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Why Some Service Departments Never Improve

June 15, 2026

Every SERVICE MANAGER wants a better-performing department.

Better customer retention.

Higher profitability.

Stronger employee engagement.

More productive technicians.

Yet some service departments seem stuck. No matter how many meetings, training sessions, or new tools they introduce, the same problems keep showing up.

In Service Drive Revolution #363, the discussion centered around several hard truths that appear repeatedly in dealerships. While the examples varied, the message was clear: lasting improvement doesn’t happen until leaders address the root causes behind their challenges—not just the symptoms.

People Have to Want to Improve

One of the biggest frustrations for SERVICE MANAGERS is trying to help someone who doesn’t want help.

Every leader has experienced it.

They invest time coaching, supporting, and developing an employee.

Opportunities for growth are available.

Yet the same mistakes continue to happen.

Yet the employee continues making the same mistakes.

The reality is that growth requires personal ownership. Managers can provide direction and support, but they can’t force someone to change.

That’s why successful leaders spend as much time evaluating attitude and coachability as they do technical skills.

A team member who wants to improve can usually be developed.

A team member who refuses to improve becomes much harder to help.

Most Problems Are Bigger Than They Appear

Many dealerships focus on isolated issues.

An advisor is struggling.

Customer satisfaction is down.

Profitability is slipping.

Technician productivity is inconsistent.

But these problems rarely exist on their own.

More often, they’re symptoms of larger issues involving leadership, accountability, communication, or process execution.

When service departments consistently underperform, the goal shouldn’t be finding someone to blame.

The goal should be identifying the systems and habits creating those results.

Beware of Following Industry Trends Blindly

The automotive industry is full of trends.

Whether it’s new software, updated processes, emerging technology, or the latest buzzwords, dealerships are constantly being introduced to new ideas.

Some innovations create real value.

Others simply become popular because everyone else is doing them.

Some innovations create real value.

Others simply become popular because everyone else is doing them.

One of the lessons from SDR #363 is that leaders should evaluate ideas based on results—not popularity.

Before adopting a new tool or process, ask:

Does it improve the customer experience?
Does it improve efficiency?
Does it improve profitability?
Does it make life easier for advisors and technicians?

If the answer is no, it may not be worth implementing simply because it’s trending.

Great SERVICE MANAGERS Understand the Numbers

Many managers are responsible for profitability but never receive proper financial training.

That creates a major leadership gap.

Understanding department financials helps managers:

Identify opportunities
Spot inefficiencies
Measure performance
Make better decisions
Improve profitability

Strong leaders in Fixed Ops understand that financial statements are more than accounting documents—they’re performance scorecards.

When managers understand the numbers, they gain a clearer picture of what’s actually happening inside the department.

Leadership Is More Than a Job Title

Leadership is often discussed, but it’s frequently misunderstood.

A title doesn’t automatically make someone a leader.

Leadership shows up through actions, not titles.

Accountability and consistency help build credibility with the team.

Strong leaders also know how to influence people toward a common goal.

Their daily behavior often determines the culture around them.

The best SERVICE MANAGER leaders don’t spend their time talking about leadership.

They demonstrate it every day through their behavior, decisions, and standards.

Indifference Is Still a Decision

One of the most important ideas from SDR #363 is that doing nothing is still a choice.

Customer complaints can be overlooked.

Process issues can go unaddressed.

Poor performance can become accepted as normal.

The most effective leaders take action early instead of waiting for problems to grow larger.

Waiting for problems to fix themselves is also a choice.

Successful service departments improve because leaders take action when problems appear—not months later when those problems become bigger and more expensive.

The Bottom Line

Most struggling service departments don’t have a people problem.

They have a leadership problem.

Or a process problem.

Or an accountability problem.

The strongest dealerships understand that improvement starts with identifying root causes, not simply reacting to symptoms.

When SERVICE MANAGERS focus on developing people, understanding the numbers, improving processes, and making intentional decisions, better results usually follow.

Because sustainable success isn’t built on shortcuts or trends.

It’s built on strong leadership, clear systems, and a commitment to continuous improvement.partment can become a high-performing one.

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!

