Fixed Ops Friday w/ Damon Egan, Steve Shaw, Richard Lupo | Daily Dealer Live
Car Dealership Guy Podcast
Fixed Ops Friday w/ Damon Egan, Steve Shaw, Richard Lupo | Daily Dealer Live
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Concept
social media presence
They’re saying social media helps the business. The idea is that people see the dealership online, then are more likely to contact you or come in.
Concept
return on investment discussion
ROI is basically “is this effort paying off?” They’re talking about whether the money and time spent on something leads to enough results to justify it.
Company
Morgato Auto Group
Morgato Auto Group is the dealership company where they’re recording. They’re showing off their facilities and how the group has grown over time.
Company
JD Power and Global Data
These are companies that track the auto industry and publish predictions. Dealers use that kind of forecast to plan what to stock and how to prepare.
Concept
year over year comparisons
“Year over year” just means comparing this year to last year. Sometimes the comparison looks weird because the market conditions change, so dealers shouldn’t panic based only on the headline figures.
Concept
36 new models in North America between 2026 and 2030
Hyundai is planning to launch a lot of new cars in North America over the next few years. Dealers will need to adjust what they stock and how they explain the different types of powertrains to customers.
Company
Penske
Penske is a big company that owns and runs lots of car dealerships. When they buy or sell stores, it can hint at where the best money-making opportunities are.
Concept
premium valuations
“Premium valuations” means certain vehicles (or brands) are priced higher than the broader market because buyers perceive them as more desirable or hold value better. In used-car and auction contexts, this affects how much dealers are willing to pay and how quickly inventory moves.
Concept
luxury franchises
A luxury franchise is basically the dealership’s permission to sell a luxury brand in a certain area. If people in that area want luxury cars, those franchises become more valuable.
Term
transport charges
Transport charges are what it costs to get the cars from the auction to the dealership. If those costs double, the dealer’s total cost per car goes up.
Company
Sherwood Ford
Sherwood Ford is the dealership Damon works at. They’re talking about how that specific store deals with Ford recalls using their service setup.
Concept
OEM
OEM means the car maker itself—the company that built the vehicle. They’re the ones who decide when a recall needs to happen.
Concept
mobile service vans
Mobile service means the repair work comes to you. Instead of driving to the dealership, a van with technicians handles the job at your home or workplace.
Concept
brick and mortar
“Brick and mortar” refers to the traditional physical dealership location. The discussion contrasts it with meeting customers where they are (home or workplace), implying a hybrid service model.
Concept
technicians that can roll 300 hours a month
The segment mentions technician capacity in terms of monthly labor hours (e.g., “roll 300 hours a month”). This is about shop throughput—how much billable work the team can produce—used alongside profitability metrics.
Concept
gross per hour
“Gross per hour” is a service profitability metric that measures how much gross profit is generated relative to technician labor hours. The speaker emphasizes it as a key metric that many service leaders overlook, and it helps align job assignments with revenue goals.
Company
Reynolds and Reynolds
Reynolds and Reynolds makes dealership software. Here, it’s being used to pull the shop’s numbers so the service team can manage performance.
Term
AI grades the video
They’re using AI to watch the inspection video and score it. The idea is to make sure the video is complete and meets a certain quality level.
Term
take rate
Take rate is how often customers say “yes” to the service recommendations. If it’s higher, it usually means the recommendations were clear and convincing.
Concept
inventory is at a shortage
Inventory shortage means there aren’t enough cars available on the lot. Dealers have to get more value from the customers they do have and often lean harder on service to keep relationships strong.
Concept
incorporate a night shift
A night shift is a staffing plan to get more work done by extending shop hours. It’s one way to reduce the backlog when the shop is busy but short on capacity.
Company
Steve Shaw Training
Steve Shaw Training is Steve’s business that helps dealership service teams get better at their jobs. Here, they’re specifically focused on how service advisors talk to customers and handle repair orders.
Brand
Mercedes Benz
They’re mentioning Mercedes-Benz as an example of a car brand. The point is that when someone buys one for the first time, the dealership staff needs to greet and help them professionally.
Brand
BMW
They also mention BMW as another example brand. The idea is the dealership has to treat new customers the right way, especially for nicer brands.
Term
service advisors
Service advisors are the dealership staff members who interact with customers, write up service requests, and coordinate repairs. This segment emphasizes that even basic communication skills and responsiveness are critical to customer satisfaction.
Company
Apple Tree
Apple Tree is the dealership group Richard works for. They’re talking about how they’re using technology to improve how customers experience car service.
Concept
unified tech stack
A unified tech stack is when the dealership uses one connected set of computer systems instead of lots of separate tools. That helps the service process move faster and keeps information from getting lost.
Concept
customer experience
Customer experience means how the customer feels during the whole service process. In this segment, they’re saying technology helps make it feel more modern and easier.
Concept
duplication/replication of services across multiple vendors
The speaker claims that using many separate vendors leads to overlapping features (e.g., texting tools from one company and marketing tools from another) that don’t fully replace each other. This can create inefficiency, extra cost, and complexity compared with an integrated suite.
LIVE
We're doing better as a result of social media presence.
If it doesn't do those three things, then it's on the chopping block.
It's in return on investment discussion.
Hey everybody, welcome back to The Daily Dealer Live.
I'm your host, Sam Darkin.
Thanks for choosing to be here this Friday, March 27th.
Look, I'm on the road today.
So huge props to Mario Morgato Jr. for hosting us here today in their stunning facilities
here at the Morgato Auto Group just outside of Miami, Florida to record today's episode
when we had a little bit of issues with connectivity and studio setups.
The Morgatos raised up their hand and said, come on over here.
And I got to tell you, I'm sitting in this stunning new conference room that they built,
I think, about a year ago.
It's a circle table, beautiful glass windows and doors here, and pictures of all their
different facilities across the country.
This quick moving group has acquired over the years.
If you want to learn more about Morgato, go to Yossi's podcast with Mario Sr.
I think that was several months ago, just an incredible episode on his story of creating
an incredible auto group.
