Dealerships across the country are facing tough conditions on the sales floor. Traditional showroom traffic fluctuates, margins on new inventory continue to shift, and customer acquisition costs remain high. Yet, one of the most profitable sales opportunities in the entire dealership arrives at your location every single morning: the service drive.
Converting service customers into vehicle sales is not a new idea, but very few dealerships execute it consistently. In Service Drive Revolution Episode #371, Chris Collins and the team break down how Fixed Ops leaders and sales departments can align to convert service appointments into sales—without alienating customers or overburdening advisors.
Selling vehicles directly through the service department creates a sustainable pipeline of high-quality trades, drives front-end gross, and protects long-term customer retention.
Why Service Drive Sales Fall Short in Most Dealerships
Most dealerships have attempted equity mining or service-to-sales programs at some point. However, the vast majority of these initiatives fail within 30 to 60 days. The breakdown usually stems from structural and cultural disconnects between departments.
The Rotational Salesperson Flaw
The primary reason these programs fail is the lack of dedicated staffing. Rotating a floor salesperson into the service drive for a day or two every month creates an environment of friction.
- Different Operational Hours: Service drives open early, often around 7:00 AM, while sales departments typically open at 9:00 AM. A rotated salesperson misses critical morning check-ins and customer arrivals.
- Transactional Mindset: Floor salespeople are trained to close customers who came in specifically to buy a car. Service customers came in for maintenance or repairs, meaning aggressive sales pitches trigger immediate skepticism and resistance.
- Lack of Integration: Rotated staff are viewed as outsiders by the service team, leading both sides to view the process as an inconvenience.
According to NADA workforce research, turnover remains a major obstacle when dealerships fail to establish clear, dedicated career paths for their sales personnel.
Advisor Disincentives
Service advisors spend their days building trust with vehicle owners. If an advisor helps sell a customer a new car, they potentially lose a repair order and the associated commission. Without proper financial alignment or compensation structures, advisors have little motivation to facilitate introductions.s a major obstacle when dealerships fail to establish clear, dedicated career paths for their sales personnel.
4 Core Strategies to Sell Cars Out of the Service Drive
To turn your service lane into a predictable vehicle acquisition and sales engine, you must move away from sporadic efforts and implement a structured system.
Implementing structured Service Drive Systems ensures your team stays aligned on daily volume and equity opportunities.
1. Dedicate Full-Time Sales Representatives to Service
Success requires dedicated personnel whose sole responsibility is managing service drive opportunities.
Dedicated service-sales representatives must embed themselves directly into the service department. They should attend the morning service shift meeting (e.g., 6:45 AM) to review the day’s appointment schedule alongside advisors. High-volume stores benefit even further by dedicating a manager to oversee these operations.
Maintaining ASE certified standards across your Fixed Ops team builds the fundamental customer trust required to make soft sales introductions feel natural.
2. Shift the Script from “Selling” to “Acquiring”
Directly asking a service customer if they want to buy a new car often triggers immediate defensiveness. Instead, frame the conversation around inventory acquisition.
The Acquisition Approach: “Your vehicle is in extremely high demand on our used car lot right now. If you’ve considered updating your vehicle, we’d love to make an offer to buy yours.”
This approach changes the dynamic entirely. The customer feels their current vehicle holds significant value, opening the door for an organic trade conversation without high-pressure sales tactics.
3. Integrate Confirmation Calls into the Pregame Process
Equity mining software allows teams to identify incoming vehicles with favorable equity positions, desirable model types, or upcoming factory incentives.
To maximize these opportunities:
- Pre-Call Introductions: Have the dedicated service-sales representative make the appointment confirmation call the day prior. They can confirm the appointment, introduce themselves casually, and mention that the store is actively seeking their specific model for pre-owned inventory.
- Visual Tracking Systems: Mark physical repair orders or vehicle identification tags (such as color-coded hat tags or clip-on flags) on the drive so team members instantly recognize priority equity opportunities.
4. Align Advisor and Manager Compensation
To secure buy-in from the Fixed Ops team, align financial incentives across both departments:
- Bird-Dog Bonuses: Pay service advisors a clear referral fee for every completed sale originating from their repair orders.
- Department Overrides: Provide Fixed Ops managers with an override on service-drive vehicle acquisitions and sales.
- Long-Term Retention: Remind the service team that selling a customer another vehicle resets the trade cycle, securing that customer’s maintenance business for another three to five years.
Updating your Advisor Compensation Plans guarantees that service staff actively support sales initiatives rather than fearing lost repair orders.
