How do your service numbers really compare?
In this episode of Service Drive Revolution, Chris Collins and Christian dive into live performance data from real service departments across the country. We’re talking actual numbers—broken down by brand—so you can see what top-performing service advisors are doing differently.
If you’re a SERVICE ADVISOR, MANAGER, or FIXED OPS leader looking to boost performance, this is your cheat sheet.
Why Numbers Matter More Than You Think
At Chris Collins Inc., we utilize performance-tracking software to measure actual advisor results across various categories, including hours per RO, CP labor sales, net-to-gross, and CSI. This gives us a crystal-clear view into what’s possible—and what top 20% performance looks like. But fair warning: the numbers might blow your mind. And if your first instinct is to say, “That’s not possible at my store,” take a breath. The stores hitting these numbers range from rural Honda shops to urban luxury brands. Geography isn’t the difference—systems and mindset are.
Highline Brands (BMW, Audi, Mercedes, Porsche, etc.)
- Top 20% Hours per RO: 3.5–4.0
- Top Performer: 6.88 Hours per RO
- Top Advisor Total Sales (Parts & Labor): $510,913
- Customer-Pay Labor Sales Alone: $141,745
- Net-to-Gross: 55%+
📊 These aren’t flukes—they’re the result of systems, strategy, and coaching.
Domestic Brands: Competitive and Crushing It
Our American Muscle League category includes Chevy, Ford, Dodge, and the like—and it’s fiercely competitive.
- Top 20% CP Hours per RO: 2.79
- Top Performer CP Hours per RO: 3.82
- Top Advisor CP Labor Sales: $102,000
- Effective CP Labor Rate: $212–$222
- Net-to-Gross: Over 50%
- SPOP Benchmark: $500,000+ (Service & Parts Gross Profit)
🛠️ For more on how to hit numbers like these, check out Boosting Service Department Profitability.
Honda Stores: Consistency Is the Advantage
Honda continues to stand out as a brand with solid service consistency and smart team structures.
- Top 20% Effective CP Labor Rate: $219.80
- Net-to-Gross Benchmark: 55.44%
- Hours per RO Benchmark: 1.99
- Top Advisor CP Labor Sales: $81,965
- SPOP Benchmark: $349,000
- Tech-to-Advisor Ratio: 31 Techs to 10 Advisors (3:1)
Want to know what top SERVICE ADVISORS do differently every day? Read this next →
What About CSI?
Here’s the surprising twist: the top-selling advisors often also lead in CSI.
The takeaway? Selling more doesn’t hurt CSI—when you build trust, it improves it. The best advisors are transparent, consistent, and make customers feel like partners, not paychecks.
What the Top 20% Get Right
They track, measure, and manage. These aren’t just “good” service departments—they’re dialed in. They know their CP-to-warranty ratio. They forecast their hours per RO. And they optimize customer pay work rather than relying solely on warranty or internal jobs to keep the shop afloat.
Final Thought: Use These Numbers as a Mirror
This isn’t about bragging rights. These benchmarks show what’s possible.
If your team isn’t there yet, don’t panic—get curious. Ask better questions. Invest in training. Build better systems. The top 20% didn’t get there by luck—they did the work.
And if you’re a SERVICE MANAGER sick of seeing advisor turnover, or a GENERAL MANAGER aiming to drive more profit through FIXED OPS, we’re ready to help.
Full Video Transcript
Welcome to the big show. Today we’re going to talk about benchmarks. What numbers should you be doing in net to gross hours per row? We have software that tracks our clients and we’re going to share our numbers and benchmarks with you. You’re going to be blown away by some of them. Hopefully inspired, but very fun to go through and kind of celebrate. And we talk about some things going on in the news and much, much more coming up on this edition of Service Drive Revolution.
You like to plan stuff out, right? When you go when you go on trips, vacations. I do. Yeah. I don’t. I know you don’t. I know you don’t. So, the family is having like a get together at the lakehouse, you know, a summer thing. And so, I have family coming from Arizona and then just my family there in Washington. And it’s like a long weekend, like a 4-day weekend type thing.
