Stop Managing Your Service Department by Email

Out on sports until spring training 0:00

[Steve Shaw] Welcome, everybody! Welcome back to Fixed Ops Focus with Steve Shaw and Mr. Dave Rogers. What's going on, Dave?

Dave Rogers: Hey, man, just enjoying a nice day in the Northeast. Haven't seen the sun in three days. A lot of rain, I should say, and some wind. So I'm inside today. We're doing this on a Sunday, I think, so I'm getting ready for some NFL football. That's about it.

Steve Shaw: Well, baseball season is coming to an end today. It's the end of the regular season. So I'm out. I'm out on sports.

Dave Rogers: That's it, you're done, right? Not even women's volleyball or anything for the winter? Beach volleyball, nothing? Come on, Steve, you're slacking. You've got to take up a new sport, man.

Steve Shaw: I'll watch anything in person. A guy called me once and goes, "Hey, you want to go to the Bucs game here in Tampa? I've got a suite, it's free booze, it's all this." And I went, "You might want to give that to somebody who cares." I don't want to spend my day tailgating, or sit up there in a suite drinking with a bunch of people I don't know just to watch a Bucs game I don't really like. Nothing really makes me popular, but I was just like, give my ticket away. It's totally fine.

Dave Rogers: When I was up in Boston, I had dinner with Joe Shaker, the guy from TruVideo. I'd met him before. He's a big Celtics fan, and he was talking about the seats they have and how they go to the games. He goes, "If there was a game tonight, we'd be at the game," VIP treatment, the whole bit. And I started laughing. I'd love to do it to experience it. He's not in a box, he's right down courtside, I think, with his seats. That's a big thing right there, man. These people just live and die by these sporting events. I watch college basketball a little bit, but I'm not a big basketball fan.

Steve Shaw: I got to go see the Denver Nuggets in Denver one time with a dealer group. We were in a suite, I was with a group of people I knew, and it was something I had never done. But I was like, okay, check the box, been there. I grew up with Blues hockey, and it was fun to watch, right? Hockey was fun back in the day. Like they say, you go to a fight and a hockey game breaks out. That was hockey to me. And then I moved to LA and went to a Ducks game, and I'm like, wait, a fucking Disneyland? It was the worst hockey ever. So I just turned off, right?

So I'll follow the Cardinals. The Cardinals ended up about .500 this year, and it was a fun year watching all these kids play, and I love the strategy, like we've always talked about. But I'm good for sports. I'm out until spring training. And hey, we might not have a season next year, so what the heck?

Dave Rogers: Is it contract negotiations?

Steve Shaw: It's contract negotiations. They say there may or may not be baseball next year, so who knows? I won't lose any sleep over it.

Dave Rogers: Hey, they've done it before, so I wouldn't put it past them. It'd be interesting to see how they do with off-season stuff if they're not going to have a season, or if they're preparing for it. They might not make a lot of moves in the off-season. And that's your Moneyball. That's what you're really interested in, right?

Reps, reps, reps: what baseball knows about training 3:33

[Steve Shaw] The strategy behind it. I just really love the strategy behind it, and comparing that to the stuff we do. I was listening the other day, and this might even be interesting to a listener. They had a shortstop with an injury, so they had their backup guy out there, and this guy was taking play after play, taking ground balls, taking ground balls. The coaches were out there double-teaming this guy. They were doing everything, because they had to get this guy ready, right? And the whole time he was substituting, every single day, every minute he had available, he was out taking ground balls, doing this, doing that, being ready for the game.

It's insanity. It's a game, right? And of course they make millions of dollars and all that stuff too. But when was the last time we had... We talked about spring training, and we had that deep dive with our people, over and over and over again, before work, after work. When are we just reviewing, play by play by play, what we're supposed to do? It's insanity to me that in this business we allow that to happen.

I actually changed it on my website. I have a new website coming out. We said that if you do the RO Marketing, it's worth a million bucks in additional service, right? People used to ask me, "How much will my advisors improve if they use your training, Steve?" Years ago I would say two tenths, because that was reasonable. Then I would say three tenths, maybe five tenths. Now I'm just telling everybody a million bucks. Hire me, it's a million dollars per advisor. That's it. Because if you do these things, we know what happens.