Leadership and Financial Impact across Fixed Ops
Bridging the gap between sales and service yields clear operational advantages across the entire dealership:
| Operational Metric | Impact of Service Drive Sales |
| Inventory Sourcing | Acquires high-quality, locally maintained pre-owned inventory without paying inflated auction fees. |
| Customer Experience | Provides a seamless transition for customers whose repair costs exceed the vehicle’s market value. |
| Departmental Gross | Generates additional front-end sales gross while protecting future back-end service revenue. |
| Customer Retention | Prevents defection by maintaining a continuous relationship through one cohesive dealership team. |
Over time, this collaborative model moves dealerships closer to a portfolio management model—where dedicated managers oversee both the vehicle lifecycle and maintenance needs of a dedicated client base., the more important it becomes to prevent obsolete inventory before it starts.
Frequently Asked Questions
To sell cars out of the service drive without creating customer resistance, shift the focus from selling a new car to acquiring the customer’s current vehicle. Frame the conversation around high pre-owned market demand for their specific model. Use dedicated service-sales reps who interact casually, offer clear equity estimates, and avoid aggressive showroom tactics.
Most service-to-sales initiatives fail due to a lack of dedicated staffing, poor timing, and misaligned incentives. Rotating floor salespeople into the drive creates scheduling conflicts because sales and service operate on different hours. Additionally, without financial compensation for service advisors, advisors are reluctant to hand off their clients.
Service advisors should receive a standardized referral fee or “bird-dog” bonus for every vehicle sale or acquisition originating from their appointment list. Compensating advisors ensures they actively support the program, view trade-ins as a win-win, and willingly introduce customers to the dedicated sales team.
Equity mining software analyzes incoming service appointments to identify vehicles with high trade equity, favorable lease-end terms, or strong market demand. This data allows dedicated sales reps to pregame the schedule, flag priority vehicles, and reach out to customers with tailored acquisition offers before they arrive.
A well-executed service drive sales strategy typically converts 4% to 5% of total repair order volume into vehicle sales. For high-volume service departments, this conversion rate generates several additional vehicle sales per day and a consistent pipeline of pre-owned inventory.
Final Thoughts
Successfully executing vehicle sales from the service lane requires treating the process as a permanent operational system rather than a temporary promotion. By dedicating full-time staff, aligning advisor compensation, and focusing on inventory acquisition, dealership leaders can unlock substantial front-end gross while protecting long-term customer retention.
Actionable Takeaway: Audit your incoming service appointments for tomorrow, identify the top three vehicles with high trade equity, and have a dedicated team member reach out with an inventory acquisition offer.
Achieving and exceeding your goals is possible when you have the right systems in place. Whether you’re improving parts inventory management, reducing obsolescence, or building more consistent dealership processes, Service Drive Revolution OnDemand gives you 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.
đź”— Related Resources
- Why More Service Traffic Isn’t the Answer
- Why Some Service Departments Never Improve
- Service Walk-Around Process Guide for More Approvals
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!
Service Drive Revolution – Episode 371 Transcript
How to Sell Vehicles From the Service Drive
Service Drive Revolution — Chris Collins, Inc.
Hosts: Chris Collins, Hogi, Adam Krey
Summary
Chris Collins, Hogi, and Adam Krey explain how franchised car dealerships can consistently sell vehicles out of the service drive. The core argument: dealerships that succeed at this dedicate salespeople to service full-time rather than rotating them in occasionally. The episode covers compensation structures for advisors, equity mining inside the service scheduling process, using salespeople for appointment confirmation calls, and why Chris believes dealerships will eventually merge the service advisor and salesperson roles into a single “portfolio manager.” The show also answers audience questions on new-vehicle maintenance packages and covers a fake forum post attacking the CCI program.
Key topics: selling cars from the service drive · dedicated service-drive salespeople · advisor bird-dog compensation · equity mining · trade-in acquisition · new vehicle maintenance packages · the portfolio manager model
Key Takeaways
- Dedicated salespeople are the single biggest factor. A salesperson assigned to service full-time — present at the 6:45 AM shift meeting before a 7:00 AM service open — works. Rotating salespeople through service a few days a month does not.
- Top-performing dealerships convert about 4–5% of RO count into vehicle sales. That’s a handful of cars a day out of the drive.
- Compensate the advisor. An advisor loses the RO when a customer buys a vehicle. Without a bird-dog or bonus, they have no reason to want the sale.
- Lead with acquisition, not sales. “Your vehicle is in high demand and we need it on our used car lot” outperforms “do you want a new car.”
- Have salespeople make the appointment confirmation call. It creates a warm, casual introduction rather than a predatory one.
- Stores that sell well from the drive also acquire well from the drive — sourcing used inventory outside the auction is a major competitive advantage in the current market.
- Maintenance packages aren’t the enemy — the one-item RO is. Add declined multi-point items to those tickets before judging profitability.
- 50–60% of customers never use their free oil changes. Phone calls, not emails, are what get them in.
Opening: Hard Knocks as Leadership Training
Chris Collins: Welcome everybody to Service Drive Revolution. Hope you’re having a great morning. I’m Chris Collins. Hogi is here. Adam — what’s up, everybody?
We have a great show for you today. Should we start off talking about Hard Knocks? Anybody watch the greatest leadership training available today?