FULL VIDEO TRANSCRIPT

Introduction to Service Drive Revolution Academy

Hey, this is the beginning of something exciting. We are going live. We didn’t tell anybody we were doing this, but we’re going to start doing the show live on Wednesdays at 10:00 a.m., which is very fun. And then on the back of this at 11:00 a.m., we’re going to do the new SDR Service Drive Revolution Academy, where we’re going to be teaching you how to run a successful service department. It is a community, but it’s a membership site, so it’s something you have to subscribe to. We’ve priced it so anybody can afford it. If you want to invest in yourself, get better and learn tools, or just be inside of our community and make some new friends that are kicking butt and taking names, this is the place to do it. So, you’d want to go to chriscollinsinc.com and purchase on demand. That’s how you get in there.

Structure of the Membership and Academy Sessions

Our thought process, Adam, Hogi, and myself, is that we will do SDR at 10:00. We will take a 10-minute break and then we will go live in the membership side on Zoom and do the academy starting at 11:00. We’re doing the academy currently every other week, but there’s going to be a bonus coming up where I’m going to start doing the other weeks. It’ll be every week and teaching leadership and personal development in between because we kind of think that you need a week to apply the things that you learn. The personal development side and all that will help you with that. So we’re going to try to build this for effect for you to get the most out of it. I think there’s an important one-two punch with that, right? We talk about it being the art and science, the art being people, leadership, and stuff like that.

Managing Information Overload and Guest Engagement

If you spend too much time on that, you get a little glassy-eyed because it’s a lot dealing with all your childhood trauma. And then if you are looking at financials for too long, you get that paralysis by analysis thing. So I think it’s a great one-two punch to be able to set it up to go back and forth like that. I think it’s going to be a lot of fun. As we’re doing this, people will be coming into the membership community Zoom, the service drive academy, and maybe sometimes we’ll bring those people onto the show and they can ask questions. So if you ever wanted to ask a question, you’re going to need to be in the membership site. Today, what Hogi is going to be teaching is basically the intro to what everybody’s going to be learning and how it’s going to work.

Value of Personal Development and Fixed Ops Investment

Then you’re going to touch on financials a little bit too, right? Yeah, maybe assign a little bit of homework and just talk about the spirit of who we are and what we want to deliver through this new SDR academy. I think we have almost 300 people signed up. I don’t know if all those people will show up, but they clicked and said that they reserved their spot. So, it’ll be really fun. If you’re not in our coaching group or our on demand, I would go to chriscollinsinc.com and click on on-demand, purchase that. It’ll get you in there. We’ve priced this so any manager who wants to invest in themselves can, because unfortunately a lot of companies don’t invest in their people, especially when it comes to fixed ops.

The Lifelong Investment in Self-Improvement

Sales training is sexy, but fixed ops is kind of the afterthought. Unfortunately, you can do it for yourself, which if you knew how much I spend on myself every year in improving and personal development, you would be surprised. I stopped adding it up. I asked the accountants the other day, “How many books did I buy on average a month?” It’s a big number. It’s a very big number. You’re expensive, but you’re worth it. It’s funny. So, we are lucky enough that Hogi and Adam are here in the office because we have our new client boot camp this week and we’re doing a bunch of other stuff together. We will either be doing it together when everybody’s here in the office or we will be doing it remotely from different locations.

Taking Service Drive Revolution on the Road

We have the ability for everybody to be together in one place and it’ll be fun. So even if we’re on the road, like we’re going to be in Indiana, we’re still planning on doing it from Indiana. We’ll take the show on the road if we have to. We’ll actually be in some truck centers in Indiana piloting something and we’re going to do the show. It’ll be really fun. We’ve had a fun couple days. We’ve gone out every night so far this week. You’re welcome. It’s all Adam’s fault. That’s for sure. He set it all up. Oh my gosh. I haven’t been drinking at all, and then Monday, I don’t know what I was thinking. You were having fun until I wasn’t the next day. It wasn’t fun. It’s hilarious.

Core Realities and Laws of Dealership Operations

Today I wanted to talk about lessons that I’ve learned. I’ve been telling my story and we talked about starting to fix dealerships and that sort of journey, but there are some things that have stood out to me over the 35 years of doing this that feel, in a way, unrealized by the general public but very true from our point of view. From the reality that we exist in, to the point where people will argue it, it doesn’t change the fact that it almost feels like some of these things are like the law of nature. I’m sharing these things because I believe that people want to get better and they want to learn. I also understand that a lot of people are going to hear some of the things I’m going to say and they’re just going to shut down because it’s too much reality for them.