We were talking to your buddy, the first guy who talked about RO Marketing, and he went to 80% penetration on alignments. Your other buddy who was on our podcast said the same thing, eighty percent penetration. If you do what we said, it's a million bucks. So I have a new line: training is worth a million bucks.

Forwarding the email is not managing 5:41

[Dave Rogers] It's a nice line. One point three, conservatively. The problem is nobody wants to write up the process, and they don't want to enforce the process. We always laugh about leadership and the manager mentality, but they don't have the basic skills of managing. You put together a process, and you make sure the process is followed, right? How do you do that? You have to train, train, train, train, train, right?

What I do is I print it out and I email it to a bunch of managers. It's their job to read this stuff and incorporate it, put it in their own terms, and then train it and teach it and coach it, right? What most people want to do now is just forward the email. That's their level of communication, and I don't understand the mentality of that. Take it, make it your own, understand it. We've talked about this before: I don't expect them to take it a hundred percent the way it's written or the way my email is sent. I'm giving you an idea to play with. But nobody wants to do it.

I had lunch with a guy from a dealership group up in Pennsylvania, in the Lehigh Valley. It's a sister group of ours. This guy Rex runs fixed ops for the Mercedes store and the Porsche store, and we were talking about some things. One of the things that came up was that people aren't students of the game, right? They don't want to be trained. They don't want to be taught. I told him I blame it on Google. Everyone can just Google things when they want to know something. They don't have to retain it. They can Google it again for free. And he'd never heard me say it, but I said, if it cost five bucks to Google something, people would really only Google what they needed to know. They would think twice about it, and I bet you they'd remember it, right? Because they paid five bucks. And that's the mentality we have now.

We talked once about Blue Oval and Five Star and Signature and Honda's Excel, and all that stuff's twenty, twenty-five years old now, right? It's kind of gone away. And I was thinking about it: when's the last time you heard of anybody using Microsoft Visio? Because that's the program we used, right? I haven't heard that term in twenty-some years.

Steve Shaw: Gantt charts.

Dave Rogers: I just started laughing. The last time I did a process map was when I was doing one of those OEM-mandated programs. So the mindset in everybody, I don't understand it. That's what Rex and I were talking about. What is stopping people from trying to get better? Why wouldn't you want to make more money? Why wouldn't you want to train your people to help them make more money? It just doesn't make any sense to me.

Rails, rules and a bank that doesn't care about your ego 8:29

[Steve Shaw] I'm lost as well. Listen, I've been out on my own now for what, fifteen-plus years, give or take. And when I look back, I was reading some stuff I wrote before, and people said I was kind of an ass, right? I was kind of an asshole, kind of a hard-ass when I ran my store. I was a nice person personally, but we had guidelines. We had a roadmap, and this is what we did. We had rails you had to stay between, and I made no bones about letting you know if you got outside of those guidelines. When you go have a cocktail, I'll be happy to take you out drinking. I'll be happy to have you over to my house, all of that stuff. But between 7 a.m. and 6 p.m., or whatever hours we're open, these are the rules, right?

One of my buddies, a guy named John, was a service advisor. He's now the service manager of an Audi store in LA. He said, "Steve, my bank does not care about my ego," right? "As long as the check cashes, that's all my bank cares about. It doesn't matter how it gets there." So it was just like, these are the rules, this is how we play, and if you're on our team, you play by these rules, right?

This is my manifesto that Steve wrote. It doesn't have the title on the front cover, but inside here are the rules, right? All of the rules we need. It's a wonderful document, and somebody could get it. It's 546 pages on how to manage your car dealership. And all that and fifty cents, well, a thousand bucks, will get you a cup of coffee, because are you going to implement it? Are you going to do something about it? You can read this. And I have a whole series of companion workbooks. You can do it yourself. You don't have to hire me, right?

