Service Drive Revolution — Episode #377

Host: Chris Collins

Guests: Adam Krey and Chris Hogland

Published: September 21, 2026

Duration: 57:49

Listen on Apple | Listen on Spotify

Building on weeks of deep-diving into shop floor culture and productivity, Service Drive Revolution — Episode #377 tackles a controversial truth: training your SERVICE ADVISORS before fixing your operating system will actually make your service drive worse. Host Chris “Bulldog” Collins and guests Adam Krey and Chris Hogland break down why weak sales, low customer satisfaction (CSI), and missed revenue usually stem from broken workflows and insufficient shop capacity, not a lack of sales technique.

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Key Takeaways & Highlights

• Diagnose Before You Train: Teaching advisors to sell more work backfires if the shop floor cannot handle the capacity, leading to missed promise times and frustrated customers.
• The Danger of Broken Processes: Six different advisors operating under six different informal processes will always create chaos, regardless of how many sales seminars they attend.
• Capacity Meets Communication: A top-tier SERVICE ADVISOR cannot out-communicate a broken appointment schedule, flawed dispatch system, or missing technician capacity.
• Focus on Net Profitability: True service department success is measured by long-term customer trust and a healthy bottom line, not just gross sales or vanity metrics.

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Why SERVICE ADVISOR Training Can Break Your Service Drive

Many dealership leaders reflexively hire sales trainers the moment customer-pay numbers dip or multi-point inspection conversions drop. However, putting advanced sales tactics into an unoptimized shop creates a domino effect of operational failure.

1. The Overload Trap

When advisors successfully present and sell more work, repair orders land on a shop floor already struggling with bottlenecks. If technician capacity, parts availability, and workflow rhythm cannot absorb the extra hours, repair orders stall, promise times slip, and clients grow angry. Realizing that pushing more work hurts customer relationships, advisors quickly abandon the training and stop presenting additional repairs altogether.

2. Fixing the Foundation First

Before investing in script memorization or objection-handling courses, fixed operations directors and SERVICE MANAGERS must look under the hood of their entire department. Core operational elements must be standardized first:

• Appointment Spacing: Aligning incoming vehicle flow directly with available technician hours.
• Advisor-to-Technician Ratios: Ensuring balanced communication loops between the front drive and the shop floor.
• Declined Work Follow-Up: Building systematic processes to capture recommendations that weren’t closed on the initial visit.
• Unified Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs): Ensuring every advisor follows the exact same proven path from guest arrival through final vehicle delivery.

Financial Impact of Operational Alignment

Restructuring your fixed operations framework from the ground up delivers predictable financial health across the dealership:

Performance Area	Operational & Financial Outcome
Advisor Consistency	Eliminates rogue workflows so every customer experiences a unified, professional presentation.
Shop Workflow & Pacing	Smooths out daily peaks and valleys, reducing technician idle time and unapplied hours.
Effective Labor Rate (ELR)	Stabilizes as structured inspection reviews replace random discounting and missed recommendations.
Customer Retention (CSI/NPS)	Rises sharply because vehicles are delivered on time, as promised, without unexpected communication breakdowns.

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Frequently Asked Questions

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Final Thoughts

True profitability on the service drive doesn’t come from quick-fix sales scripts; it comes from building an airtight, synchronized operating system where sales, service capacity, and customer trust reinforce one another. Fix your workflow, balance your shop loading, and build a dependable process before expecting your team to sell more.

Actionable Takeaway: Audit your current appointment spacing and shop loading today to see if your technicians can actually absorb a 20% increase in labor hours before you ask your advisors to sell more.

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Ready to Strengthen Your Fixed Ops Systems?

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

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

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

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Service Drive Revolution – Episode #377 Transcript

You Don’t Need Service Advisor Training | SDR #377

Service Drive Revolution

Hosts: Chris Collins, Hogi, Adam Krey

In This Episode

• Why general managers mistakenly think they need service advisor training when facing poor customer communication and low sales numbers
• The truth about fixed ops: Why service advisors are not actually salespeople, but reporters of news
• How unaddressed shop capacity and broken processes turn advisor training into a recipe for disaster and angry customers
• The hidden danger of pushing sales when your workflow is a bottleneck, and why processes must come before people
• Why service managers are set up to fly blind without financial transparency and how tribal knowledge hurts dealership profitability

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Opening & Community Catch-Up

Opening & Community Catch-Up

Chris Collins: Welcome everybody to Service Drive Revolution. Happy Wednesday. We hope you are having a great time. We have a great show for you today. We are going to talk about why you don’t need service advisor training. I know that sounds like a joke. It’s not a joke. It’s going to be very interesting. We’re going to have some great insights, but from our experience and what we see getting results out in dealerships and service drives everywhere, you don’t need service advisor training. And we’re going to talk about that.

Please say hello to the Oklahoma Smoke Show hoagie.

Hogi: What’s up everybody?

Chris Collins: And Adam. Adam’s super excited. Hunting season is coming. He’s dying to shoot a turkey on his own land, which is so anti-American.

Adam Krey: And deer. They’re everywhere. We’ve had some good feedback on the socialism in your service drive. And I feel like that’s a part of it is not being able to hunt what’s on your own property. I’ll tell you right now, I’ve almost hit this very large Tom in my driveway three times now. And I think it’s just about time.

Chris Collins: Like almost ran it over with your car?

Adam Krey: Oh yeah. It just runs right through. I’m like…

Chris Collins: You call it a, you call it a Tom?

Adam Krey: Yeah.

Chris Collins: I should tell everybody to you, like here’s the funniest thing. Now we are doing these live on Wednesday now, but they replant Monday. So for some people, this is going to be a little irrelevant. But if you watch the NFL, you would know that the Chicago had an incredible first game. They scored like the most points ever in a first game. It was like 58 points, zero defense, by the way, in this game whatsoever, like zero defense on both sides. It’s kind of like watching the NBA, like zero defense, which is another problem that we can talk about, but they, you know, Caleb the quarterback and the team, like there’s something, you know, going on there. I think there was a lot of carryover from last year, a lot of momentum into the playoffs with the Bears. And so super excited.