Understanding the Unique Structure of Fixed Ops

They don’t want to live in that reality, and I apologize for that. That’s not my intention. But I do love these sort of deeper intellectual conversations. I love talking about getting better, human behavior, and psychology. So if that’s not for you, I apologize. But I’m always trying to improve, get better, learn, and try to understand from our point of view: how can we create better training and better environments for people to grow and get better also? We have to lead by example. We have to practice what we preach, which we definitely do, but that’s a part of it. There are quite a few things that stick out to me that don’t seem like most people understand them but really are a reality in our industry.

The Pitfalls of Over-Training Without Systems

Our industry is so different than other industries. It just is a funny thing that you have these businesses that would stand on their own inside of a business. It doesn’t exist in a lot of other places and I’ve tried to figure it out in that way also too. We have been different in the industry in that we’re really trying to fix things; we’re not trying to be experts or consultants. It’s funny, Adam got to sit in on a call, but I told one of our sales guys who had a dealer losing money in a couple franchises in a bigger metro market and needed us. Just me looking at the numbers and looking at what it is, I was like, “Hey, I really want to talk to this dealer before we would offer to sign them up because this is going to be a hard one.

Screening Clients for Strategic Alignment

If the dealer isn’t our type, it’s not going to work.” And sure enough, I get on with this dealer and the dealer tells me—granted, this guy is booked out over a week. So booked out appointments over a week. He has a brand that’s a pretty tricky brand, brands that are a little tricky in a metro market where, let’s say, you’re downtown and you’re landlocked. He proceeds to tell me that what he needs is he needs us to train his advisors. I’m like, “Listen, if we doubled your sales by training your advisors, you would implode worse than you’re imploding right now. The fact that you don’t understand that or see that is just funny.”

Fixing the Store Math vs. Temporary Training

At the end of the thing, it’s like, “You’re not a fit for us.” We have very limited time to fix stores the way that we’ve been fixing them lately, and we only want people that understand what it is we’re trying to do. We’re trying to fix the store and make it healthy; we’re not trying to train. Training doesn’t stick. We have to create systems and the people math has to work. You torture service advisors by asking them to sell more when you can’t get the work done. It’s just not even logical. These are the sort of things that we run into that just aren’t logical, so we just have to screen for this sort of stuff. We would never be a fit for that guy.

Partnering for True Operational Turnarounds

I wouldn’t take his money. No, it wouldn’t be successful. The focus wasn’t on the results; it was more on the time that we would be in the store while it’s losing money. It just makes no sense. That’s the thing that even made me want to take the call with the guy: I see a financial statement that’s losing money and I want to fix it because it’s fun. It’s fun to fix stuff. But unfortunately, you have to have a partner on the other side that wants it fixed. Too many times the reason why they’re in the situation they are is them. Wherever they go, there they are. They’re the same people whether they hire us or not. So you have to admit your kid is ugly or we can’t help you, basically.

Adam’s Growing Reputation on the Show

Sad truth. What did you think about that call? I thought it was a healthy discussion, I would hope that they would process what was said, I actually feel like you kind of gave him a gift; you showed them the mirror a little bit. Hopefully I could have cut his ego. I could have said, “Oh, an important guy like you, you should hire us, we’ll do whatever.” No, I think that’s what most people would do; that’s what consultants do. I don’t want to sell him. Consultants totally do that. That’s the worst thing. So, I made a list. I kind of went over some of these with you, Hogi. I don’t know, Adam, if you heard any of that. You were too busy smoking cigars and drinking.

Taking a Waymo in Downtown LA

Oh, thanks, bud. Poor Adam’s getting a reputation. What is the reputation you’re getting from being on the show? Because now people see you and they’re like—it’s mostly probably hunting. It’s hunting or I’ve had a couple times for my driving, apparently. We’ll see when we take the show on the road. I told him he’s shaping up to be a pretty good punching bag. It’s all right. Whimo. That’s not the intention. Whimo. I’ve gotten questions about Whimo. Didn’t you guys just have a Whimo experience? I don’t want to talk about Whimo. Come on, give them one more shot. I’ll give them one more shot. A couple of Adam’s friends came into town that own or run software for Big Fleets, two really cool guys.

Navigating Passenger Capacity and AI Answers

We went to a cigar club I’m a member of here in LA, and it just so happened the basketball game was on, which was great, but we smoked cigars and hung out. I drove everybody there, but because I live closer to there, you guys were going to have to Uber back. I didn’t think that you would take a Whimo from Beverly Hills to downtown LA just because it seems kind of far to me. But you guys at the end of the night were like, “Nope, we’re taking a Whimo.” I wanted to show our guest. Tell us, you call the Whimo. Does Whimo have its own app? Yeah, it has its own app. And so you dial up the Whimo? Yeah, there’s four of us.