There’s a there’s a twist to this that I didn’t expect to this story, which is pretty funny. So my one cousin hit up my chick and was like, “What’s the plan?” And she’s like, “Oh yeah, I love a plan.” And so it just needed to be asked, right? So then they started planning all of this and they came up with an itinerary, like a little itinerary.
I had talked about making it fun for everybody, but also taking some of the stress off of my mom is that each couple was responsible for dinner one night. And then my cousin Jeff’s such a great cook, like he I wanted him to barbecue steaks. He’s so good. But kind of breaking that up a little bit. So maybe I kind of influenced this in a way cuz I thought it would include everybody, but also take the stress off my mom because like she’ll do good the first night, but by day two, she’s pretty wiped out cooking for that many people. Yeah. And she doesn’t quit. She just keeps going cuz she’s got that drive to take care of people. And I wanted, you know, I wanted to have fun and kind of enjoy it, not have to work or whatever.
So, they come up with an itinerary. How many How many pages is it, Chris? Uh, I think the actual one that went out is 5, but I think it started at 7. Yeah, something like that. So, she’s go she’s she asked me like, “What do I think before it had been sent out, right?” So, it literally is an itinerary. Like, it says like from 12 to 4, staggered arrivals, welcome drinks on the dock. Are there X’s on the dock where people have to stand? You know what I think when I read that? I don’t know. It feels like a 20 group almost. Like, well, who’s going to be making the drinks? Like, I’m giving myself a job. Like, now I got to serve drinks from 12 to 4. Like, these my like half of them are late. Like, yeah. Like, and then, but here’s the one that caught me.
So, the second thing on the itinerary on this first half day of this event, 4:00 p.m. jet ski orientation. Tell me more. I can’t safety refresh for adults. And I was like, what is that? And she’s like, “Yeah, we we need to go over the jet skis.” And I’m like, “No, we don’t. Like, what do we need what what are we what are we talking about?” And so then there’s an actual outline for the jet ski. I mean, there’s so many problems with this in the sense that if you’re inviting everybody to a jet ski orientation, that would basically mean that everybody would be riding the jet skis, right? Which would mean the only thing I would do for three or four days is carry gas up and down the hill cuz these the new jet skis just burn gas. They have a bigger tank, but they burn more gas. Yeah. And so you I would just be running into town to get gas, carrying gas down the hill. That’s all I would be doing. And the hill’s no joke either. So you don’t want everybody riding the jet ski, but this is like an invitation for everybody.
And then on on the jet ski rules and safety, listen to this. Number one, life jackets are mandatory. No exceptions. Number two, only adults may operate the jet skis. Was there a specific age or no? 18. Okay. 18 plus. Never operate jet skis under the influence of alcohol. I would like immediately that eliminates a third of my family. Yeah. I propose we change that to rarely instead of never. Rarely. Our rider one rider per jet ski unless otherwise approved for kids. What do you think that means? That they don’t want that we don’t want it three deep. Keep a safe distance from other water. This is for you. That’s the Christian rule. Yeah, other watercraft and swimmers. Number six, always ride with a buddy. Both jet skis out together or one following the pontoon. So, the boat, I guess. Number seven, use the designated ride zone. No wake near shore. Number eight, return jet ski to dock with each ride and report any issues immediately to maintenance. What a control thing. We could build a portal. Is this a Is this a Oh my gosh. Be courteous, take turns, and respect ride times. Number 10. Can you imagine with a clipboard in a visor hat? This is what I have. Telling people like, “Oh, no. You weren’t in orientation. You can’t ride.” Like, it’s been 22 minutes. Uh, number 10, enjoy responsibly, safety first, fun always.
