Beyond the Wrench

The Parts Department Runs on Process

• Jay Goninen

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Wayne Brozek, Founder and CEO of WB Global Services, breaks down why the parts department is only as strong as the process behind it. In this episode, he covers how parts and service personalities differ inside a dealership, how a simple audit he performs can expose inventory discrepancies in a shop, and how he applies fractional leadership to help guide dealership teams.

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SPEAKER_01

The parts farm is filled throughout the processes all day long. If you don't follow it, yeah, yeah. Beyond the Wrench with Jay Ganinen from Ranchway.

SPEAKER_00

Welcome back to Beyond the Wrench. My name is Jay Ganinen, and I'm your host. Today's guest is Wayne Brozek, founder and CEO of WB Global Services. Wayne has built a reputation as one of the industry's leading voices on service and parts operations, helping dealerships and organizations improve performance, increase profitability, and better understand the metrics that drive success. Do people understand the numbers behind a high-performing operation like Wayne? I'm excited to share this conversation with you. Welcome to the show, Wayne.

SPEAKER_01

Hey, thanks, Jay. How are you doing?

SPEAKER_00

I am good. I uh always think this is fascinating with you because when I was at a dealership, a John Deere dealership, I would I had the pleasure of sitting through one of your classes, and this is many, many, many years ago. I don't know how long ago it was, but I remember leaving that class, just thinking the world of you and and kind of your understanding of operations and just learned a ton. And I loved your presentation style. So the fact that our paths crossed many years later is a pretty cool thing to me. So just an honor to have you on the show.

SPEAKER_01

Thanks, Jerry. I thought you were gonna say, you know, Wayne, I sat through one of your classes years ago, and it's the most torturous thing I ever went through in my life. It traumatized me, you know.

SPEAKER_00

Not at all. And what's funny, when I started, and and for those of you that are listening that are from the automotive side, uh in in the equipment world, I was what a is in the automotive world known as a fixed ops director, but we called it the aftermarket manager or aftermarket director. So a lot of parallels between the two, but I started off in that position. I think I was 30 years old, uh, got a whole bunch of employees underneath me at 30 years old and was swimming, right? I was trying to learn, trying to understand operations. And I give credit to the dealership I was with because they sent me down to Deer and sat through a class. I think a lot of those principles and and really the way that you taught the class apply to anything in terms of our industry, right? Uh it parallels with automotive, it parallels with the truck side, it parallels all over the place. Your key metrics really kind of worked, and and and the guidance on how to run a department really had a big impact on me at an early stage in my career.

SPEAKER_01

Nice. Well, I'm glad. You know, because I was right there with you, right? I started my career in the automotive field as well, and at a very early age took over a parts department at a fairly large dealership, right? Compared to what I was used to in in rural Nebraska when I was in high school working at the automotive dealership. It was small. And then when I went to Colorado, of course, it's a lot larger story. And uh I really wanted to be the parts manager because I felt like we had a lot of things that we could correct and fix and grow on. And I was 20. Well, I turned 21 when I was at that dealership. I started there when I was 20, turned 21 when I was there, and at 25 or 6, I don't quite remember. I think I was 26. I was now the parts manager. The interim parts manager being to begin with, because the owner thought, uh, when you're a little too aggressive, you're gonna kick all the his words to me were I'm afraid you're like a young stallion gonna kick all the the correles off the pins if I put you as a uh parts manager. And I was like, Well, give me a shot.

SPEAKER_00

Well, do you recall uh at maybe interesting part about equipment dealerships is that a lot of times, at least in my experience, a lot of the people that are in the dealership have been there forever, right? Like there are there's so many staples in a dealership where they've just been there all their life. Did you kind of have that when you came in? And were you kind of the young guy that was coming in? And and uh everybody's like, well, you know, he doesn't know anything. You you're just uh you know, he's he's that young guy coming in.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, yeah. You know, they don't think you're still wet behind the ears, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, exactly. It was that way for me. Um when I was a parts manager and and started thinking about all the things that we needed to change, you know, because I share the story with people a lot. When I first started out, I went to the back parts counter and I didn't really know much about anything, right? And so the best place to teach you is is put you in front of 30 technicians and say sink or swim, right? And and these guys on the automotive side obviously are paid flat rate, which is primarily different than ag for sure, right? But so those guys are back there, and I remember typing in a part number, like a four-forest steel pump or whatever it could be. And the computer may show, hey, you show four of them. I tell them, here's your price. I got four of them, go sell it. And then I was off to the next technician, you know, and it just goes moving like that all day long. And um, then it's the technician come back, you know, 20, 30 minutes, maybe an hour and a half later, whatever, say, Hey, wait, I need that fuel pump. And I'd go all the way downstairs, grab that fuel pump. They would show four of them. How many would I find? Two, one, none, zero. And then you gotta come back upstairs and tell the technician who's now pumped the fuel out of the tank, drop the straps, drop the fuel tank, hold starting to pull the fuel pump out, and now it's dead on his rack. And I've got to tell him, uh, Jay, I don't have the fuel pump. And he wants to grab me over the counter, right? Because he thinks I'm you know, and I am, I'm the one giving him the bad news. And that used to happen to us all the time, Jay and I'm I was like, man, we gotta fix this, you know. It's just the parts department's built around processes all day long. And if you don't follow them, yeah, you got a headache, and it never cures itself.

Parts vs. Service Personalities

SPEAKER_00

How did you translate? I think it became really evident to me when I was running a parts and service department at at the same time, multiple locations of a dealership, that the personalities in a parts a parts department were wildly different than the personalities in a service department, right? Like they're just it was different, different worlds.

