Book A 30-Min. Discovery Call with our team Today+1 (800) 230-5165 Book a Call

Moneyball for Your Service Department: What Baseball Can Teach Fixed Ops

Moneyball for service department: When dealership leaders make decisions based on feelings instead of facts, the results are usually disappointing. That’s why in this episode of Service Drive Revolution, Chris Collins, Christian Lafferty, and Hogi talk about “Moneyball” for your service department—how to cut through the noise, focus on the right numbers, and finally run a profitable, customer-first operation.

If you’ve ever seen the movie Moneyball, you know the story. Scouts were focused on things like how a player looked, the sound of the ball coming off the bat, or even whether he had an “ugly girlfriend.” Meanwhile, the real data—the on-base percentage—was being ignored.

Sound familiar?

Too often in service departments, leaders make the same mistake. We hire based on gut feelings (“small hands will make a great tech”), set pay plans without tying them to performance, or defend broken systems with resume statements like, “I’ve been doing this for 20 years.”

The truth? The data tells a very different story. And if you want a high-performing service department, it’s time to start playing Moneyball.


1. Pay Plans Must Match Performance

One of the biggest mistakes dealers make is capping advisor pay at an arbitrary number—like $8,000 a month—no matter their production.

If an ADVISOR is generating $250,000 in parts and labor sales, their pay should reflect their performance. Otherwise, you’re squelching growth. On the flip side, if ADVISORS are earning 15–20% of gross because your system is broken or your culture is toxic, that’s not sustainable either.

👉 Related: Top Fixed Ops Performers: What Car Dealership Service Managers and Advisors Do Differently

The point is: stop thinking in terms of payroll expenses. Start thinking in terms of ROI.


2. Hire for Facts, Not Feelings

We’ve all seen it: MANAGERS hire based on likeability, familiarity with a DMS, or some superficial factor. That’s no different than hiring a baseball player because “he looks the part.”

Instead, hire based on actual performance and proven results. Otherwise, you’re gambling your customer experience on gut instinct.


3. Facts Over Feelings

How many times have you asked for a simple number—like net-to-gross—only to get a long story in return? That’s what we call a resume statement: excuses instead of data.

The Moneyball approach forces us to separate facts from feelings. The truth might sting, but it’s the only way to fix what’s broken.

moneyball for service department

4. Simplify the Metrics

At the end of the day, there are only two things that matter:

  • Is your department profitable?
  • Are you delivering a great customer experience?

If you’re excelling in one but failing in the other, you’re not running at full potential. And here’s the good news: because the industry standard is so low, doing the basics right—like clear advisor communication or understanding your financials—will put you ahead of the competition.

👉 Related: The 9 Reasons Why Service Managers Fail (And How to Avoid Them)


What Baseball Can Teach Fixed Ops

The lesson from Moneyball is simple: baseball scouts were focused on the wrong things—intangibles, gut feelings, and traditions—while ignoring the numbers that actually won games. Fixed Ops leaders fall into the same trap.

Here’s the crossover:

  1. Stop hiring on gut instinct.
    Scouts obsessed over looks and “the sound of the bat.” In service, managers hire advisors because they’re likeable or “already know the DMS”—not because they’ve proven results.
  2. Pay for performance, not limits.
    The A’s outsmarted teams with bigger payrolls by maximizing ROI. Service managers need to pay advisors by percentage of gross, not cap them arbitrarily.
  3. Facts > feelings.
    Baseball scouts trusted instincts. Service leaders defend broken systems with resume statements. But profitability and CSI are the only real scoreboard.
  4. Simple metrics win.
    The A’s knew runs win games. Service departments need to measure only two things: profit and customer experience.
  5. Constraints can be advantages.
    Limited payroll forced the A’s to be intentional. In Fixed Ops, smaller teams or tighter budgets should make you sharper, not weaker.

👉 The bottom line: Baseball teaches Fixed Ops that winning isn’t about tradition, ego, or excuses. It’s about measuring what truly matters, stripping away noise, and building a system that makes profitability and customer satisfaction inevitable..


The Real Lesson of Moneyball in Fixed Ops

The Moneyball lesson is simple: stop relying on tribal knowledge, excuses, and outdated traditions. Start focusing on the real metrics that drive success.

When you do, you’ll discover that profitability and customer experience don’t have to be at odds. You can—and should—win at both.

