Welcome everybody to Service Drive Revolution. I’m Chris Collins, and this is Christian Lafferty. We have a great show for you today. I want to talk about something very personal, something that almost made me cry recently. I also want to say that I’m not the kind of person who cries easily. Then I’ll share a few of my crazy dealership stories.

Summary

Chris Collins shares a rough car buying experience to show how old dealership systems, weak communication, confusing pricing, and poor service hurt the auto industry. He compares that experience with Tesla’s simple, customer-first buying process and says dealerships need to rethink sales and service if they want to keep customers. His bigger point is that the industry can still improve, but only if leaders are willing to face these problems honestly.

In fact, the last time I cried was when my dog Rocky died.

This story made me tear up a little, so let’s talk about it. First, a bit of housekeeping. For our coaching clients, if you want 2022 to be a better year and want your Fixed Ops team running well, we can help you build a network and a family that is doing progressive work on the service side of the dealership.

We’re starting to turn people away from our Coaching Program because we do not have room for everyone on the coaching side.

The On Demand program and the online content are still open because they scale better and do not need the same hands-on time coaching does.

Handing someone a script and expecting that script to fix everything is crazy. A script can give you a map, but it will not make you a better Service Advisor. We have to fix the mindset first before we keep making more crazy dealership stories.

If you haven’t seen our video on YouTube about our Top Dog Event, The Fixed Ops and Service Department State of the Union, it is one of our fastest videos on YouTube.

The views were amazing, and that was the high point of our Top Dog event. People still tell me it was the best event they’ve ever attended because it was real, emotional, and honest for everyone there. I was also writing it and thinking about what I wanted to say. It had to be moving because this was our State of the Union for Fixed Ops. This is where we are in the auto industry, and if you have not seen it, check it out. It also shows the winner of the Jeep at Top Dog.

We will end by asking one big question: What changes next year, and how do we get rid of crazy dealership stories?

However, let’s discuss what made me want to cry deeply.

I was talking to Missy about this the other night because she has people from outside the industry interact with us directly. They did not grow up in it the way we did, so they do not carry the same baggage. As industry leaders, we have all had plenty of crazy dealership stories. People outside the business are only seeing it because they are our spouses or close family. She finds it interesting that some problems in the automotive industry would be easy to fix if you were not inside it. For people on the inside, though, it is not that simple.

Whoever was in our OnDemand or Coaching Program and had the biggest increase in profit, Effective Labor Rate, Customer Satisfaction, and an essay stood out. When people come into the coaching program, they take a leap of faith. Those essays became a great source of inspiration for new people. They showed that it is normal to feel different or be afraid of change. There are other managers just like you who thought the same way and still ended up with great results and a better quality of life.

These people have the freedom to run their business and not be victims of their business, so they do not have crazy dealership stories.

These essays inspired everyone. Then COVID hit and we had to rethink Top Dog. Our lawyers, who oversee the contest, told us we had to pull it back because parts of the world were shut down and it was not fair to people in Canada and other places.

I ended up driving the Jeep I had fallen in love with. I never had one problem with that Jeep. All we ever did was change the oil. I did not put many miles on it, and I never had an issue. It was fun to drive in California. It also looked like a monster truck because we lifted it.

I’m usually never looking to be the average person.

So I like surprising people. Top Dog finally happened. We had a lot of people apply, write essays, and turn in numbers. There was a clear winner, and we gave the Jeep away. After Top Dog, I did not have a vehicle for months. I was in Europe for a couple weeks, and I had been Ubering and borrowing my fiance’s car. I needed a car. When I got back, I started looking around. Part of why I waited so long was that I did not know what I wanted, and I was afraid of another crazy dealership horror story.

Finally, I decided I wanted an SUV because I’m bigger, and I wanted something smooth. I did not want a sports car bouncing over potholes, so I decided on a Land Rover. That was the car I wanted to buy. I started looking online, and even though we have clients who sell Land Rovers, none of them are here in LA. The bigger stores here are owned by a public auto group that thinks it is a nation for autos, a nation for its own cars.

I started looking online now…

The funny thing is that when you work in this industry, you become the customer. You do not want to ask your own clients for a favor. I felt two things. First, the clients we have who sell Land Rovers have low inventory and the cars are hard to find. Second, shipping is tough, and I did not want to bother them. I also felt like they might feel forced to give me a deal, and I would feel bad about that right now.

I looked at the land rover dealership los angeles reviews, and I do not think any of them had more than two stars on Google.

The bar is low at some of these places, and the reviews gave me plenty of crazy dealership stories. I also know the numbers for our clients who sell Land Rovers, and the hours per Repair Order are high. So yes, these cars break. That meant I was buying a car with no strong dealer connection, and that service risk was scary.

Most of the reviews were about service, and two dealerships stood out: the one closest to us in LA and the one near the beach. We will not name them, but one is near the pier by the ocean and the Third Street Promenade.