So we, I don’t know, we talk, we have meetings and Zooms, like all kinds of things have happened. And every time Adam is on okay, here we go. He’s going to talk about the bears. I’m going to have to hear about the highest score. Doesn’t say a word, doesn’t say a word. And then I’m surrounded in my life by bears fans. Somehow my, my existence is surrounded by bears friends. So that’s good. My buddy who cuts my hair, who’s a good friend and a incredible guy, Homer, he’s a huge Bears fan. So he grew up in Illinois and he cut my hair yesterday.

And yeah, I got to hear about the Bears. It wasn’t Adam. I always expected to be Adam cause Homer’s a little more casual and laid back, but he was really excited. So then I told him, I go, I said like, well, Adam hasn’t really said anything, but I, it’s a big deal. And I was telling him that you, you keep wanting to go to the Seahawks Bears game in Seattle. And he’s like, Oh yeah. Like I circled that we should go. And I’m like, no, we’re not going. I said, I’m not, I’m not getting beer thrown at me. And it with you to wearing your bears jerseys and like full get up, like you guys are going to actually play in the game.

What, what Jersey would you wear Adam? What, what player like for me on the Seahawks, there’s, there’s kind of two players. I would wear the Jersey, which I never do. And I don’t, the only Jersey I own is the one that my cousins gave me as a joke that says Kelsey on the back. But if I was going to have to, I’ll tell you the two I would do would be either Cam Chancellor or Bobby Wagner. Okay. So it’d be defense and it would be those two. I have a signed Cam helmet in my office. He’s probably one of my favorite Seahawks of all time. Who, if we went to the, which we’re not, but if we did go to the bears game, it’d be funny to have a bet. But if we did go to it, what Jersey would you be wearing when I got beer thrown on me?

Adam Krey: So my typical go-to is Walter Payton, but it depends on what we, what we need for that game. Where we’re at in the season. So if we need more defense, I’m probably going to do like Ditka or butt kiss. But then like, Hey, if I just want someone just like balls out, start running, just like some more momentum, I might pull out my Hester, maybe my Erlacher. I don’t get any new players jerseys. I just don’t do that. It takes a lot for me to kind of invest. My newest like player is going to be a Hester and Erlacher. That’s like the newest of the, of the thing.

Chris Collins: And so for the audience, what’s significant about, about Peyton’s Jersey?

Adam Krey: Oh, well, my, my first born daughters named Peyton.

Chris Collins: And what did you want to name your second daughter that you messed it up and pull it off?

Adam Krey: Jordan.

Chris Collins: Jordan. Yeah. It comes close. Came close. And then somehow your wife caught on. How did she catch on?

Adam Krey: Uh, I think it’s when Peyton started wanting to watch basketball and we were watching clips of Michael Jordan and we were starting to talk about names for Marin and it just went bing clicked. And I was like, Oh, but you have friends that are Jordan that did not pass the test. So that’s how big of a fan he is. He named his daughter after a running back.

Chris Collins: Yeah. Yeah. So the Peyton, the Peyton Jersey makes sense actually. Yeah. It’d be fun. I think it’s a, it’s kind of a standard. There’s mutual respect, I think for Walter Peyton around the league, doesn’t matter like what generation you are, but I still think it’d be an awesome game to go to man. It’d be beautiful November ish timeframe. I think beautiful. Well, I tried the stipulation and you, you wouldn’t go for it.

Hogi: Yeah.

Chris Collins: So no, there’s no way. I’m not kidding. You know, uh, Luis went to the Raiders opening game. I forget who they played. They won. Oh, they played the Miami dolphins. And he was the first day I was like, how was it? You know, cause it was his birthday and he took his son. They went and he said, Oh, there was this dolphins fan. I kind of fight with it. I’m like, yeah, of course. Like it’s, it makes sense in Vegas, right? Like, okay, Vegas, but it doesn’t make sense to go into Seattle where the, you gotta understand, like the only thing going on in Seattle is the Seahawks. It’s the only good thing there is there.

Did I, did I tell you guys the story about the homeless guy in our neighborhood? No. Oh, I didn’t tell the story. I swear. Are you sure? No. I think, I think we kind of have it on video, but, um, so Missy and I do this thing in the evenings after dinner is we walk, we just go for a walk and I live in West Hollywood. It’s beautiful. Like West Hollywood looks like a movie, the trees, it’s just, you know, it’s a special place. So we, we go for these walks and you, there were these two homeless people on the sitting on the curb on our walk, which you never really see in West Hollywood. Like you don’t see homeless people in our, in our neighborhood, not, not where we’re at.

So instantly I’m like, Oh man, you know, like, how do we get these guys out of here? Like what’s going on? Um, and they, like the ones got like a shopping cart full of stuff and like, you know, it doesn’t, doesn’t look great, but, um, we’re walking back in the guys talking about how great it is to be homeless in Seattle and how they give you all this stuff and do all this stuff and like literally selling the, the other homeless person on it’s better to be homeless in rainy, cold Seattle because they give you all this stuff and all the perks of being homeless. Isn’t that nuts? No way. That’s, that’s hilarious.

Yeah. He’s like, you don’t know, man, it’s so cool up there. Like, we gotta move. Let’s move. And I’ll buy you a Greyhound ticket right now. Get out of here. I can’t believe we come to work here every day. Wait, that’s funny.

The, um, we had a, uh, new, new customer bootcamp. Was it last week? Yeah. And like, I don’t know. It’s, it’s downtown LA, like downtown LA is what it is. It’s not great. The government here doesn’t know what they’re doing. It’s there. There aren’t enough police and the one, you know, the police are kind of given the directive to just let things happen. Like twice a week when I’m, when I’m driving home or to work, I see somebody run a red light. Like they don’t pull people over for running red lights anymore. That’s a thing. So people just run lights. It’s like lights are just merely a suggestion, which is great in a city of 14 million or whatever it is, but we’re having the bootcamp.

