guess my trainer loves this stuff. It’s called rain. And, but it’s a little bit, you’re going to feel like you’re going to have a heart attack. That’s fine. But I just want at the top of the show, I thought it would be interesting if you guys drank a little bit of this. So it’s jalapeno something.
Mia:
So it’s spicy. It’s a spicy bottoms up meat. It’s going to be wonderful.
Chris:
Strawberry. It’s not, it’s not spicy, but I want to see a transformation. And I’m excited to see through the show. If you guys start talking faster, maybe a higher pitch. If we have a hard time holding, like holding still, if you’re a real fidgety, it might, since you have, uh, add so bad, it might have the reverse effect and you might fall asleep. So this is Dick inside of service drive revolution. This is a science experiment. So what do you, what do you think about the flavor? It’s actually really good. Yeah.
Mia:
And I don’t like the jalapeno and strawberries confusing to my taste buds. Like there’s a lot going on
Chris:
A really nice cocktail. Right. The actually had a little tequila in it. Okay. I’m in or tequila.
Mia:
Sorry. You’re right. It’s killer.
Chris:
Yup. Also one, one more thing before we get to our topic of post COVID pain is if you’re not inside of our Facebook group, there’s a lot of fun stuff going on in there. And Christian’s going to read one of them here in a minute, but there’s some, there’s some great conversations going on that you’re missing on if you’re not in there. So make sure you go to the Chris Collins, Inc. And request to be in the Facebook group and somebody will help you through that. They will check your background, make sure you’re not a consultant,
Mia:
Right. Because sometimes they can sneak through by gala to spy on you. Yes, definitely.
Chris:
There, there is a couple people that we automatically like don’t let into anything. Cause they’re just a pain in the. We have a list. And I would imagine that they probably, at some point we’ll create another Facebook and then like, yeah,
Mia:
You could almost turn that into a show like where people, people are pretending to be other people on the internet and then they meet people. What I think they call it fishing.
Chris:
You’ve been here most of the week hanging out and we’ve been, um, working on some things together. They were kind of fun. What is the biggest surprise kind of coming in from the outside? Not really knowing us coming into the office and the crew in the team besides Michael’s jokes. Top-notch by the way. Yeah. Michael’s uh, jokes or sense of humor. All of it. What would, um, and by the way, Michael is in charge of switching the board right now. Um, if anybody wonders who Michael is, but what’s the biggest surprise coming in, seeing us from the outside. Right. You’re like, cause it’s not what you see on the show. Isn’t really what we’re like. Probably it’s not the full story. Yeah.
Mia:
Uh, probably that you guys are genuinely like terrible human beings.
Mia:
No,
Mia:
It’s the opposite actually. Like the fact that you guys are just like, you you’re real, you know, you’re not, I feel like a lot of people online or on TV or on YouTube or podcasts or so like, I don’t know. It’s like a fake personality kind of. Yeah. Or they pretend to be somebody that they’re not purely for cloud or for views. And you guys are genuine on both sides
Chris:
And that surprised you, you thought like I would be in a little more, um, like tell me what you thought coming in. Like, and you can be honest. I don’t, but what did you think coming in and you thought it would be a little more of a pain in the? Yeah.
Mia:
Or a little scarier. Um, I don’t know, like a little bit more aggressive maybe when it comes to like your, your expectations, but you are, you are very aggressive with your expectations, but I was expecting that, but like way more, like in a scary way, I think like scary how, I don’t know how to explain it. Like, I didn’t think you were no, like, I didn’t think you were going to be mean. I, I think I was expecting you to be a lot more imposing. I also wasn’t expecting you to be as tall as you are.
Chris:
Oh, I look short on the internet.
Mia:
You don’t look short on the internet, but you’re, you’re, you’re abnormally tall, but I am also short. So
Mia:
I like to say that we’re normal and he’s abnormally tall. How tall are you?
Chris:
600 a month. That’s all 71. No, I’m I’m, I’m like ma I’m a little hair under six two.
Mia:
Yeah. Then I’m just really short because that seems really, really tall to me really.