Driverless Complications in Beverly Hills

I want to make sure because I knew one of us would have to sit in the driver’s seat. In the driver’s seat there’s no room, but there is room for three in the back, right? Yeah, there is. It’s like the back seat of a Porsche. It would have been snug. But yeah, so I enter in the chat like, “Can there be four riders on one at a time?” AI said, “Of course.” No problem. So, as soon as we get in, then the guy comes on and it’s pulling itself over and everything. Even though there’s no driver, you can’t be in the driver’s seat. How far out of Beverly Hills did you get? Not around the corner, like 100 feet. Here we go.

Stranded in an Alleyway Abort Mission

So then you call an Uber. And then you guys wanted a nightcap, so you were going to keep going. Which is hilarious because I was done and you guys kept going. So how many more drinks did you have at the bar you went to? Just two. We went to the rooftop and then the night’s up and for whatever reason, we go back to the Whimo app. I will admit I said, “Hey, it’s only a couple miles, let’s take a Whimo, it’ll be fine.” To make a very long story short, the Whimo took you guys into an alley where there were a bunch of people that looked like they wanted to hurt us, but there was some sort of drug deal going down. There was definitely something going on.

Assessing Machine Safety vs. Human Judgement

Then you guys decided to abort in the alley and get out and run the other way. We walked very fast. We didn’t want to drive too much more attention, but it was already there. For some reason the Whimo decided to go down a dark alley and just kind of stop because people were standing in the middle of the alley doing what they were doing, congregating. So, you guys high-tailed it the other way, but still this afternoon we would pull up the Whimo app and Adam says he wants to give him another chance. It depends on the time of day. So are we learning the lesson the hard way, or how would we describe this experience of learning that maybe people are better than machines?

Potential and Misplaced Pressure in Hiring

There’s always risk with people; it was never a question for me. Gives a good experience. You think you’ve grown from this experience? We’re here talking about it. How much cheaper is it? It’s significantly cheaper, probably you guys should keep trying to save us money. You can run. Chris is like, “No, I got the Uber black, you guys can go in that one.” Okay, so let’s go through my list of things that I’ve observed or learned over the years. Just a reminder to everybody, we’re starting the Service Drive Revolution Academy today at 11:00. If you’re not signed up on on demand, go to chriscollinsinc.com, click on-demand, sign up, and we will get you in there.

The Illusion of Liking the Job Candidate

Today we are talking about the setup, what you’re going to learn, mindset, and getting some feedback from you also. First thing I’ve observed and learned in my last 35 years in dealerships is that people have to want it; you can’t change people. I’ve spent a lot of time trying to change people that didn’t want to be changed, and seeing the potential in people that they don’t see in themselves. At the end of the day, it almost becomes abusive in a sense because they get deeper and deeper into their nonsense and we get further and further away from what we are there to do, which is help customers and run a healthy business. It becomes about them, not about the customer or the business.

Identifying Hidden Managers in Service Drives

The more pressure and the more expectation that’s on the wrong people, it gets very unhealthy. When we’re hiring people, I think that’s one thing that I’ve learned about hiring: it isn’t about liking the person. I might like somebody in an interview—in fact, it’s rare that I interview somebody that I don’t like—but they might not be a fit for what we’re trying to do in that way. I think people struggle with that a lot too. We get the question a lot from dealers and even sometimes from managers about a service advisor, but a lot from dealers about their service manager: “Hey, I don’t know if Mr. or Miss service manager is the guy or the gal for the job.”

Overlooking the Warning Signs of Bad Hires

They don’t like people, they hide in their office that sits by the door, and they ask if we can fix them. But we always say, “Give us that person and let’s see,” because a good portion of the time it always surprises us who works out and who doesn’t. Really kind of the test for it is you give them a couple of things and they usually tell you who they are and if they’re going to do it. Sometimes you like them, but deep down you know they’re not going to do it, and it can become this issue where people are trying to tell us who they are and we don’t listen. Why don’t we listen? Because you can always look back whenever we’ve made a bad hire and go, “The signs were always there.”

Discipline and Wanting the Role More

We just overlook them for some reason, right? One reason is we just need people, and the pressure of filling the spot requires a lot of discipline. People have to want it. Sometimes I feel like we want that person more than that person wants the actual opportunity or role. We see the potential and they can’t see it within themselves. What really comes to mind is it almost seems like the more you dig in deeper to help expose that to them in a good way for them to want to flourish, it’s more of a detractor and they run the other way. That’s the scary part about it: wanting them in the position more than they want it.