SPEAKER_01

Oh, amen. You know, and so so when when I was in the parts management role, I always thought, whoa is me, right? Like I'm the lowest guy here, you know, nobody listens to the parts manager. You might in our manager's meeting, you know, I'd try to speak up and they'd go, Yeah, yeah, it's just parts, you know, sales got all the glory, then service was next, and finally I might even come lower than the body shop department manager, you know. It's like nobody wanted to listen to the parts manager, right? And so when our when our service manager got ready to retire, I told the owner, again, the same owner that that promoted me to parts manager. I said, Hey, Jim's retiring. I I'm tired of being chewed out by the service department, I want to go over there. And he's like, Are you sure? Feed me to the wall. I was still pretty young, right? I mean, I was in my 30s, kind of like you were when you took over. And I said, Yeah, I want to go over there. So so I did. And Jay, like, you talking about personality differences, yeah. In parts, your shelter, dude. I didn't know how good I really had it, right? Here I thought I was always being chewed out by the search manager, which you know I was. I mean, and so I go into the service manager role, and dude, everybody wants a piece of that cat. Yeah, everybody wants a piece of that cat. I mean, I have technicians that are upset with me, I have service advisors upset with me, I have customers upset with me, the OEM reps, you know, the sales department. I mean, you name it, you I could I could make anybody have it seemed like you know, the first year and uh totally different. You're an absolute threat. They're totally different personality facts.

SPEAKER_00

Those dynamics are so fun uh to look back at. They're not as fun when you're in it. Yeah, yeah. Well, it's not as fun as when you're in it, uh, or it's not very fun when you're in it. Yeah, but it was, you know, as you look at that, it almost forces you to grow, doesn't it? Where you walk into a role, especially at a young age, like you did, and you like I just remember going into that role and thinking, you know, I was probably overly confident in going into that role, right? And at some level, I think you almost need to have that because you're gonna get knocked down a peg or two when you go in. And then once you go in, you're like, especially that service manager role. I I say a lot of times in in a dealership or an independent repair shop, that's the hardest job there is because you're just navigating so many different things. A lot of times you're gonna make a decision that's gonna make this side happy, but this side not happy, and you're just like kind of playing the political game all across the dealership, and it is it's a lot, it's a lot of weight to carry.

SPEAKER_01

You know, and so I've been blessed, really. I have been like I started in the parts room delivering parts and went through every single chair there is inside a dealership, all the way to a partner and owner, right? So I've sat in the owner's chair all the way down to delivering parts, and the service manager chair you are spot on, Jay. That is the hardest role of idiom. Of Ideo. I mean it's tough or none.

SPEAKER_00

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SPEAKER_01

You know, I I think it has been, right? Like, like I was just working with another dealership group last week, and they're part of our end program, what we call it ed program, but they'd worked with another consultant, and and I'm not saying that that I'm better than anybody else because I'm not, but there's a distinct difference that they noticed between my style and this other group, because the other group, and I just asked myself, well, you need to ask that consulting group how many of those consultants actually made their living inside a dealership, where actually a parts manager, a service manager, a fixed option, a used car sales manager, a GSM, or yeah, because I really believe that that and our and our slogan is we teach from we don't teach from theory, right? We we teach on our experience. Yeah, and uh that has helped us so much because like anybody wants to join the W group, if you haven't had an actual live experience living and working inside a dealership, you may be a totally smart person, but I want somebody that's gonna be in the trenches and knows what it feels like to take that call on a Friday afternoon and tell your customer, no, I'm not gonna have your vehicle done today. You know, we had to wait on this part or whatever, you need to you need to know how that feels before I can go in and try to teach an advisor how to handle objections. You know, it's so true.

SPEAKER_00

And I mean, if you look at it, I think the bigger companies understand that as much as anybody, right? So when you go into the corporations, oftentimes you'll see, you know, whether it's a an OEM on the automotive side or the equipment side, where wherever it might be, a lot of times you'll see a company identify somebody at a young age as a potential leader down the road. And what do they do with that person? They move them all over the place and they have them experience all different departments uh and and really try to get them that exposure. And I've I've also seen the same thing with very successful family businesses that end up becoming big businesses, right? Like they they have uh a really good dynamic. I've got a number of friends that kind of grew up in that world, and same thing, they understood the need to kind of go through go through all the roles, go through the paces, and understand how hard a technician's job is, or understand how hard it is to tell that customer that you don't have uh the ability to get their vehicle done on a Friday afternoon. It's I think so much of it is just understanding the difficulties and challenges that go into each position before you're in leadership.

SPEAKER_01

Yes, you know, and I made all of our arts people go through it back in the day, what I called our tour of duty, where I hooked them with a technician and they spent two weeks in that shop, and their pay was predicated on the hours that that technician turned, right? Yeah, and so they got to live and experience firsthand when you say, Sorry, I don't have that fuel pump out, I'll try to get it for you tomorrow. Tomorrow isn't good enough, we you're stopping us, you kill us. And they experienced it, and I think that really helped them with the empathetic side of the business where they came back to the parse counters and they worked it because their pay was directly tied to it. We did that three times a year.

SPEAKER_00

Man, I what a what a great idea. And

Wayne’s Auto & Ag Background

SPEAKER_00

I I think before we dive into more of the operation side, I do want to take a little bit more time to talk about your background because what I think is really neat about your background is that you've got a little you and I have a lot of similarities in that we've spent time in the automotive world and uh time in the equipment business and and on-road, like just a little bit of everything. And I'm interested to learn how you see some of that translating between because I I don't know that many others have that perspective as much of going kind of crisscross between all of them. But I I did notice like over time, a service department's a service department, regardless of what you're working on, a parts department's a parts department, regardless of what you're working on, and the similarities between all of them were probably they're probably more alike than they'd even like to admit, right? Like there's a lot of similarities, even though what you're working on in the shop is is quite a bit different.

SPEAKER_01

Correct. Yeah, you you know it's it's uh I I I work with all kinds right now, right? I just visit with a uh large dealer, truck dealer in Minnesota, did some work for them and their people, and and it's funny, you know, when you're on the when you're on the ag side, they don't really want to hear about the automotive side. Right. The automotive side, we didn't care, we we'd hear from any side. We could I mean if you're an ag store or you're a large Kenworth or Peter Delta store, we'd listen to but the ag they I think they had rubbed down them so often that they're they're callous of the fact that I don't want to hear anything about your automotive experience, right? But I gotta tell you a funny story when I came right out of the automotive side and jumped into now you gotta remember. So I I I started an automotive in the parks and service, then went into sales, and then owner as a partner, and the partnership was just terrible. I tell people all the time partnerships a lot like marriages, some are really good and some are bad. Mine was terrible, right?