Hogi: I did. I watched it on the plane last night.
Chris: Adam, you hate leadership?
Adam Krey: I don’t hate leadership. I just missed the episode.
Chris: It’s good. Hard Knocks is really, really fun. It’s the Seattle Seahawks this year.
The NFL dropped the rule — they used to have a rule that if you made the playoffs you could pass on Hard Knocks. In the new collective bargaining agreement, I think they changed that, and they picked the Super Bowl champions. The Seattle Seahawks, Super Bowl champions, on Hard Knocks.
It’s an interesting thing to see a team coming off winning the Super Bowl now trying to figure out how to get back there. I think it’s harder to get back there than it is to get there, in a lot of ways. Don’t you guys agree?
Adam: Yeah, totally agree. Not too many do it.
Chris: Your team, Hogi — the Chiefs have done it. But it’s not common.
Hogi: One of my favorite things with that episode was there’s just a vibe coming off a Super Bowl win. Those rings are pretty awesome. Whoever designed their Super Bowl rings — they had some cool surprises with it. They hit that little button and it opens up into a stadium.
Chris: When we go to Cut in the Beverly Wilshire in Beverly Hills, that jewelry store is in there — Jason of Beverly Hills. When Adam and I went there a few weeks ago, they didn’t have it for sale yet. They have one they’ll sell to fans. It’s like $20,000 and it has real diamonds. It’s not the one the players get, but you do get your name on it, and your number is 12, which is the number for the fans. Then they have another one with Swarovski crystal or something that’s about $1,500, which doesn’t look that cool.
Adam: What’s the reasoning that you don’t get it, Chris?
Chris: There are a bunch of reasons, Adam. I know you made the comment that if the Bears won it, you’d buy one — and then I think you kind of backtracked.
I’m not going to spend $20,000 on a ring I didn’t earn. I don’t do anything as a fan.
Adam: You were here at our Super Bowl party.
Chris: I did nothing. I ate and smoked a cigar. I did nothing but yell at the screen.
Football’s the best. I’m so excited football’s back. It’s so nostalgic for me. Football reminds me of my grandpa. I was born a Seahawks fan — my grandpa was so excited when Seattle got a football team. They were an expansion team. I think the Tampa Bay Buccaneers and the Seahawks came in at the same time, and they never won through my whole youth.
I played Pop Warner football and got to play at halftime at a Seahawks game, meet the team, sit on the sidelines. It was such a connection between my grandfather and me. He’d take me to the games, and Mariners games too. The Mariners have never won a World Series, but he would fall asleep listening to Dave Niehaus, a legendary broadcaster in Seattle who called the Mariners games.
I still can’t believe the Seahawks won the Super Bowl. I love our coach.
Why leadership shows up on camera
Chris: I’d recommend everybody watch Hard Knocks just from a leadership side. You can look at the teams that have been on Hard Knocks before that didn’t win, that didn’t make the playoffs — you could tell why by paying attention to the mannerisms and the behaviors.
There was an interesting clip I saw the other day of Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger doing their annual shareholder meeting. They take questions, and one of them was: how do you avoid getting ripped off in business?
Buffett says a lot of people get ripped off — he sees it quite often. And he says they have this way of doing things where they pay attention to what people say, what they’re interested in, how they behave, how they act. If you’re really paying attention to that, it tells you who somebody is.
One of the red flags for them: if they’re going to buy a business and the owner says it’s easy to run the business, they’re out. They’re not buying it. Because nobody who runs a successful business long-term ever says anything is easy. If they say it’s easy, they know they’re just trying to sell something. Their model is to buy out the owner, make them the CEO, give them a bunch of stock and the resources to grow it — they want the owner to stay around. And if somebody says “business is easy,” they’re not honest. Because it’s not easy.
Watching Hard Knocks — I think it was last year, maybe the year before — it was the New York Giants. You see the head coach at the combine talking about doing the 40 and foot racing, and he’s on his phone the whole time. He’s not talking football. He’s not engaged in what he’s doing. He’s not even watching the people on the field doing drills. He’s just messing around. He thinks everything is funny.
He’s gone. He’s fired. You can tell by where he’s spending his attention.
If you think about attention as commerce — as a source of revenue or money — you’re spending your attention. You’re spending your money by where you put it. He was goofing off. You’re at the combine for a week. Your goal is to figure out who the players are that you want to take in the draft. Even if that decision is made by the general manager, you want to be involved in it. You want to be part of it as a head coach.
So as a fan of football and leadership, it can be very insightful.
Adam: I want to watch it. The clip you played for the running backs coach has got me intrigued. If there was a commercial, they should just play pieces of that.
Chris: Thomas Hammock is the running backs coach. In pre-production I was playing it for Adam because it’s so good and so funny.
Adam: He’s from Illinois, right? He’s from NIU, and he took them to a bowl game where Notre Dame — that was their only regular season loss. That’s a huge deal for NIU, the Huskies.