Franchise Management vs. True Operational Leadership

Next one that I have is management versus leadership. Growing up in the car business, you go to leadership training and there are a lot of leadership trainers out there. What I started to observe when I started fixing service departments and interacting with dealers is I rarely ran into a leader. Most people are managers, especially dealers who are running a franchise, a car franchise. Ford is creating the car, BMW is creating the car, and they’re just running a business that is basically outlined by the franchise. It’s like running a McDonald’s. Nobody running a McDonald’s is a leader in that way. A car dealership is more complicated than a McDonald’s, but at the end of the day, it’s very rare that a dealer, a sales manager, or a service manager is a leader.

Defining Followership and Mutual Agreed Missions

It’s very rare, and even to the point—it’s funny—my I Am Leader book has sold a ton, but not many people in the car business buy it because it’s way too lofty for where people are at mentally in that way. I always felt like the conversation of leadership was us using the term wrong; we’re giving ourselves more credit than we deserve by calling it leadership training. Most leadership training is management training. Leadership is a completely different thing. I think it’s used just for marketing to sell whatever clickbait or self-help stuff is up there like, “Hey, I want to be a leader, I want to click on that and do it.” Leadership is getting other people to do something counter to their own self-priorities in service of a mission.

The Hard Practice of Iceberg Leadership

You’re creating followership in people in a mutually agreed upon mission, which is a very hard thing to do. When I think of the way people talk about leadership, there are a lot of feel-good things and concepts, but at the end of the day, it’s more like working out. You can talk about it, but for the person that’s doing it, there’s evidence that they’re doing it and you don’t need to talk about it or ask about it. They’re a student of it and then it shows. They’re not the ones posting all the stuff to LinkedIn about it. That’s just the way I always think about it, but it’s actually really hard in practice. It’s really hard to even be effective in some of the smallest capacities with it.

Identifying Behavioral Patterns and Packs

It’s an iceberg thing where 99% of the people are talking about the tip of the iceberg above the water, and real leadership is all the base of it below. We could talk about that all day if we wanted to, but that’s what you see for sure. The next one is things travel in packs, and this is just like one of those laws of nature. For a simple example, if somebody is late all the time, if you follow them home, their house is probably messy and they probably don’t keep their promises. It’s not one isolated thing that’s the problem; it’s the whole of the person that’s the problem. In some of the interrogation training that I’ve been in, body language, the pronouns people use, and the words matter.

Analyzing Dehumanizing Patterns in Communication

One trigger isn’t enough; you need to see a pattern of three or four different ones to then assume that somebody is guilty. It takes a little time. A good example is Bill Clinton when they said, “Did you have sexual relations with that woman?” and he said, “I did not have sexual relations with that woman.” What does that tell you when he says that? It tells you that he did it, because it’s very psychopathic. He’s dehumanizing her instead of saying, “I didn’t have sex with Monica.” He’s separating himself and talking about it almost in the third person. If somebody talks about themselves or others this way, they’re dehumanizing the other person. All of those things add up, but it isn’t one isolated thing.

Reading the World Inside a Customer’s Car

When somebody’s running a business and they’re losing money in one department, there’s a pretty good chance—like we say—that you can tell by the financial statement what’s going on. The receivables probably aren’t tight, and customers probably aren’t getting helped. Just losing money isn’t the single event; that’s the symptom, not the cause. There are a bunch of other things behind that that are the problem. As a technician, it made me think of how true it was that you can tell a lot about a person by looking inside their car. When you sit in someone else’s car in the driver’s seat and pull it into the shop, you’ve entered their world. You learn a lot about a person, especially when you start taking a car apart.

Shifting Blame and Deflecting Ownership

I’ve learned more about people in their glove box than they would ever care to know I know about them, but it is true. Same thing with the pronouns they use, like “I” versus “them” or “they,” you know they’re deflecting. It’s funny when somebody works in a business and they’re talking about management as “they,” like they’re not a part of the business. All of those things mean I’m not a reflection of what they are doing. Then you could safely assume that that person probably isn’t going to take responsibility for the customer that didn’t get helped or for calling people back. Those things travel in packs, but we just don’t think that way; we think they’re isolated incidents.

