Can I be honest here? Nobody works to give it all away. The expectation is that you work hard to make a living; to support your family’s needs and, hopefully, have a little extra at the end of the month to kick back and relax a bit.

When it comes to a culture of giving, it’s understandable that you might scoff at a community outreach event or a giving your time off to charitable events. But like many things in business, it’s about perception by others of your actions and an opportunity to refocus, not about the event itself.

What Good Comes of Community Outreach?

Your dealership may be involved in an annual visit to a soup kitchen, or a drive at Christmas for kids’ toys. Your actions, no matter how you feel about it, benefit the people on the receiving end. And that’s a good thing, isn’t it?

But there’s more to a culture of giving at the professional level than that. When you’re involved in charitable activities, two things happen.

You Give Your Dealership a Good Name

It doesn’t directly put money in your pocket. It costs you valuable time and a few bucks as well. When you contribute to a culture of giving back to your community, your sacrifice is less about you, only partially about your community, and mostly about improving your dealership’s perceived standing in the community. Yes, that sounds callous.

What’s in it for you? It’s alright to ask what you’ll get out of a community outreach event, especially if it’s work-related. When your dealership takes part in a public event that benefits your neighborhood or a specific cause, it boosts your social media presence, your visibility in the community, and puts a positive spin on your store.

The benefits are most important if you’ve been plagued with negative issues recently. Have you been slammed on Google reviews or Yelp? Is your Facebook page littered with negative comments? It’s time to do something positive and uplifting to change how your store looks.

You Receive a Change of Perspective

It’s that warm and fuzzy feeling, but at a professional level. Doing something good for people in need, or simply a good deed in your community has a profound impact on your outlook on life. What has been fully self-centered (that’s not a horrible thing, necessarily) gets shifted to let other people become the focus. You’ll begin to see how good you really have it, from a great work environment, a cohesive team, a consistent and substantial income, and even your health.

That simple change of perspective may not last long, but it can have an effect on your work life. For that brief period of time, you may begin to change how you do business. You might consider going above and beyond in your customer service, you may take an extra moment to ask a distraught service customer if you can help. It might only be a small thing like looking customers in the eye and smiling.

It’s All About You

Again, it might sound callous, but at work it is all about you. If you’re manning the barbecue for a Saturday sale, flipping burgers, it’s a chance to make contact with customers and drum up some leads. If you’re answering phones at a Radiothon in the mall, wear your work name badge so people know where to find you.

This applies to every position in the dealership, none withstanding.

• If you’re the GM or the dealer principal, you should be involved visibly. You should make sure your dealership’s branding is all over the promotional material and you have demo vehicles displayed at the event.
• If you’re a salesperson or a sales manager, have your cards with you. You never know when someone is ready to buy a vehicle, or knows someone who needs a new car.
• If you’re in the service or parts department, wear your uniform and nametag. Look the part and engage people. Remember, if they are visiting your store in any capacity, there’s a good chance you’ll run into them in the service drive.
• If you’re a lot jockey, a lube tech, or a wash bay technician, greet people and smile. Be outgoing – this could be your opportunity to show management your true colors and possibly move up in the world.

Great things happen when a whole dealership gets behind a community outreach event or sponsors a charity, a food drive, or a toy drive. It benefits the recipients, but don’t forget to make the event benefit you professionally as well.

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the average person holds 11.7 jobs between the ages of 18 and 48. That’s an average tenure of just under 31 months per job; hovering around two and a half years. Can you make your department run efficiently if you have each position becoming vacant every 31 months? Probably not.

In a dealership environment, it takes months of training and experience to get up to speed. In a department of 30 people, you’re on the prowl to fill a vacancy once per month. Undoubtedly, you have better things to do with your time than constantly tapping into the HR department for applicants, interviews, and sorting out bad hires. Wouldn’t you rather focus on finetuning the sales on your smooth-running ship than plugging holes in the hull?