SPEAKER_02

It was absolutely terrible.

SPEAKER_01

And uh got out of that and um went to work for my neighbor actually, and he had four John Deere stores. And the very first six, seven months I was there, I had a John Deere rep. And um she was taking that early retirement package that they were offering, and she came by to say goodbye to our dealers, and she stopped in my office and she goes, Wayne, I gotta tell you something. She goes, When you first got here, and even till today, uh you're the hardest guy to understand. And I'm like, dude, what do you mean I'm hard to understand? She goes, You talk so dang fast, I can't even understand what you're saying. And you know, that is like you've been in an automatic center, right? We're you you got like two and a half hours, three hours at best to work on a uh on a on a unit and get it back and get it out of your shop. Then you get into the ag side, it's like, well, nothing could be here two weeks or three weeks, it's not gonna be here hours. We we're counting it how long it's been here by the day, right? And uh so she was like, You you talk something fast, I can't even understand what you're saying.

SPEAKER_00

Well, it it's it is interesting because there are uh even between the construction and the ag side, some major differences and how they go about their business. And right until I went to go work in an ag dealership, I don't think I truly knew how how different those two were, even though I was just talking about the similarities between each. There were so many different challenges with the ag side, and and even I think as these companies get bigger, the amount of lines that you carried and the amount of it just stuff not knowledge you had to have on a bunch of different stuff, right? And as technology is advancing, it just I I don't envy those folks because there are so many different variations of things that they need to know.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, you know, and and the and the thing like like you and I both having experiences at a John Deere dealership, and in that environment, there's a lot of brand purity just because they offer so many things. I mean, they can cover from from big four-wheel drive track tractors and you know, 900 horsepower all the way down to a little lawn and garden tractor and sprayers and planters and everything in between hay equipment and some other ones that that you know, especially construction dealerships that we work with, and and even some smaller short line type uh equipment dealers, they have to have all these different product lines, and their parts department struggles, you know, because and and I hear it all the time working on on the service side or even on the parse side, that the the parse department will take a call and they'll say, Hey, I need this part for this kind of component. And the parts like for what? And they're like this, this, this. He goes, Heck, I didn't even know we sold it. We sold so many different short line vendors, he goes, I didn't even know we sell that product, right? And here's somebody's calling them because they bought it from them and they don't even know, right? So we we were very fortunate. You and I are very fortunate. We had that brand purity and we had to learn a lot, but it was all about one single OEM. You didn't have to worry about how do I learn this part, how do I get this part? What are the terms of those parts, right?

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, what's my password to the portal uh of this one that I haven't been in in a year and a half? Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, that's I've got such a small brain, I can barely keep track of you know a handful of passwords, let alone 16 different OEM or 20 different OEM vendors, right?

SPEAKER_00

Did uh did you have a preference between the two? I I know that's kind of a loaded question, but uh when you look at automotive versus equipment, uh, was there anything that tugged at your heart a little bit more?

SPEAKER_01

Oh, yeah. So I guess right automotive business is at my core. Yeah, like I love the automotive business, the pace of the automotive business, right? When you're inside the automotive world, your day is just room and shaking and grinding. And I love that. I I loved a lot about the automotive. What I didn't really like, and it's terrible, it's terrible. I'm gonna stereotype this bad, but I'm doing a deal with you in the automotive world, no matter. No, I can't say that well. But just doing the deal with you. I gotta tell you, press real hard because we're making seven copies for everybody's attorneys that are going out there. And I think maybe that's because my partnership dissolved in such a bad way that I just didn't feel right. But um when I got to the ag side, it was more like stick your hand out, shake my hand, J. If you you uh you want to do this deal, we'll do this deal, and I'll stand on it, you stand on your terms, and we'll be good. And and again, I'm generalizing.

SPEAKER_00

I think you're right though. I think you're very right.

SPEAKER_01

But that that that's that's one thing I know, it's like the speed and and and speed of execution on the automotive side, it's turn and burn and must go. Not saying that that we move super slow on the ag side because I've been in it now for 18 years, yeah. You know, but there's a Super Bowl season that we used to call our weed harvest, and that was all hands on deck and you moving and shaking as hard as you can, but that's a a season, right? Yes, important portion of your year. Whereas an automotive side, I've never felt it not be, you know.

SPEAKER_00

It is it is interesting.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, that that I truly love in the automotive side.

SPEAKER_00

How how did you make that jump then? Like when you went from the automotive world to the ag world?

SPEAKER_01

Well, so remember my partnership had dissolved. I'm back in my hometown. I was super proud to be back. Um, although I said when I was in high school and looking to go to college, I was never coming back to this, never come back. You know, never say never. That's one thing I've learned. Never say never. Um, but anyway, my my neighbor at the time, super guy, yeah, I talked to him just two days ago. Um, but he he he asked me to come in, and you know, back in those days, you know, you're talking now, it's been over 20 years, the automotive world. I was GSM running. Well, I just left my partnership, and a friend of mine hired me to come run his four stores because in the meantime I didn't know what I was going to do. And he said, you know what, come run these four stores for me. So I did, and it was it was fine, it was fun, I was having a great time. But um, my wife wanted me to be at home, right? And and and anybody on the automotive side knows. I mean, we didn't have the blue law in Wyoming, so we could sell on Sundays, right? I mean, and if you're a dealership, an automotive dealership, and you can work a Sunday, it's a big holiday, you're gonna be open, right? Yeah, that's just what you're gonna do. And and she didn't like that, she didn't like the long hours, and I was of course used to it, so it didn't bother me. But this opportunity came up, and I could be home every night early. I didn't have to work weekends any longer. And uh I just took it and and I said, I said, there's a big difference in our compensation. What what I was making the automotive side, my expectations over there were one thing, and then coming to the AG, it's like well, that's a little quite a bit lower, but my responsibilities were a lot different too, you know. So so I kept my feet, and back in those days, um, I was called a general service manager over four stores, right? We had a parts manager over those other uh the parts farmers draw four, and I was over service for this one, and then we grew to like you're saying, I was the aftermarket director, DP of aftermarket, DP of after sales, whatever you want to call it. But um, yeah, that's how I transitioned. And so I I I told him, I said right out of the gate, I when he asked me to join, I said, Look, every summer I had to go to my uncle's farm and work all summer long. And at the end of the summer, Jay, I got compensated huge. I got a brand new pair of boots and two pairs of Lee Gyes. I didn't even want the boots, I was in town to go to school, right? But out on the farm, yeah, I love those boots. But yeah, so I told him, I said, so there's two things to know about AG. You work really hard and you don't like compensated very well.