And, uh, the first thing that happens is there’s a car kind of parked out in front of our office and why should back up? We have people from, from other parts of the country, they’re not from here. So they fly in to do this bootcamp. So they come from maybe parts of the country where the government works and things are going, they’re, they’re a little surprised to see that LA looks like, you know, like a third world country.

But, uh, the first thing that happens is this car is parked in the, like kind of in the street, not in the middle in, but in the middle of the lane in the street, in front of our building, with these two guys clearly on some sort of math or something, I don’t know what they were on, but they’re just standing there looking in their car and the one guy has his pants down. So he’s, he’s got his pants down. He’s on some, some sort of thing that makes you not know what you’re doing or whatever. Your pants are down. And, uh, when, when they call 911 about it, we called somebody in the office, they send the fire department, which I thought was super funny.

What to like, like come to a normal state somehow? Yeah. They gave them a, what do you call that stuff that brings them back to life? Narcan?

Hogi: Narcan.

Chris Collins: Something like that. So then that, that happens. And I don’t think anybody in the room really notices cause they’re inside here and whatever, but I definitely notice there’s sirens, the whole then like a couple hours later, there’s a little shootout. So there’s literally on the corner, there’s a shootout and they have this guy barricaded in the building, kitty corner across the street and the police helicopters talking to the guy and you can hear it in here. Like you heard it, right? Huggy?

Hogi: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Chris Collins: Pretty funny. Yeah. We heard it. And, uh, I thought I heard something the first time and, and we just kept going. And then it was like 20 minutes later, it got even louder in the library in the back of the office. And, uh, they were like, you know, stay inside. You’re in the perimeter of an active crime scene or whatever. Please stay inside, stay away from window. Like the message and, and everybody heard that. And they’re like, yeah, no, it’s been going on for like 20 or 30 minutes.

Um, but, uh, yeah, we were inside the perimeter. So I went out, you know, I went outside to kind of check it out and we were inside of the perimeter. They had a whole perimeter for the guy and they ended up, they ended up arresting him. And then his, uh, girlfriend for, uh, uh, I don’t know what, what do you call that when she like helped him? She kind of a salient or something. I don’t know what the term is, but they, they both got arrested, but it, it was a good mix of people in the room. Cause it was like, uh, we had a couple of people from, uh, the Bay area of California, kind of like outside of Oakland. And then, uh, and then the, a lot of the rest of the room was from Chicago.

So fortunately, like it wasn’t a bunch of people from Oklahoma or something. Cause you know, we all kind of looked at each other and shrugged our shoulders and then got back to, got right back to work. It happens. Nobody missed a beat, but it is embarrassing. Like LA could be so cool. Just so little, just a couple of changes. I mean, I love, I love LA, but not for that part, not for that part of it, which, so I was talking to, uh, to my buddy at her this morning at the gym, by the way.

So I had a couple of people mentioned at the gym this morning that they saw that Andrew Bustamante interview over on our books that changed my life channel. If you haven’t seen that, I would recommend watching it. Bustamante is incredible. Every conversation I have with him, learn something. He’s just the nicest guy. And we will at top dog this year, we will be giving a signed copy of his book to everybody. He can’t make it to speak this year. I think we’ll, we’ll get him next year, but, uh, so great. So, you know, check that out.

But I was kind of talking to him about the commute, like my commute has been taking like about an hour to get to work in the morning, not getting home. It’s, it’s quicker. So I’m, I live six miles away from the office, but it can take over an hour in traffic. And he was telling me, he’s like, well, you should just ride the train. Like the train’s 15 minutes. I’m like, I’m not writing, like what? Get on the Metro. Like with my, can you imagine me getting on the Metro with my bag with my laptop and all? Like, no, no, like try to tackle you to take it. What I want is get that Tesla cyber truck and have it drive for me.

Like I’ve, so a couple of times that I’ve gone out of town, I’ve rented the cyber truck and you know, we have, so we have a Tesla and I don’t drive it. She, she does. And she loves it. She loves the self-driving. I keep seeing videos online about, you know, how great it is the self-driving, but that’s kind of what I want. I love my, uh, my Rover. I really do, but I think I’m going to trade it for the self-driving.

You’re ready? It’s just so it’s so what’s funny is yesterday we left at the same time and I kind of I go a different way. I beat her home by like two minutes and the whole time she had self-driving on. It always takes kind of a different route than the, the normal route you would take. But it was only like two minutes. It was pretty good. And she’s like, you know, I’m all stressed out because I’ve been like merging and fighting and exiting and like, you know, it’s a full contact sport here to drive. And she’s like in a great mood and talking to somebody on the phone, having the greatest time. I’m like, what’s for dinner? I just came out of war.

Adam Krey: Yeah.

Chris Collins: And she’s like, Oh, I want that. So I just want to, you know, I don’t know. I can just talk to Grock and have it teach me Spanish or something. I don’t know, French, something. I could be doing something productive in that time. And isn’t it kind of funny that the other manufacturers don’t seem to be trying to catch up on the self-driving? Like I know there’s assisted driving, like dabbling in it. Is it a marketing thing? Do you think that Tesla is really that far ahead of everybody else? Or do you think that maybe I mean, they’ve definitely, you know, they’ve definitely been gathering that data for for a lot longer than everybody else.

But I mean, the thing about the thing about Elon though, is it’s it’s all it’s all open. Like he doesn’t he doesn’t really try to hide everything. He’s not he’s not about that. Like most of his stuff is open. So the technology is available to him. I think everybody else is a little bit more cautious on like the the exposure that it brings liability wise or something like that. They seem to be way more conservative on that part, because the technology is there like these cars, you can turn it on there.