It takes some planning today, but you can minimize your employee churn. Many employees take a job to get a foot in the door, expecting opportunity for advancement. If it’s never offered or discussed, they’ll become restless and leave. As part of a successful management team, you need to know where each of your staff members wants to end up in one year, five years, and even ten years.

Putting a plan into action will solidify your team with good people and reduce the times you’re sorting through resumes.

Discover Each Employee’s Career Goals

You should be completing performance evaluations with every staff member, right? When you do, it’s a great opportunity to find out where that staff member wants to be down the road. Are they looking to move up the ladder quickly? What is their ‘dream job’ at the dealership? How can you help them get there? Or is this just a job in the meantime, or a position they’re content to perform for the foreseeable future?

You need to know each person’s trajectory. In fact, make yourself a spreadsheet and categorize where all your staff members are headed. Whether it’s management, ownership, or to a different industry, knowing where each person is headed, and how many are taking the same path, will help you plan for the future.

Assess Your Deficiencies

With your whole team plotted out on a spreadsheet, take a look at the positions that don’t have someone coming up through the ranks. Of course, the entry level positions like cashiers, wash bay technicians, and service drive greeters and valets won’t have a long list of names waiting, but the others should.

If you have positions that can’t be filled in-house when a vacancy opens up, you have a deficiency. These deficiencies are harmful two-fold: they prevent you from managing because you’re focused on hiring, and they are unproductive while a new team member gets up to speed.

With deficiencies, you can either bring new people on board who will cross-train for those positions when a need arises, or you can coach another staff to change their trajectory – but only if it fits!

Connect the Dots

Now that you have your goals and deficiencies worked out, it’s time to put boots to dirt. As a manager, you can keep your staffs’ eyes from wandering to other workplaces by giving them a task to focus on. Plan out a career path with each one, which is revisited annually. Make it a visual career path, written down or sketched out on paper, so it becomes real to the staff. But that’s not where it stops.

Pair each person with someone in the next level position to learn the ropes and find out what the position is all about. Then once that level has been achieved, do the same thing with the next position, then the next, until the career goal has been achieved, the goal changes, or the employee moves on.

What’s the Point?

We all know the statistics, so why put in the time and effort of creating career paths? It’s because the tenure at each position will be longer when you do so, and you can prevent good people from taking their leave too early. And that’s not even taking into consideration the financial costs of training new hires – that’s another topic altogether.

In every industry, the winds are shifting. The products are evolving, but that’s not what it’s about. The level of service that’s given is now the measuring stick – the ever-climbing standard that earns and loses you clients. And personally – managers and fixed operations directors especially – are you equipped to tackle the change?

Fluid Yet Firm

The old-school management technique may still work extremely well today. A manager on a firm foundation, whose tried-and-true methods have been used since computers were invented. You’ve built your success on this technique, so why change now?

There’s no flaw in old-school techniques. However, the way business is done is changing dramatically, more than we’ve ever seen before. That firm stance on the way you manage, the way your service department runs, and the service your customers receive is about to change out of necessity. Otherwise, the store is going to suffer.

How it Was

Your front-line service staff used to be the voice of authority. They were in control of the service visit from start to finish. Your customers deferred to them for the best corrective action to take care of their vehicles, listened to their car care advice, and continued to service at your location as long as their vehicle as fixed right.

The former service experience was primarily – almost solely – structured around the vehicle. It didn’t matter that Joe the Technician was crusty and foul, and a few grease prints on the door were frustrating but acceptable. Price was important but the vehicle-technician relationship was more valuable.

That style of service goes back decades to when engine rebuilds were an expectation every 60,000 miles. Transmission fluid wasn’t changed because a car didn’t last long enough to need it. Service departments were a utility, not a service provider per se.

How It Is

We now have a culture with internet at the core. Recent generations – not just millennials – have the ability to communicate freely with handheld devices. Complaining is more widespread – not that there’s more complaining, just that it reaches much further online than via word of mouth.

The service department visit now demands a relationship between the front-line support staff like the service advisor and the client. The maintenance and repair requirements take a backseat to the service that’s received.