Chris:
Oh, that’s okay. That’s I like that. I, I always think it’s interesting when I meet people and they’re, um, they have an expectation of me to be different than what I am. So I’m asking that question and just trying to understand how I can make people more comfortable because I feel like sometimes I make people uncomfortable and it’s not my intention, but I just show up in the room and people aren’t comfortable. I have enough effect. That’s the bulldog. Yeah,
Mia:
It can. It can, it can be intimidating. I wasn’t intimidated. I was, I think I was just expecting you to be more intimidating and you’re not. I’m so disappointed now.
Chris:
So the, the subject that we’re going to talk about today is post COVID pain. And I’ve been saying this for a long time on coaching calls, that there is a pent up demand because traffic has been down and people haven’t been driving as much people have been working from home. Traffic is down, but the lids coming off of that dude and traffic is up. And now what we’re seeing on our coaching calls and in the conversations we’re having is we’ve cut back our support staff. We’ve cut back our advisors and techs. And now we’re going from a situation where we were running out of work to we’re booked out weeks. And we can’t handle in, um, like a little, were you saying a little less than half of our clients are tracking to have best months ever?
Mia:
Yeah. And not by a little bit, like they’re blowing old records out of the water right now. It’s so much fun to watch. Like it’s, um, it’s definitely something. I think that in general that the group would agree that they weren’t as ready for it as they should have been. Even though we’ve all been kind of talking about it for a really long time, but there is a lot of demand right now. And it’s just a, it’s a, it’s kind of a feasting time. So it’s pretty cool.
Chris:
Now the thing that I would say, you guys jump in here, but the thing I would say here is you got to remember a couple of things. You gotta remember that the person interacting with the customers is the advisor and you still have to approach this. Like we control the faucet. And if we think that advisors can go from writing 10 a day to 20 a day and we can maintain consistency, you’re crazy. You, you have to either your systems and add more advisors and techs, or you have to control the amount that’s coming in. Now, if you’re controlling the amount of traffic coming in in this situation, you’re going to get booked out. And once you get booked out past a couple of weeks, your no show rate is going to go up quite a bit. So I don’t believe that from now until the end of the year, things are going to slow down.
Chris:
They’re only going to pick up because, and this is, this is being reported everywhere. Even though gas prices are high, people want to get the hell out and they are going to drive this summer. They are going to take road trips this summer. They are going to be moving around because people feel pent up and they want to get out and about. So more people are going to be driving somewhere on weekends. They’re going to be going to parks, national forest, all kinds of things. Traffic is going to be way up. So you want to scale now, get ready now add advisors and techs now because the traffic is not going to slow down whatsoever. It’s only going to grow through the summer. This will possibly be one of the busiest summers across the board that we’ve ever seen, but you will miss out on that opportunity if you don’t build the capacity to serve those customers.
Chris:
And what happens is, if you don’t get ready for this sort of thing is you’re going to them off and they’re never coming back. So you’re going to have all this opportunity served up. It’s going to be there. And all you have to do is reach down and pick it up. But if you, if you’re complacent and you think that with, you know, the same amount of advisers and the same amount of texts, you’re going to be able to over-deliver and that your advisors can go from writing 12 a day to 25 a day and maintain a customer experience. That’s just acceptable. You’re crazy. And we’re not even talking about over delivering. What we really want to do is over deliver and be a hero to those customers. We won’t even, we won’t be even delivering an average experience if we don’t get ahead of it. So now’s the time to hire and build. You can take a little bit of a leap of faith right now, I think, and hire more texts and advisers than you think you need. Although I would say in our experience, everybody needs more texts.
Christian:
It’s the, it’s still the number one discussion. And I think the big thing is, is knowing that there’s so much work coming in the summer. Like you can get really creative with what the value is going to be of that technician this summer. So even things that maybe you might’ve done before in terms of offering incentives for people to come and come on, board your team, I would probably move that up even more. It’s just really, really important for us to get the team in place before it gets crazy,
Mia:
Was trying to train during that kind of rush is, is not helping anybody and it’s not productive at all because everybody’s going to be too busy to train. And then training falls to the wayside.
Chris:
I have a couple of friends that have just been driving. Like they’ll just drive to Arizona. They’ll just drive because they’re just sick of being in the house. They just want to get out. And they don’t really even know where they’re going. They just want to get out. And I think that this summer we’re going to experience that families are going to go on trips, camping. All of that is, is going to it’ll be the busiest it’s ever been.
