Who pays for the advisors?

[LROE8]

I know that typically the advisor is paid by service. But does anyone have parts pay the "parts sales" portion?

I have always found it difficult to pay an advisor a commison on tires that only has $60 in labor but $700 in parts. We (service) lose money every time we do that. Or lets say a warranty transmission that sells for $3,000 and there is only #.5 hours of labor. Parts gets the sale but Service pays the huge commision.

What do you guys think on that? How do you pay?

[KevvyG]

Why are you paying them on Parts Sales??? Around here, SA's get paid for selling labor and PA's get paid for selling parts. In the parts, we handle all things parts related....quotes, procuring, prepicking, etc.

Evryone realizes that we need to help each other out. We drop off parts for sublet (flywheel turns, broken springs, etc.) Now SA's get paid on the sublet, but we don't. But we don't care because we realize we are just pushing more through the shop. As long as the customers keep flowing through the shop, we know parts will as well.

I've seen some of the convoluted pay plans thrown around on some message boards. I think they make it harder than it needs to be. Bottom line....Service sells service and Parts sells parts. You win some and you lose some, but at the end of the month, it all washes out.

My 2 cents.....

[scotstrong]

LROE8:

You need to consider the gross profit involved; not the sale amount. Labor (except "loss leaders") is generally 70% gross as a percent of sale; parts is 30-35%.

Those $700.00 worth of tires might not have netted the parts dept 10% in gross as a percent of sale. With many manufacturers, that $3000.00 transmission-- parts only gets a measly "handling charge"; not standard warranty markup.

Paying on sales as opposed to gross is a dangerous game, as the incentive to "give it away" to make a sale is too strong.

[JGKW]

LROE8

Silly question, do you have a parts transfer?

[bsilcox]

Good Morning All;

Around all of our stores we paid the Service Sales Consultants/Managers on Labor Gross and Parts Gross. The TIER is driven from the movement of the Customer Paid/Retail amount sold. The Parts Director and I look at it this way the only person SELLING anything to the ultimate Customer is the Service Sales Person. We pay them on Parts Gross Profit generated and the Parts Dept. covers that percentage of gross.

Just my Opinion!!

------------------
Fixed Ops Professional

[sp7128]

BS

Does service pay for the parts driver when he is picking up a special tool from another dealer or a sublet cylinder head, key lock cylinder or repaired radio? ........You can use all the fancy titles for the employees you want ...directors ,,,consultants etc etc....ultimately they are still service advisors. ,,,Sounds to me like another profit center for the service department, deferring expenses once again!!!!

[zsmith]

The comission our advisors earn on parts sales is paid by the parts dept. I don't hire, fire, train, motivate or reprimand any of them, so I'm not sure why I have to pay them. Parts advisors do not get paid for any of the labor generated when we direct customers to our service department. Expenses should be paid by the department that accrues them, they're service employees, service should pay them.

[gmcgrew]

With or without a parts transfer? If your store has a parts transfer service is paid for selling those parts and if you also make parts pay service advisors for selling those parts you are double dipping in parts for service pay. Without a parts transfer I would not be against paying service advisors on the retail parts portion.

Warranty, internal, tires, gog, etc would not be payable just as they are not applicable to the parts transfer.

[This message has been edited by gmcgrew (edited 04-07-2009).]

[MovingForward]

Our advisors are paid off gross, however there are couple bonuses that can be made. One of the bonuses is part to labor ratio. If there parts to labor ratio is 80% or higher they recieve a bonus. This tends to help keep them honest in many different cases.

[KA]

zsmith :
I could not have said it better !