Yeah. So, I vetoed that. Yep. Down with the down. The other thing on here like man like there’s walks like so this itinerary has like different group walks like where you walk around the lake lawn games and sparklers just it’s not my thing. It’s not my thing to have an itinerary. Yeah. I like to go with the flow. I don’t I like it’s it’s the lake. I want to do what I want to do when I want to do it. I want to read a book. I want to hang out with my cousins and just talk. I don’t want to have to be anywhere. You know what that sounds like is a workshop. Yeah, exactly. I’ve gone on vacation with friends that are like this and I’m I tell them right out of the gate like as soon as they hand you the itinerary and they’re like, “Oh, we’re going to go, you know, to the volcano and hike and whatever.” I’m like, “Okay, well, just so you know, if you need me, I’m going to be by the pool reading a book.” Right. And smiling. I will I’ll make dinner, though. Yeah. I’ll find my way to dinner, but that’s about it.
Yeah, I thought it was pretty funny. And so then the the kicker, the the thing that I didn’t see coming is uh they created this in AI, which is actually a good thing because I bet AI did it in 35 seconds. Well, I think it took them an hour and a half to type in the commands cuz you’d have a lot of Oh, that’s right. You got to teach it first. And so the the jet ski orientation outline or whatever was AI. That was all AI’s idea. Yeah. Because I mean one thing in Washington is you have to have a boat license to drive a jet ski. So I mean that takes care of half of that. Like you don’t you don’t need to uh Oh. Yeah. You had to do that. Yeah. It’s still good for a couple more years. I think you’re But yeah, I’m a certified state of Washington jet ski operator.
So funny. I I know you really like the jet ski orientation. To me, like the planned walk, the planned leisure walk is like out for so for so many reasons. Missy, you can write my trip itinerary anytime. I love it. No. Should we talk about news also? Like that thing kind of doesn’t it kind of sound like you’re But you know those managers that manage through pay plan? Yes. Like that the pay plan is like you you know you get this and this but if you you know I don’t know whatever you’re Yeah. I call those if then statements. Yeah. And it’s always one idiot that you’re writing the pay plan around. So you’re you know you’re wasting everybody else’s time instead of just addressing that idiot. That’s kind of what that felt like is like we’re managing through itinerary. Yeah, for sure. Speaking of itinerary.
All right, so in the news today, we have Ford, beautiful, beautiful Ford being sued over their band-aid fix for alleged defective engines. And this is like I like the the part about this where it says alleged, but like it’s vehicles from 2013 to 2019. I feel like we’re pretty sure if they’re defective or not. There’s no alleging anymore. Like it’s the the sample size is big enough, the time frame is big, long enough. we’re okay. But but they seem to really have problems with like the their little EcoBoosty supercharged turbo engines, but to the point where they’re getting sued. We should ask AI. What manufacturers had the most recalls ever? And I bet you Ford wins by got to be Ford by a long by twice as much as the next closest one.
Well, do you remember for a while when I was doing the news like every week it would be like the first thing I come pull up is another Ford recall where I just stopped doing it because everyone was like, “Oh yeah, Ford recall.” Built into their plan, I guess. So, I feel like they haven’t learned anything in 150 years of building vehicles. Maybe I’m wrong. Oh, they’ve learned something, but they just have a lot of recalls. Yeah, but they’re they’re selling them still, which is interesting. I still love Ford trucks. Yeah, I do too. very very well-built vehicle, so no complaints there.
And this is not a Ford truck. This is something super cool. But General Motors 2026 Chevrolet Corvette, the ZR1X. So, it’s we were talking about if we were to bring back the, competition for manager of the year, this would be it. The Corvette would be it. Well, the ZR1X is a is a little bit of a big brother to this. It is going to be a production vehicle. Yeah, they’re going to make them, right? They’re not limited. It’s a hybrid. So, there’s a engine. There’s a electric engine at the front wheel, I think. And just listen to this. Like, how much horsepower do you think this bad boy has? It’s over a thousand. 1250. Yeah. It’s nuts. You I could do a lot of damage with this thing.