And the best part? Once you see the truth, you’ll never settle for “the way we’ve always done it” again.


Full Video Transcript

Welcome to the big show. Today we are going to talk about Moneyball for your service department. And then we also are going to teach you how to build a cult. Christian is here. Hogi is here. I’m here. We’re going to have a lot of fun today. So let’s hang out on this edition of Service Drive Evolution.

Christian, did you see the Taylor Swift interview on the Kelsey podcast? Yeah, I like that podcast. Oh, you watch it? Yeah. New Heights. That’s what it’s called? Yep. Yeah. The Kelsey brothers. And their beer is called Garage. Yeah. It’s all in the background now. I just learned that about that, too. I think you were telling me about it, but I just learned about it, too. I guess they’re doing pretty good with it. Yep. People are buying the beer.

It was funny. I asked Hogi if he’d watched it because it’s his team, right? So if you don’t know, Oklahoma here is a big Chiefs fan, by far the biggest in the company. Easy to Christmas shop for. Yes, that’s true. Doesn’t take much. Chiefs shot glasses. Remember that barbecue apron? Hey, you remember that book you got me? I got it framed, too, and then that jersey. Yeah, I have a whole wall. I’ve got to send you guys a picture. I have a book. Yeah, I did. You don’t? That’s some. Well, it’s a glass thing. It opens, but come over, I’ve got to pull it out of the frame to read the book. No, no, no, no. It has a little deal that opens so you can. It’s for the book, but it opens. You can take the book out. Yeah. But it hangs on the wall and stuff because I was trying to figure that out, right? Because the signatures are on the front of the cover. There are a bunch of different signatures. So putting it in a sleeve didn’t feel right. Yeah. So, yeah, it’s cool. My favorite was the, so there was one year where I was shopping for him and I found probably one of the coolest Chiefs jerseys I’ve ever seen. It was kind of the silver and the red and everything. And so I’m, I’ve got to have this jersey for Hogy. Ordered it. I shipped it right to his house. I was so excited, and then I felt you almost didn’t want to tell me. I had purchased for Hogy a women’s jersey, and apparently it didn’t fit, but I think his wife is probably a big fan. But yeah, I bought him a women’s jersey for Christmas one year. She wore that. It got good use, though. She wore it to the Super Bowl.

