Service Advisor Pay Plans

[MBailey]

Don't mean to open a new "can of worms" here, but had the old "one-on-one" with my dealer today, and he wants to revise the advisor pay plans. Please share with me what some of you other guys are doing. I am in a major metro market (Houston), in a Nissan store, on lateral support groups, running 90-100K monthly in CP labor sales with 3 advisors and 13 techs. Thanks for your input!

[Mike Vogel]

We are outside of Los Angeles, Toyota store
and our Advisors get paid as follows. They get paid on CP Labor Gross (after discounts),
Warranty Labor, and CP & Warranty Parts. They also get a base salary and a draw.
They are offered 2 bonuses per month based on CPL written and Dept CPL. E mail me back and I can give you specific numbers. We did away with spiffs on other things as they tend to get out of control and advisors think it is a permanent part of their pay plan. E mail if I can help.

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Mike Vogel
Claremont Toyota/Ford
Claremont, CA

[Doctor-Z]

I have found over the years that the best Advisor pay plan is as follows. There is a chart that corresponds Customer pay ticket average to a specified dollar amount. Then I also have a chart that corresponds the total gross profit which is in this case total sales minus tech cost for the month for that specific writer. It includes customer pay, contract, warranty, internal, and PDI, to a specific dollar amount. Then I give 1 point for a minor service, 4 points for a major service, and 6 points for a major plus service. At the end of the month I also pay $100.00 for every 30 points of service. Lastly I do a 20 ro check at the end of each shift, checking for pertinant things such as punch times, 3c's, signatures, promise times etc. BAsed on a % at the end of the month they can add anywhere from $150.00 to the max which is $400.00. This keeps them focused on making us as audit proof as possible. Average monthly bonus for the year is approx $1,500.00, with a base weekly salary. This keeps the writer focused on maintanence, proper paper work, as well as total sales, and ticket averages. It has been working great for us for 10 years now.

[kregelis]

I believe the only pay plan is based on CSI and cross referenced to sales. This is also a very simple plan to follow as the month progresses. I use an outside CSI company called Customer Traac. This way the results are only days old. The pay plan is based on three levels of CSI.

CSI levels
3.80 3.70 3.60

Total Labor
Sales

$34,000
$35,000 $900.00 $600.00 $300.00
$36,000

$37,000
$38,000 $1400.00 $1000.00 $600.00
$39,000

$40,000
$41,000 $1800.00 $1400.00 $1000.00
$42,000
$43,000

$44,000 $22000.00 $1800.00 $1200.00
and higher

The goal is labor sales and CSI. I know many advisors that can sell $50,000 and more in Labor but there CSI is awful. Total labor sales is the goal and CSI is the report card on how well they did with the sales. No magic formulas and no way to "work the plan".
If your working this plan than the shop is doing great.

[LexBill]

I'm a dir of fixed ops for a Lexus store. I believe that pay plans need to be very simple and focused on what you want to drive your business. Since I believe that producing labor hours drives most service and parts sales my consultants are paid solely on hours sold. I pay them $4.50 per hour sold that they write and $1.00 per hour written by any other consultant. I don't distinguish between cp, internal or warranty as their job is to take care of the customer and make my operation go no matter what the pay type is. I dislike making their pay contingent on CSI as it causes them to concentrate on the score, not on customer satisfaction, and puts them in an at times adversarial mind set regarding certain customers. Lastly if you're running your techs using objectives it makes sense to have your consultants focused on the same target. E-mail me for more details if you wish.

[Steves2sense]

3 part pay plan that mirrors your goals. Mine are attract/retain good people (including techs), Great CSI, Great Gross. Really good SC's should be well paid or you will get what you pay for. Exceptioanl ones may make more than the Svc Mgr some months (just like sales in the front end). Determine what the range needs to be for your store and play with the numbers.

1. Some base to encourage professionals to apply and take care of the "admin" non-money generating tasks

2. Standard Weekly comp for Gross plus spiffs for fun on maintenance items (repairs sell themselves) e.g $5 for every 60k


3. Some bonus for CSI (above district/national average?) plus bounty on individual surveys

Ideally, the comp would be balanced between the 3, with strong advisors earning more of their pay from gross and CSI.

[ServiceGuy]

I may be wrong, but my first concern is that the term "revision" means that the advisors are making too much money from the dealer's point of view. Why does the dealer need to take money away from the advisors? Not a good sign for the store overall.

I would encourage you to go to bat for your advisors, if this is the case. If they receive a revised pay plan, would you personally work under those conditions of the new plan as a SA? If not, then why present it to them? At the same time, which SAs can you afford to lose if the new plan makes it harder or impossible to earn their current income? Unfortunately, it is easier to provide a new pay plan to new people. This may be part of the dealer's game plan.

I am pro SAs. They have the biggest part in creating customer perception about the whole dealership and the manufacturer to more customers than anyone else in the store except the receptionist or cashier. I think they deserve a good pay plan with incentives in certain areas as described by the different responses.

I would add more specific info, but there was no indication of the current plan and their average income per month per SA.

Daniel Emmanuel
Dealership Management Resources
Houston, Texas