He reminds me of one of my football line coaches, and I won’t repeat what he said, but it was very similar. You put your beep into the dirt and you just keep fighting. I keep envisioning the lineman drills with the chutes. I’m having a little bit of trauma flashbacks, but I’m going to try to somehow get a recording of that and make it my ringtone in the morning. I just want him to yell at me. I want to wake up to him yelling at me about “don’t wait for the hole to open up.”
Chris: It would be great if we could do something with our coaches where we break that down, like how we do book reports.
Hogi: When you’re listening to it from a leadership standpoint, try to unpack what he’s building. He’s calling out the obvious right away. He’s firing up their emotions right away. He’s immediately coming with how their brand — which is really the Seahawks brand — is to be physical. No part of what he was saying was just emotion. It all had functionality and purpose with it.
He didn’t write down that speech five minutes before he walked into that room. He was prepared. It had a pathway and an intention. He’d been waiting to give that speech for a minute.
Chris: There’s a lot of pent-up energy there.
Adam: It gets me excited for November 2nd.
Chris: For anybody listening, Adam wants me to go to Seattle to watch the Seahawks beat the Bears at home on November 2nd. I won’t go — because I’m not going to sit there with somebody in a Bears jersey in Seattle. All my fellow Seahawks fans going, “You brought this guy?”
Adam, we should be able to talk about someone else’s team without you bringing up the Bears.
Adam: It’s worse than Cowboys, because I wasn’t alive when we went to the Super Bowl.
Chris: Do we have a Cowboys fan on our team right now? Is this the best team of coaches we’ve ever had? Best coaching team we’ve ever had, and we don’t have one Cowboys fan.
Adam: I just want to be part of the championship club, guys. I connect dots. That’s what I do.
Chris: There’s one other one-on-one in there that Coach Mike does with number three — our phenom safety-linebacker who’s hurt. He just had surgery on his foot. The kid’s kind of depressed, going through rehab, wants to be out on the field, and then Coach is talking about all these things people are saying about him in the media, and he takes that and turns it around. It’s a pretty cool intimate one-on-one that we get to see into.
Adam: That’s what I like about that show. It really brings the human element to leadership.
Chris: They’ve said in press conferences that after two days they forget the camera is there and they’re just functioning normally. Which is the best. That’s what I want to see.
Housekeeping: Academy and Top Dog
Chris: Today on SDR Academy, Hogi is going to be teaching the secret weapon of systems, and coming out of that we’re going to go into specific systems. Just about every one of these systems we’re going to teach you is worth $50,000 a month in additional sales. You could directly tie a number to each one.
If you’re not in Service Drive Academy, go to chriscollinsinc.com, sign up for OnDemand, and you’ll get a link. Every other week we’re going through and teaching you how to be the best leader in the service drive.
Have we ever told the audience that we have Jefferson Fischer coming to Top Dog this year as a speaker?
Hogi: No, I don’t believe so.
Chris: Adam and I had the honor of seeing him. I actually got to have dinner with him at an event last year. If you’re not familiar with him, go to YouTube and type in Jefferson Fischer. He’s an attorney from Texas who really digs into how you can word things, how you can overcome objections, how you can neutralize a bully or a negotiation.
He’s really smart and has a great way of nicely changing somebody’s perspective in a way that doesn’t create resistance but still makes your point.
Adam: What helps in digesting that is his facial expressions as well, along with the message. He’s grown up on a lot of different platforms, and I don’t know many people now who haven’t heard of him.
Chris: He’s a good get. He’ll be at Top Dog this year, and we’re working on some other fun stuff for Top Dog.
Follow-Up: The Fake Forum Post
Chris: We talked last week about this fake-news service advisor forum on Facebook that had a critique of us — of me, but of us basically — that is totally fake. It’s some sort of plant. It’s a Jeff Cowan forum, so the forum is run by Jeff Cowan.
I don’t believe Jeff Cowan would be doing that on purpose, but it’s so fake and odd that it’s hard not to think that maybe he is. I don’t know.
Adam went into the forum and looked around. Do you think it’s a plant from Jeff Cowan, or a random person making up the post?
Adam: I think it’s a random person. But when you read it, there are a couple hundred different postings back and forth.
Honestly, I love the back and forth of all the other various people. There are more people telling them, “Please stay away from my operations — if you’re like this, I don’t want you working for me.” So we don’t have to do much.
There’s a little bit of a realization, of looking in the mirror. With change, there’s always going to be some sort of resistance. I don’t know if it’s him or one of the folks who work with him. It could be.
Is there any truth to “any publicity is good publicity”? The truth is going to come out in the fact of people going back and forth. It’s actually kind of an interesting community that has the discussions, because there are a lot of people with common sense. Nobody goes in there and starts raising everything just for the fact of not having a value behind it. And there are people going to bat for us as well, ironing out the truth.
Chris: How many comments are on it?