Christian, do you ever feel there’s a joke that you’re not in on? There’s an understanding of stuff that you don’t get. Yeah, I do feel that way a lot, probably more than an average human. Did you watch the Taylor Swift-Kelsey podcast a while ago? Oh, on New Heights. Yeah, I like the podcast. That’s the name of their podcast. Well, they’re two brothers. Yep. Travis and Jason Kelsey that I get mistaken for sometimes. Makes no sense to me. That’s funny. No, I could a little bit. When my cousins were here. Do you know the story? When my cousins were here, I was bringing them down here to the library. So, we were on the, what is that? The 10. And this lady in a Mercedes pulls up and she rolls down her window on the other side. She’s screaming at me. So, I roll down my window and I’m, “Why are you chasing? What? I can’t hear.” I’m, “What? What? We’re on the freeway, right?” And she, she’s screaming something. And I go, I go to my cousin. I’m, “What is she saying?” And he goes, “She’s saying Eagles.” And I’m, I’m looking. I’m, “What?” And he goes, “She thinks you’re Kelsey.” That’s so funny. So then they bought me a Seahawks jersey with Kelsey on the back, which they think is funny, which never has been worn, but sits in my closet. I can’t throw it away because they gave it to me. But so I watched, I want to say I watched 20 minutes of it. I don’t even know why I watched it. I was watching. It’s not my thing. But I was asking Hogy about it. I’m, “Hey, did you watch it?” And he goes, “Oh yeah.” What does that mean? He was mad about it? No. He was, “Yeah, of course.” Kind of, and I go, “What do you mean?” And basically, so, previously Hogi has said, I always know when Taylor Swift’s coming out with a new album because my daughters ask to do chores for 30 bucks or 40 bucks. Yeah. Yeah. So, which by the way, we’re jumping all over here. I’m sorry everybody, but there’s this vinyl store that I like that sells used vinyl and I sorted his inventory by highest to lowest price. And the number two one for 2500 bucks was a Taylor Swift album. And in that top 20, I would say half of them were Taylor Swift variations of albums, which is nuts. I never knew. I don’t understand why you’d buy Taylor Swift on vinyl. It sounds the same. It’s pretty processed, right? It’s just not my thing. But I don’t know. I couldn’t honestly name a Taylor Swift song, which I know is not the case for you, but you’re a girl dad. So, basically what Hogi told me is that his daughters had him get an iPad and mirror it to the TV because there are so many Easter eggs in that thing that he was blowing it up. How an iPad, the stuff in the background had meaning. So at one point, and I remember this right at the beginning, she says something about 27 seconds or 29 seconds in reference to him and that means something. Everything has meaning, right? Give him an example of what the Easter eggs are. I mean, there’s a bunch of them. So it’s totally a cult. The new album’s orange and there’s a Rothco book in the background and Rothko’s famous for using orange. Everything’s planned. She’s talking a lot about Sourdough. The 49ers mascot is Sourdough Sam. And so there were all these hints that she’s going to be performing at the Super Bowl, the Super Bowl in San Francisco. San Francisco. Yeah, exactly. So, there are all these things, and even to the point, they, and she hadn’t talked publicly about them a lot, about the Easter eggs, and she’s talking publicly about them and, “Hey, it’s definitely a thing we do. It’s not for everybody, and so if it’s not for you, excuse us for a minute, but if you’re into it, you’ll never understand the depths of this rabbit hole.” And she’s, “You wouldn’t know that if you take the lights from the show and turn them backwards and count the flashes that it means something or something.” Well, people took the lights from her last show at this point that she says to do it and you turn them around or whatever and backwards and play them and then have ChatGPT read it to you in Morse code. It says it’s nuts. Morse code. Yes. Yeah, like an eye blink, but it’s the lights and it’s nuts. The depth of all that stuff is crazy. I think it’s brilliant. I can’t. It’s something. Yeah. I mean, at the heart of what she does, it’s been around forever, but I think the first time I ever saw anybody do it was Kiss. And so the narrative is, “I never fit in. I don’t belong.” And so then there’s the Kiss Army, which is the place for you, right? So, the Swifties, she never fit in. She’s always the underdog, even though she’s a billionaire. It’s all very culty, but smart to build a tribe. She’s got, I mean, just think about the NFL, and we were talking about that too, how much it’s increased their viewership of just people that had no interest. Yeah. Females. It’s interesting too, when you watch the commercials now how many girls playing flag football NFL commercials there are. Yeah. Yeah. If I had a son, I wouldn’t want him to play football. I certainly wouldn’t want my daughter hitting her head over and over again. That was one of maybe the better parenting things that my mom did is I had this cousin that was a senior in the high, and the high school I went to was a football powerhouse, as much as you can be a football powerhouse in Washington state, but whatever. And it was a big deal and my cousin was going to college on a scholarship. He, but he had had knee surgery already in high school. And my mom told me when I was playing football, she’s, “When you’re my age and you wake up and you’re in pain,” she’s, basically what she’s saying is, “Hey, if you want to go play football professionally and you think that’s an option, it might be worth all the pain later on, but if you’re just playing recreation, there’s other things you can do and don’t have the same collateral damage.” Yeah. And, yeah, I just, if I had kids, I wouldn’t want them playing football. I just wouldn’t. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It’s, yeah. Just the reach of what she’s done. It is crazy, and like or hate her, right? It’s pretty polarizing. Branding, marketing, just all of it. Telling a story, all that Easter egg stuff is people are trying to find the story. It’s the Encyclopedia Brown, those solve-it mysteries. It’s a modern social media version of that, where you’re figuring it out and then they’re sharing in forums or, I don’t know, where do the kids share? Yeah. Well, posting, whatever. Yeah, just all of it. It’s everywhere. It transcends all of social media, and it’s not in one thing. It’s an ecosystem of hers that’s everywhere. How far into the cult are your girls? My 16-year-old’s kind of coming out of it where she’s still, she’s getting into different types of music and stuff. And then my 14-year-old kind of follows what my 16-year-old does, but something big, like her going on the podcast and stuff, then we’re right back in the heart of it again and stuff. But yeah, they kind of start, there are things they could be into. Oh, yeah. I mean, Taylor Swift at the end of the day, besides the external locus of control that it’s never her fault when she breaks up with a guy, she’s a pretty positive influence, right? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I agree with that. Do you see that from a parenting side? Yeah. Yeah. There’s nothing. Yeah. No part of her, that ecosystem or anything that you’re trying to shelter them from or use as an example of what not to do or anything. Do you think you should become a Swifty? I mean, by default, he kind of is. I like, I am, but that’s why he’s young. He understands stuff that I don’t. When I’m asking about this, I had no idea. I’m learning. I had no idea that that existed. Did you? Not to the level that it does, but I’m not surprised. I have a lot of faith that she knows what she’s doing. Yeah. And then it’s there are not very many things from my world. My world has always been a guy’s guy, football, cars, stuff, cowboy hats. I got two girls that their world is girly girl. So, the Taylor Swift thing has been fun for me, because at a particular age where they stop talking to you, it’s this gift-wrapped thing of our two worlds kind of colliding or intersecting. So for that reason, I’m a Swifty, but still, I totally get it, though. There’s only so much of that. They’ll listen to those songs over and over again, and my threshold for it, the pain tolerance for it is pretty low. But, yeah, no, I’m right up there with a lot of the Swifties. I know quite a bit. But it’s funny. Keeps you young. Keeps me young. Yeah. This exciting. So, you had the idea of talking about Moneyball for your service department. I love that clip on YouTube. It always comes up in my algorithm of Brad and those old coaches around the table and basically the scouts. The scouts. Yeah. He’s, they’re talking about, “Oh, he’s got an ugly girlfriend,” and this guy, the way the ball sounds when it comes off the bat and that sort of thing. Yeah. And it has always reminded me of what we do, in a sense of what everybody’s talking about is usually different than what the actual problem and fix is. They’re talking about the wrong stuff. They’re thinking about the wrong stuff. And at the end of the day, nobody wants to acknowledge that it’s broken. There’s a lot of egos. Yeah. There’s a lot of posturing, but it takes a guy to come in and go, “What is the problem?” Nobody can answer what the problem is. Yeah. And he just cuts a straight line to it, right? So, you could apply it to different things. But no, it’s just overall a thing where, Jonah Hill’s character, do you remember his name? I forget his name, but Jonah Hill. Yeah, he figures out that he just cuts through a lot of it. If you want a profitable service department and a better customer experience, there’s a straight line to those things, but we muddied the waters with it. If you want to win baseball games, he figured out you need runs, and if you need runs, you need to get people on base. His name was Pete. Pete. Yeah, it was Pete. So, it was just a basic algorithm, but there were the most important metrics. You’ve got to get people on base, and you’ve got to score runs, and you win games, and that gets you to World Series or whatever. But just kind of starting at the end and work backwards. But it’s such a funny thing where then you start to apply that to different things, like hiring people, like hiring a service manager or hiring advisors or even techs. It is the scene for Moneyball. Yeah. We’ve witnessed it. “This guy’s going to be great. He has the look.” I’m, “What’s the look?” “What was his performance at the place he was before?” I think at the heart of that, too, is people are mimetic, and so everybody’s following what everybody else is doing, even if it isn’t working. They’re doing the same thing that we’ve always done, hoping that it’ll be okay, versus intentionally creating an outcome. As you said, it’s more of a direct line. Yeah. I sat in on a tech interview once, and this is absolutely 100% accurate. We sat down there, and the guy didn’t bring any numbers with him, no production or anything, and kind of just talks a little bit through the system, who fixes cars, and the guy walks out. The service manager turns to me, and he goes, “I like him. He’s got small hands.” I was, and I’m, “What?” “Yeah, he’s got small hands. He’ll be able to dig into those little places and fix all those little things.” I’m, “You’re going to hire him because he’s got small hands?” I think he hired him, too. But that was, that’s what made me, when you said this Moneyball thing, I thought of that interview because there’s nothing more Moneyball than small-hand techs. That’s so funny. So, we kind of have a list. The first one is the money part, where in our industry people tend to think, “Oh, a service manager makes this, an advisor makes that,” with very little connection to what the performance is, right? For example, if your advisor should be 8% of your gross, and you have an advisor writing 250,000 in parts and labor, and it’s 8%, it is what it is, right? But most of the time, they will come in and they’ll go, “Well, an advisor can’t make more than eight grand a month, no matter what their performance is.” And so, in a sense, they’re squatching the performance by penciling people. Whenever there’s a pay plan change, it’s never in the favor of the people doing the