But I just go, what manager is going to stand out there and say, "These are the rules, ladies and gentlemen. I'm going to coach you through this and this. This is what's going to happen, this is how we're going to get it done"? If they would do it, we all know they would make a shit ton of money. But how did that manager get in place? We brought that manager up. I always look back at the dealer and say, we took a great person and put him in a chair to fail. We took a guy who was a great tech, a great advisor, made him a manager, and he failed, and it's our fault. That's what I said.

Promoting the best tech into a chair to fail 10:54

[Dave Rogers] It is. I've always said the car business is like ancient Egypt. The pharaoh dies and everyone moves up a rung, right? That's how King Tut became pharaoh at fourteen years old. Good chance there of being successful, right? But think about it. That's what we always do in the car business. As far as service managers go, you take the most productive service advisor, and you've taken the most productive tech and moved them up to advisor. We've talked about this before. And I don't mean this as derogatory, but you take somebody who's a very selfish, self-centered individual. That's what made him a good tech. That's what makes him a high producer.

Same thing with a lot of advisors. Their primary skill is not being a team player. The primary skill is being a selfish, greedy SOB. And that's fine, because that's what the job pays, right? That's what makes money. And then all of a sudden you go, "All right, we're going to make you the manager, Steve." Well, now, instead of being a selfish, greedy SOB, you have to be a selfless person, and you have to make your living based on other people's performance, right? Isn't that what managing is? Getting things done through others. And the problem is a lot of people can't adjust to it, or they're not being trained for it, like you said. And I'll say the thing nobody wants to hear: they're not students of the game themselves.

When I had my accident and realized I wasn't going to be able to use my hands to make a living anymore... I was a worker. That's what I did. I worked on a farm. I wasn't cerebral, right? My personality didn't matter when I was a mechanic, although I used to get in trouble because I had a bad attitude. But that's okay, because I was a mechanic. I wasn't a technician, I was a mechanic, right? That's what we called them back then. I was in the trenches doing my job, I had an accident, and then I went to school a little bit and was introduced to multi-level marketing, and there were some self-help books. I got a lot out of reading different books on being a better communicator and learning different things about business. I went down that rabbit hole, and I had to learn. Some of it was The One Minute Manager, things like that. So I had to open my mind.

The collision caused me to do that, and I've been spewing it ever since. Not everybody has that sudden impact that causes them to change pace. I knew my personality was not going to be good for being a writer. I knew you couldn't be a miserable SOB and be up front, right? So I had to learn to like people. I had to learn a little patience. But for some reason people don't have that inside of them, or they don't invest in themselves to learn outside the box. And you're right: who's training them? Who's taking them under their wing? Who's their mentor? Because it doesn't happen naturally. That's the problem.

The trainer is a tool; the manager owns accountability 14:01

[Steve Shaw] Well, think about this as well. Let's just say you're not the go-getter guy, right? You got put in that position. And then your dealer principal, or somebody above you, hires Steve Shaw, or a third-party trainer of some sort, right? We come in, and we will tell you right up front: we're not your accountability. I'm a tool guy, right? I give you tools. I always use the analogy: if your lube tech stopped using his impact gun and went back to hand tools, you'd think he was silly. We're the same thing. We provide tools, right? I'm not the accountability person, unless you hire me to work thirty days in a row, which is probably unreasonable. So I give you a tool, I give your people a tool.

Why do they stop using the tool? Because the manager may or may not have come to class. The manager was too busy. The manager's writing a report, or going down some other road that has zero importance toward selling that job. So the advisor just looks at it as, "I guess it's not that important." It would have been a change for the advisors, so the advisor doesn't do it.

I was having lunch just a couple of days ago, Friday, with a fixed ops director from a big auto group here locally, and a guy who's in the fluid maintenance space. This gentleman was telling me, "I go in every week and talk about fluid sales. How do you sell this, how do I sell this, over and over and over again. I've been going into the same store for two years, saying the same thing to the same people." Simple, very basic three-sentence phrases, word tracks, stuff he probably got from me. And he goes, "I've been going in there for two years, and they're still not saying it." And you've got to go, why? Why won't they? And why won't somebody hold them accountable for doing it? It's insanity.