Yeah. So I don’t think it’s a lack. I don’t know if anybody else is that that far behind me. Maybe I don’t know. I say that, but then they they keep building, you know, they kept building and forcing electric cars on people that nobody wanted. Like the the only one that was kind of that’s got any real market share at all is Tesla. And so yeah, I don’t I don’t know what the thing is, but they’re self driving it. It definitely is. I agree. Same thing. My my wife’s car, like sometimes I’ll find myself taking it just because it’s on there and like and that’s that’s my favorite thing is talking to Grock like and you were telling me that you have a teach you stuff, right?

Adam Krey: Yeah, constantly, constantly. And then like if something comes up, like I just kind of it makes for a family conversation thing, too. So if we’re going somewhere as a family, we’ll take her car. And then like I just start conversation with the kids and and then whatever we’re talking about, you know, there’s always something that comes up and I’m like, I don’t know. And then we’ll ask Grock and then let it.

Chris Collins: That’s cool. Give us a lesson on it. Have a drive the conversation.

Adam Krey: Yeah, because it just keeps everybody. It’s another tool I can use to keep everybody off their phones, right?

Chris Collins: Yeah. Yeah. That’s great. It’s great conversation because as a family, you spend a lot of time together in the car. You know, do you do you notice to hoagie that you’re more relaxed when when the self driving’s on? Like I definitely noticed that with Missy yesterday is like she was in a completely different like I’d gone to I’d been to war and she was just like in the best mood. And she’s like, you know, she’s so different.

Hogi: Well, driving driving in LA is nuts. Like there’s, you know, you’re just fighting. You just, I just want to get home, right? So I’m trying to like take every opportunity and switching lanes, the whole thing. And when, with the self driving, it doesn’t switch lanes and take the fastest route, but you don’t really have to do anything. I think there needs to be more commitment to that. I think they’re just dabbling into it.

Cause like, even on my, my new Ford truck, it’s more, it’s probably the best way to call it as an assist. Like I, I can do the blue cruise and just like stare ahead and it’s right. You’re not as fatigued or whatever, but it only does it for major mapped out like highways. You can’t take it off of, you know, route 50 or on 55 and take it off the ones that have to be mapped. So there’s very specifics on there. I think they really just should try to commit to that with one vehicle and just build from there. I think that’s where Tesla really just committed. Tesla will park it at a parking lot at the grocery store. It’s what it does now.

Chris Collins: Yeah. I mean, it just keeps, it just keeps getting better and better. Yeah. And that way I think they, the others claim that they can do the self park stuff, but I mean, anytime you have to do that manual intervention, right? It’s kind of like, all right, I’m going to press this, turn this off and then just push it. And then it will go and park. It’s like, I’m already, I’m already driving. I might as well finish.

Yeah. Like Tesla, literally when you’re, you know, if I, if I jump in it right now and put it to go to target or whatever, as it pulls in the target parking lot, each spot it identifies as a parking spot comes up with a little, a little P with a little sign on it or whatever. And then as you’re going past those parking spots, you just, if you tap one of them, it’ll stop. And then, you know, in that parking spot.

But yeah, I mean, I think they’ll catch up eventually. I mean, I think they, I think they have to. And then not to mention if, if the dam keeps cracking on the BYD and a couple of these China cars being able to come in, like the, they, their, their self-driving is already top notch too. And it’s cheap.

So a question for, for you, Hogy. When we talk about the gas vehicles, self-driving doesn’t really have to be affected by that, right? Like it isn’t the self-driving isn’t more effective because it’s electrical.

Hogi: No, no, not at all.

Chris Collins: Yeah. So then, then what the, what the manufacturers could do is just sell them the technology from Tesla. Tesla could just sell them the technology. Like, yeah. I mean, famously in, in tech, there’s a lot of scenarios where like the Apple iPad pays a royalty to Microsoft for the technology of the touchscreen or something. Like they’re just borrowing technology.

Well, yeah, maybe, maybe. I mean, I, this is, this is my assumption, but I have a couple of friends. One, one of them still with Tesla and I could ask their opinion on this, but I’m, I’m pretty certain I know their answer and it wouldn’t be that General Motors and Ford and you know, the rest of them don’t have the technology. They’re literally not that agile where they can get the engineering department on what the next model is going to be and their legal team anywhere close to the same spot to be able to move forward. And in Elon’s world, that just doesn’t exist. That, that level of, that level of, in, in ability to execute, that just doesn’t exist. So I don’t know that it’s the lack of, of technology or they need to buy it from them. It’s just literally how big they are and how much they get in their own way.

And, and I think too, like when you step back and you talk to some of our dealers and, and them trying to partner with the different and being a franchise dealer today with some of the manufacturers, like literally they’re happy when the manufacturer just gets out of their own way to accomplish what everybody knew five years ago needed to happen. Get rid of the red tape. I think this is another, another example of that.

Chris Collins: Yeah. Cause for me, like I’d much rather drive my Rover than a Cybertruck, but the self-driving such an advantage.

Adam Krey: Yeah. And I think that puts you in a big group of, of today’s marketplace. And they’re starting to get over their fear of, you know, like ordering a Tesla and, and where to do it and, you know, where to charge it and stuff like that. But, but yeah, like they’re, they’re just starting to demand it. Like enough of them have experienced it. And, and I don’t, I don’t think that’s going to go away.

Chris Collins: Yeah. It’ll be, it’s an interesting, it’s an interesting kind of where it’s at, but, uh, Missy’s funny whenever like she’s riding with me and then I go to a gas station. She’s like, Oh, I forgot what this is like. Yeah. She brought that up when we were there last time.

Yeah. She just plugs it into the side of the house. Like it’s, she doesn’t have to do anything. Yeah. So funny. Yeah. She pretends like it’s this like big task, you know.

I kind of also, the other thing is, and this is like a little up Adams alley of, of being like a prepper. I don’t like the idea of having two electric cars. I like the idea of having one of each in case anything does go down, you know, yeah. You ready? I got a full tank again.