Makes no sense in Los Angeles, right? You get to go 9 ft and feel every pothole. Oh my gosh. I feel like there’s a there’s this place by my house. the potholes like no exaggeration 10 ft by 10 ft and it’s just a matter of time before that whole thing just falls right into the subway system. Sink holes. Yeah, it’s got a sinkhole feel to it. So I I don’t drive over it anymore. I just completely drive around it or take a different route. But that’s a common common thing in Los Angeles. We don’t have enough taxes. that’s why I drive my big boat is I like my big air suspension. Yeah, that thing’s super comfortable. But man, what a car. Yeah.
So, the so the engine, it’s a 5.5 L V8, is the naturally aspirated part, and then it’s picking up another 186 horsepower from the electric unit. Still to this day, when I see one of those Corvettes on the on the road, I still do a double take. Like, every time I’m like, “Wow, that’s a sexy car.” Don’t you think they really hit a home run, too, with the colors? Yeah. probably one of the best colored cars that I’ve seen. That blue to me just the blue. I saw one a couple days ago coming into work that was brown, but like a like a odd like kind of flat brown. It It was incredible. Yeah. And some some young kid driving it looked like he was an influencer or something. I don’t know. It was a cool car. I can’t wait for my next midlife crisis. You can’t have two. That means you didn’t get the first one out of your system. I did. I had the sports car. it’s so funny. But yeah, that’s that’s a pretty pretty sexy car. the interior looked insane.
So, we’re we’re going to go a different path now than we usually go cuz most of the time we don’t talk about specific numbers. And we don’t talk about specific numbers because they seem unbelievable to a person not in our program usually. And what happens is the conversation just becomes like, oh, they must be cheating or whatever. Nobody ever really can get past their ego to understand that people are putting up numbers that are much bigger than what you think is possible. Yeah. And so it always ends up being this negative thing, right? Like even when we talk to people coming into our program, a lot of times we avoid talking about numbers because sometimes there’s such a gap that they can’t get over it and they spend all their time trying to justify why they aren’t doing those numbers and how it’s not them. Yeah. that we try to kind of avoid that because it’s it’s just a waste of time. Yeah, it becomes an argument versus how do we get there?
Maybe one out of 30 or one out of 40 strategy sessions I can put up like a what I would consider like a full potential result page for somebody. It’s not very often. So keep that in mind when we’re talking about these numbers. If you’re first, you know, reaction is that’s impossible or they must be cheating or whatever it is, that’s you. That’s not us. like there are people out there performing at a very high level that are constantly improving and getting better. And I don’t know what to say. If if if your insecurity and judgment is to try to diminish people that are doing something that’s really cool, that says more about you than it does about anybody else. But that being said, there’s some pretty crazy numbers in in our group.
And so the way that we track this stuff is we have software, we have a competition monthly between our our clients and the advisors all compete against other adviserss in in different categories. So like you know the Ford stores would be in an American group, Honda stores would be in a Honda group, that sort of thing. So, it’s like, you know, like brands competing or just individual brands competing against themselves, but this gives us a tremendous amount of data and we’ve had AI in there looking at the data and different patterns and that sort of thing, but it gives us benchmarks and it kind of tells us where where the averages are, where the top performers are, and then, you know, individual performers also. And so I asked Christian, I’m like, “Hey, can we go through some of the advisor benchmarks and just talk about that because I think a lot of people are curious about what what is possible and you know what the number should be.”
Yeah. So there’s so many places that we could start but but I thought maybe what we could do is the first is I want to take a couple of things off the table. As we talk about these results, one of the things that matters extremely little is geographic location. So whether you’re in a small market or a big market, whether you’re a huge store or small store, I feel like it’s a very level playing field based on the fact that some of these numbers that I’m going to give, there’s no rhyme or reason to those two items. So the first thing would be is that anything’s possible anywhere. And I think that kind of like Chris was saying is don’t try to don’t try to talk yourself out or explain a way that it can’t be done. The right question is to ask how. Don’t you think? Like that’s the big thing is ask how. And the other thing I can say this really really proudly is some of these crazy results that I’m about to give. The thing that goes along with that in these stores is that not only do they have really crazy sales numbers, their CSI typically is either number one or number two in the region, if not in the country in some of these things like we’ve got stores that are you know top of the business in Honda and GM like there’s just brands all over the board but the CSI typically seems to be going up with the sales. So that’s another thing that I would say like you have to accept that at the end of the day if we’re taking great care of customers they’re happy to spend the money. So if you go into this with those two types of things. So any preference on where you want me to start? No.