One reply out of thirty 15:54

[Dave Rogers] Well, again, management versus leadership. Managing people is fundamental to getting things done, right? Listen, it's great to be a leader. Every business needs one. But as a manager, I put a process in place. I need a way to measure whether that process is working. I need some kind of red flag to throw up if people deviate from the process, whether that's a report or whatever it is. It needs to be read, and then you need to circle back around and find out why they deviated. If they deviated because it's a shitty process, then you change the process.

Steve Shaw: Right.

Dave Rogers: If they deviated because they just don't want to follow the rules, then you have a choice to make.

Steve Shaw: Right, then you change the person.

Dave Rogers: You change the person, or you work with them, or you train them, whatever the case may be. But the problem is that requires, and we'll go back to the four-letter word nobody wants to hear, work. It requires some work. Every time we talk about these things, that's what it always boils down to, right? Dave Rogers sends an email from corporate: "Here's what I want you to consider." Instead of everyone taking it and digesting it... I don't know if I talked about this earlier or offline, but take it, digest it, understand what he's trying to say, ask a few questions, make it your own, and then implement the process, or implement the changes. Or let's have a discussion about why you wouldn't want to do that. Don't just forward my email and go, "Here, Rogers wants you to do this shit now." That's just laziness, right?

I recently made something up, my maintenance rant, the six-month intervals and stuff, and I sent it to thirty GMs and thirty service managers, and I got one reply. One. "We're going to do this." Okay, great, I'm looking forward to it. I guarantee you, if I walk into the stores, I'll be lucky to find it printed out somewhere, and if I eavesdrop, I won't hear a goddamn thing. But this is what you get. Why wouldn't you want to do this to make more money? I don't understand it.

Steve Shaw: Exactly. So I go into stores, and we talk about the daily rhythm, the meetings, the daily meeting, this type of thing, right? "Yeah, I talk to my people every day." Do you? And the meeting is exactly what you said: here are your numbers, and they get sent an email with their numbers on it. Nobody fucking reads your email that says, "This was my numbers yesterday," right? So you didn't have a morning meeting. You sent an email out in the morning. That's all you did. There's no review there, there's no good job, bad job, there's no support there. That's you being lazy. You sent a fucking email to your associates, and like you said, how many of them read it? None, maybe one.

Dave Rogers: One out of thirty, right? It's three percent.

Steve Shaw: One out of thirty. Three percent, or 0.3 percent, I don't know, I can't do math. So what good does it do? Why bother? That's one extra step. AI could have done that, and then you could have walked out and had a meeting. It's mind-boggling. It has to go back to the four-letter word. It's work. "I don't want to do it," right?

Pay plan thinking versus investing in people 19:12

[Dave Rogers] And I thought about this in one of the previous podcasts and we didn't mention it. There's also this mentality, general managers mainly, of always concentrating on their pay plan above all else, right? "Is this going to cost me more money? Do I have to sign up for this? How much money is this going to cost me?" There's no evaluation of whether this is an investment in my people, an investment in the future. Like Steve Shaw training. "Well, what's it going to cost me?" Well, listen, it's going to add a million dollars in sales to each of your advisors. How many advisors do you have? You have five? You have five million dollars. I can tell you right now, Steve Shaw training doesn't cost five million dollars a year, right?

You won't spend five thousand dollars to make five million. But I guarantee you you'll sign up for the latest and greatest bullshit that Cox brings your way, or somebody else blows smoke up your ass with. Whoever's hawking some product and offers you free golf or something like that, you'll take advantage of it, right? But you won't invest in your people. You won't spend a thousand dollars. And that's the second hurdle right there. I'm not going to call anybody out by name, but they're out there, and you're out there, because all you think about is your friggin' pay plan.

And there are service managers out there who do the same thing. They only think about their friggin' pay plan, and they don't think about their people getting better and growing. They'd rather save five hundred dollars today instead of making five million dollars later on down the road, which, again, is an insult to what we're doing. It's being small-minded, and it keeps a small income. I always say small mind, small income. That's where you're going to wind up. You're not going to grow.