SPEAKER_00

There's a lot of truth to that. Yeah, there's a lot of truth to that. You gotta you gotta love it. And that that was the I think we noticed this in some surveying that we do too for like our voice of technician survey, that it doesn't come out and say it, but there are times where you look at maybe an equipment dealership, uh, and specifically an ag equipment dealership, and it's a lifestyle. Like a lot of those people that work at the dealership have grown up in the industry. I I used to joke when I was at the dealership that I loved hiring farm kids because while everybody else was complaining that they had to work Saturdays, they were happy that they didn't have to work Sundays, right? Like it was just uh yeah, yeah, yeah. It was it was just kind of a different way of life, and and I do think we miss out on some of that on the automotive side, where you know it is, it can be a lifestyle and it can be a really good lifestyle, but it's maybe not like that ag world where sometimes money is just straight up secondary. They they they really value what they're doing. I think they have relationships with their local community and the farmers around them that you know when you when you go out and a chopper's down and you're able to fix that chopper to keep them going, you you just save the day, right? You kind of put your hero cape on. And and I think there are a lot of guys that took a lot of pride in that.

SPEAKER_01

Amen. And you know, I tell people that all the time, right? The the the relationship-based um, well, more of a partnership than it is in a customer, right? It's more of a partnership because you're really talking about ag dealerships in particular, are taking care of about one percent of our of our population, right? There's there's not we don't have transient people coming in and out of our dealerships like we do it on a motorcycle, right? On a motor dealership, you could be having two or three of your customers a day that don't even live in the same state, right? Yeah, you you don't have that on the ag side. The ag I mean and and and it's funny because I had this company that was gonna, and he's a good friend of mine, really good friend of mine, so I can I can't bash on him, but uh he knows how I feel. He used to be trying to solicit us to say, hey, we're gonna we're gonna do uh secret shopping to your service manager, so you can and we'll record the call and you kind of hear how it goes and you use that for trading. And I said, Okay, yeah, let's let's give it a shot. And this is early on, and then I realized, you know what? You're not gonna BS that service manager to ask for because he knows who these customers are, those are the same people that lived on that family farm for the last three decades, you know, or three generations. And and so when you say, Well, this is so-and-so, and I've got an eight R tractor, and he goes, Okay, who is this and where are you at? Because he knows in his mind, he's like, I know this county, I know all the surrounding counties, I know who moves into these farms, and you know, you can't be asking. So then the service manager just gets just laid on real thick because I knew Wayne's gonna be hearing this call, you know, in about two days. So they put on all the slick stuff, you know, and say stupid stuff, and they knew exactly the calls coming to me.

SPEAKER_00

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Low-Hanging Fruit for Dealership Success

SPEAKER_00

You've had so many years of operational experience and working with shops, and I'll say dealerships as a whole, just because you you've had your foot in all of them uh or all departments, but what do you see as maybe low-hanging fruit when you go to work with a dealership in terms of things that they should be working on, or maybe that they're not aware that they should be working on? Like when you walk in, do you see any commonality amongst them of things that they could probably do to change their luck on on just success?

SPEAKER_01

Jay, I gotta tell you, before I answer this question, you asked some really good questions. You do. Thank you. You asked some really good questions. But yes, so it depends on it really depends on what industry I'm going into.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01

Right? If I went into an automotive store, I look for a few different things. Um primarily what I want to look at in automotive, most automotive stores that we work with to this day are ran pretty well at both parts and service, right?

SPEAKER_02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01

But what I like to look at is some KPI metrics inside an automotive store to see what their thinking is through their leadership, right? If they tell me one of the questions I'd ask a lot as soon as I work with any new automotive stores, I say, what's your gross margin on parts for internal tech? Oh. Oh, well, you know, we we're we're hospital. I'm gonna call. And I'll ask the surfman, what what's uh what's your turn time on reconditioning? You know, and he'll say, well, you know, it's about whenever if we get it done in a couple weeks, we're good. You know, and so right then I know what the leadership is thinking, right? If I walk into the store and I say, hey, and what's your parts margin on on internal, and they say 10%, and I go to the search manager and say, hey, what's your turn time on an internal ticket? And they say, you know what, our leadership gives us 72 hours or 96 hours from the time it comes into the shop, then I know the leadership is dialed into charting their burning their inventory unused, right? But then I know that this the leadership, either the GM or the owner, has only been in sales. When when especially if they tell me their market was 10%, because I can prove to you time and time again, if you're selling your parts to an internal ticket at 10%, thinking that you're saving the gross margin on the deal on the front of the house, you're fooling yourself, right? Yes. So those are a couple questions I ask on the website, you know, and then when I go into a ag dealership, specifically an ag dealership, the first thing I want to do is I want to do a hundred part number bin audit on the parts room.

SPEAKER_00

Really? Yeah. That is smart. That is really, really smart. Yes. Yeah.