Those two dealerships were clearly charging over sticker in the reviews on Google, and I think it was around $25,000 over at the time. People were telling everyone about it in the reviews.

I did all the research, watched videos, and got excited about buying a new car. So I thought, okay, I should go drive it. I made an appointment with the dealership over the hill and emailed two stores.

I went to a dealership that was about the size of a postage stamp, with cars parked everywhere. It looked like chaos, but they had a lot of new inventory. They packed as much as they could onto that little lot. I went in and asked for the person I had been emailing so I could test drive one with my fiance.

Let’s go back in time a little. Four or five months earlier, she bought a Tesla, and Christian had a lot of influence in that purchase because he loves his Tesla and the whole Tesla buying experience.

What makes me want to cry is how great the Tesla buying experience was. My fiance asked, why does nobody want to talk about this?

When I get invited onto panels, I have said it before: NADA told me not to talk about Tesla because the auto industry does not like the subject. I told them it is not just the loss of new car sales that will hurt the business.

It’s the market share that electric car companies like Tesla are going to take, along with the loss of new car sales.

The experience nobody wants to talk about is this.

You go to the website, pick the model, choose the outside color, then pick from about five colors. You choose the interior from three options. After that, you pick S or regular, so you can choose the sportier version or the standard one. The other big choice is self-driving, which is $10,000. If you do not buy it now, you can add it later.

You click through and buy a car in six or seven steps. You pay the deposit with a credit card. At that point, you have picked a Tesla, and you have not even talked to anyone.

It says the car will be built and someone will call you about financing. She was happy, and they said it would take 90 days. Then they sent an email saying the car was ready in half that time.

The finance person called and told us the car was ready. We needed to finish a few DocuSign forms on the website so they could schedule delivery to our house.

They came to our house on a Saturday, parked the car in front of the house, and out came a young, good-looking, charming kid. He said, here you go, congratulations, can you open the app?

He moved the car to us in the app and asked if she had any questions. That was it. She was in her new Tesla, and it was the easiest purchase you could imagine.

Now let’s go back and talk about my car buying experience and these crazy dealership stories.

My email went back and forth. I made an appointment, showed up at the dealership, walked into the showroom, and immediately got that feeling you get when a really attractive girl in summer clothes walks past a construction site.

The salesperson came out and sat down to tell us they did not have the models on the lot that they showed on the website. They had plenty of cars, but not the one I wanted. That is classic car dealership bait and switch. The website said they had them, but they did not really carry them.

If you wanted a specific color combination and it was not there, it did not exist. Even if there was a VIN number, they did not put real photos of the vehicle online. They used stock images instead.

I do not know if they do it on purpose. I do not understand how you list a car with a VIN, say you have it, and not show the color. There are no real photos, and it is a mess. That is false advertising, and it feeds the same story everyone already tells about the auto industry and crazy dealership stories.

At that point, I did not care about the color anymore. I asked if I could drive any version of the car. During the test drive, I told the sales guy that they had some pretty bad reviews. The salesperson laughed and said, yeah, that’s us. The Service Department sucks.

My crazy dealership story got even worse when we did the demo route. When we got back to the dealership, I was trying to pull it back into that postage stamp lot, and I could not even get in.

That is what it feels like for customers pulling into service drives, and it creates crazy dealership stories. It looks like chaos. Nobody seems to know what they are doing. That kind of experience sticks with the customer, and it makes them want to leave.

I came back from the demo, and I was still worried about the color I wanted.

Now I was looking at other colors because I had realized this was not what I thought it was going to be. I needed to figure out quickly which color would be okay before I bought the car.

I told the advisor helping me that I would write a check for the vehicle. I knew they would have to wait for it to clear, and once it cleared, I would come pick it up.

I thought I was going to be the easiest customer they had ever had. I was going to write the check, wait for it to clear, and then send someone to pick it up. Done. Then he said, okay, do me a favor and come sit at my desk.

What do you think happens when he comes back from the tower? Another crazy dealership story…

The story only got worse. The turn means the manager comes out and sits in the salesperson’s seat. That is an interesting move psychologically, because now the salesperson is standing while the manager is sitting.

He came out, sat down, and the salesperson was not there. I assume that is a technique. It is not something I would do in a dealership I ran. Right away, it gave me another crazy dealership story for the future. The manager sat at the desk and asked, how can I help you?

That is his pet the dog line. That is how he builds rapport.

I told the manager there was no way I was paying a market adjustment. They kept asking if I wanted to pay $12,000, and that still was not an option. I understand that dealers can charge a market adjustment, but I was not interested in paying it. My crazy dealership stories got worse because I had already been there for a couple of hours, and I had nothing to show for it except frustration. They wasted my time. They did not have what they said they had in stock. It was bait and switch. They had no technique and no respect for my time.

