A Facebook Post Turned Into This?!

"Well, I never hung up on you" 0:00

Steve Shaw: Here we are again, Dave Rogers. Welcome to Fixed Ops Focus, everybody. Dave Rogers, what's on your mind tonight?

Dave Rogers: How you doing, Steve? Everything's good, I hope.

Steve Shaw: Everything is spectacular here. It sure has gotten hot, and I can't believe how much my phone is ringing off the wall, not only with dealers, but we're getting comments in our comment section. How about that? So I've got to read a comment, since we're on the topic. A guy named Mike Both sent a comment about his craziest car story. I'm not going to read it word for word, but this is actually pretty funny. It ties into your rant, it ties into training, it sort of ties into everything. Mike says he had a customer once who never changed his oil in 42,000 miles. He came in for some after-warranty repairs, and Mike told the customer, "Well, we recommended an oil change to you throughout the life of your vehicle, and you never bought it." And the guy goes, "Well, I never hung up on you." So since he didn't hang up, the dealership was just being weak, and it's their responsibility, so they need to fix the car.

Dave Rogers: You know, he's got a point. Maybe he should be a trainer. Mike was actually a service manager for years. He worked in South Jersey with me for a short period of time, and he probably has a lot more crazy stories than that. I believe good old Mike is retired. He's one of the few guys in this business who actually survived long enough to retire, and now when I see him on Facebook, he's traveling the world with his wife. So congratulations and shout-out to Mike. He's one of the few who made it out alive. You've got to give him credit for that. With all his years, we could probably have him on and let him tell story after story.

The C word: consequences 2:03

Steve Shaw: There are some great stories out there. But what's funny is you rant about this all the time, and I hate to go down this path again, but we might as well. If I tell you to do an oil change and you say no, there are consequences. I could put myself in the customer's shoes and say, "Well, you didn't tell me I had to," because in our training company, we don't allow people to say "recommend." All this person did was recommend, recommend, recommend an oil change, and the customer said no, no, no. Nobody ever told him the camshaft could snap. Nobody ever told him the consequences. I call that the C word.

And when I talk about consequences with advisors in training and say, "You've got to educate the customer on the C word, the consequences," my God, I can't even begin to tell you what people think. It's like the worst thing ever to say, "Are you aware of the consequences of not changing your oil?" Like that's taboo. It's mind-blowing that we can't say that. There are consequences for your actions.

Dave Rogers: Well, we can. We obviously can. It's just that people choose not to. I had a conversation recently with a general manager and a service manager about what's different from this year to last year. And this wasn't my saying. This was the GM, who isn't a fixed ops guy and will readily tell you he can't find the service department unless I leave a trail of popcorn. When I was showing him some of the stats, the declined scheduled maintenance, a hundred alignments recommended by the technicians and 87 of them declined, he stated out loud that the advisors are just sitting there waiting for the big warranty job. They're taking the easy money. They don't have those difficult conversations with customers, which is part of the problem right now.

I heard somewhere that there's loyalty, which is to the brand, and there's retention, which is to the service department or the dealership. I think that's the way you have to look at it. I don't think customers are loyal to a dealer. You can retain them, and they might love you, but people fall in love with and are loyal to the brand. With brands like Toyota, Mercedes and JLR, these people are fanatics. If you tell them that changing the oil is required for the vehicle to operate properly, and the consequence is that they'll be stuck on the side of the road, you're not lying. That's not a scare tactic.

When I first started in the business, I had a service writer I worked with who, if a customer declined brakes, would ask them, "Where do you live?" They'd tell him. "All right, I've just got to make sure I keep my wife and family out of your neighborhood, because when you go crashing through that next stop sign, I don't want to be anywhere near you." That's the way he used to sell work. I don't think you have to be that way. But you're right about the consequences of not changing the oil, which is the simplest thing.

I think Todd said it best today. If your doctor told you that you could come back every five years for a blood test, but one year is really the number, and you followed the five-year advice, that's stupid. You wouldn't do it. Your insurance pays for one a year, so why wouldn't you take them up on it? If I'm the doctor, or the technician or the advisor, and I tell you that you should change your oil every six months, every six or seven thousand miles, most people aren't going to say no if you give them a good reason.