work. Yeah. It’s always to get more back, in a sense. And then there’s the other side of that, too, where people are paying way too much for the performance because their culture is broken. Nobody wants to work there. So, the advisors are 15% of the gross, or they’re a business that has embraced quick lube and all their traffic comes through a quick lube, and their advisor is making 20% of the gross because every RO is 50 bucks, and that’s it. And all of that is basically either leaving it to chance or sabotaging yourself by thinking about how much they’re making in dollars versus how much they’re making in performance and as a percentage of gross, right? You can’t look at the payroll expense. You have to look at the ROI from what you do. Yep. And my favorite thing is where you have the person that’s an express advisor and they’re making 25% or 30% of the gross they generate, but they’re only making four or five grand a month. So everyone’s, “Yeah, that’s a cheap employee.” I’m, “No.” And they quit. The turnover is huge. And then they start upping it, right? They’re, “Well, we’ve got to pay him more.” And it’s, “No, your system is broken. The whole thing is broken. You’re just running people through here like cattle.” Yeah. There’s no connection, there’s no relationship, everybody’s miserable, it’s just this tension, everybody hates being there. And so the money part most of the time people get wrong. And then the other one is like you said, small hands. People don’t hire for past performance. They hire for likability or commonality. They understand how to use the DMS or whatever it is, right? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That is, and we’ve joked about that over the years, but it’s amazing how often we still hear it today, cycling through resumes. They already know Kia or they already know CDK or whatever, and so that becomes the number one thing they’re vetting for. And the other kind of thing going along with that is when they’re looking at resumes and stuff, the reason why they run to someone that’s more plug-and-play is because so many people are still, in today’s environment, waiting until they need somebody to start recruiting. That’s a reaction. Yeah. And it kind of puts them in this position, and then it becomes feelings over facts in a bad way. But I’m not going to lie, when you said the little hands thing, I was waiting for the punchline. I thought that was a, I was walking to work today. Yes, exactly. I can see where you think that. I was waiting for the setup. And then speaking of careers, do you know what career makes you more successful the more you drive customers away? An Uber driver. I just had that one waiting, just simmering in the background for you. I need a snare drum and a cymbal. So funny. The next kind of two I have go together, and we say this all the time in situations where there’s a lot of experience but terrible results, and so you have a manager that’s been doing it for 20, 30 years, but their department isn’t profitable, their CSI is really inconsistent, high turnover, and they invariably are so set in their ways that we’ll say they have 20 years of experience working against them. They have all the reasons why it can’t work, versus just the path to how it can. And then most of the time, in those situations, they’re talking about feelings like they’re actual facts when they’re not. None of their behaviors, none of their thoughts get us to where we want to go. But they’re so married to them because it’s just how we are as humans. Over time, we have to justify the thing. We build this world. We talk about this in the leadership training, right? You build the city around all of your issues, and it requires you almost reinventing yourself, letting all that go, and focusing on the actual facts and putting the feelings in a bag and leaving them on the curb, in a sense. But so it’s really hard to talk to people like that because you just keep. This happens to me all the time. I’m, “Okay, but what’s the net to gross?” “Well, see, the thing is,” and they go on this whole, and I’m, “No, I just asked you to just read this number to me.” “Well, parts, but,” and it’s, “If we can’t acknowledge that we are broken, we can’t fix it.” You’ve got to be able to look in the mirror and tell yourself the truth. I think that. Don’t you think that would be a really good, if you’re trying to give somebody advice that you might be headed down that wrong path? You, more than anybody I’ve ever met in my life, people give you resume statements more than I’ve ever seen, and if you catch yourself trying to justify, “Well, in my 30 years of experience,” or whatever it is, if you catch yourself saying that, you’re probably wrong. Yeah. So maybe explain everybody what a resume statement is. So we learned that from Chase Hughes. Yep. So, a resume statement is where when you’re asked a direct, this comes from interrogation, right? Yeah. So, pretend you’re interrogating somebody from Al-Qaeda and you say, “Did you blow up the embassy?” And then what would they say? They would say, “I’m a good person. I’m a good father.” And you’re, “Yeah, but what I was asking you is, did you blow up the embassy? My wife really loves me, and I really love my mom, and I’m a good, and you’re, that’s a resume statement. They can’t answer the question.” Yeah, you’re changing the subject, and that does happen to me a lot. It drives me. Sometimes I just sit back and watch that happen. That happened to me today. Not even remotely surprised. Yeah. And I was, but now I guess I’m getting older. I just don’t have the patience for it, especially as busy as I am. I’m just, “Hey, that isn’t what I asked.” “Oh,” and she’s not the best either. “But in my 20 years of telling jokes, I’m shocked.” I don’t get it. That my, “Oh, that was your resume statement of being funny.” God, I’ve tried so hard to find my yearbook where I was voted funniest to show him. Oh, yeah. A resume statement, too, right? Yeah. The problem is I wasn’t trying to be funny. No, I think my humor came out of survival. You have organic humor. I’m dry. Yeah, I’m a little more dry, too. Hogi is too. Hogi’s funny. Facts over feelings.

