SDR #373: 5 Things Great Service Managers Do
August 24, 2026
AI Summary
5 min readThe Unspoken Playbook of High-Performing Service Managers
Chris Collins opens the episode with a confession: most service managers learn their trade through tribal knowledge, watching the people they worked for and replicating what they saw. The result is a profession full of managers who know how to survive but not how to excel. The five traits he and his co-hosts lay out aren't taught in any formal curriculum — they're patterns they've observed in the field, in the managers who consistently outperform everyone else.
Refusing the Trap of "Good Enough"
The first and most foundational trait is that great service managers refuse to accept the status quo. Collins makes a sharp distinction between what he calls open systems and closed systems. A service department is a closed loop: customers arrive the same way, advisors follow the same process, and after six months on the job, a manager has seen nearly every problem and personality type that exists. There are no genuine surprises. Yet most managers treat this predictability as a reason to maintain, not improve.
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What you'll learn
- 1 (00:32) **Introduction & Book Giveaway** - Chris Collins introduces the episode's topic: five things great service managers do that no one talks about, and announces a signed book giveaway for Academy members.
- 2 (08:03) **Airplane Story & Celebrity Look-Alike** - Chris tells a humorous story about being mistaken for NFL player Jason Kelce on a flight.
- 3 (14:28) **Travel Banter & Credit Card Roulette** - The team jokes about sharing an Airbnb in Indiana, comparing it unfavorably to hotels, and discusses a game called "credit card roulette."
- 4 (22:40) **#1: Don't Accept the Status Quo** - The first trait: great service managers reject the status quo and actively seek improvement.
- 5 (28:40) **#2: Know Their Numbers** - The second trait: great managers know their financial numbers and how to leverage them for results.
- 6 (30:42) **#3: Are People Collectors** - The third trait: great managers constantly recruit, train, and retain talent, building a team that wants to follow them.
- 7 (34:32) **#4: Retain Customers & Make Experience Easy** - The fourth trait: great managers are fanatical about customer experience and understand it drives everything.
+ Full timestamped outline available in the app
Guests on this episode
Show Notes
Great service managers don't simply survive the month—they build stronger teams, improve the customer experience and create consistently profitable service departments.
In this episode of Service Drive Revolution, automotive fixed operations expert Chris Collins reveals five overlooked habits that separate great dealership service managers from average ones.
Great service managers:
1. Reject the status quo and continually improve their processes.
2. Know their numbers and understand how to change them.
3. Become "people collectors" who constantly recruit, develop and retain talented employees.
4. Make the customer experience easy, trustworthy and worth returning for.
5. Find coaches and mentors who challenge them to keep learning.
Chris explains why dealership service departments are closed-loop systems, how tribal knowledge keeps managers trapped in outdated processes and why exceptional performance can actually make a manager's job easier—not harder.
The conversation also examines service department profitability, net-to-gross, unproductive wages, CSI, NPS, technician recruiting, service advisor performance and customer retention. You'll learn why sales scripts and objection handling cannot replace customer trust, why technology such as video multipoint inspections cannot fix a broken process and why successful service managers are always recruiting.
Chris also discusses former CIA intelligence officer Andrew Bustamante and his book Outsmart Everyone: Spy Skills to Gain an Unfair Advantage in Work and Life. The team explores charisma, vulnerability, intentional leadership, parenting and the ability to make genuine connections with people.
This episode is for: Dealer principals General managers Fixed operations directors Service managers Parts managers Service advisors Automotive technicians Dealership and repair-shop leaders.
If you want a healthier, more profitable automotive service operation, this episode provides a practical leadership framework you can immediately apply.
🛑 SDR Live Academy Online Training For Huge Results: https://chriscollinsinc.com/op/sdr-live-weekly/?=sdrpod
🛑 Book your Profit Gap Analysis Now: https://calendly.com/byron-webster/30min
🛑 Best Selling books on making Fixed Ops a money printer: https://chriscollinsinc.com/shop/
🛑 Got a question? Call us at 1-833-3-ASK-SDR
🛑 Want to work with the best? https://chriscollinsinc.com/careers/
🛑 Chris' Top-Selling Leadership Book I AM LEADER: https://iamleader.com
Chapters: 0:00 Introduction — Five Things Great Service Managers Do 1:02 Andrew Bustamante's New Book and CIA Wisdom 7:
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