Two crashes and $5,000 in one week 6:18

Steve Shaw: I know, it's crazy. Listen, I was training at a very prominent, very large dealer group out of the Midwest not too long ago, and this exact same thing happened two times in the week I was there. And the advisor had the audacity to argue with me. He said, "Well, Steve, I like to show people things. I like to take the customer back and show them. And if they don't want it..." I said, "Okay, but did you create a need? That's our whole thing. Did the customer know they needed it? Did you let them know there would be consequences for not doing it?" He goes, "Well, I showed them." I swear to God, he kept pointing to the brakes: "I took them to the car and showed them their brakes were worn out." And the customer drove away.

That customer drove a mile or two from the dealership and crashed the car into a curb, $1,800 later, less than five or ten minutes after leaving the dealership. And of course the dealer paid for the brake repair and the repairs to the customer's vehicle. A similar story happened at another one of their stores the same week, because they were using poor words: "I recommend... no, I really recommend you get this done. I strongly recommend..." And these advisors were arguing with me that they did a good job, yet two cars crashed, to the tune of about five grand to the dealer in one week, at two separate stores in the same auto group.

They kept hanging their hat on doing it right. I said, "Well, if you did it right, your dealer would not have a five-thousand-dollar repair." But they refused to talk about the consequences. I said, "That is the job, bro. If you don't like that, then you're in the wrong role. You're in the wrong role if you can't say that to your customer." It doesn't make people happy, and it doesn't make them your best friend, but that's the job.

The customer who skipped every oil change on a lease 8:27

Dave Rogers: It is, and I think that's the difference between a professional advisor and somebody who's just stopping in and not making a career out of it. You have a lot of advisors out there who are great. They enjoy what they do. It's a career for them. We've got to have a couple of guys on pretty soon about what makes a career advisor and why they do what they do. But look, I tell the story: post-COVID, you couldn't buy a new car. There was no supply. A customer had purchased their leased Pathfinder. They'd bought it at a different store, in a different state, but broke down near us and got towed in. The engine was seized. Nissan wanted copies of the oil changes, because there was nothing in the national history. Nissan has a national history where you can see all the work that was done, and there were no oil changes. And she said, "Nobody ever told me to do an oil change."

It was actually bought at the same dealership where Mike and I worked at one point. She'd bought out the lease, forty-two thousand miles, the engine blew up, and her extended warranty wasn't going to cover it. People think, "It's a lease. I don't have to take care of it. I can ignore it." It doesn't work that way. Todd said today, when we were talking about leases, "Listen, I bought out my last lease because my wife didn't want a new car. I'm glad I took care of it. I changed the oil every six months on it. Can you imagine riding around in a car for three years, ignoring it, and then buying it? That would be stupid." And that's what people are doing.

He and I talked about competitive pricing, and the A and B services at Mercedes. I don't think you should tell somebody who calls that a B service is nine hundred and fifty dollars. That's stupid. Our services are 250, 300 bucks, whatever the case may be: an oil change, a tire rotation, a multi-point, setting the tire pressures, topping off the fluids. And I asked Todd, "If the customer does three extra oil changes in three years, would you give them a thousand more for their trade?" And then I went into my rant, our rant, about the conspiracy theory. I asked him, "When's the last time the Mercedes rep beat you up about selling their VSCs?" He's never had that conversation, because they don't want to. They'll sell prepaid maintenance all day long, but they won't have that conversation, because they know it's on the dealer's books.

Steve Shaw: You know this more than anybody, looking at the books, and I know you're heavily involved in overseeing your dealers' reinsurance plan. I was on a call today with a dealer group, looking at the dollars coming back into the service department through reinsurance in literally ninety days. This auto group was at close to half a million dollars in 90 days. That's the money these insurance policies are paying out, in a very small window. And I'm scratching my head: what's going to happen over the course of a year? That money gets shifted out of reinsurance into the service department's pocket, but then we lose the gross and the net on it, all the expenses. We're losing a ton of money. I think that's a big part of your argument. And the manufacturers go, "It didn't cost us anything. That's a million dollars of the dealer's money. Kudos to the dealer for taking care of that."

Dave Rogers: I think it's a good revenge tactic on the manufacturers' part, to be honest with you, because for years we didn't sell their policies. Somebody figured it out: "Let them keep their reinsurance. Let's see what happens at eighty thousand miles." We had that conversation with the Infiniti customer. At 80,000 miles his timing chain jumped. He followed the book, but I don't think he followed the right recommendation, and I told him that. We wound up trading him out of the car. I felt bad for the guy. But people don't understand that the oil thickens up and gets sludgy, and it clogs up the tensioner. All of a sudden the timing chain tensioner can't work, the chain starts flopping around, it jumps and it causes all kinds of havoc. It's mind-boggling to me, and I love that Mike brought it up, because it happens more than just once. It's happening every day in somebody's service department.

