25 Aug #10: Top Dog Service Manager Challenge Finalists, Awards and Winner
This year, we issued a $50,000 Service Manager Challenge at our Annual Top Dog Event and the response was overwhelming. Of every service manager who entered, on average in the last year, CSI is up 9.20%, net to gross is up 13.70% and ELR is up $23.30 which is amazing. In this Service Drive Revolution Special Edition, Gary and I sit down with 5 of our 6 Finalists to discuss their road to Top Dog. But before we share their stories, we wanted to share some of our favorite memories from the 2016 Better Your Best $50k Service Manager Challenge and the Annual Top Dog Event.
Finalist #1: Adam Hrubec
We begin with Adam Hrubec. When I came on to help Adam’s dealership he was working as a technician and absolutely killing it. He was even named Top Tech in the country and awarded a trip to Thailand. Soon, he was put on the short list for potential service managers, despite his actuary aspirations. (What even is that?) Adam’s journey is a tribute to how important your mentality is on the road to success. After becoming a service manager who had no experience as a service advisor, he felt the substantial heat from the advisors. Of course, initially there was a significant learning curve but Adam pushed himself to fulfill the position he’d been promoted to. As Adam puts it “you can’t lead people without first gaining their respect. And if I was going to gain their respect, I needed to be knowledgeable of my new position and demonstrate a passion for the work”.
Adam is of the rare breed of guys who’s good with numbers and has a winning personality, a rarity indeed. He took to our Excel Spreadsheets like a fat kid to cake. Adam came up with the ingenious idea to create a new component for the Missed Opportunity Report that measures what has mechanically been sold on the car. This idea came to him after finding himself in similar conversations with all of his service advisors. Invariably, service advisors would be focusing on selling hours to customers while neglecting to sell maintenance. So, this new component now easily tracks the mechanical work sold. He then used the report as a tool to leverage performance. Kudos Adam, kudos.
Finalist #2: Jeff Spencer
Our next Finalist is fellow nerf gun aficionado, Jeff Spencer. After going through previous service training, which proved unsuccessful, Jeff had about given hope on the entire idea of training or at the very least consultants. But once he saw some gems of mine on YouTube, he bought into our unique form of training immediately, particularly focusing on creating a stellar customer experience. Jeff has a tip for all of you looking to revolutionize your drive: “You don’t eat the whole elephant at once, just one bite at a time”.
Jeff began by setting up his maintenance menu and then slowly introducing new element. Overall it took Jeff roughly 90 days to put in place the Chris Collins Inc techniques and immediately had a record breaking 3 months. The service advisors started seeing tangible results and are continuing those results, mostly due to Gamification. These games enable accountability to sneak up on the service advisors without them even noticing. Jeff was making such a splash, the GM even has him helping out the Sales Manager to turn around the sales department. Jeff is a big picture guy; he knows the more cars sold means more new customers for his service department. Way to spread the love, bro.
Finalist #3: JD Harwell
We move on next to my bearded comrade, JD Harwell. JD had the classic Oprah “aha moment” after first being introduced to our Chris Collins Inc techniques at one of our Coaching Groups. Before even returning home to his dealership, JD was already taking steps to change his alignment prices. JD even took it a step further to implement a good, better, best options for alignments.
His brilliant idea is as follows: Standard alignments sold for $139 with a warranty of 12 months or 15,000 miles with a clause for “potholed” a reduced alignments of $89.95 is offered. 3 year alignments (to take primarily take care of all of the leased vehicles) is $169.95 with similar parameters. And finally Lifetime Alignments which are good for as long as the customer owns the car for $199.95. JD has been selling Lifetime Alignments like crazy, his best month selling 200 of those bad boys.
For JD, the biggest takeaway from our coaching groups was that he actually had to start reading to become the leader he wanted to be. His most instrumental book is a Service Drive Revolution favorite: Jocko Willink’s Extreme Ownership: How U.S. navy SEALs Lead and Win. It illustrated that it’s not necessarily the team, but having a leader who motivates the team that creates a clear path to success. JD says Jocko’s book “ignited a fire that he had to be the best he could be, not just for himself but for his team”. All for one and one for all, like a natural born leader.