Adam Krey: Yeah.

Chris Collins: Yeah. So that’s probably not a bad plan. Like, uh, I used to hear the sales people in the, in the early days of Tesla, some of those early galleries, like you’re in a pretty small area. So even though we’re working on cars, like the sales gallery is just across the floor at a lot of the, you know, some of those few original, uh, galleries. And, uh, that was what the sales people would always be talking about was they had these stats on like, you know, households over two in America, like 70 something percent of them have two cars and, uh, 90 something percent of the time you only take one of those cars, uh, over 50 miles at a time, you know, so basically their whole pitch was you can have a metropolitan car that is the electric car. And then you, you know, still have your internal combustion car for, uh, you know, if you need to jump in and go 500 miles, you’re good to go, right?

And there’s probably something that you can do that. Yeah. I do like that pitch though. That’s pretty clever because it’s, if you look at it too, it’s kind of like the transition into the market by pitching it that way. It’s true. When you’re with the family, you’re probably going to take something that’s long distance or whatever. So as an immediate need, I know that I have friends that have just recently gone into that Tesla market. That’s for that exact reason. They got rid of their little SUV and they said, Hey, this helps with my commuter, but we still have the van or whatever, uh, troll around the kids to road trip.

Chris Collins: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That’s my, my other thing too, but I, I couldn’t justify having to having to, like, I don’t have any more. But you don’t ever really, uh, I mean, when you leave, you’re going to Seattle or going somewhere for, uh, in your case, if you were going to drive somewhere outside of LA, like you could rent something to do that, right? Cause like 90% of the time when you’re leaving, you’re getting on a plane. Yeah. I’m not driving anywhere. Like I’m going to San Diego coming up. I’m taking the train. If I go to Vegas, I’m flying. So I wouldn’t drive. I drove to Arizona. What is that last year? It was terrible. I’m much rather fly. It just takes forever. A lot of desert.

Yeah. So yeah, I don’t, I don’t really need anything, but that I don’t have range issues whatsoever. Yeah. But yeah, I hope the other manufacturers start, start working on that. I think it’s coming because I think like, as I sit here right now, I’ll probably switch and then I’ll, you know, I don’t know if I buy the thing or lease it or whatever, but then by the time that that’s done, I’m hoping like in the next two or three years, there’s more options for self-driving than just Tesla. Yeah. Yeah. I think so.

Somebody was saying Toyota has something coming. I drove a Hyundai in up by your people a couple months ago. That it was probably better than some of the other assisted driving or whatever you want to call it. But so I think they’re, they’re coming along, but man, those hundreds look great, dude. Like I double take on those. Like I do on the Corvette, like every time I see a Corvette, I’m like, Oh, it’s such a great looking car.

Yeah. It’s one of those brands where like, every time I’m getting in them, a Mazda is another one just fit and finish and, and like the technology works and just like the, the basic things that should end like it looking desirable. There’s a couple of those brands that, uh, they keep, you know, they keep just getting better and better and the, and they’re positioned pretty, they’re positioned pretty well right now also for a pretty good future. Yeah. They’re reliable. Like they, yeah, everything about them is great. They look great. The interior’s good. Yeah.

I wonder what the next thing is going to be besides the self-driving in that way. Like when you’re, when you’re in a Tesla and it’s self-driving, you do kind of reimagine what the cockpit could be. Yeah. I haven’t got the opportunity to do a cyber cab yet, but, uh, I’ve, uh, yeah, I keep, I keep wondering what it’s like to be in something without controls and, you know, I think we’re quickly, I think we’re quickly approaching that. And then, um, yeah, I don’t know cars.

The, the other thing, if there’s not a steering wheel for the driver, like fatalities will go down a whole lot more. So one of the most unsafe things for a driver, uh, of a vehicle on a car accident is the steering column. Um, so when that goes away, like that’s another thing that makes self-driving, uh, immensely more safer. Uh, it already is like, right. The air rate is already, much lower than human drivers, obviously. But, um, yeah, it is, it is, uh, I think it’ll be, I think, yeah, I think it’ll be, um, just a place where, uh, I don’t know. Like, I don’t think there’ll be a whole lot you do in your living room or at your desk that you can’t do in the car.

Do you think cars will get smaller? Like the cyber cab is kind of smaller. I think they’ll put a desk almost kind of like a, a ledge where you can actually work off of. Yeah, maybe. Yeah. I mean, like even the, uh, even the Tesla, right, for the, the inside of the car, cause there’s not so much happening up front under the hood, you know, that, uh, it is like the, the cubic space inside the cabin is a lot bigger, even though it’s not as big a car, but I don’t know. I think they, I think they continue to get more modular and, um, and things like that, which I don’t know if that’s a good thing or a bad thing for, for old car people won’t like that. Um, I think the next generation, they don’t really care about customization and stuff like that as much. Yeah. Um, I don’t know. It’d be interesting. I think it would be interesting because like when they came out with a smart car, the size of that thing was pretty small, but it was basically what, like a roll cage.

I think part of it, you’re going to have to have something that has the ability to, I don’t know, crunch if there is an accident. So do they just use mostly like, uh, kind of a roll cage type framework and then build around that? So it’s not as big as our traditional vehicles, but something a little bit smaller that can still be appealing. I always like being higher in, in something bigger personally. I mean, the, the cyber truck feels big, but it’s really not as high, but it feels big inside, but I like room. I get claustrophobic pretty easy. That’s kind of my, I was like the F one 50, you always felt roomier than a so Rada. Yeah.

Why You Don’t Need Service Advisor Training

Chris Collins: It’s good. Okay. So before we talk about what you don’t need service advisor training, a couple of things. One is on the academy today, we’re going to be talking about what happens at the desk. So last time we talked about petting the dog, that was a great conversation, but now what happens at the desk, we’re going to go through some stats and things maybe that, you know, we have the ability of seeing being in a bunch of different stores over the years that just, if you’re in your service drive, every time you don’t understand or know the increased closing ratios and the customer experience. So we’re going to talk about that today. What happens at the desk.