Vehicles last longer than ever, and that means the customer could be returning more often to the service department for maintenance and repairs. The service staff need to know how to handle the balance between proper vehicle service and exceptional customer care. And right now, the customer care bears the brunt of the burden.

How Will It Be?

The future of service is uncertain – will it be new and innovative vehicle technologies, self-serve dealership service departments, or pickup and delivery services that set the new standard? The service visit is evolving quickly, so it may not be long until we find out what’s coming next.

One thing that’s definite: the management team needs to adapt to the new style of service, whatever that may be.

Can You Evolve?

Can you see why the old method of managing a service department is going the way of the dinosaur? Long-time customers may put up with it, but as a general rule, new clients won’t. Your service department needs to address customers at their level and on their terms or they’ll go elsewhere, simple as that.

The only equipment you need to succeed in the new service experience is the willingness to evolve. It’s much less a skills issue than an attitude adjustment. Obviously, if you’ve been a long-term manager, you have the skills to ensure those under your charge are doing what’s necessary.  You simply need to learn where the winds are pushing and lead your staff on the journey.

The alternative to evolving in this aspect is somber. It affects your service department’s health, your CSI scores, the dealership’s repeat business, the overall sales figures, and the livelihoods of everyone on your team.

Keep your mind open to change. Learn from your peers by attending events like the DrivingSales Executive Summit, the DrivingSales Canadian Dealer Forum, or any other forward-thinking, innovative dealer forum.

A little story about my initiation into a new workplace a decade ago:

I had some previous experience as a service advisor already – about three years’ worth. Not exactly a ‘pro’, but no longer a newbie. I left a standalone store for a dealer group closer to home, and the structure was completely different. The focus was still on the customer, but more about keeping long-term clients for the income they provide instead of providing exceptional service as the primary purpose.

It was all fine at first, getting into the swing of things. Then one day, the service manager and fixed operations manager wanted to have a chat. They felt the service department needed an influx of gross profit, and that would fall on my shoulders. As a novice, I posed a question: “How do I maintain keep the customer happy while taking more money out of their pockets?”

The answer alarmed me. I was told in no uncertain terms that they expected me to be more aggressive. Don’t take no for an answer. In fact, I was told that they expected me to generate complaints about being too pushy. “If you don’t get at least one complaint per month about being too pushy, you’re not doing your job.”

Doing as I was told, I buckled down. The dollars started rolling in hot and heavy, but one massive negative resulted. CSI scores tanked.

What Did I Do Wrong?

Obviously, the pendulum swung the other way within a couple months. Now we needed to stop the bleeding in the CSI survey scores.  As a service advisor, I was just doing as I was instructed. Did I do something wrong? Yes, but it wasn’t on me. It was on my superiors.

It Was Out of Focus

It’s that fine line to walk: providing exceptional customer care in every circumstance versus earning as much for the department and dealership as possible. It’s a two-focus issue, like a pair of binoculars. If the left optic is out of focus, the view is skewed and inaccurate. If the right side is blurry, you’re missing critical details. Constant minor corrections are required to keep a good balance between the two spectrums.

It can be debated if I took the instructions too literal. But the result was an uptick in income at the expense of happy customers.

Are You Pressing the Financial Side Too Hard?

In the automotive service industry, pay plans are heavily based on commission, so it’s always an internal battle: oversell a bit and chance a slightly ticked-off customer, or keep the customer pleased as punch at the expense of a slightly disappointed manager. How do you react in a customer service versus higher dollars per RO situation?

• If you’re praising your service advisors for selling more month over month, you might need to perform a professional inventory. Are you sacrificing customer satisfaction for your own paycheck?
• If you receive praise for one of your service staff in a CSI survey, do you reward your team member for a job well done, even if it was a one-line oil change RO?
• If the team member with the highest overall CSI score is consistently earning less per month than a higher earner with bad CSI, is there something you need to explore?