Steve Shaw: There's no question about that. I bought my first Wrangler, well, I leased it. It was a 2016 base model, crank windows, you name it. I had the Jeep Wave program. But in my head, I'd always wanted a Wrangler, and I was going to keep it. So I did way above best care. I bought every fluid service and everything you could do. I'd balance my tires at every rotation, do the engine oil additive, this and that. All they had to do was say, "Hey, this is on the schedule for your car," and I'd say yes, yes, yes. If they didn't ask me, I'd ask for it, like you'd do on your Hemi Charger. And they'd say, "Steve, why are you spending money on your truck? It's a lease." They were trying to talk me out of spending money on my car. I'm here to give you money, and our advisors are turning money away.

Measure and coach every day 14:01

Steve Shaw: I looked this up today, because I had to do a presentation to an auto group, and I was looking at training, metrics and measurements. The difference between measuring and coaching every day versus coaching once a week is astronomical. If you measure every day and coach every day, it's light years. I'm talking hundreds of thousands of dollars for a dealership. And I can't get a manager to tell me a good reason why they won't do it, because there isn't one.

Dave Rogers: There isn't a good reason. It's busy work, whatever the case may be. Everybody has their ideas of what their day is like. I was talking to one of the techs in the shop today about the video. In addition to the video showing the customer underneath the car and what it needs, you've got to tell them why. People don't know. Like you said earlier, "My brakes are low. What does that mean?" If your doctor says your arteries are 60% clogged, you think, "Okay, I've got 40% to go. I'm good." You have to put it in context for these people. And either the advisors don't know this stuff because they've never been students of the game, or they're lazy. Todd's point was that they're just waiting for the next big, fat recall to come through the door.

And you wind up paying these advisors good money. I've never been one to pay them just on customer pay. I don't want them treating the warranty customer or the internal customer like a red-headed stepchild. Treat all the customers the same. You see a car, cha-ching, there's money in that car somewhere along the way. But they're turning that philosophy against me, so you almost have to tie their bonuses to closing ratios, something tangible to what they're selling, and not just some arbitrary number like CSI. Because they're definitely not selling. This store has a 35% closing rate. And I showed them another store with almost the same dollars recommended in the same short period of time, fifteen days, through the sixteenth of the month, that got almost a hundred thousand dollars more in completed sales, just by having a higher closing ratio.

What are they doing? They're T.O.-ing. There's somebody talking to the customer. If it's brakes, tires or batteries, they're not letting the customer go without a second or third shot at it. But it's a lot for one manager to be doing. You have to have a team of people. You could spend your whole day trying to T.O. stuff if you have advisors that bad. The topic just keeps coming up. I'm trying to explain to a Mercedes guy that we should have menus, and he's looking at me like, "Really?" I've been saying this for 10 years. Haven't you been listening? But now that it's a little slow, people are feeling it. I say there's one year's worth of cars missing from the road over the last six years with the decrease in sales. For every dealer, one year's worth of sales is missing from the last five years. That's a big number, man.

Retaining technicians and the one bad apple 18:15

Steve Shaw: It is. It's crazy. You could go all kinds of ways down this path. Maybe, like in Mike's story, the customer didn't buy it because they didn't believe it and felt like they were getting ripped off. You could say it's the manufacturer's fault. We talked before about the technicians. I heard a statistic today that over the next year, 70,000 techs are going to retire and only 35,000 are going to graduate. So where are we going to get people? And what would possess me to stay with you? Times are tough right now. The good dealers out there are figuring out how to retain their people. But if you don't care about me or my needs, and you don't care whether I make a paycheck, and you talk to me once a week, "Here's your paycheck, bro," and I say, "I don't have 40 hours. I've got 30. I can't feed my family," and you don't care enough to talk to me about that, I'm going to leave. Same for an advisor who isn't selling enough.

That one comment could spawn so many different conversations for a dealership. But as a guy who studies human behavior: if we don't take care of our people and make sure they get a paycheck, we're not going to have people to work on cars down the road. I hate my Wagoneer stories, well, I love them, I think they're hysterical, but we know this is happening every single day. I told a group today about a prominent CDJR group here locally. They're not my client, and I don't train them. They may have their own trainers. They're not just fooling around. But their people are not getting it done. It's not happening.