Auditing Parts Rooms & Easing Team Uncertainty

SPEAKER_00

And so when you're going, you're when you do the audit, you're looking to just kind of going back to our conversation from before, just trying to do an inventory and making sure that the the parts are there, that they're priced correctly, that kind of stuff.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, so so when I go in the bids, Jay, like typically my automotive stores, they've been they've been molded and worked on long enough by the OEMs and everybody else that they truly understand fill rate, turn, all that kind of stuff, right? Um, accuracy. Because we were getting beat on it, and now I'm really gonna age myself in the 90s, right? Like when back in the 90s, I remember taking over and early 90s, and we had three and four times turns. Well, when I left the automotive side, we were at nine to ten times churn, and that was pretty average, right? We were no crazy big deal, right? We came a long ways, um, won several awards from Ford for having really good parts in clerk engine, but I'm super proud of that. But anyway, as you should be. Yeah, thanks. And and so when I go into the especially construction and ag, but primarily ag when I walk in your parts room, I want to get into the heart of the parts room. I want to go in where the parts bins are, right? And I'll look around, and if I see that bins are just cluttered and they're dirty and there's raggedy old bin labels, I tell the owner right now, I say, you know what, why don't you print off your balance sheet and let me know what that number is that shows on your asset line or your parts inventory? And I'll bet you I'll bet you right now you're 20% off. Oh wait, no way, no. Well, you you got five million dollars in inventory. I'll bet you right now you're you're you're close to $600,000 off you get it because I'll go in, I'll count those hundred parts. And you know, when I count 100 parts, when I'm saying you're accurate, it's because the bin is right and your count is right, yeah. Right? It's not just well, yeah, it's in this bin, no, is is the bin in the computer accurate and everything, right? Because I just walk around to count 100 part lines.

SPEAKER_00

I just you know I'd I'd be interested to hear your approach, like when you're walking into say a parts department, how are the parts people feeling at that point? Because don't they like it with anybody, right? Where you're like, oh, here comes this person that I don't really know that's starting to dig into our dirty laundry. Like, how do you how do you kind of settle them down a little bit? Because there is that level of uncertainty, right?

SPEAKER_01

And you're exactly right, right? Here I am an outsider, but the after I after I do the count, I see where we're at, it's not like you know, it's not like that. It's like I start to you're you don't know what you don't know, and neither did I. Somebody had to help me, and I had to learn through a lot of black eyes what I was doing wrong until I figured it out. And and so I tell them, you know what, here's where we're at today, but here's where we'll go together, and we're gonna do it together, right? And we're gonna get you there. And and and I asked him, how many times do you look up a part and and you show it or you say you have it and you can't find it anywhere? Oh, it happens all the time. I said, Well, there's a way we can get out of that madness, but you gotta put the effort in, right? You gotta do it every single day. We have we have set policies that you have to do every single day and processes you have to follow, otherwise you won't gain anything out of your parts of it.

SPEAKER_00

Well, I I think even being able to go in and say, Hey, I've been in your shoes and I've been get yelled at by text, or I've been, you know, I've been yelled at by the service manager over and over again. Like if you don't want to get chewed out, this is some of the easy stuff that you can do to make your life better. And then you also have confidence with it when a customer's calling in that the parts actually in the bin when you tell them, right? Because you know how it goes in harvest season and the phone's going like crazy and you're picking up and you're you're solely relying on the computer. And if because you've got a line of other people coming behind them, and if you tell that customer, yes, we've got it in stock, and then the customer walks in the store and it's not there, you have a lot of egg on your face, and you're trying to figure things out really quick, right? So it is in their best in their best interest to kind of get organized there just for their own personal satisfaction, right? Because it it not having that together is gonna make your life miserable.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, you know, I I I've worked with several dealerships, and and they'll tell I've heard it numerous times since we started working with them in a fractional way, is that several of the guys will say, you know what? I have the on-call phone, and a customer would call, I'd look at the part at home, see, and the computer might show me that we have four or five or six or eight or dozen, who knows? But he'd say, I'd have to drive to the store before I can confirm that I had it. And then after working with Bus for a while, they're like, Yeah, I showed two of them. You want it? I'll let you know. Or yes, I'll take great, I'll meet you at the store, just start heading there, you know. And that feels way better to the parts people and the customer because they can meet there about the same time, they'll pull right off the shelf, head into the gone. Whereas before they'd say they drive 45 minutes back to the store and they may have it, they may not, you know, and now they're pretty well, yeah. We're running 98% accuracy, you know. I don't care about parts bonus unless you get 95% or bob.

SPEAKER_00

That's smart. And it is, you know, just so critical to earning trust of a customer that you know when they're busy as heck and they need to step away from their day to go get parts, that they can trust that it's going to be there. And you know, I think that speaks to processes as a whole, right? And something that you've really kind of built your career off of is some of that organizational kind of effectiveness, right? And and I I look at so many opportunities, and going back to when I sat through your class, I think you could see some of those automotive elements come out in terms of the way that you're doing math, the way that you're measuring productivity and efficiency. And I think you had brought, correct me if I'm wrong, I I'm I'm trying to think back, and my memory doesn't go very far, so this might be trouble. But I want to say you had brought a formula to John Deere that was uh that productivity formula uh where it was I I can't remember what you guys called it, but it was something that mixed productivity and efficiency, right?

SPEAKER_01

Yes, yes, yes. So there was two guys, um George Waycaser and Steve Ewel. Yes, had come up with this plan and presented it to myself and a few other guys. And of course, they John here said, Hey, you need to talk to Lane because he's he's the only store that we know of that is paying his technicians commission, right? True 100%. You turn, you burn, you earn, right? Yeah, you turn, you don't burn, you don't earn. And and uh, and so so they they present this thing to us, and and we've worked on it for gosh, I don't know, Jay. It seemed like forever, but it's probably eight, nine months. And then um Deer said, Yeah, well, we felt confident in it that we could we could present it and and improve operations. So they said, here's 10 dealers, you guys figure it out, see what see what you guys think and see what you can do. And we did, and over the course of that year, every everybody's net profit improved. So then Deer said, Well, that could be a flu. Here, try these other 10, keep helping us, you know. We'll we'll we keep telling the guys that the flu can help us with your dealers, right? And so we did another group of 10, same same similar results, you know, everybody's bottom line improved. And so then George, of course, I was working full-time at the store, these other two guys were were retiring, and um they asked me, Hey, would you help us train this? And so I did with with those two guys, and we went all across North America, South America, Central America, and uh training labor performance too. And that's probably one of the the highlights of my my career is knowing that I had input on something that is now on John Deere financials globally. That's crazy. Every John Deere store is measured by that now.