Please take my musings not as gospel but simply as a consideration. In my past, I wholeheartedly know that the binoculars needed to be adjusted. Your store may be different right now, operating smoothly on both ends of the spectrum. Remember that it’s a fluid situation and it can change quickly. Be ready to make adjustments between true customer service, where the customers best interests are taken into consideration, and the bottom line for your department.

The Results

We all know the results when a customer is taken to the cleaners and finds out (which almost always happens). They move on. They take their business elsewhere. You’ve lost that customer, perhaps for life. Poor customer service and overselling have the same effects. It ends up costing you your CSI scores AND future business from that customer.

I don’t think I’m all that unusual (although my wife might not agree). My automotive career in the dealership world was disjointed, broken up into almost exact segments of 18 months. Some might think it’s an ADHD issue where I can’t sit still for any length of time. I’d like to think I know better. I think it’s because I’m ambitious.

What happens is this: it’s a job that I fully and completely enjoy, but for a while. I spend a year working hard and doing better than ever for income and other personal and professional KPIs. Then, after about 12 months, I begin to look beyond. I look at the position above where I am or a lateral position to a different department in the store. I get restless.

What Do You Do When You’re Restless?

When I get restless in a position, it’s because I don’t feel challenged anymore. Personally and professionally, I get a thrill out of solving big problems or completing major tasks. When it becomes routine, my toes start tapping, my gaze starts to wander and my eyes glaze over. I need professional stimulation.

My restlessness becomes all-encompassing. I look for the next challenge, the next great opportunity, and a chance to expand and hone my skills. Unless the dealership I’ve worked are the exception, professional growth isn’t a strong point among dealers, especially in the service department.

My productivity suffers from my loss of focus on tasks at hand. I begin to receive complaints from customers and co-workers. All that negative energy comes simply because I want more of something.

The result is like clockwork – at about 18 months, I make a change. I switch from the service department to the sales floor to try my hand at selling cars. I switch to a different store in the same dealer group, either because my manager wants my trouble out of their hair or because there’s a need I can fill in a different environment. Once or twice, it’s been a change of dealer groups for a new opportunity altogether.

At the risk of isolating myself, is there anyone else with a similar pattern?

What I Would Have Preferred

Like most people, I hate change. It’s not comfortable and there’s an aspect of the unexpected. Instead of flitting to and fro, I would have preferred to stay in my current department and position, developing my skills and enhancing my expertise. Like I said, dealers don’t seem to have a great grasp on the development process.

People with ambition, such as myself, have a few things going against them. A – an inflated ego is usually one component. B – we require more attention than a typical employee.

If given the opportunity, I would have wholeheartedly jumped at skills training for my position. Online courses from the manufacturer don’t cut it – they’re much like an afterthought or a requirement for the sake of numbers and ratings. If I had known or been offered to participate in online courses and training from places like DrivingSales Academy, I would have been all over it.

Better yet, I would have preferred to cross-train or groom for the position above mine. With my ambitious nature, I desired to go beyond my current standing – earn more, a more prestigious title, more responsibility. Again, it’s not a strong point in the automotive industry.

What About YOUR Ambition?

Where are you going? Whether you’re starting to get antsy for a change or you’re satisfied with where you’re at, it’s a danger to get too comfortable. Seek out opportunities for improvement outside of your dealership’s and manufacturer’s offerings. Is there a conference you can attend that will help you hone your skills? Is there an online course or webinar that can help you better yourself?

If you’re the manager of someone you suspect can do more than their current position, I believe it’s your job to get them where they should be. It might not be under your command or even in your store. I believe you will be best served in the long run by assisting your staff members to achieve their full potential.

And as a manager, your ambition should do two things: it should drive you to develop your team to be the absolute best as a group and as individuals, and your ambition should drive you to accomplish as much as you can on your own. Maybe it’s time to look at a GSM or GM position, or a fixed ops director role.

Every person you hire has an intended role to fill. In some fashion, you can determine their performance and compare it to the benchmark you’ve set for them. The bar might be set quite low or you may expect a lot from your employees, but that’s not the issue at hand.