And then we'd love to have Mario Jr. on Daily Dealer Live at a future episode.
So enough of that.
Although you will see these cool pictures, logos, all that stuff behind me, it's a heck
of a lot of fun.
From Ziggler Studios to Morgato Auto Group headquarters, it's been a fun transition
this week.
And by the way, no M&A, nothing's changing in my world, nothing's changing in anybody
else's world.
Just didn't have a good internet connection here in Miami.
So thank you for that.
Wednesday's FTC conversation was a must watch, 97 dealer groups on notice.
One clear takeaway, transparency isn't optional anymore.
If you missed it, be sure to go back and watch a heck of an episode, one of our most
viewed Daily Dealer Live episodes yet.
And today we shift gears.
Today is Fixed Ops Friday, and if your service drive isn't your profit center right now,
that changes today.
Damon Egan is bringing a moneyball approach to redefining the service business.
Steve Shah, who I used to work with back in my Zurich days, is breaking down how behavioral
training is transforming the way service advisors present to customers in 2026 and beyond.
And Richard Lupo is talking unified tech stack and mobile service, where the industry
is headed, whether you're ready or not.
But first, let's hit today's auto industry headlines.
Up first today this Friday, JD Power and Global Data are out of their March sales forecast,
but the headline number needs some context.
Total new vehicle sales are projected at about 1.37 million units.
That's the strongest month of 2026 so far, but it's down 11.4% year over year.
The reason for that gap isn't a week march, it's the last march was it's that last march was
artificially inflated by consumers rushing to buy ahead of expected tariff driven price increases,
pushing the annualized sales pace to 18.1 million, the highest of any month in 2025.
The underlying numbers can actually look reasonably healthy.
JD Power's read is that these distorted year over year comparisons
are going to be a recurring challenge for most of 26, so dealers should focus on current momentum
rather than getting too caught up in the headline numbers.
Also this week, Hyundai CEO Jose Munoz announced at the company's annual shareholder meeting
that the brand plans to introduce 36 new models in North America between 2026 and 2030.
That's across electric, hybrid and gasoline powertrains plus higher performance drives
derivatives on top of the 25 models Hyundai currently sells in the region.
Their announcement is part of Hyundai's broader 26 billion dollar U.S. investment
commitment which includes a new steel mill in Louisiana expanded domestic production and a
goal to have more than 80% of vehicles sold in the U.S. domestically assembled by 2030.
For Hyundai dealers, this is a significant runway of new product coming but it also means
preparing for a more complex inventory mix and a wider range of customer conversations
over the next few years. Next up today, Mexico is making zero tariffs on automobiles,
steel and aluminum, its top priority heading into USMCA renegotiations.
President Claudia Scheinbaum made the public push last week as formal bilateral trade
discussions with the U.S. opened in Washington, notably without Canada at the table as U.S.
Canada talks are lagging behind. The formal USMCA review is set to begin in July 2026 but the
complication is that Trump has said as recently as January that USMCA isn't relevant to the U.S.
leaving the outcome genuinely uncertain. Nearly every major automaker, GM Ford,
Stellanus Toyota, Hyundai, Tesla, Volkswagen has urged the administration to preserve the agreement
pointing to how deeply integrated these three country supply chain actually is.
And we wrap up today with the CDG Bicell Tracker, a deal to close out on today.
We love our CDG Bicell Tracker. Rob McGee of McGee Automotive Family purchased Lexus of Warwick
from Penske Automotive Group in a deal that closed March 26th, McGee's first Lexus store and its
first entry into Rhode Island. The group already operates more than 10 stores across New York,
New Hampshire and Massachusetts. So this fills in the gap nicely on the East Coast.
Penske noted it buys and sells stores regularly for a range of strategic
and portfolio related reasons and still owns other dealerships in the Warwick market. Brokers
described Warwick as a strong car market and with Lexus continuing to command premium valuations,
it's another deal underlying the demand for luxury franchises in a prime geographic area.
Be sure to check out the full CDG Bicell Tracker at cdgbicell.com and that is a wrap on today's
we gotta love it and that's a wrap on today's auto industry headlines. Welcome to Fixed Ops Friday,
everybody. All right, as you know, we are streaming live across all
Cardiola Ship Guy CDG platforms. You can post your comments into today's show,
join the conversation. It improves and makes this show awesome. The most awesome automotive show
on planet or well, let's see, at least here in the US. I don't know of anybody,
anybody else that's got anything out there. Igor Kay's checking in from the Mannheim auction
today. He says, hey, just got done with my Mannheim auction and values are way up. I paid 5%
on average above MMR for cars. Also, transport charges are doubled to get cars from auctions
back to the stores. It's crazy out there. He goes on clean good cars that are five years old,
especially hybrid and EV segment are out of control and good quality lower mileage used cars
are scared at auctions and when they pop up bids are high. Lauren Klein comes in says, go check
out the museum. Best one I've ever been in. All right, I'm going to ask for that two or after.
I haven't seen it yet, but they've been very hospitable to Margado family
during my time here broadcasting. Lauren Klein comes in says, long time no see. Hope you are
doing well. Yes, we are. Kevin Stuckey fixed stops Friday. Dan C wonder what type of premium
earnings multiplier McGee paid for a Lexus store. A couple of comments on DW, which we might bring
in later. But let's get into today's content without further ado. First up today, Damon Egan,
service director at Sherwood Ford. Welcome to the show, Damon. Thank you. Really excited to be here.
Excited to have you. So hey, first up today, who are you? What do you do? And then we'll get into
some questions, Damon. All right, well, I've been in the car business for over 20 years, started on
the sales side and decided that I didn't want to work those bell to bell 12 hour shifts anymore.
So I thought service was better because they got to leave at five o'clock. By the way, that's not
true though. It can be. Let's just say it can be. And started with my own independent shop and then
got into the dealership world and have been here with Sherwood Ford for the last 10 years of my
career. We are the largest Ford store in Western Canada. So even us in Canada love your show.
