Now Is the Best Time

Managers are using the episodes to train 0:00

Dave Rogers: Some of my service managers, Rick being one that we talked to, were using some of it for the store. He was talking about the technicians setting objectives and setting minimum standards for the guys, which is a problem that store has. And it was funny, he listened to the one where you were talking about your guy, I forget what his name was, the salesman that moved to service, that they were going to fire. Well, we've got a guy like that at one of our stores, and he said, "That described exactly what's happened to this kid in my store." He says nobody's ever trained the guy to do anything.

I started laughing, and he goes, "I'm going to start using these short little lessons." He said he shared a couple of them with the guys, and a couple of people really enjoyed them. Fifteen, 20 minutes wasn't taking a lot of time out of their day. And he says, "You know what's better than an email, Dave?" So I thought that was good feedback.

Steve Shaw: That's awesome. Good deal.

Dave Rogers: I thought it was good feedback. And then I shared a screenshot of the podcast on Instagram, and it carries over to Facebook, and I shared the screenshots with you. Some of those people sent me texts, and there were a few more after I sent them to you. Some people gave some good feedback. They could be blowing smoke up my ass, but they said nice things anyway.

Steve Shaw: Well, my buddy Rick has called me, and he's like, "You want some feedback? I'll give it to you." Rick's always done a great job of giving me feedback, and I know what he's going to say: "Your lighting's this or that," "You were looking up in the air." But I think most people are going to be very critical. So if you're getting good feedback, I would say we did a good job. I've only gotten good feedback as well. I think it's pretty awesome that we're getting that.

Dave Rogers: It's good. But I liked the idea that he was using it for training. I said, that's exactly what Steve wanted: for the new service manager, give him lessons and refreshers. That hits the point exactly. It was good feedback.

Steve Shaw: Cool. Now you can tell Tony you can do it on work time.

Dave Rogers: Right in the middle of the day. "Sorry, boss, I'm recording a podcast. Training my people."

Steve Shaw: I'm training my people right now.

Dave Rogers: Your old friend Sam from Ziegler, I keep seeing things on LinkedIn. It looks like they do the same thing. They talk about all different things in little mini podcasts with the group there. So it might be how they're sharing information too. I thought it was a good idea.

Steve Shaw: I think that's actually a pretty good idea, utilizing that in today's day and age, if it gets things done. Maybe a fixed ops guy and a manager are having a conversation, and then they share it with everybody. I can't see how that would hurt. It sounds like a very progressive, forward-thinking thing. You got any good stories today?

Dave Rogers: I had a couple of them recently. I don't know if I'd want to share them, though. They were kind of ridiculous, some of the crap that happened.

"We don't have time to train" 3:55

Steve Shaw: Well, I'll tell you a funny story, because here's what happened to me today. Today is January 1, the first business day of the year. We always talk about accountability. If we're going to do objectives, somebody's got to hold people accountable. And as an outside service trainer, I have zero authority for anything. My job is to show up and teach.

I know for a fact there are quite a few people, and I'm not going to name any names, that would prefer not to train. Even in our own university system, there are people that would prefer not to train. And nothing pisses me off more than when somebody has to have a collective decision on how to train. The collective decision is always going to be: we don't want to train. Twelve is not good, one's not good, 9 a.m. is not good, and three o'clock is not good. They're going to tell you there's never a good time to train. Other than if you're a very progressive group like yourself or some of our university clients, where it's always a good time. We were talking: we're slow right now. So when should you train? In the rough times, when there are no cars.

So I'm talking to a guy today. He's been a long-term client, and I said, "Hey, here's the invoice for next year. Looking forward to a pretty good 2026." And he says, "I'm going to have to talk to my team and see if they still want to do this anymore." And I can tell you what the answer is: we don't like doing it. If I said, "Hey, I'm going to be at your store tomorrow," the answer is "We don't have time." The answer is always "We don't have time to do it."

So that's my rant today. If you're going to train, you're going to take shit. I know when you call your people out to join us for a seminar, nobody runs up to say, "Dave, thank goodness you had this class, because I've been looking forward to this for the last six months." If you went out and surveyed all 40 of your managers, how many of them would come back and say, "Dave, we love online training and we want to keep doing it. In fact, how about more classes for us?"

Dave Rogers: We've got one guy at 100% in the whole group. For that guy, there's not enough training, because he's at 100%. But everyone else would say the same thing. You're right.