Okay. So, what I would tell you is that let’s just start with Highline. Okay. So, on the the hours prior, and this is like BMW, Mercedes, JLR, there’s a Porsche store in here, Audi. So all of those things the the benchmark hours perro run right around between 3.5 and four is like the benchmark that the average how do we have the benchmark set the top 20%. And then I also wanted to give the high side is that we’ve got stores in the highline. multiple advisors are averaging well over six closer to seven hours per RO. So the highest in our group with highline 6.88. The dollars in cents part of it in terms of we’re talking about total parts and labor sales. The next section that we’re on our average is anywhere between like let’s call it $240,000 to $260,000 in the highline. And the high number, you’re going to laugh at this, I think. One advisor, $510,913. That’s more than some departments. That’s more than some departments with one person.
That same person their highline, they definitely are writing some warranty, but I wanted to make sure that I pointed out that it wasn’t just writing warranty. That that same person had $141,745 in just CP labor sales. And that $500,000 is parts and labor. $500,000 parts and labor, customer internal warranty. The whole schmizoo is the 510. So that’s a big number. So that is that’s your highline.
I wanted to go to domestic or what we call our American muscle league and we have some pretty crazy results from that. That’s probably arguably our most competitive between the stores. Like like we’ve gotten just kind of a out of like 25 stores out of the 25 stores that are competing for this championship every month at any given time there’s seven or eight that could win it. So it kind of lets you know it’s like really toploaded with results. So let’s talk about some of that data.
So the the benchmark CP effective labor rate $212.22 is the top 20%. CP hours per top 20% 2.79 hours per what’s the net to gross the the top 20% it’s over 50 is the top 20%. And we’ve got some that are 60 plus percent to gross. Should we talk? You want to talk about SPOP at all and explain? SPOP is a service and parts profit combined. Our top 20% $500,000 in SPOP. So it’s a pretty big number, the benchmark. Yes, it’s the benchmark. So it means you know parts is making $250,000, service is making $250,000 or something like that.
Right now, let’s talk about some individual advisor performance. Out of our top advisers on domestic, our top adviser and CP labor only sales 102K. CP effective labor rate top adviser $231.32 and top hours per row this might surprise you a little bit 3.82 on a domestic. So, those are some pretty big numbers, huh? All right, this is kind of fun.
We should talk about Honda. I’m always trying to figure out like, and I think it changes from time to time, but like like what brands work best with our thing. They all work, but I feel like Honda really kind of shines. I feel like if I if I was to buy a dealership, I’d buy a Honda dealership. Would you? I’m I’m Toyota or Porsche. like is my my two and Honda would be third for me. Porsche doesn’t have enough volume for me. I like volume. Yeah. Well, that makes sense. You did have the number one BMW store in the world.
Okay. So, let’s talk about Honda benchmarks. So, top 20% in CP effective labor rate $219.80. Net up to gross benchmark. All right. 55.44%. Yeah, that’s the top 20%. What’s the benchmark for hours per row for Honda? 1.99. Yeah. So about two. Yep. That’s kind of the sweet spot.
Yeah, I like this number too. CP sales per advisor for Honda $658.21. Pretty good number. SPOP 44% or $349,000. That’s pretty good. So, those are like the the benchmarks and then some individual hours per hour which are just phenomenal. highest CP hours per RO of an advisor 3.55. then highest CP labor sales $81,965 is the high mark. So that tells me because our benchmark is 65 there’s a lot of people running between 60 and 80. Yeah, a lot. So that’s pretty cool.