Christian:
Well, even last summer was like that too. Right? So weren’t RV shops having like some record years and stuff like that with sales of RVs and the RV rentals were going crazy. I expect that same thing to be, uh, be actually worse this year. I think it’s going to be amazing when our opportunities, but yeah, a lot of people are taking the road to nowhere. Aren’t they? Um, they’re just getting in there. They’re going, it’s a pretty cool time for a road trip. That’s what I did all last summer.
Chris:
Wait. So I thought that was going to be a joke, but that was that a joke. Was that a Christian joke? No, didn’t,
Chris:
It’s it about, you know, but what would be the punchline to that? Yeah, totally. That’s okay though. You caught me off guard, but it was like, Oh, here he goes.
Christian:
Right. So now I’m trying to disguise my segues.
Chris:
Be really careful. You guys seriously, like don’t burn through customers by, by, you know, taking them for granted. Like this is the time where you can build your rate, your retention and your aro count because you’re going to have opportunity. But the things you need to focus on is answering the phone, being available. When customers, you know, they’re going to wait until Thursday to get their car service, to go on a road trip on Friday, you need to build a capacity in order to get them in. You need to make it easy for them to get in. You need to make it easy for them to call on the phone. So think about all the little things like those things matter, answering the phone. When somebody calls being available for them to come in, spending time with them, actually calling them back or over calling them, you know, that stuff matters. So don’t take it for granted. You, everybody has a tremendous opportunity sitting in front of you and it’s how you plan and execute on that. That’s getting to determine what happens next year. I love it. Any closing thoughts on that, man? How’s the energy drink feeling fine. I feel like always you didn’t sip it. I don’t feel like I don’t feel like this is a scientific experiment, unless you like,
Mia:
If I chug it, I’m going to belt really loud. And I don’t think that makes for good podcasting. Okay. So you’d want it now. I don’t want to get the, you know, the fizzy feeling up your nose when you drink soda too fast. Yeah. I guess since this has jalapeno in it, it would probably burn a lot if that
Chris:
No, it’s, it’s kind of like a fake hall opinion. It never burned, but it’s there though. It’s kind of in there.
Mia:
I’m I’m impressed. I’m not gonna lie. Like I would actually go out of my to drink this and I don’t do energy drinks.
Mia:
Yeah. I actually just recently stopped drinking coffee. I’m so sorry. That’s all right. I switched to tea, but I noticed every time I’m drinking the, uh, the tea, I get this horrible pain in my eye. So I went to the doctor and I told him about, and he’s like, you need to take the spoon out before you drink.
Mia:
Hm
Mia:
How’d I do. Good. That’s pretty good. I was thinking about doing it. Why you drank to see if I could get you to spit the
Mia:
Spit take. I can do a spit take if you want. I don’t even want to command. It’s a non command spit. I was going to say, I didn’t even realize that that was going to be a joke because I, at first I’m like, you have coffee, right.
Chris:
And that’s the brilliance of what Christian does you, don’t it sneaks up. You don’t even know. So
Mia:
The fake segway was actually a set up for that. Yeah.
Mia:
Yeah. It was good. Well done. Thank you. Yep.
Chris:
Another thing that we’ve asked Ms. Mia to do is to do like your little countdowns. I’m a huge fan of, of your stuff on Tik talking. You can just crack me up. So today we’re going to talk about the difference between base cluster place base plus commission versus commission. Yes. And this is specifically for advisors service advisors, whether you should pay them a base plus commission or straight commission. Yeah. So tell, tell us your thoughts on this.
Mia:
Um, I have a pretty strong opinion on this that I know a lot of people don’t or won’t agree with. Um, but as somebody as an advisor who a lot of people can, me, me, not just you, I think a lot of people in the industry, um, you know, being in service for the past 10 years and working on both sides where I’ve worked dealership and I’ve worked independent and I’ve had both pay plans, um, or pay ups or whatever you want to call it, just for my personal experience. When I worked at dealerships that were set on that full commission, um, pay plan, it just, and maybe it’s not even the commission, that’s the problem, but it always created such a cutthroat attitude between everybody, which I obviously have a problem with. I don’t think anybody really likes the cutthroat.