I said at one point, you guys should look me up because I am going to talk about this.

The crazy part is that nothing has changed in 30 years. At that point I was really down about it, so I went on the Tesla website and looked at the SUV. It was not exactly what I wanted, but it was much easier than dealing with all this. Then I found out they were sold out until November 2022, so I wondered if they were also stretching the truth by saying it would be ready in six months.

I was dying to buy a car, and I did end up getting a vehicle. But that situation showed me how crazy it is when a dealer can run the show. If people did not need a car, this would not work. As a customer, you do all the work. They do not want me to write a check; they want me to wire the money. So I planned to wire the money on Monday when the office opened, and then the guy told me about finance.

In finance, the game was to cash convert people. We used to role-play cash conversions. We talked about them and tracked them. No crazy dealership stories there.

So if the desk has someone who does cash deals, send them to finance and have them convert more of them. We like that. They won something in the game because, at the end of the year, especially if you run a dealership, Land Rovers are over 6,000 pounds, so you can write them off 100 percent. Instead of giving me more crazy dealership stories, I would just like a clean purchase.

It is better for me to buy the Land Rover and write it off for taxes than to lease it, because that helps on taxes too. So people come in at the end of the year and say they want that Land Rover, and they write a check.

Recently, the finance guy tried to sell me a bunch of stuff I did not need. It was a menu full of items I did not care about. He asked how long I was going to keep it. I told him two years, because that was the plan. So I do not need an extended warranty. I do not need those products. Stop giving me crazy dealership stories I will repeat to everyone I know.

The only reason I would buy them is so he can make a commission.

CRAZY DEALERSHIP BUYING EXPERIENCE

If you are in that situation, do not try to sell me things I do not need. The guy even said some things about not making money. It is interesting that people do not look me up. People at that dealership knew who I was, but they still said what they said.

Nuts, but why wouldn’t they try to do a cash conversion in that situation?

Anyway, I had to wire the money on Monday. I signed all the paperwork, and then he said I could not take the vehicle until I showed proof of insurance.

I told them I had already sent the insurance, but he said the VIN had to be on the policy. I told him I had 30 days, and that because we were buying it under the business, I had more insurance under the business than on the car itself.

So the insurance guy waited for them to send the paperwork, and my crazy dealership story kept getting worse. We wired the money on Monday, and it cleared that day. I went to pick it up on Wednesday.

On Tuesday, I asked if I could get the paperwork. I wanted them to email anything the insurance company needed so they could add the car. I asked for that information.

Because it was a cash deal, nobody in finance would even help. So I told the sales team to text the salesperson. I told them I was coming to pick it up, and if they could not get me the papers, nobody better tell me I could not take it.

When I got there, I had an appointment to pick up the car, but the salesperson was not even there. I called him, and he was somewhere else.

Someone there told me to have a seat and that somebody would help me. But nobody was there to help me. When I saw someone I knew was the manager, I asked him to hand me the key and I would figure it out myself. That just kept making my crazy dealership stories better the longer I stayed there.

I don’t want to sit here for four hours because I do not understand why this is happening. I had an appointment.

It is frustrating that we still do not understand why dealerships lose 80 percent of their customers to independent stores. We do not want to talk about it. That is the problem. We only want to create crazy dealership stories.

But right now, while we are sitting here, we can still save the automotive industry, and nobody wants to do it. The manufacturers do not want to save it. The dealer body does not want to save it. And nobody wants to discuss it.

We are all a little naive about it. I guess we think the Nations of Auto and Lithia are going to buy everything, and the dealers will get their big payday and leave. But does nobody care about the image of our industry? Our mothers, sisters, and cousins buy cars too, and they should not have to go through the same frustration and the same crazy dealership stories.

Just read the reviews and you will see people are fed up. You cannot treat people like this. It is depressing to me. I grew up in this industry, and nobody cares. Everyone seems content to wait for something to change. I think the reason new car grosses and used car grosses are so high right now is COVID.

This is creating a second problem and giving me more crazy dealership stories. I do not know the second-level naivety.

My crazy dealership story gets worse because if people are paying $15,000 over sticker because of supply and demand, why would we not invest some of that money in making service easier when the car breaks or needs work?

Why would we not invest in the relationship after the customer leaves with the brand new car? We need to think about the auto industry as more than a one-time sale.

Why are we not building service into the customer experience? Why are we giving people crazy dealership stories?

Instead, we get stuck with a crazy dealership experience. Why are we not spending more time and effort as an industry on making things easier for consumers? Why are we giving away the advantage?

I do not understand it. Tesla is not doing many things we could not do as an automotive industry. We are just stuck in our ways, stubborn, and unwilling to talk about it.

From our family to yours, we hope you have a great holiday season. We hope you eat so much that Santa brings you what you want. We will see you at the start of next year on Service Drive Revolution.

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