Average advisors, 10 and 31. 31 techs, 10 advisors. So, really close to that 3 to 1 ratio we talk about all the time. Let’s see what other kind of I mean, we got a lot of data in here. Yeah, I don’t think we should give all the data away. you want me to keep the the net to gross is the important one. And then CSI is just different across all the brands, but that’s something we track too. Yeah. like I said, I’ve just got I think my my highest Honda dealer is pushing a 98 regularly. So that’s that’s pretty close to perfect. We have had plenty of stores across many brands. So like Infiniti, we had a couple of stores that had a thousand last month. GM stores like at the 97 98 when everyone else is kind of in the 80s. So we’ve got lots of examples of stores either perfect or close to perfect with their CSI. It’s the summer of fixed stops and it’s only going to get better. It’s so fun.
Also, we should have talked about this at the top, but we the team did training for texts on video inspections. I know there’s this thought out there that I don’t like video inspections, which is not what I’ve said. I’ve said if you can’t do it with paper, you can’t do it with video, which means it’s all about the system. Garbage in, garbage out. But I think the team did a really good job just going through like all the different things that it takes for that to work because there is a lot to it and you know, we’re asking technicians that aren’t on camera that aren’t comfortable with that to to do it. So, we created some training from them to to help them, which is fun. That’s going up in our on demand. Have you seen any of the rough yet over that? Oh, yeah. I saw I’ve seen it’s really well shot. Our boys are doing a good job.
Yeah. I was on the kind of like there was a what I would say that training is made up is like it’s part field, right? Yeah. We filmed it in a in a shop and everything like that. And I went with just to kind of help Kosh our our you know what would you call him like our head of production head of production like head videographer creative genius of sorts. So I was helping to give him context to what he was shooting. And there were times that like you don’t get to see his creative genius until it comes out on the video. And then that same night we came back from doing the shoot and he showed me on and I was just like just blown away. Like training training doesn’t normally look like this and it’s really cool. Training can be fun. Yeah.
So it is fun and it’s educational and the thing that you’re going to get coming out of this stuff and and coach Hogy did an amazing job with it. But you’re systematizing the video inspection. If you’re trying to set yourself up for success like that’s the way to go. Yeah. And also, you know, Hogi’s a tech and so we have a tech teaching texts. Like, I don’t I don’t think it would come off the same if it was me and you, cuz I don’t know. I think it’s there’s a value to the authenticity of somebody walking a day in their shoes, like actually being them, not Yeah. Even Even talking about idealized versions of stuff. even watching like this is a little thing, but like his comfort level underneath a car and his comfort level using the the tools like the tread depth gauge and the brake thing and everything like that, it was like he’d done it a thousand times that I haven’t done it a thousand times. Yeah. and I think that him doing that was it was a perfect fit. But be on the lookout for that. They’re turn they’re editing and doing all that production really quick.
Super fun. Well, thanks everybody. Thanks for hanging out. We’ll see you next time on Service Drive Revolution. Thanks so much for watching this episode of Service Drive Revolution. We’re uploading new stuff every day, so make sure you subscribe and click the bell icon so you don’t miss out. If you have a question you’d like us to answer on the show, call 833-3-ASK-SDR and we’ll answer your question on the show. That’s 833-3-ASK-SDR. For special deals on our books and training, head over to offers.chriscollinsinc.com. That’s offers.chriscollinsinc.com. I’m Chris Collins, and I’ll see you in the next video.
🔗 Related Resources:
- Boosting Service Department Profitability: A Quick Guide for Fixed Ops
- Top Fixed Ops Performers: What Car Dealership Service Managers and Advisors Do Differently
- The 9 Reasons Why Service Managers Fail (And How to Avoid Them)
- How to Train Quick Lube Techs into Master Technicians
Feel free to explore the linked articles above for deeper insights into each strategy. If you have any further questions or need additional resources, don’t hesitate to ask!
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