Chris:
So cut throat between the advisors. Yes. Okay.
Mia:
Which I think can roll down and then, you know, affect the customer in a negative way when everybody’s trying to compete and steal from each other and cherry pick and you know,
Chris:
So what percentage of the pay do you think should be commissioned versus face?
Mia:
I’m trying to, trying to remember how it was at my last shop, but I don’t remember off the top of my head. So I couldn’t tell you.
Chris:
You’re not really one to worry too much.
Mia:
No, I, I do it matters.
Chris:
I’ll tell you my pay plan for being an advisor 25 years ago. Wow. Cause I used to just sit there and figure out every day when I was tracking to make
Mia:
Yeah. I mean, when I, when I was working at the, the last dealership I worked at, I made, I want to say it was 1.8% off of, off of gross. And then this is a completely other topic. All the male advisors made 2.3. So really? Yup. So, and maybe that’s why I also have a problem with it was just me. I’ve only, I’ve only been the only, ever been the only female
Christian:
I’ve got clients where they’re only females.
Chris:
I have never seen where the pay plan for a female advisor was less than a male ever.
Mia:
That’s usually how it was where, I mean, I’m from Colorado and I don’t know if they’re less progressive there they could be. But I was, yeah. I was always the only female and I usually made less or I was on a different pay plan. Even if I had more experience, it was so weird and I never understood less progressive.
Christian:
No, I don’t think so. I feel like these, they are, well, I think that all, all States have their goods and bads, right? Like we can probably find it.
Chris:
What’s what’s what’s good about up North Dakota. Everyone’s really sweet. There. What’s bad about it.
Christian:
That if you want to collect 100 people, you actually have to get everyone in the state to volunteer, to come to the same place at the same time.
Mia:
Have you been to like every state that Alaska?
Christian:
Um, the Northern lights and also it’s a great fishing industry.
Chris:
I feel like you read that in Wikipedia now. So it’s one of the few States I haven’t watched States. Haven’t you been to?
Christian:
Okay. So I’ve got, um, Alaska, Wyoming. I’ve never been to Wyoming, Idaho, Maine, um, Oregon and Washington. I’m almost done. I’m sorry, what was the second to last one? You said at Oregon, Oregon, what is it again? In Oregon? So Oregon. And
Chris:
So Lauren call me, um, that’s great. I’ve probably almost been to every state twice.
Mia:
Wow. I have a lot of catching up to do. How many States have you been to? Not enough. I could count on my hands. How many have been to?
Chris:
Okay. So what do you, what do you think about her position on, so we need to table the whole idea of that females would get paid different than males, because that seems, um, it seems crazy. So let’s just talk about commission and, and base. Yeah.
Chris:
It is crazy if, uh, if happens, but like I said, I don’t, I haven’t witnessed that, that that happened. So I don’t think it’s not commonplace. I think that’s an isolated, weird nutty thing that you experienced.
Mia:
Then it could also really quickly boil down to, you know, when I was a new advisor, I didn’t quite have the backbone that I do now. And I don’t think I had that authority or advocated for myself properly. So it probably could have, you know, been partially my fault of letting them walk all over me, you know? Cause I would never allow that to happen now.
Chris:
Well, I don’t know. You’re, you’re at a huge disadvantage if that’s the pay plan, because you also run the risk of, you know, getting terminated if you complain about that or whatever. So that’s a weird situation to be in, but I’m just saying that is fairly isolated in that I’ve most of the time the female advisors in a drive when we’re doing a pay plan are the top performers and there you would never, it would never even cross your mind when we’re changing a pay plan that you would pay a female less. What you’re trying to do is figure out how to make the pay plan. So they’re Oak, you know, cause the pay plan change is always hard to nobody likes it. So you’re always trying to navigate how to sell them on it. Not that there would be a different one from, I don’t even know how, how you would come up with that idea that that male and female pay plans would be different. Yeah.
Christian:
I just don’t understand what the, is it really worth it to save the like 0.5%? Like I don’t understand the logic people that motivated. Yeah. It’s horrible.
Mia:
Well they, and they would, in my experience, all of those employers told you that you’re not allowed to know everybody else’s pay. Okay.
Chris:
Well, in my experience that never happens. Everyone finds out what everybody else almost like they leave, they leave whatever meeting and you know, group text everybody.