Car dealers train eight hours a year 7:04

Steve Shaw: That's my rant. I'm not the most favorite. I know people like me. When I come in, we always have a good time. But whether it's the good times or the bad times, December or January, the first day of the month or the last day of the month, everybody would rather be doing something else. So you know what I did? I decided to look up training statistics today. I've kind of known these numbers, but I thought I'd ask my buddy Grok.

The Fortune 500 companies, people with more than a thousand employees, average over 60 hours of training per person per year. So 60 hours, a week and a half every year, they're spending time learning, training and developing. A tier-two company, let's say less than a thousand employees, is at 40 hours, which is down from 47 hours per year. So in 2025, training went down seven hours per man. Car dealers: eight hours per year is what we train our people. And we ask why our customer experience isn't so good, or why we can't get all these objectives done. Well, we do eight hours of training each year. It's mind-blowing. Absolutely mind-blowing.

Pull them off the drive and train them 8:42

Dave Rogers: When I was a service manager for years, we obviously didn't have online Zoom and all that stuff, but I used to want all my people in school or some kind of training for 40 hours a year. That's what I used to say: one week. I came up just like everyone else, but I always thought it sounded good. Two weeks' vacation, one week of training. I figured that was a fair number.

I would believe those numbers. I think Grok is probably very accurate there. You've got to consider there are some groups out there, like the big public groups and some progressive groups, that probably do a really good job. So the average might be eight, but a lot of your neighbors are probably at four or two.

We had a conversation today about one of the stores. You won't hear me say this a lot, but we'll talk about it. The hours per RO were 1.3 last month. The question came up: does that exclude express or include express? The service manager said, "When I took express out, it was still 1.3." So we're like, well, then there's obviously something not going on. And this same guy believes in training. He's the one with 100% on the online university. So we had the conversation: why aren't you taking people off the front desk, putting them in a room and giving them five classes on how to sell? Because every day they're up there, they're costing you at 1.3 hours per RO. You've got nothing to lose. Take them off the line, because the guy next to him could get 1.3 as well. You might as well put somebody in a room and train them.

Those are pitiful numbers. I think they took their eye off the ball last month. It was the holidays, and everybody was too busy celebrating. How do you go from 2.2 hours per RO to 1.3 inside of a month? It's ridiculous. I do think we have to spend a lot more time training. Since we started the advisor training in 2018 or 2019, whatever year it was, it's made a huge difference. Do they do it all the time? No. But it's made a huge difference in their knowledge, giving them a little more courage and the word tracks to use. Our customer pay numbers are up accordingly every year. Even with lower RO counts, we're still hitting the numbers, and I think it's all training.

You wouldn't let a salesperson burn ups 11:40

Steve Shaw: Well, certainly I have a vested interest in it, because I'm Steve Shaw of Steve Shaw Training. But you don't have to use Steve Shaw, and you don't have to use any of the other players in the space. Managers are capable of doing it, if that's what they want. But think about this: if I was selling cars and burning through opportunities, or ups, as some might call them, and I waited on 10 people and only sold one car, somebody would have a talking-to with me, correct? There's probably an expectation that for however many guests you meet, you should sell X, Y and Z cars. I couldn't give you those statistics. But if I'm a service advisor, there should be a similar expectation of hours per RO, or we need to have a conversation. That goes back to what you were talking about in previous episodes. There should be a standard, an expectation or a benchmark of some sort that we follow.

What the electronic multi-point tells you 12:47

Dave Rogers: I've been a big proponent of the service lane tools. I like tech. I'm an old guy, but I'm not a dinosaur. I like technology, but I don't like technology just for technology's sake. I've said it before: if you have a good process in place, let's say multi-point inspections, the technicians are doing them correctly and they're presented to customers, and it's a manual system, the beauty of electronics and technology is that you now have reporting that tells you how good you are or how bad you are. In the past, we would have to sit there and go through repair orders or the stack of multi-points to see what percentage of penetration we had. So I love the electronic multi-point. I like the reports it gives you.

When it comes to training, you get the results based on what kind of process you have. If the guy's burning through ups, and you look at the metrics in the service tools and see that only 60% of that service advisor's repair orders are getting a multi-point, or his closing ratio is 13%, you're right. Why would you let that person talk to any more customers today? You wouldn't do it in sales. Hint, hint, GMs: you wouldn't do it in sales. If you had an F&I guy doing 500 a copy and everyone else was doing 1,300, you probably wouldn't let that guy get the good deals.