Adam: There are like a couple hundred. Back and forth. It’s a series. I’ve been out of the Facebook game for a while, so it’s just like — oh, man. A lot of thumbs up, a lot of thumbs down, smiley faces, the little emojis, people laughing.
There are a lot of anonymous posts that go in there. How can you be anonymous on Facebook? I don’t understand that. I got out of that whole thing a long time ago, so to see this just makes me shake my head. Sometimes people just want to be heard in silos.
I keep thinking of the angry kid in mommy and daddy’s basement who wants to drum up some sort of drama. But then again, there are some cool discussions on there of people actually trying to help people. That’s what should be happening in those types of forums — not just a complaining fest.
Chris: Jeff should just moderate it. If Jeff isn’t the one doing it, he should moderate. If we had one of those, we would moderate it for sure.
If you can be anonymous online, you can be very opinionated and make up all kinds of stories. What do they call that — trolling?
Main Topic: Selling Vehicles From the Service Drive
Chris: Let’s talk about the subject we wanted to highlight today, and that is how you sell vehicles from the service drive.
One thing we need to do in fixed ops is run a really good department that’s consistent month in and month out — and we need to help the other departments. We need to transcend our department and help other departments prosper in these times, because a lot of dealerships are struggling with sales on the front end, and there’s a lot of opportunity in the service drive.
At Top Dog this year I was thinking about asking somebody we know whose dealerships convert about 4% of their RO count into car sales in the drive. Four to five percent is doing a really, really good job — you’re selling a handful of cars a day out of the service drive.
I want to talk about what I’ve seen work, and at Top Dog we’ll probably go deeper into this and have a real step-by-step guide. It’s time for us to start embracing this and not waiting for sales to come and try to do it — go out and seek it out and help.
Most of the time what happens is sales starts selling in the drive and then it goes away. It only lasts a month or two, because you have to staff it differently.
1. Dedicate salespeople to service
Chris: The first thing on my list of what makes it work: you have to dedicate salespeople. They have to be dedicated to service. That’s their job.
They’re there Monday through Saturday, or Monday through Friday, whatever it is. They’re in the drive. They’re there. So they’d be at the shift meeting at 6:45 in the morning — if service opens at 7:00, which it does in most places, that salesperson is in the shift meeting at 6:45, ready to go, communicating with the advisors, talking about what’s coming in, highlighting customers they want to make sure they get face time with. It’s a planned thing.
They’re dedicated. That is their world. They live in service. Not this “hey, we’ll schedule a salesperson in service every once in a while” — that never works, because sales usually runs at a different time. Sales opens at 9:00. Service has been going for two hours. It’s a completely different business.
The really big stores will also dedicate a manager.
2. Compensate the advisors
Chris: The service manager and advisors should be part of that. If I’m devising it, I’d have some sort of bonus for the advisors for their customers who bought a vehicle — some sort of bird dog. And maybe some sort of override for the manager, just to get the attention and the focus going that way.
But the advisors for sure. Because if you think about it, an advisor loses the job if somebody buys a vehicle — and they’re not getting paid. You want to make sure they’re compensated in a way that makes them look forward to it, so they’re excited about somebody buying a vehicle.
The other part is understanding that you’re getting the customer back, which is the circle of life. Whenever sales sells them another vehicle, we get them again in service. The trade cycle is usually three years or so — it’s even longer lately — but getting them back. So compensating them on that.
3. Understand the equity math
Chris: There’s a bunch of stuff on the sales side that if I was a service manager, I’d want to understand.
Depending on what software they’re running, they have the ability to look at the cars coming in and see where they are equity-wise compared to the value of the vehicle they have, and what sort of terms there are on models. Is there a vehicle where they can have the same payment without much down? Are there new programs? Sometimes manufacturers will do pull-ahead programs where there’s a bonus that makes that sort of deal work.
Understand how that math works. Really understand it.
4. Lead with acquisition, not the sale
Chris: A lot of the scripts they’ll use aren’t so much about selling them another vehicle. What they’ll talk about is: we need your car on our used car lot because it’s in high demand.
That’s the thing they’ll say — hey, your vehicle is in high demand, it’d be a great time if you want to trade it in, because we really need it. Which makes the customer perceive that they’re getting more value for their trade-in.
So a lot of times the conversation starts with “we need the vehicle on the used car lot” versus “hey, do you want to get a new car?”
Hogi: Today, more than ever, that’s pulling really well. People are shocked at how much their car is worth today. People who bought a new car a few years ago, close to COVID, don’t know what that thing is worth today. That piece pulls really well.
5. Make them part of the department, not visitors
Hogi: When you see this work very effectively — part of having dedicated salespeople, being part of the shift meeting, all of those things — they become part of the service department.
If it’s somebody where you’re rotating a schedule and a salesperson just has to work service three days out of the month, they’re still coming over to the dark side from the other side, and both sides view it as an inconvenience at best.