Christian:
I’m pretty sure they send pictures of their patient.
Chris:
Whoever that whoever that, um, leader or manager is, is extremely naive. And I, I have a Gherkin cigar, like to sell them on a warm
Christian:
It’s from Trinidad and doesn’t say GRCA on it at all, but it’s a GRCA. Okay. So what’s your, what’s your take
Chris:
Before, before I tell you mine, what’s your take on the base plus commission versus commission. And I am wondering if we, you will have the same opinion. I’m hoping, I’m hoping to God Christian, that you give the right answer here. That’s really what I’m trying to say. So don’t mess this up. I’ll do my best. What is your feeling? If you’re an advisor, little base plus commission or pure?
Christian:
My preference is to work off, off of pure commission.
Chris:
So tell me why.
Christian:
So my belief was always that if I was on pure commission, I could always beat any kind of salary that was out there. So I knew that the harder I work, the better I took care of customers, the more I executed making sure that the experience was phenomenal, that the sky was the limit in terms of what I could make. And I think that, and maybe that’s the thing is, is that the pay plan that, or the, the advisor that’s attracted to that pay plan is that person that wants to shoot for the sky and thinks that everything is our opportunity. Now I would, I would challenge you that it, the whole like no teammate thing, that’s way more of a personality and hiring issue. Like I would only hire people in that were like, they were part of the team and saw and loved customers so much like that they couldn’t handle seeing another advisor, not take care of a customer. So like when there was a time for you to hop in and get it, you would. But my, my belief is that I think that if I’m an advisor, I want to create my own destiny. Right.
Chris:
But I w I would say, uh, one other thing too, the, uh, getting along thing too. But, but back to the, the pay plan thing is, you know, we we’ve in our lifetime created thousands of pay plans for service advisors, probably, you know, why we put a base in a pamphlet to keep the advisors from making too much money. Okay. So you just think about this for a second. If you, if you’re riding service and you get 5% and you write $200,000 in parts and labor, what are you making?
Mia:
I failed math 10 grants.
Chris:
Okay. Let’s say you have a base of three grand, but you’re getting 2%. What do you make it seven? So it’s a way, it’s a way for us to control the upside for the advisors you’re doing, you’re doing crazy numbers, 200,000 in parts and labor, which is, you know, really good for an advisor. You’re up there, you’re in the top 5% of advisors, but you’re making seven instead of 10
Christian:
And then your lower performers not making that much less when it’s a salary thing. So I think that that’s the hard part is you.
Chris:
And also we put minimum requirements in that kind of cover the bottom. So the minimum requirements protect us at the bottom, but we strategically would put a base in there to keep the advisors from making 12 or 15 grant.
Mia:
That does make sense. And I actually, I never thought of it that way, but I think a lot of this boils down to the fact that our experiences are so vastly different, whether it’s because of where we grew up or that kind of stuff, because in my experience at the dealerships where I was full commission, I mean, I I’m sure every advisor would say this, but I worked my butt off every single day and tried to get along with my team. And I’m sure you guys have all heard the tick-tock stories of, you know, terrible teammates who stabbed you in the back and everything. When I worked at an independent shop that had a base plus commission, we had a much smaller volume because we were a small, independent, there was just two advisors. So me and my coworker, and we were easily combined selling 150 to 200,000 on parts and sales a month just between the two of us.
Mia:
And the base was small. Like if you, if it was just the base, it was not nearly enough to live off of. And then our, you know, the commission was 0.5 off of, I don’t remember what it was off of anyways. So, but we like kind of, it was a team effort where like, I didn’t just make the commission off of what I sold and vice versa. Um, it was pooled and I made so much more money that way and sold a lot more that way. And that shop hit like 2 million in sales for the first time in history because of that. Um, but I think a lot of that does boil down to how the team works together.