Are your employees living up to their potential? That’s vastly different than the standards you’ve set for them in their current position. The role they fill right now might be all they’re able to do (or maybe beyond their capacity). They might also be capable of much more under your guidance, and potentially beyond your guidance.

There are four categories of employees:

• Those whose skills make them a perfect fit for their current career. These staff members are mostly satisfied with their job, work well under your leadership and with the rest of your team, and have no desire to look beyond their role.
• Those who are outside of their comfort zone. The position they fill is stretching the limits of their abilities, or might be more than they can handle. The daily flustered look on their face gives them away.
• Those who have no place in your store. These people are in-fighters, disruptors, or those who don’t have the skill necessary to fill their position – or any other – at your dealership. You’d be happy to help them find a new job elsewhere.
• Those who are exceedingly proficient or skilled at their job. It’s the people you’d hate to lose in any situation, staff members who make others around them better, and those with the capacity to do much more than they currently do. They seem restless at times, losing interest, and lack motivation at points.

The first type is great to have around. Day in and day out, they get their workload done and take pride in their work. The second type might need extra coaching, training, or to be re-assigned to a different role. The third type needs to move on, and you can assist them in finding a new career by releasing them from their obligations at your store.

The fourth type is a problem, but a good problem. It’s the type of employee that should take up the most time of anyone, and here’s why:

They’re Underachieving

Someone who has skills to do more than their current role has a tendency to get complacent. It’s no longer a challenge to go to work – it’s just routine. Their attention wanders and they lose focus on the details in their job. That’s probably the most frustrating bit for you as their manager because you see no limit to their capabilities. A marked drop in CSI scores, calls from customers, and complaints from other staff mar one month, followed by a stellar month afterward.

They know they can perform their role, but it’s no longer a challenge. What do you do? Fire them for poor performance? That seems like a waste.

Prepare Underachievers for the Next Career Step

If someone is getting complacent at their job, it’s time to address it. While bad behavior might be an issue, it stems from lack of stimulation in many cases. They need more from their job and, while they might be great at the position, something else might suit that person better.

Discover Where They Want to Be

You’ll need to determine what your employee wants from their future. Do they want your job, or the one above you eventually? Is there a different department they’d like to enter? Discover your employee’s goals – you can’t help direct their steps if you don’t know where they want to end up.

Keep in mind, this is to better the employee in the long run. Don’t make your discovery time part of a disciplinary process as it may become a negative association. You don’t want coaching to be anything but positive.

Set Out a Training Path

As a leader, your job is to bring your team forward in their careers. Assist these underachievers in planning out their next steps. Is additional training required, or certification necessary? Would time shadowing their desired position be of use?

Help your team member schedule the necessary training steps to achieve their goals. If outside training is required, it’s a great idea to subsidize the cost upon a successful passing grade.   

Encourage Seminars and Additional Training

If your employee truly wants to move up in the ranks, encourage attendance at the seminars and dealer-focused training for that position. It gives a taste of what can be expected down the road. It might also help your employee determine if the job is as glamorous as they thought or if it’s not really a good fit.

If you let great employees continue to underachieve, you’ll have one of two things – a great employee moving onto another opportunity or a wild card in your department. Neither option is great.

As much as you try to avoid employee churn, you’ll always need to hire someone. It might be to replace a staff who’s moved on in their career or because you need to expand. From all the applicants, you look for someone who is going to fit your team, get up to speed quickly, and get the job done. But there’s more to hiring than just filling a position.

What Does an Ideal Candidate Look Like?

Not their physical attributes, but their character and skills. In your dealership’s hiring process, what does the ideal candidate possess? There’s a set of characteristics that will help ensure you have the best success with a new hire. If you don’t have an ideal candidate profile, here are a few things to consider:

Long-term Work History

Past employment is a great indicator of work ethic. Look specifically at a candidate’s work history on their resume. Watch for gaps in their employment timeline and short-term employment stints. This often indicates someone who flits and flutters around, never staying long in one place. It isn’t the type of person you want to invest time and money in training, just to have them leave.