Hey, go Canada. We love it. By the way, we had our first Australia guest on last episode,
so it's great to have Canada. We are truly an international show at this point. Yeah.
Absolutely. Absolutely. All right, so let's dive in a little bit. First up question I have to ask,
Ford was the most recalled OEM last year. Have you felt that in Sherwood Park, Alberta, Canada?
If so, how and how are you working to meet the demands for recalls that are coming out of the
recalls from Ford? Well, one of the things that I know that we're obviously we're going to talk
about later in the show is mobile service. And we are the number one Ford store in Canada for
mobile service. And that is really a big, big way to get on top of these recalls and get ahead of
them. Has it reduced consumer confidence? Maybe a little, but I think that nowadays with the amount
of recalls that come in from every manufacturer, I think it's becoming more so the norm than the
exception. We try and give the best value that we can, even though we are out doing recalls or
software programming, we are giving that exclusive attention to detail to our customers.
We like to use the word frictionless in our department. We want to make it frictionless for
the customer to do business with us. If they have a problem, like a recall, we want it frictionless.
We will come to them. We will pick up and drop off the vehicle. So listen, as a as a as a dealer,
as a franchiser, you can't control the number of recalls. That's on the OEM. What you can control
is that experience you're talking about. At Ford's invested a lot of money in their mobile service
strategy, and it seems to be paying off well. I'm curious in Canada, are customers as receptive
of that? And does that kind of make up for some of the challenges with these recalls that we're
seeing? Mobile service in Canada is still in its infancy. A couple of years ago, I had the opportunity
to spend a week at a large Ford store in the US and Florida, and they run 40 plus mobile service
vans. We currently have one. So it's still in its infancy in Canada. People are still getting
used to the idea of using mobile service. Really, again, tried to make it frictionless in what we
do and offering people many different ways to do business and have the experience with the
dealership without having to come here and drink our bad coffee and watch bad TV.
Well, and don't you think that's going to be the future a little bit? We want to create a great
experience, brick and mortar, but also be there where the customer wants us to be if they want
us at a home or go place a business. All right. You've talked about your approach there as money
ball for service and fixed operations. What do you mean when you say money ball for service
day to day? And what data are you looking at that most service directors aren't?
So we've got a euphemism that we use in fixed operations. And since I can remember, and that
is we've always done it this way. That's why nothing ever changes. By the way, that's the car
business. That's not fixed ops only. That's every, that's all of us who are all guilty of that.
Well, if you were at NADA in February, then you know that the buzzwords around there were AI,
and there's all this new technology. And we've adopted a money ball atmosphere when we decided
to put together our forecast for 2026. And what would that look like? It's not just having a
bunch of technicians that can roll 300 hours a month or an advisor that can hit that home run.
We need singles and doubles and have consistent performance up and down the lineup. So when we
started to construct what we wanted to do for 2026, we really looked at the metrics that we have to
look at things like the gross per hour. That's a very, very big metric that a lot of people don't
basically service managers look at hours per work order or an effective labor.
So in March of 2026, Damon, what does gross per hour give you as a metric that helps you
you and your team perform better? Well, just really lets us to make sure that the right
technicians are getting the right jobs and that we're doing the right things on those
work orders with the right people to maximize not only the efficiency but the profitability
for the dealership. It also allows us to track it hour by hour because if you're looking at
yesterday's metrics, you're already behind me Paul. We look at it and see what's going on so we can
make adjustments on the fly as we go. So as a service director, you're putting these numbers
back in front of your team. What system are you using your DMS or other to generate this
gross per hour metric? We currently use Reynolds and Reynolds. In addition, we partnered with Mike
Karma. So then that way we've got real-time data flowing all the time. I carry an iPad with me
everywhere I go in the shop so we can have conversations with technicians, with advisors,
and have the data right there in front of us. We're very, very big believers in video MPI. I
instead of having technicians do it, we actually hired a videographer to do our videos for our
customers. Wait, so you have one videographer in the shop that goes around. Mike Karma does the
video, right? We use that across our group. It's a great tool, great communication metrics, great
way to engage the customer, get customer kind of engagement up. How does a videographer work
instead of the technician? Wouldn't a customer rather hear from a technician than a professional
trained video person? What we found was that technicians are usually introverted, don't want
to be in front of a camera, and they're using a lot of technical jargon that a lot of customers
don't understand. But if I have somebody with a tire gauge saying your tires are at 50% versus
730 seconds, as a consumer, I understand that. And it's very, very basic. It's very easy to
understand. And we found that our penetration and our actual lift per video has grown exponentially
since we started this. So give us the numbers. What percent of customer tickets get a video MPI?
100%. And we're up about $588 per video seat. Wow, okay, okay. And is there anything special that
you're putting content-wise into the video outside of the norm or the traditional? Do you have a
special word track? What are you doing to help create that lift at 100% video MPI creation?
Funny enough, I mean, Mike Karma has actually brought out a new option in their package where
it grades, AI grades the video for what it's looking for and gives you a rating from 0 to 100.
And we've seen our video quality go from 50s and 60s into the 80s and 90s now.
Wait, wait, so give me an example. It will grade the video quality. I've actually heard this from
our Ziggler GM, Zach Terrell. We've got it at our Kalamazoo location. He's told me about this. But
how does it do that? What's the grade based on and is it accurate?
We didn't think it was going to be accurate, but it grades for using a tire depth gauge,
using a brake depth gauge, talking about the wipers, talking about filters, talking about the
main concern. If there's any profanity, if there's an overt amount of noise, it gives the customer
a better experience than someone just doing it on their phone and not knowing what to say and
using a lot of technical jargon. So it actually grades that. Yeah, that's interesting. The swear,
the slang stuff that customers don't want to hear as part of their video MPI when they have kids
sitting around. That's a problem, right? If you have a technician two stalls away that drops
something on his foot or something or her foot and says something, this will take that out,
you're saying? Absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's very cool. All right. So
video MPI is a key metric. You said hours are gross per hour per hours. And then are there two
other key service metrics that you're obsessed with right now, Damon? Again, we partnered with
Dynatron. We're one of the first ones in Canada to use their new dashboard and their depth of
analytics that they go into with breaking down what our repair effective labor it is versus
maintenance, you know, number of flat rate hours sold outlines per work order. And we can actually
tailor all these things to what we're looking for. I mean, we came out with a very, very ambitious
forecast of 30% growth year over year. We're currently sitting at 42%. So we're listening.
