Fixed Ops Magazine - 2020 Vol17 02 - 34

perhaps a less-challenging way to express this idea is with the Russian proverb "Trust but verify," which was popularized in Western culture by the 40th
President of the United States, Ronald
Reagan.
When advisors know that their service manager has insightful data on
the business that they sold (or didn't)
during the day, a clear picture emerges about each advisor's strengths and
areas where additional training might
produce more revenue.
The digital service solutions available
today for scheduling, servicing and
communication will improve advisor
performance and make accountability
practical, honest and instructive.
Handling the "Sweet Talk"
Managing by accountability makes otherwise subjective and often emotional
performance conversations less so.

Hours could be scheduled by how much
time is available to sell by advisor. Technician and advisor-sold hours can also
be tracked by how well advisors hold
the effective labor rate.

in customer-pay revenue. "The prior
month, we generated $56,300 in labor,"
he said, "but $85,900 the next month
when we turned on VIP."
Changing behavior

A 10-stall shop has slightly more than
20,000 hours available per year to sell,
fixed ops consultant Mike Volkman of
Service Department Solutions reminds
us. At a $90 per hour effective labor
rate, these stalls should produce $1.8
million a year in labor revenue. Using a
conservative $1 labor sale to 85 cents
parts sales ratio, the total revenue generation from your 10 stalls should generate $3,463,200 total annual revenue.
When Tony Dutton used integrated vehicle inspection tools at Atlanta's Capital Buick-GMC, where he is the Fixed
Operations Director, its service department realized an immediate boost

A Chief Learning Officer blog post highlights the importance of addressing the
accountability-performance question.
"Our research shows it's a leading indicator of high performance," wrote its
author, Joseph Grenny, a four-time New
York Times bestselling author and leading business performance scientist.
Pay plan, performance spiffs and other
methods of compensation and recognition are proven ways to incentivize the
work behaviors you want to modify.
The word "accountability," however, can
convey a "checking-up" perception;

Francie Dalton, a specialist in management, behavioral and performance
measurement sciences and founder and
president of Dalton Alliances, has much
to say on this subject. "Many managers have trouble confronting poor performance," Dalton, a veteran of the
U.S. Army Military Intelligence Service,
wrote in the whitepaper Metrics Based
Management™ (MBM). "They can't find
the words to articulate what needs to
be said about the substandard performance of their subordinates."
"MBM eases this process by expressing most performance expectations in a
quantitative way," Dalton said. "Rather
than discussing feelings, the rater and
ratee are talking about quantified goals
and objectives. One reason performance reviews are stressful is because
there is disagreement between the rater
and the ratee regarding expectations."
Accountability driven by service software metrics, like MBM, can help service
managers eliminate discomfort or disagreement during performance reviews

Fixed Ops Magazine - 2020 Vol17 02

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Fixed Ops Magazine - 2020 Vol17 02