Then coming up in October, and I think we’re pretty much capped, capped for space. I know that’s an internal debate, whether we let another five people or something sign up to come, but top dog this year, we have Jefferson Fisher and then a huge lineup. The theme this year is beyond the drive. How can we try and send the service department and affect the overall business? So how can we think beyond the drive? That’s the theme. Really fun. It’s going to be a good time.

So exciting talking about you don’t need service advisor training. Let’s just set up why this, this topic has come up. So we get calls very often that, you know, dealerships want service advisor training. And the reason why they want service advisor training is, is legit. But most of the time the general managers or the owners of the store have very little fixed up experience. They come through the front end. Right?

So what happens is if you’re a general manager or you’re an owner of a store, you usually are getting calls from customers that are complaining and the overall customer experience isn’t very good. So you think like, well, my advisors aren’t communicating with customers because you hear customers don’t get called back. They don’t know what’s going on. You know, just the process isn’t very smooth. And so you think, Oh, well that’s training, train my advisors, how to communicate with customers. We hear that a lot. Right? And then the other one is you go to a 20 group and you see that your than everybody else or just your average sales are lower. So it’s a, it’s a logical thing to think like, Oh, well I need to train my advisors how to sell.

And then, you know, forever, there’s been this idea in fixed ops that service advisors are salespeople, which I think is goofy. And I think if you ever wrote service a day in your life, you wouldn’t really say that because it’s not really a sale. You’re just, you’re just reporting the news to the customer. And like, if they’re declining breaks, it’s usually because they don’t like you or you’re doing it too late in the process. Right? Like a lot of times if you, if you call on your decline work, like, and you ask the customer, so let’s just say you run your, your declines and you, you call 10 customers and I get three or four of them on the phone. A variably, what happens every time we do this exercise is the customers either didn’t know. So we put a decline on there, but the customer didn’t know that they needed the work.

And I know this is infuriating and people listening to this are going, well, that wouldn’t happen in my drive. No, it happens in your drive. My market’s different. You don’t understand me. No, it happens in your drive. Just try it and you’ll see, but for some reason advisors will put it on the RO as declined and the customer knows nothing about it, or they, they just didn’t understand. And then the, the, the next most common one is, yeah, they told me that, but I was already there to pick it up. Usually the declines are not really declines. They’re put on the RO as, Hey, you need this stuff, but I never got a hold of you. Right. That’s usually the most common reason why customers aren’t buying work.

Now it’s logical. If you’re a general manager or a dealer to think, Oh, well, my advisors need to be trained how to sell, but it’s the reason why they’re not selling that work or they’re not telling the customers that they need that work is something completely different than what you think. And so, you know, every week we go into service departments that are underperforming, aren’t profitable, where the advisors aren’t selling, they’re not communicating and it’s not a great customer experience. And the fix is never advisor training.

We have the best advisor training in the industry by far. I don’t think there’s anything even close to the advisor training. And I would love to just see how people advisor training, could you imagine if our business was just to sell advisor training would be so easy for us because we’re, you know, if we’re selling you advisor training, we’re in a sense not on the hook for the outcome or the result. And you can ask any of the advisor training companies out there, what’s the average net to gross for your clients? How much did you net? The only thing they’ll say is hours per RO went up 0.4 or 0.5. That’s all the advisor training companies can say because they don’t even care about your net. They’re not interested in it because it’s harder. If you actually want to make more money in a service department, that’s way harder than just training advisors. I can train your advisors and leave and it’s up to right in that way.

And so, you know, the approach that we have always had is that health, you know, there’s two things that matter. The customer experience, does the customer want to come back? Do they like and trust us? And are we running a healthy, profitable department in the process? Those are the two things that matter. And they have very little to do with advisor training and everything to do with two things. Your processes, like what does the process put the customer through as an experience? How does the customer feel about what’s going on? And then the second part is shop loading and capacity. How is our process setting the technicians up to be more efficient? How many texts do we have? And how does that workflow happen? What is the efficiencies of that? How much work are we eating and getting done? Because most of the time, the advisors are not selling the work because they can’t get the work done. And we hold them at such a high, you know, bar for CSI that they don’t want to upset the customer. They would rather not do the work than upset the customer or rather not do the work than have the car they just rode up now not get in the shop because they sold this additional work.

Let me think of an analogy for this where people are just drastically wrong, but they tell you with all the confidence in the world that they know and they don’t. Okay, I’ll give you an example. There are dealers out there that fundamentally will argue with you about paying advisors on warranty and internal. And every time we go into a store where you don’t pay the advisors on warranty and internal, warranty and internal or an afterthought. And if somebody just bought a car last week and they come into the service drive with a wheel or something like that, and they’re not paid on internal, nobody writes that customer up. And you’re thinking, you’re like, no, my advisors would never do that. It happens all the time. Like it makes no sense whatsoever to not pay the advisors on all of the work that they touch because it does diminish the customer experience. I’m not saying this because I have a dog in this fight or, you know, it would matter to me the way I’m saying this because that’s the reality of what happens out what we see all the time. But managers will argue the point and, you know, frankly, most of the time managers have the least understanding of what’s really going on in their drive because they’re in an office all day doing reports and whatever. And they want to think the best and they want to think that what’s happening out there is the right thing, but it just isn’t.

And so that’s just an example of what I’m saying of what’s really happening versus what we perceive to be happening are so far apart and it’s costing you a lot of money. And so this is an example of that, that you think you need advisor training, but if we came in and trained your advisors in the current processes that you have, your situation would get worse, not better.

Tell them why, Hoagie. Why would the situation get worse, not better? If we just trained the advisors?

Hogi: Yeah. If we just blew up sales.