When they’re part of the department — our service scheduling process, I’ve seen several people use equity mining within it. The advisors have a process called pregame where they’re going over their ROs, looking at the opportunities, checking history. There ends up being a pregame for the salespeople in service also, whether it’s equity mining or looking at the vehicle they have and preparing for that.
When there’s that level of preparation on the service drive, the engagement with the customers is way more organic. It’s a weird thing to come in for service, if you don’t set it up right, and have me try to sell you a car. There can be a level of that little voice in the customer’s head — when they go to a car dealership there’s that little thing of skepticism, and it gets louder when they feel like they’re being sold to. There’s a way to make that whole process very organic.
But if it’s something you’re just going to try, and you’re going to make salespeople go over there every so often — that’s where a lot of people get it wrong.
Chris: You make a really important point, Hogi. When Dealer Tire has somebody dedicated in the drive, we sell more tires. When we have a body shop that has somebody dedicated in the drive, we sell more bodywork, checking windshields. The focus and that human connection makes the sales go up. It never doesn’t. It’s 100% that that works. It’s the same sort of thing.
6. Flag the equity customers in your hat system
Chris: We have this system in the drive where we’re hatting customers’ vehicles. The color of the hat is the advisor they’re for; the time on the hat is the time of their appointment. It’s a system that takes away decision-making for the customers and is very organized. The advisors come out and meet the customers at the vehicle.
One thing I’ve seen work really well a couple of times: we pre-mark those pre-writes of the customers the salespeople have tagged as the ones who have equity and might be interested in a trade-in. You can put a different colored hat beside the other hat so they know that’s them and the salespeople can greet them also. Or you can put a little flag on the hat — there are these little flags you can get.
Just marking them so we know they’re one of the customers the salespeople need to talk to, and the advisor facilitates that introduction.
7. Have salespeople make the confirmation call
Chris: It helps a lot in the customer’s experience if the person calling to confirm the appointment — if you have a BDC calling to confirm appointments, that’s great, but on the vehicles that have equity, having the salesperson call and confirm the appointment and then mention it.
“Hey, your car is one that we’ve highlighted to have equity, and it’s something we’re looking for on our lot that we have interest in. I want to meet you tomorrow when you come in. You’re coming in at 8, I’ll be around. My name is Chris.”
So those customers get their confirmation call from the salespeople, which is a nice warm introduction under the premise of reminding you about your appointment tomorrow. It’s very casual versus predatory. A lot of times you get this “whoa, I’m being sold something” versus “oh, they’re trying to help me.”
Using the salespeople to do the confirmation calls is a really good way of softballing that and making a friend.
Those are the biggest ones on my list. Like anything, if you dedicate people to it, you’re going to learn and get better over time. But it doesn’t take that long — it’s a pretty linear process. The opportunity is coming in every day, and it really is unbelievable that we’re not doing this.
The Portfolio Manager Model
Chris: I believe — and I’ve said this for a very long time — that car dealerships in the future will not have salespeople and will not have service advisors. They will have portfolio managers.
You’ll have somebody who has 200 customers assigned to them. They handle their trade when their trade cycle is done and they want another vehicle. They handle the service appointments and writing up the service. All one person doing all of it.
It’s one relationship. The thing we run into is we have different relationships. If they like the salesperson but they don’t like the advisor, that dramatically diminishes our chances of getting them to buy another vehicle from us.
I ran into this when I was a service advisor. I would introduce a customer who really shouldn’t be doing the repairs on the car — the repairs they need to keep that car functioning the way it should exceed the value of the car, or it’s very close. So you’d tell the customer, “Hey, it needs $6,000 worth of work, and that kind of exceeds what the car is worth. What I’d suggest is talk to somebody in sales and trade it in and get something new. If you use the $6,000 you’d spend on this as a down payment, you’d just be in a much better situation.”
And I would introduce them to a salesperson — and then the vehicle would get towed out. They didn’t sell them the car, and I didn’t get the work.
That relationship is so important. If you have a salesperson who’s at the shift meetings every morning and is basically part of the service department, and if we’re tracking how many cars we’re selling out of the drive and everybody is vested in that in some way — even if it’s tiny — that makes the world of difference.
That’s where I see this becoming portfolio managers. Because it isn’t that hard to write service in today’s world, and it isn’t that hard to sell a car. They’re kind of the same thing.
If you just think about what an advisor produces in gross and what a salesperson produces in gross — if that’s one person, you’d have somebody producing a tremendous amount of gross.
You have these scenarios on the front end where there’s not enough gross in the cars or enough volume for salespeople to really make the kind of living they used to make at certain brands. So you have tons of turnover, and you don’t have the career salespeople you used to have. They still exist, but there aren’t a lot of younger kids coming in and becoming that like they used to.