Steve Shaw: And I think the key to the whole thing is that it's an investment, right? Listen, I invested in my people, I invested in myself, and you invested in yourself. You didn't all of a sudden become Dave Rogers the first week you started reading books. We spend money to grow our business. It is an investment. It's an investment to put a process in place, right? It's a time investment, and over a period of time you're going to see exponentially better results. But people don't want the work. They just don't want the work to make that happen.

Buy-in, and the GM tip 21:23

[Steve Shaw] What drives me even more crazy, and we should probably get out of here, but we could rant for a while: I talk to a dealer, and it's, "My people will never do that. I can't get my manager to do that." And I go, "Then please don't hire me. Because if you can't get him to do it, and he works for you and you sign his check, then I can't get him to do it." I said the other day, and sorry, somebody's going to go off on me: buy-in is bullshit. There's no fucking such thing as buy-in, right? If you have to get somebody to buy in, that means you told him what to do and you have to sell it to him, right? Like I have to get buy-in from a service advisor when I stand up there and teach, because it's not their idea, right?

So if we can't make it the manager's idea, and the manager can't make it their people's idea through communication and conversation, then yeah, buy-in's bullshit. They're not going to do it. We're either partners, and that's what people want these days, partners in growing this business, or just don't do it. Why bother? Why say you're going to do it?

Dave Rogers: That's the part I don't get. Why waste your time, why waste your money and why waste your effort? Just say, "I'm not going to do it." Plain as day.

Steve Shaw: Well, after my rant, and I pissed everybody off, you'd probably better give us a GM tip of the day.

Dave Rogers: Well, the GM tip of the day is you really have to invest in your people. And to piggyback on your last statement, you have to sell it to a certain extent, right? Convincing people to do something, changing their mindset, getting them to do things they don't naturally want to do. There are multiple ways of doing it, but most general managers are from the sales department, and they were good at selling something. Just take that skill set you have and find the value, find the need, find the hot button of your individual employees. And honestly, it starts with your management staff. If you can't get them to buy in, you ain't got a chance in hell of getting the employees to do it. Not a chance in hell, right?

Steve Shaw: Well, can I say, if I was the leader, the GM, the dealer, I could identify a problem: "We're just not making X. Our CSI sucks, our profit's down," or whatever. "Hey, Mr. Service Manager, how are we going to fix that? What do we need? How can we get it done? What are your thoughts?" And let the manager come up with his ideas. I would call that as good as buy-in as you're going to get. "What do you think about training? Would that be a good idea? How could we train our people? Would you like to do it? Would you like to get outside help? How would you see this happening?" That's the most basic level of it, right? I get it. It's not just that simple, but it kind of is, right?

But if my dealer never told me he wanted to make, you know, 30% net to gross, then how would I know? I think breaking even is fine, or losing money's fine, or whatever. If you don't tell me I need to make X, and I'm not making X, I guess all is well. Why would I try harder? I'm making a big fat check every month. If you don't give me the vision, that we need X, Y and Z, the standard, life is good. So there probably needs to be a little fire there too. A little heat.

Dave Rogers: I agree a hundred percent. That's part of the job of being a manager, a general manager. You've got to find their hot buttons. You've got to light that fire. And again, use your sales skills. Sell the goddamn thing. Mean it, though. Do it honestly, do it earnestly, do it from a position of caring, not just from working your damn pay plan. Because people read through that. Everybody who works in a dealership knows whether the GM makes a decision based on his pay plan or because he really gives a shit. And we've got to get out of that mentality, because I think it's more pervasive than most people understand.

I think we hit the twenty-five-minute mark, so we have to cut this one short. Listen, real quick: if you listen to the podcast, please subscribe. I know Bryan's going to do a disclaimer afterwards, but put some comments in. If you listen on Spotify, or watch on YouTube, whatever, put some comments in there. Those comments go a long way. We listen to them, and then we find out people like Nancy actually love us, which is great.

Steve Shaw: Exactly. It's funny, I do run into people in my travels who actually listen to us, so that's pretty awesome.

Dave Rogers: It is great to hear.

Steve Shaw: Great to hear. Looking forward to it. Talk to you next week. Later.

Dave Rogers: All right, brother. Have a good one, man.