It's an example. So I missed that, Damon, actually. And one of our viewers, that's why we do
comments to social media drive for 255 says, Hey, Damon, talk about your 43% growth in February.
What did you do different to get that big of growth? That's substantial. Yeah. So a lot of
times in domestic stores, you're bouncing a work order around between the shop between specialized
guys, between general guys, between quick lanes. And we stopped that. We actually decided in December
of 2025 that we were going to split up the management team or leadership team. So we have
I have an assistant manager that he handles coaching with the advisors and CSI. I've got
another assistant manager that handles the shop and the flow because we have to operate
like a production facility, but with a professional sports organization mentality,
we've got the right player, right spot. If someone doesn't fit where they need to,
then we're going to drop them from maybe a first line to a third line or maybe from a
starter to a backup. And we're going to be able to do that to give other players the benefit
of their expertise and move them up in the batting order. I'm talking about opening day with the Jace.
I love it. You know what? Go Cubbies. So we'll have to go for that or Detroit as well, the Tigers,
but we straddle two geographies here at our Auto Group. But yes, baseball season is almost in
full swing, no pun intended to your point. So talk to us about, I just lost the, you know what,
I was so fascinated by the baseball thing, I got lost in the baseball deal. All right,
so going into a couple of comments, Lauren Klein says, how do your approved MPIs measure
compared to all the other stores using their texts to do the videos better or the same?
So I do have a few friends in the city that are service directors at different stores.
Our take rate is much higher. Our view rate is much higher. With my Karma, you can see how
many views and how many shares of that video. And we're seeing it multiple times where we're
getting 10 plus views and we're getting it shared. We're seeing it on our CSI comments that love the
video, love that it wasn't in technical jargon. And I could understand it and it made my purchasing
decision that much easier. Because again, what we're talking about is we wanted this whole
experience to be frictionless and painless. And really try and get away from that. This is
worse than going to the dentist. Yeah. And you're having success at that? Yeah, absolutely. You
know, one of the other things that we analyzed was that, you know, a lot of people will say,
you need more RO count to get to drive numbers. You need more RO count, more RO count. No,
you need to do better with the people that you have. We designed a system where our service
writers work with the same customers every time that they come through the door. So they build
that relationship. We see the dollars per RO go up. We don't need more customers. We just need to
do better with the ones that we have. Now we're sitting around $1,100 per work order. So I'm
quite happy with that. For a fourth store, that's a really good number. And then we take over our
next guest. So Damon, let's talk training before we transition to our next guest. Who is a trainer
in the automotive fixed-op space? By the way, Igor Kay, Sam, you're way too young to start losing
your train of thought. I'm not. I span three decades in the car business. So I get to lose
my train of thought anytime. But Roger Koenig comes in and says, this gentleman is sharp.
Damon, that's props to you. Dave Rogers says, met Damon a couple of weeks ago. He is a great
operator. And then there's another comment from Jim Sabino, who says, the mobile service king of
Canada. Before we ask you about training, tell us your thoughts about Canadian automotive industry.
So we talked last show with somebody in Australia, kind of gave us the state of the automotive
economy in Australia. What's the state of automotive industry in Canada? And are tariffs
impacting your side of the fence much? And what would you like to see as a dealer in Canada to
help our entire thinking about USMCA and some of the other things, our entire
automotive ecosphere work well together? It's really challenging times right now with the tariffs
and especially with the Ford product, with the aluminum plant fires that happened.
So inventory is at a shortage. We are often referred to as the redhead stepchild of the
automotive sector because the population in Canada is the same as it is in California.
So we don't get the same amount of inventory. We don't have the same amount of dealers. We don't
have the same kind of pull as the Americans. But we've managed to overcome it. I think it's
what it's allowed us to do is to be a lot more creative with what we need to do, not only to
sell a car, but the service car and retain that customer. We had to overcome some huge obstacles
that we, you know, maybe in the US that you don't have as much of and speaking to some US dealers,
they don't have some of the challenges that we have. Because we're usually one to two years,
especially on the service side, one to two years behind what the Americans do.
So we've got to get creative and we've got to really steal ideas from not only American dealers,
but from other industries on how we can overcome the challenges that we do have.
All right. One question. What is one challenge that you're having today,
March of 2026, that might be unique there in Canada? And then who do you use for training in
the service department? And what do they train on? First up, one big problem that you're addressing
or facing in Canada today? Basically, right now, I need more service base. I mean, we're tapped out
here. That is not a Canadian problem. That is auto industry. In the US, you have technician problems.
We have technicians that call us and say, I want to come work there because we know you have work
and we want to come work. But you just don't have enough base. Yeah, we've got to incorporate a
night shift. So we are open till 10 o'clock at night just to keep the traffic rolling through.
Well, Damon, I have a phone number that those technicians looking for a good bay could call
because I think we could help each other. I'll just, I'll put the technicians to work and,
you know, and then you'll have 100% base base. That's a great problem to have, by the way.
Where are you getting, where are you recruiting technicians that don't necessarily have a bay?
How are you finding this excess of recruits in the technician world?
Well, we do, we try and really build our own technicians. I mean, we value technicians and
we look at up-and-comers like draft picks. So if we're drafting a sports analogies,
because the analogies, you know, the parallels are so great. But if we're going to draft a new
technician in, we want them to understand our culture. We want them to understand what we're
willing to invest in them, but what we're, what we're expecting from them. We call it the rules of
engagement. With everything that we do, we have rules of engagement that this is how things are
going to go. And this is what we're going to do for you, but this is what you need to do for us.