Combining those two jobs creates a scenario where you can make a really good living, take really good care of your customers, have a portfolio of clients you’re serving, feel really good about what you do every day, and produce gross in a way that benefits the customer — because they don’t have to go to two different places. It benefits the dealership tremendously, and it benefits you, because you can make a really good living doing that.
So I believe that’s where it’s going to go.
Audience Q&A
Q: Focus on the handoff, or focus on the relationship with the service team?
Hogi: I think part of the answer is what you mentioned about having the salespeople make the appointment reminder call. But I think it’s both.
Chris: It’s both for sure. That’s why those salespeople — when we’ve seen it work really well, and it’s mostly high-volume dealerships that do this, which is a shame — those salespeople are in service. They’re part of the service department. It’s where they live. They exist there.
Think about it in terms of: if you were a customer, how would you want it to be? If you have a relationship with your advisor and your advisor is making the introduction, that’s probably better.
If the salesperson is calling and saying, “Hey, I just want to remind you we have you tomorrow at 8:30 coming in for service and you’re with Hogi.” Customer confirms. “And just one other little thing I want to mention — my name is Chris, and I’ve seen that your car is in high demand on our used car lot. I don’t know if you’ve thought about selling it or trading it in, but I’m going to say hi to you tomorrow. Just think about that.”
A light little touch on it. No pressure. You don’t have to make a decision now. Let it start working. Let it start cooking. What they’re thinking is, “Oh, how much is it worth?” You could even say it’s worth more than you think.
Hogi: The people who are doing this well — it’s probably another whole topic that’s equally important to anybody operating a store today — the people who are selling well out of the service drive are also acquiring very well out of the service drive.
With what you’re paying for used cars today, you just can’t afford to get them at the auction anymore, hardly. It’s a racket. There are stores doing this very effectively, and it just so happens that there are stores out there sourcing all their cars externally and not through the auction right now. It puts them in a crazy competitive advantage.
Q: What is your opinion of new vehicle service package programs?
Chris: When I’m buying a new car, I’m buying an oil change package or a maintenance package, something like that.
I’ve been counter to most of the opinions out there, which is normal. I started working in a service drive where customers were not making appointments for advisors — it was an open floor. What I have always tried to set up is forced relationships with customers, where I’m having the BDC check who the previous advisor was and putting the customer back with that advisor, because it creates familiarity.
If you see the same person over and over again — even if it’s not some love match or overwhelming chemistry — you get familiar, and you start to trust the person. And in service, trust is the thing we want more than anything else. So forcing that familiarity is the secret to it.
The reason I said the thing about familiarity is that those new service packages create familiarity. If you have two or three free oil changes, it’s going to entice you to come in and use those. Then you’re familiar with the service department. All of the stats tell you that if you get them to come in a couple of times, you’re going to be the place they come.
So oil changes are really, really effective.
The thing we miss as an industry, which is terrible: one, we miss the introduction to service. It’s rare that anybody does that well. But we also forget that when somebody buys a car, there’s so much going on. You could tell them, “Hey, you have three free oil changes, this is worth $300, and you call this number to make an appointment.” You could be really thorough in going through that in finance. They will still forget, because there’s just so much going on — and then they’ve got their new car and the new car smell, and they don’t remember.
I’ve seen stats where 50% of customers don’t use those things. Even the free oil change. As high as 60%.
The way to make it effective: you have to have somebody calling them and reminding them they have it. As soon as they buy the vehicle, send them some sort of email. This works especially in dealerships that sell trucks or vehicles people are going to modify with wheels or lift kits. Say, “Hey, I’m from service, I’m your liaison. Remember, you have those free oil changes.”
And then have somebody call. Let’s say it’s a store where customers are due for oil changes six months or 6,000 miles out from buying it. At five months I’d be calling them, making an appointment for the next month, and reminding them.
Don’t leave it to chance. Run everybody we sold five months ago, and we should be calling them this month reminding them about next month.
Emails are good, but phone calls are better. Emails go to spam. That’s a good first line of defense, but your closing ratio and open rate on those is going to be less than 50%.
Hogi: When I get that question, it’s often “the maintenance programs don’t pay well, they’re hurting us.”
Take 25 customer-pay ROs that have those maintenance packages on them, go look at the declines from your multi-point inspections, add one or two of those items to the ticket — and then see if that ticket looks like a winner or a loser at that point.
The maintenance programs aren’t the enemy. I know a lot of times they don’t pay what we want them to pay. But they’re not the enemy. The one-item RO is the enemy.
Chris: Good point, Hogi.
Q: How often do dealerships actually sell from the drive intentionally?
Adam: Coming more from the commercial side — is it just “we try this and then it gets thrown out”? Or are there a lot of groups or stores doing this and they just don’t do it consistently, or they wait until issues arise, like currently in the market where sales are down?
Chris: We have a lot of clients who ask us for help with sales, because of what we do in service.