The Mimetic Trap of Digital Inspections

You pull one shoe box out of the closet and they all come falling down, so things travel in packs. Indifference is a decision; not doing anything is as much of a decision as doing something, and it’s a very strong signal. Then there is how mimetic people are. Mimetic means following others, and we’re all mimetic; we grew up basically learning from others, which is how we create our personalities and develop. But people in the car business are super mimetic. Over the years, I’ve endured some pretty big fights and people attacking us in a way that doesn’t make any sense whatsoever because we fought against the mimetic side of things in the service of actually running a healthy, profitable business.

The Fatal Flaws of Software Band-Aids

When everybody was going to a digital inspection (MPI), I adopted it in a couple stores and tried it. We were paying like $5,000 a month for ink, paper, and doing the process, but my hours per RO went down. My efficiency in the shop went down and my expenses went up because I was paying for all this stuff. I just realized that paper works way better, because it was hard for the techs to go to a computer and do the inspection. Then you had to wait for parts, and then you would email this estimate to the customers, and the customers would just call around and shop it because it had the price. You weren’t selling any value.

Standing Against Manufacturer Adoption pressure

There were so many things wrong with it, but the manufacturers were pushing the dealers to do it. I remember BMW specifically because I had a grip of BMW stores that I was working with, and I said I tried it in a couple stores, it didn’t work, and so I wasn’t doing it. BMW wanted to introduce me to the company that did the MPIs. I’m nice to them, but I’m just like, “It doesn’t work, and if you want to pay me to fix your thing, I’m happy to talk to you, but I don’t know that I could fix it because it’s just fundamentally flawed. Form equals function, and what you’re trying to do doesn’t work.” But people in the car business love software; they love a band-aid and the magic pill that doesn’t exist.

The Real Cost of Tablet Check-Ins

We did an audit of my stores where we were doing it with paper versus the stores with the digital MPI, and we were selling twice as much per RO as they were. All the measurables, shop efficiency, and everything was better than that. Then it was like, “Well, then let’s just attack Chris because we don’t want anybody else on his program, because even though they’re making more money on his program, we’re the manufacturer and we want adoption and compliance more than anything else.” The same thing happened with tablets. Dealers are like, “Oh, we’re getting tablets,” and I’m like, “Why? Where’s the proof that those make it a better experience for the customers or that you sell more?”

Rushing the Customer Experience Is Torture

Here’s my experience with tablets: your hours per RO will go down. Somebody’s sitting there staring at a tablet and not interacting with the customer. They say it’s faster and customers are going to be in and out, but customers don’t want to be rushed in and out. Customers are saying they want to be in and out only because the existing experience is so bad. Fix the other stuff and they don’t want that. It’s the torture that we’re putting customers through that makes you think technology is the magic pill, but it isn’t. Tablets were that, the MPIs were that, and there’s been a bunch of different examples where I’ve had to go toe-to-toe with the manufacturer.

Manufacturers’ Disregard for Dealer Profitability

The second thing that I have coming off of that is the manufacturers do not care about the profitability of the dealers. That is true. We have always been a company that is for the dealers and helping them be profitable. We really struggle doing anything with manufacturers because manufacturers want compliance whether it works or not. I’ve been asked to talk at functions with manufacturers and we’ll get to the Q&A part. I remember this Ford meeting where there are Ford executives right there, and these guys are like, “How do we make a quick lube profitable?” Ford was forcing everybody to do these quick lubes at the time.

The Flavor of the Day Program Tension

The dealers were like, “The more we adopt the quick lube, the more money we lose,” and I agreed it doesn’t make any sense the way they are doing it. I said, “If you guys want me to come to Detroit and explain to you how to do it right where the dealers can make money, let me know,” but they didn’t care. Nobody called me from Ford; they’re just like, “Don’t have that Chris Collins guy back,” because they do not care about them running a healthy business. They care about compliance, and the problem that happens is the manufacturers have so much turnover it’s a different program every quarter or every year, so the dealers just get punch-drunk from the flavor of the day.

The Failure of the Quick Lube Model

It’s this weird tension that happens where you end up pretending like you’re doing the quick lube when the manufacturer is there, and then you go back to the thing that actually works. That’s just not healthy for the teams and the culture because you’re just trying to conform to whatever the next program is, and nobody will come out and say what is true: a quick lube is the worst experience for the customer. You have your least talented people touching the most cars, running them through like cattle, and it’s not set up for any sort of additional work. You’re not mentoring those techs to become anything else, and your turnover is terrible.