Did you have anything else on your list, Hogi? No. I think a piece of that, too, is understanding that the tribal knowledge in the industry. A lot of what we’re talking about is a failure of the industry, right? We’ve come up with all these different metrics to try to cheat the system or something, and complicate it. Yeah. There are two things: What’s your profitability and what’s your customer experience? That’s it. That’s it. Yeah. Yeah. And if you have more of one than the other, it’s not working. You should be able to have both. Yeah. Yeah. And then I think if you’re hearing this information, because I remember unpacking some of this for the first time years ago, hearing some of this, and it felt like somebody was talking directly to me. I didn’t even know it was a problem throughout the whole industry. It all just was like, “Oh man, this was all written about me.” And one of the things that helped me the most was at a quarterly coaching meeting, and we had talked about this concept. The numbers are what the numbers are, and you can use them as strategy or criticism. So if this is you, and this speaks to you, and it’s where you’re at, just look at it and then figure out how to change it and what levers. Yeah. It’s not emotional. It’s not. And you’ll find the Moneyball algorithm or whatever for what you want. Yeah. And I would say, too, it’s the best part of what we do, right? We’re sitting here right now, and the reason why you’re here in town is because you’re doing, I call it a boot camp. Maybe we call it a master class, but basically new clients coming into our coaching group come here for a couple days, and they basically get the recipe. Here is the recipe of how this is going to work, right? And so you’ll have, how many do we have this week? 30 people. 27. 27 people will be in here on Thursday morning, and you guys can watch the testimonials of what people say. That’s really our best marketing. When it’s done, we ask them what their feelings are on it, and people are transformed because the industry has lied. The tribal knowledge has let us down. And there are all of these misconceptions that you can’t have fun and run a good business, that it has to be hard for some reason, that you have to kill yourself in order to get an outcome. And no, really, it’s just executing on math and a system and holding yourself to a certain standard. I mean, it’s a pretty easy recipe once they understand it. But it feels the most liberating, empowering thing ever when you’ve been living the other way, which is very inconsistent. We’re telling people, “Oh, just get us more gross. Get us more gross.” But we mean profit. No, we don’t share the financials. There are all kinds of booby traps in our industry that people try to work around, and then we just kind of come right through the front door and we’re, “Hey, this is actually what’s back. This is what you’ve thought is behind you the whole time,” and this is how it works. “Here’s where the levers are. Here’s where you have the most leverage is if you stand right here and push this.” And it’s, I mean, it’s probably the best part of what we do is watching that evolution over a couple days. People are sitting up a little straighter. They’re excited. They can’t wait to go back to work and start implementing it because knowledge is power. When you learn something and it makes sense, you present it in a way that resonates, right? They’re not, “Oh, well, maybe it will,” or, “Oh, no, that makes total sense. I’ve been looking at it that way, and it actually is over here,” kind of a thing. My perspective is different. And so when it starts to actually make sense and resonate, that energy is contagious. Yeah. What I think that it is is that before they come in, those 27 people had never considered before Thursday that there was another way except the way that they’ve always done it. And then you flip it, and by the mid-morning, they’ve realized that their life was a lie. But I think once you show them that there’s another way, then they get curious about, “Oh, what else have I been closed off about?” And then they open. And that’s where we see the transformation of people. I’ve heard you both say it is that this thing creates not just better service managers, better parts managers, but better humans. That’s what you do. You unlock that key. It all starts with the, all you need to be told once is that the thing you were always told is that it could be a different way, and then you just start to test the waters on so many different things. But I don’t know. I think too, when you realize it’s simple, when you take financials, there’s a part I’ve learned to say in that class when we start with financials that, “Hey, I’m not a CPA, and my goal isn’t to make you a CPA, but my goal is for you to be able to take the financials of your department and know where the leverage is and know how to drive profitability in your department, right? And have it drive your decisions.” Yeah. And it happens that the arithmetic is pretty simple. It’s not a big complex thing, and I think when you can make the complicated simple, that’s what creates the excitement and the drive. That, too, is something with this whole piece of my career on this team. I believe that about a lot of other things now. If somebody is explaining something that has always been a little bit mysterious to me, and they can do it in a simple way, it’s usually a pretty good telltale sign that that person really truly understands that and can teach it. And I think that’s a little bit of what happens, too. There’s just all this noise, and there’s a straight path through it, and it will happen this week. I’m guessing five or six times, probably, I’ll get pulled to the side at some point, and they’ll be, “I’ve been to a lot of training and never been to training like this. This makes. Why doesn’t anybody teach that?” And I’m, “I have no idea why nobody’s teaching it because it isn’t fair. It isn’t fair that people sit there in an NADA class debits and credits till their eyes roll back in their head, and that it’s so complicated you give up. You get learned helplessness.” And that’s how I felt early on when I would ask people questions. It felt like, “Okay, I guess this, nobody knows. Everybody’s lying because it doesn’t. None of it adds up.” It has to add up. Yeah. There has to be common sense involved in some of this stuff, right? And, yeah, so, back to just the subject of the Moneyball for Fixed Ops, and we’ll put that clip in, if you’re watching this on YouTube, we’ll put that clip in the description, too. But it’s just funny that that’s what it feels like, and there’s a better way. Also, the other thing that I would say about that clip is you’re not handicapped by the Yankees and the fact that you have a payroll 10 times lower than the other team. You actually are starting where everybody else is, in a sense. You don’t have an unfair advantage, but you operate like you do most of the time. Yeah. You could actually make it an advantage by saying that you have to be so intentional with each spot on the 24-man roster or whatever it is. The Yankees can blow it. Yeah. You can’t, which means that you consider every position so much better than the Yankees do. You should be able to flip it if you’re doing it right. And the good news in the industry, the expectation for customer experience is so low that with a little bit of intentionality, you put yourself above average. If your advisors, I don’t know, pretend to be on the, way above average. If you know how to read a financial, you’re way above average. Experience, if you don’t suck. Yeah. That’s the bar. If you know what your expenses should be as a percentage, all of that, right? Yeah, that’s great. Well, that was a fun conversation. Thanks everybody 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.