The difficulty of running a sales department is having a manager who’s good with process and systems, which is very rare. Second is finding salespeople — because salespeople don’t make a lot of money in this current setup. They could work 60 hours, and there isn’t a lot of gross in the cars, so it’s a hard gig. A lot of dealerships are paying salary now, and they’re not making the kind of money they used to make.
So it’s hard to dedicate salespeople to the service drive when you can’t cover your floor.
A parallel would be: we want to dedicate technicians to internal, but we’re backlogged in the shop right now. How are we going to pull two techs out and dedicate them to internal when we can’t get techs to work on customer vehicles?
Same sort of thing. It’s a leadership thing. The managers in sales aren’t always that good at process and systems and holding people accountable, and salespeople are coming and going with a lot of turnover. It’s really hard to then dedicate somebody and focus on that.
You have to have a really strong system in sales, and then add this on it. If you don’t have a strong system and you try this, it just becomes an afterthought. You’re just shifting salespeople over there when you can — and it’s not a “when you can” thing. It’s every day. That’s your job. Today, you’re looking at what’s coming in tomorrow.
Hogi: It’s pretty polarizing — the places where it works and where it doesn’t. If you bring it up, a lot of people are like, “Yeah, we tried that once, it didn’t work.”
The Commercial Truck Parallel
Adam: With you guys reviewing this — it’s like a bridge within the commercial truck world. There are mostly fleets. You were talking, Chris, about owning that entire relationship and having that portfolio manager. We’d call them a customer or client manager on the commercial truck side.
I’ve been in so many situations where service helps sell the next truck. That might be a statement that gets made — but no, I actually saw it where there was intentionality behind it, because of the particular owner or the number of vehicles. If it was a fleet, it’s probably better to get it out with an earlier trade with the residuals that were happening.
I saw the bridge between both sides, because there are ways to definitely sell the next vehicle in the customer’s best interest.
If you’re trying to get a mom with a family out of a high-mileage vehicle that has a really costly repair, into something safe and reliable — I know Hogi says a lot when it comes to the maintenance piece. But if those repairs are very costly, get them into something more safe, dependable, and reliable, and don’t spend all that money.
It’s the same thing within truck. If the residuals and the repairs are so costly, having that sales mentality on the service side — actually working with them and partnering — can be a really good selling point.
Chris: On the other side, the thing we miss is: the guy’s got a Corvette from two years ago, but the new one came out and it has more horsepower. I experienced that a lot running a BMW store — they want the new M5. There’s a handful of people who just want the latest and greatest, and they’re not even aware it’s out until you tell them or they drive it.
On the heavy truck side, the parallel is what we hear from parts: a lot of people won’t come here for service because the service department does a terrible job, but they’re still buying their parts from the parts department.
And how many times does a fleet sales manager have to go back into service and intervene and get a truck to the front of the line? Imagine if that bridge was closed. Those fleet managers aren’t going to buy another thousand trucks from us if nobody’s called them back for two days.
That’s where we miss the customer experience. Because to us in our industry they’re two completely separate departments — but to the customer, it’s one experience. That’s where we miss it.
Wrap
Chris: Thanks everybody for hanging out with us today. We’re going to shift over now to the Academy. Hogi is going to be teaching about systems. I’m excited about this — it’s going to go for a few sessions, going into specific systems you can leverage in your drive.
I encourage everybody to watch Hard Knocks, and we will see you next time on Service Drive Revolution.
About Service Drive Revolution
I know from experience that a lot of dealer owners won’t invest in training for fixed ops. But eight service managers in our coaching group have been promoted to general manager — something that doesn’t happen enough in our industry. Proof that when you’re given the right tools and the right mentorship, you can do amazing things.
I’d like to personally invite you to something that should already exist, but unfortunately doesn’t: a live fixed ops academy, a mentorship, a community. But what it really is, is a service drive revolution. Anybody can afford it. Anybody who wants to invest in themselves.
We’re going to teach what we know about running a healthy fixed ops service business. Our average coaching client performs well above the industry average, and a handful of them are in a league completely their own. In fact, if I told you their numbers, you wouldn’t even believe it. They’re so good.
Learn more at chriscollinsinc.com
Terms Used in This Episode
- RO (repair order) — the work order for a service visit. RO count is the number of service visits in a period.
- CP RO — customer-pay repair order, as opposed to warranty or internal work.
- One-item RO — a repair order with a single line of work and no additional sold services.
- Equity mining — identifying service customers whose vehicle value exceeds their loan payoff, making them candidates for a trade.
- Pull-ahead program — a manufacturer incentive allowing a customer to end a lease or loan early without penalty.
- Bird dog — a referral payment to someone who sends a customer to a salesperson.
- Pregame — CCI’s process where advisors review upcoming ROs and vehicle history before the customer arrives.
- Hat system — CCI’s method of placing a colored, time-marked hat on each vehicle to identify the assigned advisor and appointment time.
- BDC — business development center, the team handling inbound and outbound customer calls.
- Multi-point inspection declines — recommended work a customer chose not to authorize.
