What You See From 30,000 Feet Might Be Hiding on the Ground
One of the challenges we face in our service drives is that it’s easy to look at the department as a whole and set a goal.
“We want 10% growth in service gross.”
Great.
But how do we get there?
If all we can see is the 30,000-foot view, we know where we want to go, but we don’t necessarily know where to start. And sometimes that view can actually make things look better than they are.
A department average is exactly that: an average. You might have five advisors performing really well and two who are struggling. Look at the department as a whole, and the numbers might tell you everything is fine. Look underneath the average, and you may find a very different story.
That’s why I spend so much time with the teams I coach getting past the overall number. The average tells me where to start looking. The details tell me what we might actually need to fix.
An Average Can Hide the Opportunity
Let’s say your department is hitting its overall maintenance sales target. At first glance, there’s nothing to fix. Goal met. Move on. But what happens when we break that number down?
Maybe three advisors are consistently outperforming the target while two are significantly below it. Or maybe Quick Lube is performing well on one service while the main shop is barely recommending it. Maybe recommendations are being made consistently, but one advisor isn’t converting them at the same rate as the rest of the team.
Those are very different problems. If I only manage the department average, I don’t see any of them. And that’s where broad goals can lead to broad solutions. We tell the whole team, “We need to sell more maintenance.” We hold another meeting. We send another reminder.
But what if most of the team doesn’t need it?
Now we’ve spent time coaching five people when the real opportunity was with one person, one process, or one point in the customer journey. The more specific we can get about the problem, the more specific we can get about the solution.
From the Big Picture to the Breakdown
Here’s what I think good reporting should allow us to do.
- Start with the department. Look at the overall numbers and identify where the opportunity might exist.
- Find the leak. If we want to increase air filter sales, don’t stop at knowing that sales are down. Find out where the breakdown is happening.
- Break down the process. Is Quick Lube not checking or recommending air filters? Are main-shop technicians not completing thorough multi-point inspections? Are advisors receiving recommendations but not presenting them?
- Get to individual performance. Once you know which part of the process is breaking down, start looking at the people and behaviors behind it. Is the issue happening across the team, or is one person pulling down the average?
- Ask why. This is the part the report can’t always answer for you. Maybe an advisor doesn’t understand how to explain the recommendation. Maybe a technician is skipping a step. Maybe there’s a process issue nobody realized was happening.
- Take action where it matters. Now you can make a small, specific change with the right people instead of throwing a broad solution at the entire department.
- Measure the change. Go back to the data and see if the change actually made a difference.
The goal isn’t to drown our managers in more numbers. It’s to take them from “We have a problem” to “I know where the problem is.” And I’d take that one step further. Eventually, I want the manager to be able to say, “I know what conversation I need to have tomorrow morning.” That’s when reporting becomes useful.
Don't Coach the Average
This is probably the biggest reason I push managers to look beneath their department numbers. You can’t coach an average. You coach a person. You change a process. You correct a behavior. If one advisor has a lower maintenance close rate than the rest of the team, telling the entire department to “sell more maintenance” isn’t really coaching. I’d rather sit down with that advisor and understand what’s happening.
- Are they presenting the recommendation?
- When are they presenting it?
- How are they explaining why it matters?
- What objections are they hearing?
Now we have something we can work with.
Maybe we role-play the conversation. Maybe we listen to how another advisor handles the same recommendation. Maybe we realize the problem actually starts earlier because the technician isn’t giving the advisor enough information to explain the repair confidently.
That’s why getting to the ground level matters. The number tells us something happened. It doesn’t automatically tell us why.
Where Data Fits In
Most dealerships already have an incredible amount of information sitting inside their DMS.
The problem usually isn’t that we don’t have data. It’s that we don’t always have enough visibility into what that data is telling us. Data starts the question. It creates the curiosity to ask, “Why is this happening?”
But there’s another challenge: time.
The average service manager doesn’t have hours to spend pulling reports, cleaning up spreadsheets, comparing departments, breaking results down by advisor or technician, and trying to build that 30,000-foot-to-ground-level view themselves.
That’s where better reporting and data intelligence can make a difference.
At Dynatron, one of the things I value when I’m working with a dealership is being able to move beyond the department-level result and start narrowing in on where an opportunity is actually coming from. Instead of asking a manager to dig through multiple reports to figure out what changed, we can use the data to help point us toward the area that deserves attention.
Then the manager can spend their time on the part that matters most: figuring out why it’s happening and what to do about it.
Because there’s a huge difference between knowing you’re missing your goal and knowing why you’re missing it.
Because there's a huge difference between knowing you're missing your goal and knowing why you're missing it.
The Report Isn't the Solution
This is important. I don’t want anyone to think that better reporting automatically fixes the problem. It doesn’t. You can have the best dashboard in the world and still not change a single result if nobody does anything with what it shows. The value comes from what happens next.
If the data shows that one advisor’s performance is different from the rest of the team, go talk to them. If it shows that one type of work isn’t being recommended consistently, look at the process. If it shows that performance changed after you made an adjustment, figure out what worked and whether you can repeat it.
That’s the cycle I want managers to get into:
See it. Question it. Find it. Coach it. Measure it.
The data can tell you where to look.
The details help you know what to ask.
And the coaching, the process changes, and the follow-up are still on us.
See What’s Hiding Behind Your Department Averages
Your overall numbers only tell part of the story. Dynatron helps Fixed Ops leaders dig deeper into their performance to understand what’s driving the results, identify where opportunities may be hiding, and focus their attention where it can make the biggest impact.
About the Author
Ariel Breidenbach
Ariel Breidenbach is a Client Performance Coach at Dynatron with 15 years of automotive experience spanning nearly every corner of Fixed Operations. She began her career as a technician before moving into service advising and dealership leadership, holding roles including parts and service advisor, assistant service manager, service manager, and service director overseeing multiple stores. She later became a corporate Fixed Operations trainer, where she led training for advisors, managers, technicians, BDC teams, and dealer leadership.
Today, Ariel draws on that firsthand experience to help dealerships turn performance data into better processes, stronger advisor coaching, and more effective customer experiences. Her perspective is grounded in a simple principle. Technology and data are most valuable when they help dealership teams make better decisions and strengthen, not replace, the human relationships at the center of Fixed Ops.