SPEAKER_00

I and I give you a lot of credit because one, I still remember that class to this day and how polished it was, and how you know I think it was something where in in my role uh at the time as kind of kind of that corporate aftermarket manager, you you had to kind of explain it to ownership as well, right? You had to sell it. Like when you when you come back from something like that, you still have to sell it to ownership. It's not like you can just come in and just you know, hey, we're doing all this, you you have to to sell it. And I thought it was a really easy conversation to have when I came back to say, listen, this is why they do it that way. And um, I don't know if we ever fully got it implemented, which was probably more my fault than anything, but we did measure more after we got back, right? And trying to truly understand the technicians, and um, we never did go full flat rate or anything like that. We did put production bonuses together where uh where we were incentivizing them for build uh time, but it was kind of an eye-opener. And I like for you, it seemed like it was really natural to be able to teach, right? Like you when you came into the class, you had that operational experience, but then for you to kind of take that next level and teach, it seemed like a pretty pretty natural thing for you, and that's the crazy part, right?

SPEAKER_01

Because teaching, I I've I've never, not one time, have ever gone to and and people say I can tell, but like I've never went to any professional teaching or training or speaking coaches and and and toastmasters or whatever those are, you know. There's a lot of resources out there that I probably should have done to really help me, but I didn't. But one thing that I really like, Jay, was like if you and I can have a conversation and you're young, you're you're an aftermarket sales director for the first time and you're learning, you're trying to do these things. And if there's something that I know that I can help you with, that's I say, Jay, don't go beat your head against that wall. If you I've done this many times, I'm scarred, right? Here's here's what I've done that maybe could help you, so you don't have to do it. Now you can probably go home and still do a couple. More times you might think, well, let me try and see what happens. And if it works, you call me back or you drop me an email or whatever. You say, Anyway, that that helped up. I cannot tell you how good that makes me. Right. I I mean I love it. And so then I just I start getting some of that dopamine releases or whatever it was, and knowing that I'm I'm helping somebody else, dude. That that's that's what was that for me.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, and it was I I'd be interested to hear kind of your perspective on I know when when I was in the construction equipment world, especially, they'd always say, well, like automotive's here, and then construction equipment's like 10 years behind that, and then ag equipment was like 10 years behind that. And like the way that they laid it out. I don't know if that was the exact numbers, but it was always kind of like this trailing effect that ag had up to automotive. And so I think a lot of the ag side probably sees value in you know a lot of the KPIs that we've come up with in the automotive world over time, because you know it's not that long ago that you'd go to a deer dealership at you know 40 bucks an hour or 50 bucks an hour, and and and they didn't really value the profitability side of it. Some would argue that there's still a lot that don't uh value that profitability side. But I, you know, I think as they started to learn more, and then the more that the dealerships viewed it as a profit center rather than just kind of a cost of doing business, then all of a sudden it was like this clicked, and we had to get more advanced with the dude technology, and we had to kind of uh just in general view it as a a key part of a successful operation. And um, and so I I say all that just to say like I think there were a lot of things on the ag side that we could learn from the automotive side or the construction side that could be learned from the automotive side. Like the automotive side has has done a lot of good.

SPEAKER_01

Oh, amen. Yeah, but you know, like automotive for for years, for decades, actually, the margins on on new cars and new trucks has always been pretty tight, pretty short, right? But in construction, the margin was higher, right? And then ag was even higher. So all the money used to come from the front of the business or selling the piece of equipment, the skidster, the loader, the tractor, the town line, whatever. And now that margin from the OVMs has shrunk, you know, market competitive pressures getting larger and larger, and and producers are shrinking. You know, the you you look at if if if you look at the number of farms out there, they keep going down. And you look at the average farm owner and they're in their 60s, and and some of them don't have a succession plan. Some of the some of their kids don't want anything to do with the farming business, right? They they've realized, hey, there's so many elements out of my control, like this year alone, right here in my hometown. Those guys are getting flat corn this year because they have no water, right? And that's a variable out of their control. And other guys you and their years, right? You can you can work your tail off, getting it ready and doing all these things, taking good care of it, spraying, fertilizing all that, and then boom, here comes a Nebraska hailstorm, wipes you completely out, and you're just standing there with your your head and your hands going, what the heck? I I did everything right, and I still lost. I still lost, right? And so I think that since there was so much pressure um on margin constraint and restrictions on margins up front, that they had to start looking at the parts and service departments and said, You guys have got to carry the load. And then the automotive side, we were used to that for decades, right? I mean, and and so someone I I even talked to dealerships early on in my ad crew and said, you know what, if I didn't have to have a service car, I I don't want it. Yeah, dude, how's the first margin of anything department back then? How are you losing money? And typically what it boils down to is accountability. Really, it's truly accountability and productivity right there, and the search problem fixed probably 80% of what else.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, and I think a lot of times the reason for the lack of accountability is because there was a lack of care from leadership, right? Because if they just don't get us in trouble and stay back there and keep our customers happy, you know, that that was kind of the mindset from a lot for for a long time.

SPEAKER_01

Forever. And then I think a lot of mergers, acquisitions, consolidations of dealer groups. I mean, you look at uh the dealership group that I was with, 26 locations, three different states.

SPEAKER_00

That was a big one.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, you know, and when I left, we had 16 in three states, you know.