Batting orders and offensive lines 14:25

Steve Shaw: Right, exactly. That's so funny. It goes back to baseball strategy. I'm such an astute student of the St. Louis Cardinals right now: where they place all the batters. Who's the leadoff hitter? Who's second? Who's third? Who's batting cleanup? These are things you might know, but you don't really think about. A guy that can steal a lot probably needs to be in front of a guy who doesn't strike out a lot. You've got to think about your strategy on these things. What am I charging? What are my expectations? What's the overall strategy? Then have that benchmark and that accountability piece. I find the strategy and the accountability fascinating right now. I must have too much time on my hands.

Dave Rogers: It's about time you got into sports. There's a lot of synergy between all businesses and the car business. I love football, and I use football analogies all the time. I'll use it now for your service advisors, which is what we're talking about. They're like the offensive line on your football team. If you're the service manager, you're the quarterback, and your technicians are your skill positions, your receivers and running backs. If you don't have a good offensive line, if the five guys in front of you aren't blocking, you get the snap, take a half step back and you're sacked. You can't even hand the ball off, or you can't pass the ball, because your offensive line sucks so bad. Being a New York Giants fan, we've suffered with that for years. But it all starts there. Your skill positions won't be able to do anything without that line blocking for you. I love that you've gotten into baseball, so now I've got to twist it into your baseball words.

Trades, free agency and salary caps 16:34

Steve Shaw: The only thing I've ever cared about in life is the St. Louis Cardinals. I grew up in St. Louis, and there's nothing better than a trip to the ballpark. Even living in LA, going to a Dodger game was nothing like going to a game in St. Louis. I can't get enough of offseason trades. I think you and I talked one time: wouldn't it be cool if you could trade? "I need a master tech here. I need a lube guy here." Could we have a conversation and trade some folks? That'd be awesome.

Dave Rogers: When I was with the public company, they used to track our employee turnover and grade you on it. If your turnover was too high, you got a beating every year. And I used to ask HR, "Why can't we just have one month that's a free agency period? We can cut, we can transfer, we can get rid of people, and it doesn't count against us. It doesn't go against the salary cap at all." They never bought into it.

Steve Shaw: Hey, I have solved the salary cap in baseball, because they're going to shut down in 2027. You get the salary cap, but there's one exception: you can still get your super-duper guy. That could go on for one whole collective bargaining agreement, and then at the end of it, you eliminate it. We're done. Baseball's on, we never have to lose. I'm telling you, that's the solution to the salary cap.

Dave Rogers: Well, they have the luxury tax in baseball. If you go over the limit, you have to pay extra money, which the big-dollar teams in LA and New York don't really care about. Football figures out a way to twist it up a little bit and reload. The capologists, as they call them in football, are the geniuses. They figure out how to redo contracts and spread them out over five years. We don't do that in the car business. You're only as good as your last month, and you're not on a contract.

Steve Shaw: And there is no salary cap, because if there's a master technician out there, somebody is going to pay him whatever it takes to get that guy.

Dave Rogers: You're absolutely right. The only time there's a salary cap is when sales suck and they're looking to slash in the back. That's when they have a salary cap.

Double down when times are tough 18:53

Steve Shaw: "Times are tough. Let's cut out training. We don't need Steve for the next however many months." But I think that's really the time when you should double down. In bad times, we should double down on training and stop worrying about what it costs. So how do we bring this all back and wrap up this session with a good GM tip or new service manager tip?

Dave Rogers: For the GM tip, I think we touched on it. You have to sit down and get into the weeds with your advisors and technicians. We talked about it already on a couple of episodes. Look at the hours they're turning, look at the gross they're doing, look at some of the metrics. But don't just take it out of an NCM book or a NADA book. Look at your store and the average of your store. See what the other advisors are doing, and then try to take the lower-performing guys and bring them up, just like you would in sales, just like you would in F&I. As a general manager, you don't have to be a stranger to service and parts. If you get into the weeds and let people know how much you really care about them, you're going to have a team that'll run through a brick wall for you in the long run.

Steve Shaw: Absolutely. Right on. If I had to say something to a new manager, I guess my rant is what I would say: don't worry about hiring Steve or paying all the money for Steve. You got promoted to that position for some reason. Look at those numbers and train your people. Spend that time with them, especially the new people. They may have been a bartender yesterday. Share your knowledge. That's what you got promoted for. Take that extra time, take that person off the drive who's burning ups, as they say, and guide them in your best way. I think that's a good way to end it here, a quick one at the beginning of the year.

Dave Rogers: Yeah. Thanks for showing up and taking some time away from your baseball stats to spend a little time with us.

Steve Shaw: Right on, right on. I'll catch you later.