Look for previous employment measured in years, not months. Long stretches of employment indicate a team member, not just an employee. You can be confident they’ll stick around for a while once hired. Another trend is consistency in one industry – do they switch from warehousing to management, then to fast food and then automotive? Or are they steadfast in their industry?

Community Involvement

Not everyone is a boy scout or a choir leader…but it helps. A candidate with community involvement on their resume, or someone who speaks proudly of their non-work participation demonstrates qualities you should find endearing – trust, willingness to serve, and a deep care for others.

When a candidate is involved in organized activities or community events, you can be comfortable in their character. You probably won’t have concerns about substance abuse or unexpected time off – it’s a reliable person on your team.

Upwardly Mobile

When you read a resume or interview a candidate, determine their trajectory. If someone has occupied the same position for years upon years, they’re a great candidate to fill that same role in your store. However, don’t count on them to go above and beyond their role. If you determine that someone has worked their way up through the ranks steadily, pay close attention to them. This person is special.

Upwardly mobile people often have a goal in mind. That’s a characteristic that’s even better than steadfast reliability. A candidate who sets out to achieve a goal and actually accomplishes it is someone you want on your team. They might be gunning for your job in the long run, but that could free YOU up to take a step forward in your career.  

Solid References

I’ve worked for more than one employer who couldn’t be bothered to call references. Not surprisingly, the employee churn at those dealerships was markedly higher. Here’s the thing about references: it’s not just about the name on the page, it’s about what they say about the candidate.

Anyone can put words on a page and pass them off as the truth. You can even hire someone to write a resume for you, possibly embellished or falsified just to nab the job. It’s when you can call the references and find out how they truly perform on the job, or how they act as a person, that makes a huge difference.

I’ve mentioned it previously, but it’s worth saying again: hire people who will train for the position above them, and will train the person below them. Whether it’s a day off, an unexpected illness, or a sudden vacancy, you’ll have staff cross-trained to fill the holes that pop up.

Filling the position is critical, allowing you to focus on the day-to-day operations instead of hiring. Spend time finding a great candidate. You’ll reduce employee turnover, the cost of training, and you’ll set your dealership up for a solid future.

Sorting through resumes, you find applicants who show potential. There are some with experience to walk on the job and set your service department ablaze. Others might not have the experience, but you can see the fire within. These are the ones you want on your side.

Everything is great for a time. You’re setting records in sales and in your CSI scores. Then a complaint rolls in, followed by another. Your sales start by stagnating, then slipping. Before long, it’s clear that something isn’t working. There’s a wrench in the gears somewhere.

You can often narrow the problem down to one person or area, and you’re shocked. It’s the person you rested your hat on, the person you hired who showed so much promise. What happened, and where did you go wrong?

It’s Not the Employee’s Fault (At Least, Not Always)

The performance issues can boil down to just one person at times. I know it to be true, because it was me at least a couple times in my career. All the potential in the world and no limits to success seem like a wonderful thing to most people, but it’s not as easy as it seems.

Some team members can be left to their own devices and you’ll watch them flourish. Others require a little guidance to help them keep on the straight and narrow, achieving their full potential in your store. Wouldn’t it be great if everyone worked the same way? But they don’t, so it’s on you as their leader to treat each person as an individual.

What Motivation Can You Provide?

I don’t mean money. The basic idea is you’re paying a fair wage for the role, and it’s not always the driving force. So what methods can you use to motivate your staff? For that, you need to get in touch with each team member individually.

Determine what drives your employee to come to the office every day.

• It might be a passion for cars and a desire to work on the bench one day.
• It might be the drive to become a manager, then general manager, and eventually a dealer principal or owner.
• It might be simply to earn a paycheck and put food on the table.

Knowing why your staff work with you is important to discovering what motivates each one. Once you know this, you can plan out motivational tools.