Finalist #4: Rocky Barnes
Our next finalist is Dallas Cowboy fan (it’s my rotten luck to be surrounded by Cowboy fans), Rocky Barnes. Working with Rocky was wonderful, he was game for anything. I can’t undermine the amount of hard work Rocky put in to launch our program, but it’s been blue skies ever since. In total, it took Rocky roughly 2 months of preparing for the launch which Rocky says were the toughest 2 months of his entire career. Not just in terms of physical work but the psychology of it all. As a leader he had to hold his team together to change and adapt as one, from service advisors to the technicians. And after the launch, it gets even more hectic.
Rocky’s tip to specifically increase CSI and increase sales: “It’s all about your processes and accountability. Accountability being the main factor.” Gamification provided Rocky with the tools needed to hold service advisors accountable, which in turn made him more accountable as a manager. It’s creating excitement among the advisors that really pushes the department up. Rocky accredits his immediate buy in and anxiousness to see his store grow to his success. Rocky has been at his store for 9 years and has consistently shown a rate of growth, but is now capturing his full potential. Talk about a rockstar.
And finally this year’s Top Dog $50K Service Manager Winner: Matt Eschliman.
Matt’s essay particularly got to me as he was clearly conflicted with the process. Matt’s been in the industry for 17 years and had already been through the ringer with previous service “consultants”. (By the way, “consultant” is a term I despise based, in heavy part, by the industry stigma that accompanies it. You know what you call a consultant? A guy in between jobs.) One of the biggest obstacles for Matt was overcoming increasing prices. But after financial statement training and seeing where the pricing strategies were coming from, he was able to distinguish the difference between being competitive and maintenance.
He went on to reprice everything, put in place a labor grid, began training on maintenance, and implementing Gamification to keep the ball rolling in the right direction. Over the following months, Matt saw tremendous growth and his service department team go all in the green. A source of continued frustration for Matt has been his CSI and after fully integrating our techniques, he saw a complete CSI transformation. Matt’s service department has seen more responses in the past 3 months than any quarter prior. But wait- he’s not finished yet. Matt feels like his dealership is only 10% of the way to fulfilling their potential. And by observing Matt’s dealership this past year, they have nothing but great things in front of them.
The idea behind the $50K challenge and our passion is to help service managers understand where their focus should be to see the improvements they desire. Any training is a leap of faith to some extent. But in an industry that regularly under trains and neglects service managers, a leap of faith is necessary. As you can see, our process are simple but require plenty of hard work. It isn’t easy. But look at what a leap of faith and some hard work will get you?! A $50K bonus. We commend everyone who submitted a packet for consideration. We encourage all of you to keep up to positive momentum and we’ll see you at Top Dog for the 2017 $50,000 Service Manager Challenge! Set your drive up to win today!
PS: A special shout out to our absentee Finalist Doug Settle who was unable to appear on the podcast. You were missed and keep up the good work! (Did you get your hat?)
Selected Episode Links
Book Ego is the Enemy by Ryan Holiday
Book Pitch Anything by Oren Klaff
Book Extreme Ownership: How U.S. navy SEALs Lead and Win by Jocko Willink and Leif Babin
Book The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership: Follow Them and People Will Follow You by John C. Maxwell
Book #AskGaryVee: One Entrepreneur’s Take on Leadership, Social Media, and Self-Awareness by Gary Vaynerchuck
Time Stamped Show Notes
[00:28] Gary Made It!
[01:35] Millennials Aren’t Getting Their Hands Dirty
[03:08] $50K Service Manager Challenge Stats
[04:02] Finalist Adam Hrubec
[08:50] Missed Opportunity Report
[11:48] Finalist Jeff Spencer
[23:58] Chariot of Glory[16:07] Finalist JD Harwell
[25:30] Finalist Rocky Barnes
[30:02] Consultants Are Guys In Between Jobs
[31:46] Winner Matt Eschliman
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