Dave Rogers: I think the thing everybody misses is that it only takes one bad individual, a service advisor, technician, salesperson or F&I manager, to drive customers away. You just have to have one person who's not an enthusiast and doesn't believe in the process. I screwed up one of my teeth today and called the dentist I've been using. I've probably spent over thirty thousand dollars there in the last few years. The first thing they asked for was my birth date. I gave it to them, and they said, "Are you Mark?" "No, I'm Dave." I guess two people in the office have the same birthday. No big deal. Then she said, "Did you schedule a teeth cleaning?" I said, "Yes, but I have a problem with one of my teeth." "I'm sorry, I couldn't hear you." My phone had four bars, but I'm driving, so I think, okay, it's me. I said, "Yes, but I have a problem with one of my teeth." "I can't hear anything." Click. She hung up.

Just for giggles, I sat there to see if they'd call me back. They haven't called me back. Most people in that office are always very nice and pleasant, but I got that one person today who I guess just had better things to do with her life. She had my record up. She knew my cell phone. She could have called me back, but she chose not to. That's all it takes. And I challenge anybody listening who owns a car dealership, or is a general manager or a service manager, or even if you're not in the car business but you own a business: there's somebody on your front line who should not be on your front line. They shouldn't be answering the phone, and they shouldn't be talking to customers. I'm just telling you.

Steve Shaw: That's it. What cracked me up today, 15 minutes before you texted me, I was headed to the grocery store, waiting on a phone call. I don't usually pick up numbers I don't know on my personal phone, but this was a local number, and I said, "How can I help you, sir?" He says, "I'm with ABC Roofing," or whatever roofing company it was. "I'm going to be in your area inspecting roofs. Would you like a roof inspection?" At first it annoyed the crap out of me, like, leave me alone. I said, "Thanks, bro. I've got a brand-new house. I'm good." But after I hung up, I chuckled inside: kudos to that guy. That guy is a hustler. He's out there trying to grow his business. I don't know if he's the owner or a minion for somebody, but he's out there cold-calling. "Can I just stop by and look at your roof?" He needs business, so he's willing to listen to knuckleheads like me. And I thought, God, we need that guy in our business: somebody who actually cares enough to want to sell something.

Dave Rogers: I get probably 10 calls or texts a month from tree guys, landscaping people, whatever, asking, "Can we stop by, take a look at your place and give you an estimate?" I think the same thing: kudos to them for being aggressive. I don't know how they get my number, but they certainly know where I live, because I see those trucks in my neighborhood that same week. It's that scratching and clawing, wanting it, being competitive. Unfortunately, a lot of advisors and managers aren't like that. We talked about it a little with Ed, going to the next level, being hungry and trying to get better and better. There are a lot of very complacent people in this business. A lot of times we're forced to pay more money than we want to, and we're paying it to the wrong people sometimes. It's coming back to bite us, because we just don't have a lot of people out there who are hungry like that guy. And too many people answer the phone like my dentist's office.

Steve Shaw: That guy is the one who should get paid a hundred grand or more and be our closer, our T.O. guy. Everybody else can be a process guy and just walk around cars.

Dave Rogers: I agree a hundred percent. We talk about stories like the one Mike brought up, and I guess people would rather deal with the customer who just goes away and doesn't come back. That's where loyalty and retention come in. You're a Jeep enthusiast, but there may come a point in your life where you stop buying Jeeps because you get tired of the service at certain dealers. If I'm a Mercedes enthusiast, or a Dodge enthusiast, and I do everything by the book and the engine blows up at 60,000 miles, I might not be an enthusiast anymore, especially if it happens more than once. I was talking to a guy about some JLR cars and older Land Rovers that have been jumping timing for 15 years. I said, "Yeah, but you've been recommending maintenance once a year for 15 years, and now it's once every two years. Did anybody ever learn the lesson and tell the customer?" Their engines are blowing up at 80,000 miles, and maybe they'll stop buying the brand. You're not doing anybody any favors.

People buy from people who tell them the facts 26:26

Steve Shaw: You're right. I'll let you wrap us up, but I've got to tell this story. I probably told it a long time ago. I had a forty-foot Jayco with a Cummins diesel engine that cost fifty thousand dollars. I took it into the RV dealership over here, and they said, "We can save you a little money on your oil." I said, "Bro, that engine costs fifty thousand. I don't know anything about diesels, but I know a diesel pusher engine has got to cost 50 grand. Please don't save me any money. Please give me the best protection, because I'm going to be driving over the Rockies someday, and I certainly don't want a problem with my diesel because Steve Shaw was cheap. 'If you'd just put the Rotella in instead of the other shit oil, you'd have been fine, Steve.'" I bought a diesel pusher. Make it last a long time. I think we've got to get into that mindset, especially right now.