For the car aficionado, make a reward a visit to an automotive museum or an open shop day to work on their car. For the upward-moving team member, offer management training courses or provide mentorship on your own. For those who come simply for a paycheck, dangle a carrot for a night on the town.

It’s Not Always Your Problem, Either

Not everyone can be motivated to do better; some must be motivated to move out. People will get restless, and turnover is a fact of live in any retail or service industry. Some people might be best getting a change of scenery, and if that’s the case, you can still help. The car industry is smaller than you’d think locally, and you have connections. If you have an employee who isn’t fitting in, offer to help them relocate to another dealership.

I’ve been blessed to have someone do this for me. It’s about actually caring about what’s best for the employee. Ultimately, it benefits your team to pare off a potential disruption. Give an honest reference to the next dealership, otherwise you’re burning bridges.

If getting in touch with your staff individually isn’t a strong point, that’s alright too. What that means is you need to hire accordingly. You should aim for experienced individuals, not someone in who you see potential. If you can’t put in the time for development, you’re going to squander that person’s potential, frustrating both you and them until they move on.  

Fixed operations careers aren’t the most glamorous. Some days are rewarding while others are like repeatedly standing before a firing squad. Customer interaction can take its toll on your team and only the cream of the crop will stick around and thrive. You know you have to pay your staff competitively, and yet, you need to motivate towards production. Where do you walk on that fine line between commission, salary, or a blend of the two?

Speaking from personal experience, extra incentive draws out the best work. Providing a minimal base salary with a commission pay plan structured to be lucrative with top-notch performance hits home for me. To be fair, I’m someone with a penchant for laziness. The commission aspect drives me to do better for the store and, ultimately, myself.

But is a heavily commission-based pay plan best for your new fixed ops hires? Which positions might benefit from strictly salary and which favor a commission factor?

Dangle a Carrot

Some team members will chase any incentive you put before them while others will disregard it completely. Regardless of the position you’re hiring for, I encourage an incentive in the pay plan. Whether you base it on CSI survey results, customer comments, recognized dedication above and beyond their job role, or on their position’s measured performance, provide a reason for team members to put in their best effort.

No matter which position a staff member holds, they are integral to your dealership’s success. From parts desk personnel to detailing staff and technicians to service advisors, everyone plays a role in the customer’s experience. Reward them for a job well done.

Best as Salaried Positions

While a carrot is a nice treat, consistent salaried pay is best for certain positions. Essentially, anyone who doesn’t actively ‘sell’ should be a salary-based employee. That includes:

• Parts personnel (rarely are upsells necessary)
• Autobody staff
• Cash office and receptionist staff
• Valets
• Lube rack technicians

These staff members have little opportunity to influence their paycheck, and a commission aspect based on performance would be difficult to achieve.

Best as Commission-Based Positions

That leaves surprisingly few positions remaining: just technicians and service advisors. In the fixed operations world, these two positions hold the most responsibility for generating profits with their actions.

A technician’s role is to maintain and repair vehicles, and to provide the customer information on essential and recommended services to keep their vehicle operating properly. A service advisor’s role is to advise the customer on necessary repairs and services during write-up and ‘sell’ the technician’s recommendations.

Both roles directly affect your bottom line and are best paid based on the work generated.

That doesn’t cover the hiring process though…

Transition the Pay Plan

As a new hire, it takes months to settle into your environment. That steep learning curve impacts paychecks. What seems to be an effective method during a probationary period is a strictly salary pay plan, allowing the new staff to get up to speed without the stressful worries of their pay.

Keep the probationary pay plan brief for commission-based roles to prevent the new hire from becoming complacent. Once they achieve a level of skill and comfort that allows them to exceed the probationary pay, convert them to their long-term pay plan.

Make the Pay Plan Clear During the Hiring Process

Whichever direction you take, whether commission-based or salary, the pay structure should be clear to applicants during interviews. There don’t have to be concrete numbers attached but a general idea of the structure should be provided.