SPEAKER_00

That's crazy, right? Well, in that that consolidation piece too, I think a lot of that was kind of led by the it was the opposite. Like it felt like the ag world kind of led that, where all of a sudden the dealership started kind of combining, and and um, you know, if you didn't if you were a one a single location entity, you better find another one or you're selling out to somebody, right? Like there's just I think that was driven by the ag side more than it was the automotive side.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, and you know, back in the day in the automotive side, like if you had if you had four stores or five stores, you were a pretty big deal, right? I mean, there was there was in our in our geographical area in the Midwest, in the West part, you know, you had the Phil Long group or the Omera and the L Ways, and then here come Wayne Hezinger, you know, and the Auto Nation start, and then you know, they had big groups, but they they didn't have like like and I think uh the ag side follows you the construction side is particularly routed, yeah. Like you look at Cat has a dealer, maybe two dealers per state, yeah, right? And those dealers have 12 stores or whatever, and then consolidation, especially drove from the deer side, was pretty hot and heavy for a long time. Burgess and acquisition going on all the time, and you're right. I mean, if you're a uh one or two store, you were gonna go in, oh yes, who's gonna buy me out or who I'd get after it.

SPEAKER_00

I in defense to the OEMs, and this is gonna probably be a very unpopular opinion, but I I understand I understood that, right? Where you you almost had to at some level because we would have you know, I'm make it no secret, I worked for Bobcat Company for quite quite some time. Yeah, and some of the smaller dealers, as much as I love them, really struggled with like basics, right? Like in terms of getting on our computer systems and getting on, you know, ordering parts the right way and following you know the recalls, making sure that they're taken care of. And uh, I think we call them field mods, like that, like all of this stuff that like once you started working with a bigger entity, you had whole departments that were taking care of IT, and you had you know all of this structure that maybe you didn't have in a small uh a small time dealership. And don't get me wrong, uh anytime I went into a small dealership, I was always I I loved going in there, like it was a lot of fun, but a lot of my conversations were far different. Whereas if I'm going into a bigger dealership, I'm talking about profitability. If I'm going into some of these smaller dealerships, I was talking about how to reset their password, right? And so there was that there was just different conversations depending on the size of dealership.

SPEAKER_01

Yep, yep. No, so I I I see it as we grew as well, you know, and and now working with dealers. I still have dealerships that we work with that are three or four or five store locations, and the the management, the leadership, in some cases, their growth has out expanded or expanded beyond their abilities, right? And you you've almost got to get somebody in here now that can think differently and lead differently because you you're exactly right. When you're one or two stores, you're just worried about putting the fires out. When you get the five, six, twelve, fifteen, twenty stores, you're thinking more strategic. How do I run this as a true business? How do I scale it? And how do I gain the economies of scales by being this large?

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, and

Fractional Leadership

SPEAKER_00

I I'd be remiss if I didn't mention all the great work that you guys are doing through WB, right? And maybe you can talk a little bit about that because some of the some of the fractional leadership that you're offering to a dealership is really helpful because you're kind of meeting them on whatever ground they're currently on, right? It's not like you're trying to force a square peg in a round hole. You're you're uh you're kind of meeting them where they're at.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, and then then we start dragging that square peg through that round hole. But we do meet you right where you're at, right? Starting there, and and and and yeah, and we do fractional leadership from all the way inside executive to to parts of the service branches. You know, if you if they lost their their aftermarket sales director or the quick stop director and they need some help, we come in and help them. What we found interesting, Jay, is that and we were just starting this, um, it's called OEL. But what I've seen is a lot of dealerships have grown, like we were just talking, they've they've grown and grown and they've expanded and they've outpaced their own leadership capabilities. And so what we've started now is coming in and doing fractional leadership where we come in and help you because corporately you may have all the processes and you think they're running smoothly, but when you get farther and farther from that boardroom and you get into the break room as we call it, sometimes these people out here at scores 12, 13, 15, they don't even have a clear idea of what your expectations are. And it's nobody's fault other than the fact that you've got you've grown so fast and you expanded so much that nobody's taking the time to make sure the processes are communicated all the way through.

SPEAKER_00

I I there's it's such a scary time for a dealership, especially a decent sized dealership, when you lose a key leadership person uh in in your group. And it's going to happen, right? Like I don't care how good of an operation you are, sometimes personalities just don't fit, or they're somebody's retiring, you know, that kind of thing. And there are times where you know maybe it's a sudden uh loss where somebody does quit, or God forbid something happens to them physically that they can't work anymore. When you get when you get in that position and you're down a key member of your leadership team, that can set you back a long way. So having just that ability to kind of even keep the ship afloat during those times, and you never know, maybe learn something that can can maybe elevate it past where it was even at in the first place.

SPEAKER_01

Right. Yeah, and we've we've builded several of those crawls. We've gotten jobs because life happens, right? One minute you your your operation director or your sales manager is here, illness strikes, family matters change, they need to move, and now they're gone, and you're trying to recruit. And we all know how time it is recruiting technicians. That's your specialty helping dealers fill that boy. But when you're when you're looking for a specific fixed option director that has experience running six, nine, twelve, eighteen, twenty-six stores, whatever, that's a hard position to fill. And you don't you don't want to have that vacancy for too long because that there's a true vacuum inside your store, and it can it can turn your ship in a hurry, you know.

SPEAKER_00

Now, I I do have to mention that there's there's uh a guy that's helping you with this, Russ Green. Uh I know he's gonna be listening to this podcast, so I just want to take a minute and say a couple nice things about Russ because I know he's gonna be listening.

SPEAKER_01

We could fill the next hour with nice things about Russ.

SPEAKER_00

We could, yeah. We really could. We really could. He he is I've I've gotten to know him so well over the past few years, and you know, he's kind of a legend within our industry, right? Where he's he's written all kinds of stories, he's very well connected, has been connected with the OEMs, uh with dealers, and just on the ag side specifically, and is looking to expand to the automotive side and kind of share some of those principles. And uh he just uh he's a salt of the earth guy, will always reach out out of the blue and and ask how I'm doing, and just uh like one of my favorite people, genuinely, just a great, great person.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, like I told you, I've been blessed, right? And having Russ be a part of WB Global Services is an honor for me, and I've been blessed to have him and call him a friend because he is he's taught me a lot, he really has. Yeah, and his level of maturity and his knowledge, and just his his well, in his day they didn't even call it emotional intelligence, right? He probably doesn't even know what emotional intelligence is, but he is loaded full of it.