So then that way, there's no, you know, there, there is no ambiguity of what's going to happen
or it's not a he said, she said, but we really want to put the money and effort
into growing our own technician. But when we do go after a free agent, and again, I mean,
I'm going to use that, we look at not just who's coming from the Ford world, but we look at import
technicians. We look at, you know, off-make techs that are, that are working in independent
shops, because it's not just so much the experience that you have with the manufacturer,
but it's the attitude, it's the culture, it's the leadership that we're looking to bring in.
And again, if we're going to invest that money and time into a free agent,
then we better be getting good value for our dollar.
Damon Egan, service director at Sherwood Ford, north of the border there in Canada,
thanks to the international car dealership guy community. Appreciate you being on the show today,
sharing your perspectives. And if you're able to hang out, we'd love to bring you back for a
special roundtable segment at the very end. So if you're able to do that, just hang out back in
the green room, producers will keep you on the line. But thanks for being on the show today, Damon.
Awesome. Thank you. All right. A lot of great comments coming in.
That's our leader, Damon. Pleasure working with him since his start at Sherwood Ford,
says an unknown poster. Roger Conan says, I'm asking Damon publicly to become the first
Canadian member of the new mobile service alliance. I'll follow up Damon, friend of Paul Meyer.
We need more quality techs in the US. People are leaving franchise dealer jobs.
And I love what Angelica Surprise says, grow hashtag, grow your own. All right, let's talk
over fuel. Before we go into our next guest, today's episode is brought to you by over fuel.
Most dealership websites, well, they suck. They're slow, clunky. They're hated by both shoppers and
Google. Well, over fuel cracked the code, lightning fast AI powered sites built to attract, convert,
and dominate every search experience. Is it time for a new website? Go to overfuel.com and
use code CDG500 in the comment box for 500 bucks off. Props to over fuel for supporting today's
content, including that fascinating conversation with Damon Egan, service director at Sherwood
Ford, and how they are making automotive. Oh my goodness, this is going to be a terrible pun.
Great again in Canada, north of the border. And some of the unique challenges of being in Canada.
All right, next up, let's turn to Steve Shaw, trainer, president at Steve's Shaw Training.
Welcome to the show, Steve. Thank you, sir. Thank you for having me. It's great to be here with
you. Good to see you again, Sam. It's been a while, Steve. So, you know, a lot of the viewers
out there may not know you and I work together quite a lot. I was at Zurich back, how to 17,
nearly nearly two decade career at Zurich, North America. And you came in as the partner trainer
for fixed ops, all things fixed ops. So, I've always wanted to have you on the show. Appreciate
you for accepting the invite in. Maybe give us an update. Tell us who you are. And for our audience,
Daily Deal Alive, that doesn't know you. What do you do out there, Steve Shaw?
You know, a lot of people wonder what I do. My name is Steve Shaw. My company is Steve Shaw
Training. And we've been teaching service advisors. Really, our passion, our goal is to help service
advisors change their behavior, change their words and improve their repair order performance.
And it really does become as simple as that. Change your words, change your life. By the way,
I'm about two hours south of you right now, Sam in the Florida Keys. So, you're welcome to come down.
You're in a better part. Are you on a boat or something? What do you got going on down there,
Steve? I have a little home in Marathon, Florida. Oh, nice. Yeah, yeah. Very good. Well,
couple comments coming into the text chain. UTSPKEN4885. Steve Shaw, the goat. So, here's
my question, Steve. We train so well in sales. We train so well in FNI. We even train, I think,
we do a great job. Body shop or body shops to an extent. Admin, what happened to service? How did
service years ago get left behind in the training arena, both at service advisor and at the technician
role to be customer facing? I'm not sure what happened, but we certainly ignore our number one
salespeople, right? We sort of expect them to know how to do everything. We bring them in,
and we put them out there on the line. We put them out there in front of our customers. And
we just expect them to do a great job. And often we put our worst trained people in front of our
brand new customers. For example, I bought a brand new Grand Wagoneer, and I couldn't talk to a
senior veteran service advisor to save my life. I'm going to talk to the most least trained person
because I'm not going to buy anything or that's the expectation. So, as Damon said,
they're moving people around in the right location. We're trying to make sure that that person,
that person that greets the brand new customer, actually has a skill set. And so, the way we
train people is we believe a rising tide raises all ships. We want your brand new service advisor.
We want your valet. We want your cashiers, the people in the background. We want them to be
prepared so that when they get that opportunity, they walk out and they're actually ready to meet
and greet that customer. Meet that brand new customer of yours that owns a Mercedes Benz or a
BMW or whatever for that first time. So, sales training comes out of sales budgets, F and I
out of finance. Those are both gross generating departments that sorely have needed in the past
training and development. What do you say to the dealer that says, hey, you know what, fixed ops,
customers come in, they're loyal to the store because they've got a car that has a recall that
needs to be done. Like, as long as my service advisors know the basics, please thank you.
Pick up the phone, answer, respond to an email. That's about all we need, Steve Shaw.
Well, I would ask you this question. Do they really know the basics? Do they say please and thank
you? Do they say, as I like to say, welcome, hey, welcome to our dealership. We are so excited to
have you here. Are they saying like I joke around, howdy, what do you want? You know, things like
that instead of that dealer defined greeting that we want them to say. Well, and Steve,
CDK reported last month from a service buyer survey. They said that the average wait time
when a customer calls into a service department in the United States of America, our friends in
Canada are off the hook, Damon Egan, is nine minutes, which is astounding to me. That means for
every person that picks up in one, there's someone else that's hanging out for 18 minutes. I don't
know too many people that hang out for 18 minutes. Do you believe the nine minute stat?
And why is this a problem? And how do we train for it in automotive to get around that?
Well, I believe that stat is probably true. I research human behavior for a living. So that
sounds about right. What I can tell you is though, for every five hours of training that you give
and associate, that's going to lead you to at least 0.1 improvement in your RO performance.
So why do we not train those associates? If you give them training, you're going to see
an immediate result in your repair order performance. And it is mind blowing when we do
allow somebody to stay on the phone for nine minutes. Damon's term frictionless is a great
term. We've got to make it easy for people to give us their money. And it seems like
that's the value side of the equation. You know, we operate need plus value equals a sale.