The last thing both you and the applicants want is to go through the whole process, discover an applicant is a good match to the dealership, then find out they won’t accept the role because of the pay structure. It wastes their time as an applicant and your valuable time during hiring.

I’m aware my thoughts aren’t shared by everyone. I’ve worked for dealer principals who want every position to be based on performance in some way while others try to ‘lock in’ pay plans at a steady salary. Feel free to share your thoughts on the best way to pay new hires in the fixed ops realm.

There’s a sales job in your dealership that earns much more than your salespeople to the bottom line. In fact, it’s many times what a salesperson earns. They arrive daily in your store, ready to work their butt off. At the end of the day, tired and frazzled, they’ve produced much more for your store than a salesperson who has just sold and delivered a brand new car.

Your service advisors are salespeople, even if it’s in the name of customer service. Their job is to inform the customers they serve why it’s important to part with their money, and how it will benefit them to do so. Seldom is there a noticeable improvement in the vehicle’s condition – it’s about maintenance more so than repairs in the modern era. Yet day after day, they come to work and earn more for your store than someone on the prestigious sales floor.

It’s Not Even Close

Just a quick recap of top salesperson earnings versus service advisor:

Sales

• An average salesperson makes a sale approximately every two to three working days, or roughly 10 cars per month. Some stores are higher and some lower, however the majority of dealers’ salespeople would be in this vicinity.
• Average gross on a car sale as reported by NADA in 2015 is $1088 for a new car and $1534 for a used unit. Let’s average that out to $1311 per unit.
• At that rate, a salesperson generates $13,110 in gross profit per month, or $157,320 per year.

Service

• An average service advisor sees 12 customers per day in a moderately busy dealership. That means in a 22-workday month, one advisor transacts with 264 customers.
• Each parts and labor work order averages a charge of $265 for customer-pay work orders and $273 for warranty work orders. Average it out at $269/RO.
• The gross profit average is 45.8%, meaning a gross profit of $123 per RO.
• In one month with 264 customers, a service advisor grosses your dealership $32,472. In a year, that’s just shy of $400,000.

The proof is there, and it’s hard to dispute.

Hiring Your Top Earners

If one of the highest earning positions in your dealership is at the service desk, shouldn’t you put serious effort into hiring the right caliber of people? That’s not to say you aren’t paying them sufficiently, because you may be. But wouldn’t you want the people that deal with more of your customers than anyone to be top-notch?

How Do You Vet Your Applicants?

Service advisors are anything but a dime-a-dozen. It takes a special kind of person to take the daily beat-down in customer service at this level. You want your service advisors to embody the good-natured, cool-tempered personality that YOU would want to interact with if you brought your vehicle in for service.

A few thoughts on vetting your applicants:

Do they have experience?

If they’re coming from another dealership, why are they looking for a new position? If a service advisor is moving on, check with their work references to see if there are performance issues. No matter how positive you are and whether you believe people deserve a second chance, the same issues are likely to pop up at your store soon after hiring.

Are they active in the community?

They don’t have to be involved in graffiti removal or the church choir, or sit on the board of a non-profit. What you want to know is that your service advisor applicant is outgoing and willing to interact on a real level with the general public. You need to know that they aren’t active in the wrong way, either, such as involved in illicit or criminal activity. Require personal references and actually follow up on them.

Are they willing to learn?

Very few dealerships do things the exact same way. Whether you’re hiring a ‘greenhorn’ with no experience and a steep learning curve or a novice with some experience already, test their willingness to learn. In the application process, implement a task that shows their willing to learn for the position (even if it has nothing to do with the role).

Require a criminal record check

Although everyone makes mistakes, there are certain issues you don’t want in your dealership. If someone has been convicted of burglary or theft, they are not a good candidate for a dealership position that deals with tens of thousands of dollars daily. If someone has assault charges, a stressful service advisor position might not mix well with those anger issues. And drug-related charges can indicate an unreliable person.

Undoubtedly, you understand how important service advisors are. Ensure your applicants will be well-suited for the position before signing them on.