SPEAKER_00

He sure is.

SPEAKER_01

He gives me zingers all the time.

SPEAKER_00

He does have good zingers as well. Yes, yes, yes. I have to have him back on the show sometime because he is a blast to talk to. Uh, and just always appreciate his perspective and and uh and kind of I I always talk about making sure that we shine a light on the ones that came before us and that did such a good job kind of setting the stage for us. He's kind of a primary uh primary example of that of somebody that's laid out a heck of a legacy for himself and has done done some good work.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, true.

SPEAKER_00

Um doesn't seem like he's slowing down either.

SPEAKER_01

No, he doesn't. I mean, some days, well, okay. So last night I get back to my hotel and after dinner, and it's it's 9 30 central, so it's 10 30 his time, and he wants to chat. So I dial up a team's meeting, and he and I talk for an hour.

SPEAKER_00

I think I was in bed already. Uh so I had already been in bed. Uh, yeah, yeah. He yeah, he uh he his mind's always going a million miles a minute, and uh, and yeah, just uh uh one uh like I said, a heck of a legacy the guy's made for himself and just uh just uh always appreciative of his

Rapid Fire Questions

SPEAKER_00

support. Now we do as we close out the podcast, which is wild, this one went really, really fast. I uh do have a few fun questions for you that we typically on the show with. So I the first one is I want to start with what was your first car?

SPEAKER_01

Oh why do you gotta talk about my first car? 1976 black translation.

SPEAKER_00

Whoa, like a smoke in the bandit type thing.

SPEAKER_01

So I gotta tell you, like like I grew up very humble. Like my parents, I lost both of them within 90 days a couple of years, boom, boom, right? And my parents didn't have a lot. We didn't have a lot at all, and that's fine. I mean, I was okay with that. But this this this guy that I ended up knowing, he in our small town, he was he was his name was Don, and he was like Don Juan. He was a dark complexed, tall guy, drove a black transam. The girls loved him. Here I am, 15, meeting this guy, and and and one of my friends, his older brother and him were really good friends, those two guys, and I'd see him on Friday nights, you know, they'd be cruising around and getting ready to take out college or whatever they were doing because they're older than us. And um, he said, Hey, when I was about a month and a half from my 16th birthday, and he came in and and he told my mom. Um, my mom was running this little can be disorder. She he said, Hey, I'm selling my car, you know. And I'm like, What you're selling that car? Mom, I want that car. I I want that car. Well, he traded it in at the local sugar dealership, and unbeknownst to me, my mom and dad, even though they didn't have much, went down and put the down payment on it. Oh my goodness. For me, I did it for my 16th birthday. Two days later, I got my first exhibition of Steve's hour ticket. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00

Made him question that decision really quick. Uh yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01

So then I signed up after I was I was gonna go to the Air Force, and um, so I decided I'm selling that hot rod car, I'm gonna change my life. I buy a Nissan Maxima to go ahead and just yeah, yeah. Years and years later, I ended up going to uh Cool Deadwood Nights, the car auction up there, and I bought a 76 uh rune. It wasn't it's not black, but I bought me a 76 4 speed, 455.

unknown

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

That is cool. What a what a great story. That's one of the best. That that's one of the best we've had on here. That is really, really good. Uh, second question is are you a morning person or a uh night owl?

SPEAKER_01

Okay, again, you ask great questions.

SPEAKER_00

So that's our marketing team, by the way. They do a good job at that. That's that's these ones aren't mine by any stretch.

SPEAKER_01

So so so I gotta say, that's changed in my life. Like, I used to be a late guy, and and and now I'm more of an early morning kind of person, but I gotta tell you, in the last eight months or so, I'm both late and early. I can't go to sleep now until two or three o'clock in the morning, and I I gotta get like this morning. I was up at 3:30 to get into the airport, you know.

SPEAKER_00

It is weird how life works that way. Uh, yeah, I I definitely kind of gone down that route now, too, where it's uh not getting nearly as much sleep and um and can operate. Like I think 10 years ago, I wouldn't have been able to operate without you know a solid eight, seven, eight hours of sleep, and now I I think I run on five or six typically. So it's yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01

Okay, well, I don't feel so long right now. I think we'd say my wife still needs 10 to 12 hours.

SPEAKER_00

Same. My wife is the same. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Very much so. Um, last one, uh, favorite type of food.

SPEAKER_01

Oh, buddy, I'm a food guy. I all right. There's not much you put in front of me except for like liver and onions that I won't eat. I mean I I love Italian. We're our our town and our communities are loaded full of really good Mexican food. So I love Mexican food. But I'd probably have to say Mexican food is my overall favorite.

SPEAKER_00

I think I don't have a tally of every guest that we've had on here, but I Mexican is the clear number one of every single yeah. I think there's been a couple that have said Italian, or you'll get the meat, the meat and potatoes, folks, but like out of everybody, I Mexican is by far the clear favorite, and it's probably my favorite as well. So that that's uh I I relate to most people, I think. Yeah, yeah. Well, I I I can't thank you enough for taking the time to join us. I know you're you're very busy with everything that that WB is doing, and uh just an absolute pleasure to talk with you. This went way, way faster than like I would have ever thought, right? It was just such a fun time catching up with you and uh appreciate uh the what you were able to teach me, you know, a long time ago. Uh but it really, really helpful. And uh you have a you have a gift there. So I it was just awesome to reconnect with you.

SPEAKER_01

Nice talking. You go you're you're doing really good work, man. Continue it.

SPEAKER_00

Appreciate that. You bet. That wraps up another episode of Beyond the Wrench. If you like this episode, please show your support by rating and following the podcast. You can also watch the video interviews on Wrenchway's YouTube channel. Speaking of Wrenchway, did you know Beyond the Wrench is managed and produced by the Wrenchway team? Wrenchway is an online community dedicated to promoting and improving automotive and diesel careers. We help technicians find the best jobs to work at, and we also help auto, diesel, and CTE instructors get more support from local industry. You can learn more by visiting wrenchway.com.

Head Shot

Jay Goninen

Host