Dave Rogers: Because I think it's more important to some of these people to be friends, to have Steve like them, instead of telling Steve the truth. That's what it boils down to a lot of times. People think customers don't want to hear the truth, or that they shouldn't say it. I think most people want to hear the truth. There are just a lot of people out there who are afraid to tell it because they're insecure, or they want you to like them. It's stupid.

My own story: I told the guy to change the spark plugs in my Charger at 50,000 miles, and he said, "Well, they're hundred-thousand-mile plugs." I said, "No, they're not." We're arguing, and I said, "Listen, have your tech pull a spark plug. If it's good, I'll pay him to put it back in. Otherwise, call me when you pull it out." Of course it needed spark plugs. He said, "Why do you want to do them so early?" I said, "My car's ten years old. Who's paying for the catalytic converter? Me. It's three thousand dollars." That's what's going to go bad if it's not burning the fuel and it's dumping into the exhaust, and it's not covered under warranty anymore. "Holy moly, I never thought of it that way."

We could probably go on and bore our audience with my rant. But I honestly believe this is very important. When Cindy and I did the podcast the first time, I liked her title, A Million Miles. We don't get these cars with a million miles on them anymore, but there are people out there with two, three hundred thousand miles on their cars, and I guarantee you they're changing the oil more frequently. We don't have the corkboard in the hallway anymore with the Polaroids of the hundred-thousand-mile club, two hundred thousand, three hundred thousand. You know why? We've chased those people away from the dealership because we refuse to change the oil more than once a year. They went somewhere else that was willing to say, "Yes, and right now. I'll do that oil change."

Steve Shaw: Well, I'll tell you this, and I said it last time. When I first started training, I wanted people to like me. As a newbie trainer, I thought, "If the advisors like me, I'll get called back." And then one day I went, "I don't really give a shit if you like me or not." Once I figured it out: I have a message, and my job is to deliver it to you. You're going to like me a lot better when your check is three, four, five times bigger than it is right now. Like me or don't, it doesn't matter. My job is to give you tools. You can think I'm a no-good SOB while I'm there, but come payday, if you do what I say, you'll have a big, fat check. My business is a thousand times better than it ever was when I wanted people to like me. It's got nothing to do with being liked. That famous saying, "People buy from people they like and trust"? Bullshit. People buy from people who tell them the facts. That's how it works. That's my rant for the day. You'd probably better wrap this up before I piss everybody off.

GM tip: ask AI how to make a car last 150,000 miles 30:52

Dave Rogers: I'm going to use a true story from today, from a general manager who doesn't know service and parts very well. While we were discussing maintenance, severe driving and six-month intervals, I challenged him, and I challenge everybody to do this: go to ChatGPT, or whatever AI you use, and ask it, "What is the best maintenance schedule for my vehicle if I want to keep it for a hundred and fifty thousand miles?" He was shocked that it said to change the oil every six months or 7,500 miles. I think he picked a Mercedes G-Wagon. It mentions the severe driving schedule, and that the frequency of maintenance should be accelerated because of cold starts, stop-and-go and condensation building up in the engine, all the stuff I always rant about. It says it right there in ChatGPT. And he's shocked. "I never knew this." All these years in the business, and he never knew it because he never looked it up.

So if anybody doesn't believe me, go look it up. It also had a caveat: if you're leasing a car, don't bother changing the oil twice a year. That's kind of what ChatGPT said. But listen, if you're not from fixed ops, you weren't a mechanic, and I understand not everybody has mechanical aptitude, if you're in this business and dealing with customers, you need to learn at least the fundamentals of mechanics and understand the consequences of not doing what we say to do. That's my tip of the day for the GMs: use your AI tools, man. They're out there.

Steve Shaw: Ding, ding, ding. Use your AI tools. I've got to have that bell ringing whenever we say AI. Dave, thank you so much, and thank you, everybody. Glad you stuck with us through both of our rants. I challenge you guys: go to ChatGPT and tell me what it says. And if anything we say is BS, let us know. If you do it, I'll read it on the air. I'll chat with you later, Dave.

Dave Rogers: Have a good one.