đź”— Related Resources:

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!

Achieving and exceeding your goals is possible when you have the right systems in place. With Service Drive Revolution OnDemand, you’ll gain access to the proven systems that have made thousands of SERVICE MANAGERS IRREPLACEABLE. Start transforming your department today!

Need help updating your playbook? Let us know how we can support your team’s growth.

Book a 15-minute strategy session with our team. We’ll explore how to unlock your dealership’s real value.  

Recommended Posts

AUTOMOTIVE CONSULTANTS AT WORK

Automotive consultants are employed by dealerships and other car companies to help in developing their businesses and, in turn, increase profits. They also might work

MY TOP 17 MUST READ BUSINESS BOOKS OF ALL TIME

[et_pb_section bb_built=”1″][et_pb_row][et_pb_column type=”4_4″][et_pb_text] “I FIND TELEVISION TO BE VERY EDUCATING. EVERY TIME SOMEBODY TURNS ON THE SET, I GO IN THE OTHER ROOM AND READ A

LIMITED TIME EVENT

Days
Hours
Minutes
Seconds
Join me as I tell the stories from my best-selling book.

1: Contact Information

2. Payment Information

Millionaire Service Advisor and Irreplaceable Service Manager books by Chris Collins

Claim Yours Before We
Run Out Of Stock!

$74.95 $39.95

This Step By Step Guide Will Teach You How To…

  • Create a workplace you and your employees love!
  • Drive traffic and increase your RO count!
  • Significantly increase your CSI count!
  • Create lifetime customer loyalty!
  • And so much more!
 

Get Free Access to Our M.O.R.E Technician Recruiting Workbook!

First enter your best email address below so we know where to send it!
 
Automotive leadership and service manager training banner promoting Chris Collins Inc. programs for car dealership growth and performance.
Man writing profit and cost calculations on a transparent board
 

We respect your privacy. Your email will never be shared