Chris:
Okay. So let’s talk about that for a second. So what, what is the purpose at the end of the day of, of a service department? Like what, what determines a good outcome, like at the end of the day or the end of the month to the end of the year or the end of the lifetime? It’s all the same. I wish I had a Christian joke right there. There’s one in there, somewhere waiting for it. Yeah. No. Okay. But I mean, what drives profit? What drives growth? What drives progress in a, in a part service department? I mean, really, you can say 80 business, but specifically what, what, what’s the important outcome of what we do customers? Yeah. Satisfaction. And so I’ve seen many times a toxic work environment that had a great customer experience. In fact, some of the number one dealerships that you’ll see in this country that we’ve worked in or worked with that are iconic and huge, the behind the scenes is super, super toxic, really people, or you would call it stabbing in the back, but the customer experience is incredible.
Chris:
And so you have to understand that from a 10,000 foot view of profitability and caring about customers, is they the two aren’t connected. Okay. And this, this whole thing, um, you know, that happy employees equal happy customers. Sometimes, sometimes it would be the ideal way, but it isn’t always true. I mean, it’s a, it’s a little bit of a trick bag because if you spend too much time, well, I wouldn’t even say that the problem with scenario is, is that a lot of managers are lazy and not good at recruiting. And so if you have this team of boobs or whatever you call them, it would be a better word, a numb nuts, or something like you have a team of numb nuts. Yeah. And then you’re like, well, I want to make my team of numb, nuts, happy because then they will make the customers happy.
Chris:
It ends up at the end of the day. It’s impossible to make. Numnuts happy. They’re never happy. In fact, all you do is make them more entitled. Yeah. So they get more entitled. The customer experience gets worse. And at the end of the day, you’re like, well, I read this leadership book that said, happy employees, equal, happy customers. You’re nuts. And it’s like, well, the thing that they forgot to tell you in that book is that you need to recruit people that aren’t entitled that have an internal locus of control that are performers. And the problem is most of those managers, their image of themselves isn’t that they have super talented people working for them. Most of the time leaders hire people that are like that. And so you got all these numb nuts sitting around going happy employees. And sometimes you come in there and throw a bomb in the middle. And, but does that make sense? It’s a complicated thing, but many times I’ve seen a toxic environment that produces an amazing result.
Mia:
Yeah. I mean, you and I have discussed this in the past about, I always root for the underdog. That’s just what I do. Um, but I th I don’t disagree with what you’re saying. Um, I think I just view it differently. So when I think of happy employees, like how, like a manager making their employees happy, I’m not talking about them, like kissing their butt, or like, you know, doing whatever their employees want to make them happy. I’m talking about like a true team environment where you can trust your team. And it’s not just between manager and employee it’s between the whole team. And I know that, you know, in the past I’ve said that I got screwed over so many times that I stopped caring about the family feeling between me and my team, because it was just, it never worked. And I think that there’s still a part of me that desperately wishes I had had that because at those dealerships where, where I was struggling like that, if my team and I actually truly got along and actually worked together, the sky could have been the limit. So maybe it was more so less about commission versus salary and more about the experience and how that affected my opinion of it. I don’t know
Chris:
If you kind of look at it from a micro scale though. We’re, we’re S we’re talking about the same thing, but maybe I’m not explaining it right. Is that some of the best service advisors out there will run everybody else over. They don’t want you talking to their customers. When I was a service advisor, I didn’t want anybody talking to my customers. Yeah. I, you know, they would go to lunch. I would get the tow ins. I would get there early and get the night drops. And I guarantee you, there’s a list of advisors that if you talk to them and they said, Oh, you wrote service with Chris Collins. They would say he was super aggressive. You know, wasn’t a team player, whatever, whatever, but it’s so hard in a service department to just, especially the ones I worked in there were so messed up. It’s so hard just to take care of your customers, let alone worry about your doofus, workmates, that show up late complain. Don’t really. And so, um, that’s what I’m trying to say is there’s environments where you have four or five really, really strong advisors that their sole focus is the customer. And they run everybody else over and they’re there to make money and they don’t care, but they take really good care of their customers, but they’re not the best. They’re not the best on collaborate.