Building Tech Pathways vs. Cattle Lines

Turnover with Toyota and these brands that really push the quick lube thing is something like 60% with the quick lube techs, in an environment where those techs are gold to us. We want them to become technicians down the road and to stay with us, but the quick lube system doesn’t feed that and nobody calls it what it is. If you had a system where you mentored those guys to become better techs where they became a C-tech in a year or so, and in two years they were going flat rate, you had a better customer experience and you sold more. It was better for the customer because they’re not all waiting in one line; you’re spreading it out.

The Chaos of Separate Express Lanes

Worse, when customers are showing up and there’s a separate express line, it’s just a constant, painful thing to watch because all day long they’re shuffling customers since the customer is in the wrong line. The customer doesn’t know, even if they’ve been coming there for 10 years, because they say, “Last time you moved me to this line.” It’s just peaks and valleys; they’re either super busy or they’re dead, but no matter what, you always wait a long time. Another mimetic thing that is funny is paying advisors on gross. Nobody can explain to me why they do that, but they go to a 20 group meeting, somebody presents it, and then we keep going into these dealerships where advisors don’t even know what gross is.

Why Gross Pay Plans Fail Advisors

It’s like the strategy is to confuse them, and what happens is we’re telling the service manager to get us more gross, so it just seems logical that then you would pay advisors on gross. But you get more gross by paying advisors on sales. Gross is controlled by the way we dispatch the work, the techs that we hire, and what we charge for it; we’re doing that, not the advisor. We just want the advisor making friends with customers, building connection, and communicating with them. It’s way simpler and advisors perform better when they understand their pay plan, but everybody went to paying advisors on gross and nobody can explain why.

Tracking Success Through Pay Plan Clarity

When I have that conversation where the flip happens in people’s minds, it’s crazy how many advisors you can go to in the industry and say, “Hey, I heard you guys had a great month last month,” and they say, “Yeah, it was a record month, I think I did really good.” Then I ask, “What was your paycheck?” and they answer, “Well, I have no idea, they haven’t given me my wash sheet yet.” If we know success is attracted to clarity, then they should be able to take their pay plan and calculate their own pay, but trying to zoom out and connect those dots is a funny thing.

The Misconception of Needing More Traffic

Another one is the belief that we need more traffic. Fundamentally, you could be talking to a dealer or service manager and say, “In a Honda store, what should our hours per RO be?” and they’ll say, “Oh, two something.” Then you ask, “What are we at?” and they say, “0.8.” Then you ask, “What do you think we should do to fix that?” and they answer, “Well, we need more traffic.” What are you talking about? We do not need more traffic. What we need to do is get to two hours a ticket, and then maybe we can talk. But what happens is invariably every time, they stop talking about traffic when they get to two hours a ticket.

Slowing Down to Scale the System

Why would we want to run faster, create more chaos, touch more points, and have more keys we could lose or more lot damage, when we could just slow down, do it right, and create something scalable? That’s another mimetic thing, thinking that more money equals more traffic, but it’s not. Less traffic and doing better with the traffic you have is the secret in the system. Advisors are salespeople is another one, and I think I have an idea how this came about. At the beginning of sales training, there were a couple main sales trainers, and somebody at NADA said, “Hey, you’re not that good of a sales trainer and we already have these guys we’re going to endorse, why don’t you train advisors?”

Why Advisors Are Not Traditional Salespeople

It’s very clear that the advisor training I grew up on is just traditional sales training laid over the top of advisor training, but advisors are not salespeople. They’re a hybrid; they are communicators. Selling is the easiest part. The reason why we don’t sell in a service department is because of our systems and our communication. Whenever somebody says, “Hey, can you teach my advisors how to overcome objections?” I’m like, “No, but we can fix your system so there aren’t objections.” The reason why people are objecting is because they don’t trust you, and you can’t talk them out of that.

The Myth of Overcoming Objections

If somebody needs brakes, they need brakes. Explain to me how I would overcome that objection when they need brakes but don’t want to do them. What you’re saying is they don’t trust you, they don’t like you, or they don’t want to do it here. They might be saying it’s too expensive, but that’s rarely the case. There’s no overcoming objections; the more product knowledge you spit and the more you talk about the viscosity of brake fluid, the less you sell. One of the best things that ever happened to me was during college, I got a job at an independent shop owned by a husband and wife who were part of the community in a small suburb of Fort Worth, Texas.