And if I show up at your store, I've made a decision to buy from you. Well, we're losing
customers. We're losing our accounts is going down because the value is starting to go away
because I'm not saying welcome. I'm causing you heartache on the, you know, on the telephone.
I'm not letting you get right in and get you and have that great experience. And then I may or
may not be providing you the experience that you've come to expect. And so that has been
diminishing over the years. We're losing the value. And we've got to have that value. We've
got to provide the customer enough value. So then then the other side, the need side where we can
create that need. And then the customer will give us freely 76% of time, give us their money.
So you've cited that the average close close rate on a multi point inspection is about 30%.
First of all, MPI, you heard Damon talk about video. It's key to his business.
Should an MPI in 2026 be done on video? Should it be paper? Should it be handwritten?
What's the best practice for delivering a service advisor at multi point inspection
to a consumer in March of 2026, Steve Shaw? I'm going to say two things. One,
absolutely, there needs to be a multi point inspection completed. And regardless of how
you do it, it needs to be completed. And it needs to be done in a certain way,
where the customer is receiving the facts from the service advisor, right?
Dave Rogers talks about pass and fail. We need to present the facts to the customer
to allow them to make their own decision to add power to that. Absolutely. The video multi point
exponentially makes that multi point inspection better. And I know we ran into each other to
convention and we saw the people speaking about TikTok videos. We've got to build our videos in
a style that's like a TikTok. So we got to get all the information out to the customer,
present the facts, there's five components, present those facts in a way that the customer
wants to hear them. And we got to do it in an expeditions manner so they don't swipe that real
like they do on YouTube and Facebook. But Steve, you heard Damon say, and I hear many service
directors say, Hey, technicians, they're not customer facing. I can't make them be I can't
put them in a video like that's not fair. They didn't sign up for that job. They're repairing
the vehicle. What do you say to a technician March of 2026 that says, Hey, I'm not customer
facing. I don't need to do a video. Well, you know, we do a technician video class and we tell the
technicians themselves, we teach them how to do the video, the five things to be in each and every
video. And as well as what's the biggest complaint of a technician, the biggest complaint of a
technician for doing a multi point spending their harder time doing a multi point is,
Well, my advisor is not going to sell it anyway. So we teach the technician how to do it. What
exactly to say we give them a guideline and we say, Hey, it's your name, it's your badge,
you're the expert. And when you Mr technician create a need by using pass or fail, you then
exponentially make your own repair order better. You know, so I love the fact what Damon's doing
and having a videographer. Wow, how powerful would that be? And if I ran a store, you're darn
right, I would put a videographer in my store and I would have that person film the technician.
And the technician would say those five things that are important to be in the video,
and then have it produced 30 seconds in and out and then have watch how much better your sales
are going to be. So Steve, you talked, you talked about you've often said, Hey, you want dealers
to stop using the word recommend. Absolutely. Why is that one word costing them money in March of
26? And what should advisors say instead of recommend? Well, recommend is the worst word
that you can say at the dealership because the, you know, all of the consumer research will tell
you is the car dealer customer loves us, they see more value in us, they want to service their
vehicle with us until the service advisor starts making a recommendation. When that advisor opens
their mouth and they make a recommendation, they become a salesperson. And forgive me,
every salesperson watching this, consumers don't buy the service department, they don't come in to
meet a salesperson, they want to come in and find a consumer advocate consultant. And so when we use
the R word, I call it the bat R word, it's a swear word, we put the customers in the defensive
mode and they think they're being sold. So they put walls up and they stop opening their wallet.
And so we've got to stop saying the bat R word recommend. And we got to talk about things like
passes and failing. We've got to talk about the minimum requirement to maintain your vehicle.
There are items that require attention. There's a certain set of words that will make you go
negative. And then there's a better set of words that'll make you go positive. And that's what we
try to bring to the table is stop saying all those bad words, those recommend words, and then
start saying the positive words. And again, after in teaching your technicians to say the
positive things, again, my name on my shirt, I'm the expert, I want to buy from an expert.
Yeah. So Steve Shaw, as we wrap up today, and thank you again for being on, I think it's fascinating
to hear your perspectives. There's not a ton of great trainers in the fixed stop space. It's
definitely more lightly populated than the sales and the finance areas, we say a lot of great
comments online. Dave Rogers says Steve Shaw is the man he's a great trainer. Lauren Klein says
they should be hiring and training with videos part of their job. Techs are trainable. We're
talking about their excuses when we excuse them from doing videos. Agreed Steve Shaw.
Absolutely. We need to train them how to do it. It's my technician. I want to see my technician
who's working on my car. That's the whole philosophy of the independent world.
Yeah. All right. So if a fixed ops director is watching the show daily deal alive today,
and walks away with just one change, they could immediately institute tomorrow morning
that would help increase profitability, retention, any of the key metrics and
service. What would that be? Well, I could tell you about a hundred things. We could talk about
presenting the facts. We could talk about passing and failing. We could talk about minimum requirement.
But the number one thing that's going to cause an repair order improvement, it's going to cause
customer retention to go up, CSI to go up, and referrals to go up, it's to say one word, it
to welcome every guest into your service department. And when you stand up in front of
people and say, welcome to my dealership, I'm so excited to have you here, watch what happens.
You know, and it's funny because even just that positive kind of approach with some energy and
connection, I think there's a lot of teams in our service worlds, service advisors and technicians,
they've got, they've taken so many of those nine minute hold phone calls from consumers,
and they just continually get beat down. And you got to find out, you got to find a way a little
bit, Steve, I think these guys and gals do to clean themselves up and kind of reconnect with
customers with a lot of energy. I think ultimately the solution to that nine minute whole time will
be better AI utilization in service departments, we're already starting to see a lot of it to do
some of the basic stuff like answering phones, scheduling appointments, and then save the good
stuff, the tough stuff for the, the service advisor, Steve Shaw, thoughts on AI as we wrap out.