Mia:
So my question is where, where do we draw the line with that? Because I, I don’t necessarily who we are exactly, but I don’t necessarily
Chris:
Are looking for a tribe. Then that wouldn’t be the environment. But if you’re a manager or somebody running a shop, looking for a great customer experience and profit, you might care less about everybody sitting around playing bongos, taking care of each other. Does that make sense in every situation where I’ve been convinced to put the advisers on a communal communism pay plan, it’s backfired the numbers and the customer experience has gone down. Okay. And what happens when I, so I literally, when I do something like that, I literally do try to understand what, what are the, what are the strings that are being pulled here that create this outcome, right? And so
Mia:
When you, when you put them
Chris:
Communism pay plan, I remember this happened to me in a dealership here where they convinced me because they, we were running three advisers on four tens. And it w it was during construction. And it was like, well, this one advisor doesn’t have as many opportunities, but they’re covering, they were like a swing shift. Right. So we’re going to put them all on a communism pay plan. And I was like, it won’t work. They’re like, come on you, you know, blah, blah, blah, you’re close minded, whatever. I’m like, okay, well, we’ll try it. So we do it. And, um, after it didn’t work and I kinda dig in to try to figure out why, what, what do you think is the disconnect in the customer experience? If your paid on a pooled, CSI bonus, the three of us, right? So we’re three advisors and we all split our CSI bonus three ways.
Chris:
What do you think is the disconnect that you don’t follow up with my customer, the motivation isn’t there, because the way it’s sold to me is, well, Mia is going to take care of your customers when you’re not there. That’s how it’s sold, because she’s pooling. She’s part of the pool of the pay. That’s going to get divided by everybody. But in, in actual reality, you’re so busy with your customers. You don’t care about my customers, and it’s still an inconvenience, and you’re not going out of your way to take care of my customers. And also it diminishes the value of the CSI bonus to a degree because you don’t affect it directly because I affect it. Christian affects it in, you affect it for you to over-perform is diminished by a third.
Mia:
So backup a little bit, because in my experience, every dealership that I’ve worked at, everybody did affect the CSI.
Chris:
No I’m saying your pay, your CSI bonus is only affected by a third, because if you move you, if Christian and I are CSI stays at 90, and let’s say the difference in the bonus is $500 between 90 and 92 or 93 or whatever. So Christian and I are at 90, and you go to 93, you’re going to split that $500 with us. You don’t get it directly, but if you get it directly, you’ll go to 95. Well, us two boobs will still be at 90. And so this diminished by a third. So you’re at whatever extra effort you put in is diminished by a third we’ll buy whatever the, you know, I worked in a service drive where the pay was split by five advisors. So if I wrote 200 that I never wrote 200,000 there, but if I wrote 140 and the other guy wrote 40, and another guy wrote 60 and 70 or whatever, does it pay for me to write 140, if it’s diminished by a fifth,
Mia:
Right? And I’m not necessarily like, it’s not the communal or the, I guess the communist pay plan is what you call it. That, that, that, I think that was just like a one-off situation. Um, but even if it was base plus commission, just for that individual to it, I just, from my experience, and maybe it’s just because I’m a very optimistic person and I’m very, um, what’s the, what’s the word I care about everybody, even if I shouldn’t, you know, even my teammates and stuff like that. There’s, there’s, there’s such a, like when I was talking about, you know, where does, where’s the line like morality wise with that? I mean, you can be the bulldog, you can be aggressive and, you know, just go to work and do your thing and, you know, run over all the other advisors. That’s fine. As long as you’re being honest. And that was always my biggest issue is that all, all the problems that I had at dealerships, where the commission was so cutthroat, and you had those advisors that were, you know, they were very aggressive and strong personalities, which is totally fine, but they were using dishonesty in order to be that way. And that’s where I
Chris:
That’s, that’s on leadership because it’s really important that that stuff be in writing. Right. Cause a lot of times what happens is, so let’s say that, uh, the rule is that if you offer something to a customer and they come back within the next 90 days and get it, get the work done, it goes back to the same tech or adviser. All that stuff needs to be in writing in a, in there needs to be a leader there that enforces that. But most of the time, that stuff is not in writing. It’s a, who feels what, when, and it’s an emotional decision and I hate emotional decisions whenever I’m dealing with salespeople or anything like that. I put that stuff in writing and I let the paper make the decision because like, you know, we’ll have scenarios with salespeople where like, you know, we, we, uh, six months ago somebody we talked to and then they, today they buy, but it’s a different sales person and all that it’s in writing.
