...if you do not have the people to support it. Just about every type of business is involved in someway shape or form in promoting themselves through social media. Companies are spending record amounts of advertising dollars to be visible to the public. They want people to "like" them. They want to tweet them and so on. 

Nothing is worse than getting customers to find you, only to find out that there's nobody to answer their question. 

The customers of 5 years ago are gone.…

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Seems whenever whatever company I was working for placed an ad for a service writer, I would get a deluge of resume's, phone calls and people walking in.My first test for them was the application. If they came back in one minute or less with their name scribbled on front with "see attached" written across the application. Strike one. 

If they contacted me in some way and asked, "what is a service writer". That was usually a strike two but I wouldn't necessarily toss that one away…

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Many times, many of your in store problems can be fixed by doing one simple thing. Change the culture of the store with the customers and with the employees,

I worked at a large Jeep stored that gave out a loaner car for every customer that came into service for anything including an oil change. Meanwhile we had a shuttle van that was used more as a parts van than a shuttle. I noticed many of the loaner invoices showed car being brought back with 10 miles or less on them. At the time,…

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Throughout my 40+ years in the automotive business, I always thought there would come a time when I would leave and take a 9am - 5pm job with holidays, multiple weeks of paid vacations and other normal job aspects. It never happened. No matter how bad of a day I might have had, I always found myself driving home thinking to myself ow much I loved this business. 

In my years as a mechanic, I love fixing cars. As I rose through management I loved fixing problems with customers,…

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I recently had the opportunity to visit the Mayo Clinic as a patient after waiting 3 months for my appointment. Now they don't just take anyone and you can't just walk in the front door to be seen.

I had an appointment for 7:30am on a Monday morning. If any o you have been there, you know it is not a small facility. They have everything under one roof to diagnose and treat almost anything.

We arrive on time and are taken in on time. The doctor arrives on time already knowing…

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As every service manager knows, it is next to impossible to find good service advisors and technicians. I will save the technicians for another time but this one bothers me the most.

Service advisors work hard long hours. Usually eat breakfast and lunch at their desks and take the bulk of the blame when something goes wrong. They are the people who come into contact most with your customers and yet most of them have no formal training. Why? Well mainly because it is not…

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True Story. In 1995 I worked for a large multi-franchise dealer who sold 50-100 cars per day. One day in 1995, the dealer, who rarely came to the store, delayed opening all departments to have a breakfast for the 450+ employees.

The topic or theme of the breakfast was "Teamwork". The Dealer spoke as well as a guest speaker who had written a book on teamwork. We all left with a coffee cup with "Teamwork 1995" on it and a copy of the other speakers book. We all left pumped up and ready…

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Sounds redundant, but if you have ever worked for an automotive group, you've probably actually heard those words. Meetings after meetings. The sad thing about it is the meetings usually involve only management. Walk up to any tech and ask them how many hours they have for the week and they'll tell you up to the minute. Ask them what your gross profit objective is for the month, you'll probably get a blank stare. Usually the first tech meeting I have after coming into a store, I ask "What…

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Those words were actually said to me but I'll get to that in a little bit. 

Well the dog days of summer are upon us. The showrooms are filled to capacity and your next available service appointment is in two weeks! Every marketing piece you've done has been a home run. Your biggest problem is where to park all these customer cars and all the managers can think of is how sweet their commissions are going to be. Some are even thinking that, at this rate, I can retire in a couple of…

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Recently, Chrysler announced that they reached their goal of having 80% of their stores opened on Saturday. In the pre-Fiat days, the number was closer to 60%! How exciting! What are the other 20% of their stores doing being closed? How can you NOT open your service department at all on Saturday? Even if they are there to support the sales department, they need to be open. Unless of course you have a CBA saying you must be closed which, in that case, the person who negotiated the contract,…

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Back in the 1970's, I cut my teeth in the car business pumping gas and being a mechanics (yes we were called mechanics then) helper. I learned quite a bit and it set the foundation for a wonderful career in the automotive industry. 

One of my early lessons in customer service was provided by my old boss. Our oil change cost $9.95. A quart of oil cost about $1.10 back then. The store I worked at was an Exxon franchise. Now our customer could go into the chain supermarket right next…

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The #1 thing that drove me crazy in stores were the phones. I would spend days, weeks, months, planning a marketing strategy to make our phone rings and then I would end up answering most calls myself, setting up appointments, and answering status calls(my least favorite call to get!).

I've watched service advisors look at their ringing phones and NOT answer it. When I saw that, it required, what I called, an immediate training session with the advisor. As like most of you who…

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Service manager needed. Last one quit over pay. Candidate must have proven record of poor CSI and lack leadership ability. Poor selling skills a must.



Did you ever get to the point while reviewing resumes and doing initial interviews, that an ad like the one above was the one you actually posted?



When I began the service drive part of my career at a dealership, the prevailing idea was that you can either sell or be good with customers. I started as one of 11 advisors at a… Continue