I have written about leadership before, but I find it a worthwhile subject to bring up again. I find that many great service or parts advisors get promoted and suddenly become the “manager.”
What exactly does that mean? I get a nice office, a new title, a fancy business card, maybe a cell phone plan and, for some still out there, a demo vehicle to drive. I am now on easy street.
Then reality sets in.
In my consulting work, I have seen many managers complain about one of their employees or say that nothing changes around here — yet they are the manager. This statement baffles me.
I remember when I first became service manager at a large BMW store. My general manager made the announcement and notified BMW Canada. That same day, a gentleman named Norm Koch from BMW head office called and said to me, “Congratulations on the promotion, Wolfgang. Well deserved. I would like to come see you Tuesday at 10:00 a.m.”
I was so excited. My first visit from a rep from head office. I had visions of us having a nice lunch together and spending the afternoon chewing the fat.
Tuesday came, and I remember it was about 7:30 a.m. I was walking past our customer waiting area after pouring myself a cup of coffee, and there was Norm sitting there.
I said, “Good morning, Norm. I thought we were meeting at 10:00 a.m.”
He replied, “We are. I will see you in your office at ten.”
I went back into my office and, sure enough, Norm came in right on time. He sat down, looked at my desk, told me it was a mess, mentioned I was out of control and then opened up a big notebook.
He listed all the things he had observed while sitting in the waiting room. My advisors were quoting the same type of scheduled maintenance to customers at different prices.
Some advisors were greeting customers in the service drive; others weren’t. Technicians were hovering around the advisors, endlessly waiting for quotes to get approved.
The more Norm went through his list of observations, the more I got my back up. After all, I had only been in this new position for two days!
After a while, I calmed down and realized Norm was right. There were a lot of things I needed to fix. The meeting moved to discussions about processes and different ideas for fixing them, and the day became very productive.
When Norm got up to leave later that afternoon, he packed his things into his briefcase and said to me, “Wolfgang, if you don’t take the time to plan and fix things, they will eat you alive!”
That advice stuck with me for the rest of my career, and I owe a huge amount of gratitude to Norm Koch. Not only did he mentor me during my time at BMW, but his advice about taking the time to plan and make changes shaped how I lived my life as a manager.
Service managers are not in our dealerships to be glorified service advisors. They are there to move the business forward. That could involve employee development, seizing business opportunities or improving a process that makes the customer journey more seamless.
I lived by Stephen Covey’s four quadrants of time management from his book The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. I believe that, as a manager, you have been hired to build the business and effect change. As effective leaders, we are hired to solve problems.
I love this quote by Colin Powell: “Leadership is solving problems. The day soldiers stop bringing you their problems is the day you have stopped leading them. They have either lost confidence that you can help or concluded you do not care. Either case is a failure of leadership.”
We are here to solve problems.
I used to write down problems I faced every day in a notebook as they came up. CSI was trending in the wrong direction. We were not selling enough alignments. I was concerned about a certain technician’s performance.
All of those concerns were written down, and during my planning time the next day — advice from Norm — I looked at one problem at a time. I would figure out a course of action and make a plan.
Maybe it turned out to be a bad process affecting my CSI score, or perhaps I needed to coach my advisors on how to sell alignments. It can get overwhelming, but remember: You can only eat a hamburger one bite at a time.
During that planning time, I believed my dealer principal got their money’s worth from what they were paying me because I was moving the business forward.
Service managers are not in our dealerships to be glorified service advisors. They are there to move the business forward. That could involve employee development, seizing business opportunities or improving a process that makes the customer journey more seamless.
If you are asking your service manager time and time again, “Did you change this process? Did you talk with that employee about their performance? Did you find out why our customer-pay gross profit is down?” and the answer is always, “I haven’t had time,” you have a manager who isn’t taking the time to solve problems.
As a manager, it is your job to solve problems — or they will eat you alive.
Thanks, Norm!