Chris Collins: Yeah.

Hogi: Because then you can’t get any work. You can’t get any of the all the additional sales that you create. You can’t get it through the shop. Like your system can’t handle it. It’s the quickest to realize the weaknesses in the rest of your system. Right. And then how long does it take the advisors to go back to, we’re not selling it because we can’t get it done and I’m just making people upset? And then what, whatever you’ve invested in that advisor training is worthless.

Chris Collins: Yeah. Because human nature, like it’s just human nature. You’re not going to continually do something that makes customers upset over and over again on purpose.

Hogi: Yeah. Yeah. And it’s funny because in the past you’ve taken a little bit of heat for this, Chris, but like it is the truth. And another thing that illustrates this is that, you know, what you took a little bit of heat for was saying systems first, people second. But what you mean by that is like, if you, if it’s just about advisor training, um, you know, the other alternate thing you could do is find some really successful advisors and bring them into your service drive. And, uh, if you put a, a really successful service advisor in a really bad system or a really bad process, they can’t perform anyway. It, the same thing will happen that you just talked about. So like, whether you take what you have and make it better or bring in talent, if your system isn’t, uh, uh, built to handle it, it’s, it’s, it’s all for not like, it’s a, it’s an odd thing to, to watch happen. But, um, yeah, it’s just, uh, it’s a, it’s a hard thing, but it’s an exercise in awareness to be able to take us, take a step back and like, uh, kind of take inventory of what is and is not happening.

And, uh, you know, that this fact that we’re talking about this concept, what we’re talking about, it is, it is where you’ll arrive. It’s by far, you know, describes most, uh, service departments across the country. Like, yeah, I had an, I had an experience earlier this week too, just to kind of go back to what you’re saying about sometimes the things that we say aren’t the most popular, but they’re the truth. And you got to go back to our goal is for you to run a healthy, profitable department and have a great customer experience. That’s where we’re working from. And unfortunately that is not where most service departments in this country are working from.

I’ll give you an example. I’m, I’m looking at, I did a strategy session earlier this week, you know, really nice people, uh, you know, smart, the, the whole thing. And I, I asked the operator, the general manager of the store. Now I’m looking at a financial statement for, uh, you know, but let’s just say it isn’t, but let’s just say a Honda store and they’re losing money in fixed stops. Okay. So just imagine that in and of itself, you don’t see a lot of those stores losing money. You, you just don’t. And so, and they’re in a 20 group with, with, uh, one of our clients that, you know, is, is 50% in integrals, something like that.

And I asked the general manager just kind of at the top of the call. So I’ve looked at the financials have kind of gone through it. I said, uh, so what, you know, what’s, what’s the priority here? What are we looking to do? And he goes through this laundry list of stuff. And I was like, well, what about profitability? And he’s like, Oh yeah, yeah, no, that’s important. And I’m like, well, that isn’t what you just said. Like, I’m, I’m in shock that you’re losing money. And you’re talking about training the advisors and all kinds of other things. And I’m like, training your advisors is like the last thing you want. You’re, you there, like your pro, your basic understanding of the business is off. Like, well, you know, it just doesn’t make any sense to me.

And so for some reason in fixed stops, we tell the managers like, get us more gross, get us more gross. What we mean is, you know, make it profitable, but that’s not what we’re saying. We need to say what we mean. And we need to understand what the priorities are. If you’re not profitable and you’re not running a healthy business, nothing else matters. It doesn’t, I’m sorry. Like there is no reason in today’s market for a service department to be losing money and to not be profitable. And it, it’s a hundred percent on what we’re prioritizing as leaders. And I personally think it’s more humane and, and more empathetic to the people to say that it’s processes first, because if we put good people into bad processes, we torture them. And so when I say process first, I’m actually prioritizing two people. I’m prioritizing the customer who matters the most. It’s the reason why we’re there. And I’m prioritizing the employees in that sense, but you got, you know, it’s the same sort of thing.

Like for some reason we have a hard time saying that profitability is a priority when I don’t understand any other way to do it. I, you know, we don’t want to train just to train. I wouldn’t want to come in and do advisor training and not make a difference in the overall business. Like it doesn’t make sense to invest in training and not have a more profitable, healthy business in the end in that sense.

Hogi: I do this exercise with advisors a lot of times when I’m in the store and, you know, it’s a constant battle, bringing them back to, especially when they, when they, when they experience a little bit of success, they, they start to get, you know, overconfident and abandoning the process and things like that. And, and the more talented they get, you know, they, they experience ways they can cut corners and, and things like that. And you’re trying to get them to double down on, on, you know, doing the fundamentals and things like that. But, you know, I’ve actually done this in a lot of different scenarios and done it with other coaches and watch them do it as well. And we do this thing where we’re like, okay. Especially when we’re first starting with a store, like what, what is your, what is your process? Like, what is it, you know, from, from the time a customer schedules the appointment till the very end and, you know, they’ll slowly start saying things and I’ll mark them on the board or sometimes I’ll have them write it on their own piece of paper. And, you know, you get 30 seconds into it and they do this thing where they’re like, well, it depends. I’m like, okay, let’s kick that down. It depends on what they’re like, well, you know, and they start going through this thing and you’ll just have this mess on the board of a process. And, and I’ll, I’ll let them go for, you know, 20 minutes or so before I cut them off. And then you just stand back and look at it with them.

And I’m like, okay, can we agree that it looks like your process is whatever gets you from 7 a.m. to 6 p.m. with the least amount of heat? And they’ll, they’ll just melt in their chairs, every single one of them. And they’re like, yeah, that’s exactly what my process is. And, and when you’re operating from that standpoint, and there’s another way to do that exercise where you have each of them, if there’s a bunch of them in the room, you have them each write it down on a piece of paper. And what’s really scary is if you have six advisors, you’ll have six different processes. And, and so if that’s the thing in your world right now, it does me exactly zero good to come in and help them train how to sell. And in that scenario, our profitability is inconsistent, the customer experience is inconsistent. Everything is inconsistent because they’re freelancing.