Chris:
And so if you haven’t followed up with that customer in a certain amount of time, it’s open and you can, you know, you can say that it’s not fair or whatever, but we all agreed to it. We all sat down and we agreed at one time that that’s how it was. And so I think that that fixes that issue. If it’s in writing and you have a leader that is very black and white, that these are the rules we stand by, then I think, I think that’s easier to navigate if it’s vague and emotional. I don’t, I don’t know that I could work in a place like that too long, just because I would get, I would, that was the issue and hard to overlook day in and day out buffoonery it’s, I’ve been in places where advisors would go in and change the aro to their number. I’ve seen it before too.
Mia:
I’ve talked about this so many times and I don’t, I won’t share that. And, and honestly, after like talking about this with you, I think you have changed my mind a little bit because it, you have helped me realize that maybe a lot of this just boils down to bad leadership and
Chris:
Well, just having a different pay plan for females versus male is weird. I wouldn’t expect that leader to also run a fair. No,
Mia:
And yeah. Anyways, I, yeah, you’re right. I think it’s, it just boils down to leadership because when I think about it, the independent shop that I worked at, where we had a lot of success as a team and, you know, all that the shop manager was probably the best shop manager I’d ever had. So that probably did have that did have a lot of things
Mia:
More to do with it than the pipeline itself. I think that that’s the thing is that the pay plan sometimes becomes the scapegoat for the horrible environment that we’re in. And we were like, Oh, it’s because the pay plan, but it’s not it’s because of all the people that are it’s the, the, the rules, the system and the culture. Right?
Mia:
Yeah. I guess that, that, that is, that is a very good, I think there’s a lot that needs to be worked on in order to truly make that full commission based or the full commission pay plan, like really truly work. Um, but once again, that just boils down to the fact that my experience has always been terrible on that front and then great with the base plus commission. So experience can change your outlook too.
Chris:
Yeah. And also, I think you, you do have to understand that, you know, the man with the hammer to the man, with the hammer, the world is a nail. I come at this from a perspective of an advisor that knows how to perform and knows how to create numbers and create customer enthusiasm and loyalty. And so I’m going to have a different mindset and approach because I’m not trying to play Kate to the lowest common denominator. And so I go back to what I was saying earlier is it is about selection because you know, a lot of these guys, they read these leadership books and it’s like, Oh, you know, happy employees, equal happy customers. And it’s like, there has to be a conversation about who are the employees, because there are a lot of employees that are entitled and don’t disagree with that. When you have a culture of entitlement, you can’t give them enough.
Chris:
I’ve, I’ve dealt with them many times, Noma, you give I’ve, I’ve had shops where like you, you gave him a thigh and you give somebody a a hundred dollar bill. And I’ve literally had them say, well, I can’t, nobody takes a hundred dollar bill. I need 20. And it’s like, it’s never enough. Wow, no that’s happened on several occasions. Like it’s never good enough, no matter what, what you do. So in that situation, you have to consider the, the group that you’re dealing with because it isn’t a one size fits all. It’s a little more complicated. That’s in this leadership book that I’m writing. I kind of in the beginning do this, this flip, where I give myself permission in the book to tell the truth about this stuff, because I feel like a lot of this, you know, John Maxwell leadership is half the story.
Chris:
It’s not really the truth about what’s going on. If you want a culture of performance, you, uh, you have to look at it from all sides and understand that there’s a lot of moving parts that affect the outcome. It isn’t just a one size fits all or, uh, you know, dog whistled at the rule of leadership is this, you know, it it’s, um, a little different, but really fun conversation. So remember if you’re, if you’re inside of our family, enter to win the PlayStation, give us a review for the review. If you’re not in the Facebook, go there. If you have questions that you want us to answer on the show, remember the hotline is eight three, three three, ask SDR eight three, three, three, ask SDR and Mrs. Fontan, this is a fun conversation. Get ready for the, for the summer bust grow now prepare. It’s all about preparation. Do you have a joke in closing Christian? Yeah, I do. Actually. They believe it or not. Thanks everybody for tuning in and we’ll see you next time on service.
Chris:
Thanks so much for watching this episode of service job. 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 eight three, three three, ask SDR, and we’ll answer your question on the show. That’s eight three three three. Ask SDR for special deals on our books and training head over to offers dot Chris Collins, Inc com nuts offers dot Chris Collins, Inc com I’m Chris Collins, and I’ll see you in the next video.