Wearing Every Hat in an Independent Shop

As I started working with him and doing a little bit more, he would give me a little bit more responsibility as I got better with certain things, to the point where at an independent shop, everybody is everything. You wear every hat: you’re a parts person, you’re the technician, you might be working on something and the phone rings so you grab it with dirty hands, or somebody walks in and you go greet them. Everybody does everything. One thing in presenting to customers was I told him, “I don’t know if I’m comfortable selling stuff,” and he said, “You’re not selling anybody anything, you’re just telling them what their car needs and caring that they get taken care of.”

The Secret of Financial Literacy in Fixed Ops

It was the best thing that ever happened to me going into this industry, getting to view it from that lens first—that you’re just there to take care of people and tell them what their car needs; you’re a matchmaker more than you are a salesperson. In that advisor training when I was younger where they tell you to ask five times at the cash register, I tried that and people hated me. That training doesn’t understand what writing service is; it’s matchmaking, not forced selling. If they’re not buying, it’s because they don’t like us, they’re truly broke, or you just need to facilitate an appointment for three weeks out when they get their paycheck.

Reverting Financial Literacy in Recent Months

Another lesson is just how important the financial statement is, yet nobody knows how to read it. It’s the best-kept secret in the industry, even though it’s how we’re judged. If you’re a manager running a department, you are judged on the profitability of your department, but nobody talks about how to get profit in a way that makes sense; it’s a mystery trick bag. I thought we were getting better, too. I’ve been saying in these new client boot camps the last couple years that it seemed like we were getting more people where it wasn’t the first time they’d seen the financials, and I was talking to them about that.

OEM Definition of a Healthy Dealership

I thought we were moving in the direction of getting the financials for the respective departments into the hands of the managers running them, but the last few months, I feel like we’ve gone backwards again. There are a lot of managers out there where—maybe I just had a bad read on it for a while—but things travel in packs, and the fact that the average service department barely breaks even in our industry tells you that they’re not looking at the financials because there’s so much talent. It’s never a boot camp in here where you look around and think a guy is dumb; he just doesn’t have the tools.

Navigating pricing Strategies and Real Stories

Once you give them the tools, they understand the financials, but the manufacturers don’t train managers how to run a healthy, profitable department because they don’t care about profit. Even the definition proof is in itself: what an OEM thinks of a healthy dealership is compliance with programs, it’s not even the profitability of the dealership. A lot of times when you’re talking financials, a brand like Nissan—and not to pick on Nissan because lots of them do it—wants us to look at our CP effective labor rate without the quick lube numbers in it. What? You can do that, but you have to look at it with it in there, too, to tell the whole story.

The Reality of Decision Fatigue and Strategy

In a pricing strategy and a real system, you want something that drives traffic and then you want something where you hold the gross, so you have to have a balance of both. But if you just look at one, you’re looking at the world through rose-colored glasses because your effective labor rate might look like $250, but when you add in oil changes, it’s $92. They tell you to keep doing the quick lube, and I ask if we can look at your profitability without it. If you’re writing 2,000 ROs and 1,800 of them are quick lubes, and when someone wants something real done to their car you have to walk them to another shop and hand them off to another advisor, that’s decision fatigue.

Launching the Service Drive Revolution Academy

The client doesn’t want to come over there; they just want to stay away from the dealer, so you give them an estimate and they run across the street to an independent shop. That’s why they’re eating our lunch. The system is what it does; I love that quote. On that note, talking about financials, that’s going to be the start of the Service Drive Revolution Academy: helping you understand the financials and where the leverage is, and it’s going to be a lot of fun. Once again, if you’re not in there, go to chriscollinsinc.com and sign up for on demand. We’re going to take a break and set up; if you’re in the Zoom, we will just pick up.

Wrapping Up the First Live Episode

Maybe we’ll play some music for them or something in the time being, and then we’ll start right at 11:00. If you’re not, hopefully you find your way to on demand on the website and get in there, as we’d love to have you as part of the community. This is going to be a lot of fun. Congratulations, gentlemen, this is our first live show. I have no idea how we did because I can’t really see comments, so people could be saying, “Oh, Adam, he’s a drunk.” Whimo. They asked me which chat I wanted to see—LinkedIn, Facebook, or YouTube—and I said I don’t know, we’ll figure it out. It’s going to be fun, and we’ll learn a lot from each other.

Final Resource Links and Outro

We’ll see everybody in the Zoom here in just a couple minutes, and for everyone else, hope you have a great week. 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. Now, that’s offers.chriscollinsinc.com. I’m Chris Collins and I’ll see you in the next video.

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