Chris Collins: Yeah. And there’s, you don’t as a, as a manager, you don’t know where to fix it either, because you’re just chasing, you know, cats, you’re just grabbing them by the tail and it’s dragging you around, but you don’t really have a fundamental game board where you’re like, Oh, this is off and this is what like, you just intuitively don’t understand where the leverage is. And that’s what you want is you want to know where the leverage is. Where do I put the most pressure and get the, the biggest on my time?

It’s, I was thinking about this this morning, you know, knowing we were going to talk about this and how many times when I was younger, dealers would say, I will pay you just to stand here. Cause whenever you’re in my dealership, we make more money. And that used to always blow me away because all I was doing was the basic stuff. Like I went through the RO’s, I did the misstops, I just did the basic stuff when I was there, but invariably sales always went up because I was doing that boring basic stuff. And they, you know, they perceive that I, that I had this like magic that whenever I was in the building sales would go up and it was all because of the process, nothing to do with me being special, but just me being stubborn and doing the stuff I knew then move the, move the needle.

And so just kind of wrapping all this up and understanding that you can call us, well, you know, we do have advisor training, but I’ve yet to see in the last, I don’t know how many years, any, any department that where advisor training wouldn’t have made the situation worse. You need us to help you set up the shop, higher technicians, get the, get the right capacity. You need to have the right advisors to tech ratio. You need to have the right process from, you know, how do we make appointments? How far apart who’d, you know, what’s the process for the advisors? We need the advisors going out to meet the customers at the car. We need the customers to feel, you know, like they like and trust us, take away decision fatigue. All of these things need to happen in order for you to, you know, improve the customer experience and have the customers feel good about what they, you know, just went through and run a healthy, profitable department.

And training the advisors is only going to make it worse. Cause we, yeah, we can come in and teach them how to sell more, but selling more, you know, in a situation where the customers hate the process and you don’t have the capacity to get it done, just compound your problems. It’s a bottleneck. Just doing something to do it. It, you know, there’s a better, more strategic way to get the success you want. And I would just encourage any general managers or owners or even directors, service managers out there listening. If, if when you wake up every day, the focal isn’t to run a profitable business with a great customer experience, rethink that a little bit because it’s, that’s a Northern light that has a lot of clarity and is easy to get behind it. Most of the time what you’re doing is ineffectively chasing the symptom, not the cause. And, you know, I’ve, I’ve always kind of lived by the motto of telling, you know, telling the truth, not, not just trying to sell you on something that you don’t need.

Yeah. Um, yeah, so that’s it. We’re going to jump over to the academy right now and talk about what happens next at the desk. If you’re not in the academy, you can sign up for it at chriscollinsinc.com. I don’t know if we had any questions.

Q&A: Financial Transparency for Service Managers

Chris Collins: Yeah, there was, there was one I just saw, Chris, that we could probably get to really, really quick. It’s, it’s seven till, so we probably need to do this in like two minutes or less. Uh, how often are you hearing of service managers not being supplied financials, uh, to real net, uh, to real net is not visible? So they base everything off a labor gross labor gross profit. I don’t know. What is it a third of the time? What would you say?

Hogi: Yeah. Yeah.

Chris Collins: Yeah. There’s still, I mean, we do not set service managers up for success in our industry. We don’t, we don’t teach them how to really run the business. It’s all through tribal knowledge. And then we, we make them drive blind without a steering wheel. They don’t have the financial, and you know, if you’re, if you’re not really understanding what the numbers are, you’re just doing things and it, uh, it’s very discouraging because even when you wonder why you had a record month for gross and the dealer is still upset and it’s because you, you spent your way into it and you don’t know that it happens so often. It’s, it’s archaic how, how we torture service managers and don’t, don’t give them training and we don’t give them the tools they need to succeed.

And the, you know, how many times you guys do we have a dealer call us and go, Hey, I’m gonna, I’m gonna sign up for your thing. As soon as I find a new manager and we’re like, give us the manager you got. Like we have a really high success rate changing, you know, teaching the one that you have to be successful. It, it just comes down to the right knowledge. And you know what they, they end up feeling like it’s common sense once they understand it. That’s the thing.

And you could, uh, you know, I would encourage you to go ask a, a County controller or a GM, see if, see if somebody say just, Hey, like I, I just want to be mentored on, uh, what this looks like. If, uh, the gross profit I’m creating is creating a good, a good net. You know, I’m learning about metrics that are good achievable, uh, numbers for net to gross and things like that. Um, so, you know, uh, if it, a lot of the times, McRoller pig in, in, uh, pushing past that, um, it’s usually more on how the, the person that’s not currently supplied the, the financials approaches it versus a GM or a controller or owner, not wanting the manager to see it. So, you know, um, we could talk about that again some more in, in, uh, in the future or, or on, uh, SDR live, that might be a good, what’s their name. What’s their, what’s their handle? Roller pig, uh, McRoller pig, McRoller pig.

Yeah. McRoller pig. You could have done better than that. Cam Chancellor, 502, Walter Payton, seven Oh three.

Wrap-Up

Chris Collins: Well, thanks everybody for hanging out with us. We really do enjoy hanging out with you. We’re going to jump over to academy now, but, uh, we’ll see you guys next week. Have a great week and, uh, yeah, see you next time on Service Drive Revolution.

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About Service Drive Revolution Academy

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 managers. That doesn’t happen enough in our industry. It’s 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 exist already, but unfortunately doesn’t: a live Fixed Ops Academy — a mentorship, a community. It’s a Service Drive Revolution Academy. Anybody can afford it; anybody who wants to invest in themselves can join. We 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 are in a league completely their own — if I told you their numbers, you wouldn’t believe it.

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• Understand the mechanics: How Does Flat Rate Pay Work for Auto Mechanics

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!