I think AI is an amazing tool. However, as an old guy, I'm your age 55 56 years old,
and there's no I'm younger than you, Steve. I'm not that I'm just kidding. There's nothing
better in life than a great process, and then add AI to enhance your process. If people think that
the AI is going to solve their problem, it's a fallacy. So we've got to have great processes.
We've got to have great skills. And then we can add AI into our world. And then again,
watch what happens. It's open in the door for people to give us their money.
Steve Shaw, trainer, president at Steve Shaw training and somebody that I've spent a heck
of a lot of time with throughout my career and throughout my history. Appreciate your perspectives
on fixed ops department training and the crucial role of a video MPI, MPI in training
at the service advisor desk overall. Steve Shaw, thanks for being here today.
Thank you for having me. I appreciate you, Sam, very much.
Thank you. All right, Paul Salisman comes into the comments and says,
I've pondered a world with no service advisors where technicians use AI
to filter noise, video to make recommendations, and occasional phone call to talk with clients.
People like to talk with experts. Yeah, I think to Steve's point, Paul, you get that consumer
direct to the person that's performing that repair, instant credibility. I've seen it in my own world.
I trust that more. Eager case says 50 today is like being 30. I'm exactly 50-year-old,
and I feel like I'm 29. Let's transition very quickly over to Richard Lupo, fixed operations
director, Apple Tree, Honda, and Acura. Welcome to the show, Richard.
Well, thanks, Steve. Going to be back on fixed ops Friday.
Check that out. You've got the mic. You've got the whole setup. That is very impressive.
Have you done like podcasting and video casting and all that stuff elsewhere?
And if so, what have you done?
Yeah, we stay strong and get the message for Apple Tree out to the rest of the industry.
And travel with Ted Ings, do some stuff with Reynolds and Reynolds, some other people as well
as an occasional stop by here with our dealership guy. And we love letting everyone know what we're
up to here at Apple Tree, Honda, and Acura. All right, so tell us about Apple Tree,
Honda, and Acura, and what you do in the organization, Richard.
I'm the fixed ops guy. Nothing too glitzy and glamorous about that. Just fixing cars,
selling parts, and breaking hearts every day. Very fun. Very fun. All right, you've called out a
unified tech stack previously as a key growth driver in automotive March, 2026. What does that
actually look like at Apple Tree? And what problem were you solving when you made that move?
Well, one of the things that we looked at about two years ago, we started about two years ago on
this journey, is to improve the customer experience. And a lot of that is through technology and giving
a customer a more modern experience than a service advisor with a pencil in their ear and a clipboard.
And when we looked out at the landscape, there's a thousand providers. You can have a texting
platform, a video platform. You can proliferate your tech stack with a thousand third party
vendors. And we know we're Reynolds and Reynolds customers, and they have a lot, just like every
DMS provider, they have a lot of utility in there that's baked in, and they offer service and products.
And so we made a decision to dive deep in with Reynolds, look at what they have,
and evaluate the stuff that they have before looking out for third parties. It makes a much,
much better experience when you have the overwhelming majority of your utilities,
such as video multipoints, texting, auto response, you know, all of those things are
integrated into what we do. We recently switched over our CRM for sales and now for service with
Reynolds for focus. And next month, we're getting the Reynolds phone system. It's not a commercial
for Reynolds. It's that we're unifying everything under one platform, and that makes our daily life
so much easier. Okay, so let's test that. And props to Reynolds, by the way. They let us use their
stage at NADA a couple months ago when we had a little bit of a tech outage on our end, and
it was an awesome set. Props to the entire team for allowing us there. There are some in the
automotive industry that would say, Richard, it's not great to go all in with one provider. If they
have an outage or a failure, your business is upended and disrupted. And besides, some of the
industry would say a single provider can't be best at all things. They're just going to come in
somewhere in the middle at most. What do you say to that? You're saying that the benefit of size
outweighs those other concerns. Well, I'll start with a very basic thing is that there are great
providers out there. I mean, there's no doubt about that. And when you specialize in texting,
you can have a great platform. Do we ever utilize nearly 100% of all the utilities of all of those
vendors? We all know the answer is not even close. And so what we see is duplication,
replication of services across multiple vendors, because the texting guy has
utilities for marketing and you have a marketing company. And so all of those things add up to
multiple overlaps with the different providers. And if what, in this case, Reynolds is offering,
fills the bill for what we're trying to accomplish, then we end up maybe with a no frills version
of what we're trying to get done. But we're completely okay with that. If we're using just
this function for this utility, and we can get that done. Fantastic. Okay. So mobile service,
let's transition a little bit to mobile service. We talked a little bit about that with Damon.
Mobile service is still dividing point for a lot of dealers. Damon is starting to get into it,
hasn't really gone into a full bore like some of the other four dealers, given their recalls and
whatnot. What's your model and how do you measure whether it's actually working March of 2026,
mobile service? So that is where the challenge has been. You'll notice that most of the
providers that have mobile service are generally domestic. And it's a much different business
case where you've got fleet service. It's an easy case to make that you can take a van,
send a guy out to an Amazon lot and perform maintenance on 300 vans sitting in a lot. It's
a much different prospect to take that van and go from driveway to driveway to driveway across a
large landscape inside your PMA and even in some cases on the edges and borders of your PMA. And
so bringing that thought and then of course you're missing some of the factory support that
some of the domestics give too as well. So without the manufacturer support and an entirely different
business case for it, it is challenging for imports like Honda or Nissan or Toyota or whatever
to bring that van in and have it make a meaningful impact to the business going from
driveway to driveway to driveway and serving customers on a retail basis.
All right. Last question up and then we're going to actually bring Damon in. We're going to do a
U.S. Canada roundtable to wrap out today's Fixed Ops Friday. What's one metric that you check,
Richard, every single morning before anything else in Fixed Ops?
Okay. Well, we look at how much money we made yesterday. That's where we very first start with.
Okay. And make sure we're on track and tracking overall. You start at the high level and when
you see something you start drilling down, but you always start with what we did yesterday.
Where do you think most Fixed Ops directors are leaving money on the table without realizing
at March of 26? Details. Such as? Over details. Okay. Give me an example.
I'm, you know, most days dress like you, but I've been out and with a stop watching hand,
seeing how long it takes a car to drive from one place to the other today.
I don't recommend dressing like me, by the way. It's much better. It's,
I'm out, you know, I'm out in the sun today out, you know, wind blowing hat on and, you know,
in the trenches getting stuff done today and obsessing over details.
I love it. I love it. I love it. All right. Richard Lupo, Fixed Operations Director,
Appletree Honda and Acura. Thanks for being on the show. We're going to bring Damon back in.
We'll do a lightning round wrap up to this Fixed Ops Friday. That's been a heck of a lot of fan
at fun. Damon, welcome back from Canada. This is turned into a little bit of international
brokerage, brokering here. First of all, let me ask you both. Is there a training platform?
You heard Steve Shaw today on the show. Talk about the importance of training in the Fixed Ops
department. Did anything he say resonate? And in your opinion, what's some of the best training
that's available to you? And by the way, this isn't an advertisement for Steve Shaw. I know him.
He does a great job. So we'll put that out there. But any takeaways from his segment and then where's
the best? I love Steve. I think his training platform is the best. Maybe it is an advertisement.
Yeah, it's a total shot up to Steve because it's really good. You know, one of the requirements
to work as a service advisor in my department is that you've got to read the book on Reasonable
Hospitality by Will Godera. The hospitality story. I would rather have somebody that came
from the hospitality industry than a car person working in the drive because they get it.
Like Steve said, they can say hi as opposed to what we prescribe them to say. I like the human
element as opposed to just something that is pre-recorded to talk to the customer about. So
I like that human element. That's why we keep the same advisors with the same customers to have
that relationship built. So absolutely what Steve was talking about spot on. We use a lot of what's
called R&D in our dealership. It's not research and development. It's ripoff and duplicate. So
I took notes when Steve was talking and I'm going to steal his ideas. I like it. All right, Richard.
I actually, this was a blind spot or was the blind spot for me until probably last year or two.
We have a very low turnover of staff and we have a lot of very experienced advisors and technicians.
We pour countless hours into training technicians, but we certainly had been
neglecting our advisors just because the average person in our service drive got
probably close to 15 years of experience. So we didn't really think that we needed to spend a
year. We leaned on some of the utilities that we have with the manufacturer. We went back and got
all of our service advisors caught up on training with the manufacturers and actually cross-trained
them with both manufacturers. And now every one of our advisors is 100% trained. And we found even
spending a 15-year-old vet, a 15-year vet, to hon the training or accurate training for sales
process. They came back and said, hey, I actually got a little bit of a refresher and it definitely
invigorated me a little bit more. Which is something we learned in Frontend Sales variable
side 30 years ago. So that's the fascinating part to me is how that kind of got left behind.
All right, as we wrap up because we only got one minute left, one sentence each fixed op still
has inefficiencies industry wide. What's the one thing you haven't cracked yet that you think is
still leaving money on the table March of 2026? We'll start with Richard and then Damon.
Connecting with your customers where they want to be when they want to be serviced.
Oh, very good. Damon. As we talked about before, it's creating that frictionless opportunity with
our customers time and time again and building that relationship to be the guy for them.
I like it. All right, final question. Everyone in fixed ops is chasing that same customer, right?
High RO account, loyalty comes back for everything. Who's the underserved customer
in your service lane right now that you're actively trying to win and what is winning them
actually look like starting with you, Damon? I think it's the ones that we never hear from.
They hang up at minute two and they don't wait for nine minutes on hold, right?
Yeah, those are the people that we never want that to have. We talk about using AI and we
use AI in our phone systems. Alpha Drive's been great for that. We want to keep those customers
engaged and do it as quickly as possible and use their time as currency.
Okay. All right, Richard. Connecting with customers who purchase but don't live convenient
enough to service their cars and connecting with them to retain them for brand and dealer loyalty
for their next purchase. Damon Egan, service director or Sherwood Ford and Richard Lupo,
fixed operations director, Apple Tree Honda and Acura. Thank you both for joining this
daily dealer live, Fixed Ops Friday Roundtable and sharing your perspectives on all things
fixed ops. Thanks for being here. Thanks, Sam's been awesome. A lot of great comments. A lot of
great comments in the text. I'm just going to give you a couple of these at the very end here.
Igor Kay says, Steve Shah had a very good point said, choose your words wisely because your profit
on your repair retention can be influenced based on how you say things. Paul Salisman,
experience doesn't equal good habits. Who did they get their experience from?
The bad stuff. It rolls downhill. I agree with that. Angelica surprise agree with both Damon
and Richard spot on. And Dave Rogers concludes us out USA v Canada, another epic hockey battle.
Question mark. And to you, our daily dealer live listening audience. Thanks for watching
daily dealer live where we break down the biggest moves in the car business, wherever they happen.
Coming to you live from Murgado Auto Group headquarters, props to them. Thanks for allowing
us to use the facilities here. Don't forget, we're here live every Monday, Wednesday, Friday,
which means we're back on Monday. So if this is your world, I'll be back at Ziggler Studios.
Hit like, hit subscribe, turn on those notifications so you never ever miss a beat.
And we'll see you next episode. Thanks for being here, everybody.
About this episode
Fixed Ops Friday dives into how dealerships can turn service into a true profit engine. Damon Egan (Sherwood Ford) shares a “moneyball” service approach using real-time metrics like gross per hour, heavy video MPI, and frictionless mobile service to handle recalls—plus a staffing model built like a sports roster. Steve Shaw (Steve Shaw Training) argues service advisors need sales-style behavior training, better phone handling, and to avoid the word “recommend.” Richard Lupo (Apple Tree Honda/Acura) explains a unified tech stack and the tougher economics of mobile service for imports.
Original notes
Today's show features:
- Damon Egan, Service Director at Sherwood Ford
- Steve Shaw, Trainer/President at Steve Shaw Training
- Richard Lupo, Fixed Operations Director Apple Tree Honda and Acura
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