Revenue is up. Gross looks healthy. Cars are moving through the drive. None of that is bad, but none of it answers the question that actually determines whether a Fixed Ops department is performing at its ceiling: are you capturing the profit opportunity that already exists inside the work you’re doing today?

The stakes for that question keep growing throughout automotive Fixed Operations. Across the roughly 17,000 franchised dealerships in the U.S., NADA’s 2025 Data Report shows more than 276 million repair orders written and over $164 billion in service and parts sales last year. Fixed Ops profitability isn’t just a store-level concern anymore; it’s the department carrying an outsized share of dealership profit, which makes the cost of missed opportunity harder to ignore.

When I ask dealership leaders which number they lean on most to judge performance, the answer is almost always the same: gross. It’s usually always gross profit. Gross matters, but it only tells you what the department produced, not what it could have produced, or where the gap between the two is hiding. I’d rather ask a different question: what should you have produced, where did you miss it, and do you know why?

If I waited till the next month to review it, I left tens of thousands of dollars behind. It didn't do me any good.

Define What "Better" Actually Means

Most dealerships already want better Fixed Ops performance. The problem is that goals like “improve CP,” “increase ELR,” or “grow gross” are too broad and aren’t clear enough for the service drive. They describe a direction, not a plan. Finding the right KPIs in dealership operations is the easy part. The real work is steering the team towards a specific goal, measuring honest progress, and maintaining consistent accountability. 

I like to put the dealer in the driver’s seat on this. What specifically do you want to focus on? Once we know that, we build measurement and accountability around it: the outcome, the KPI that shows progress, the dollar opportunity tied to improving it, the behaviors driving the number, and a checkpoint for knowing whether the plan is working. You can’t determine whether a department is reaching its full potential until you’ve defined what potential actually looks like for your store.

Quantify What's Actually Being Left Behind

Discounting is one of the clearest examples of how small, everyday decisions compound into a much bigger number than leadership expects. For example, an advisor closes a ticket and takes $100 off to smooth things over with a customer. That single adjustment isn’t necessarily the problem. The problem is whether anyone can accurately quantify what’s happening across every advisor, every ticket, every day. A store may believe it’s discounting under its 5% threshold, while labor adjustments and smaller erosions push the real number to 7%, 8%, or higher. If you’re tracking profitability at your store, you need to be able to quantify what’s going out and what you’d expect as a discount. The same logic extends to pricing, effective labor rate (ELR), warranty, advisor performance, and work mix. The useful question is always the same: what should have happened, what actually happened, and what’s the dollar value of the difference?

Let's quantify that and see what it looks like on a daily basis and tie it into how it fits into the big picture of profitability for the store.

Turn the Annual Opportunity Into a Daily Number

A $100,000 annual opportunity sounds significant, but it’s abstract to the advisor or manager whose day-to-day work has to close that gap. I recommend breaking that number down until it means something to the team doing the work: what does it look like this month, this week, per business day? Which advisor, technician, or work mix is influencing it? What has to change today?

That’s also where the lens matters. I’ve found that shifting from advisor-level to technician-level data, for instance, sometimes creates the “light bulb” moment that an advisor-level view didn’t. My approach is always the same: let’s quantify that and see what it looks like on a daily basis, and tie it into how it fits the bigger picture of profitability for the store. The opportunity only becomes manageable once it’s specific enough for someone to act on it right now.

Manage the Month While You Can Still Change It

Waiting for month-end scorecards turns performance management into hindsight. If a metric missed its target and nobody catches it until the books close, that month’s opportunity is gone, and the next month starts with pressure to make up the gap while still hitting its own number.

I know this firsthand from my years running Fixed Ops at a dealership. When I waited until the next month to review something, I left tens of thousands of dollars behind. It didn’t do me any good. Frequent visibility isn’t about surveillance, it’s about coaching while there’s still time to make an impact. Reviewing and coaching in real time, even about what happened yesterday versus something two weeks ago, will result in quicker action and less missed opportunity.

You're not going to wait till the end of the month and go, 'Wow, we're 30 units behind. What can I close today?

Make Profit Potential an Accountability System, From Executive Leadership Down

A GM wouldn’t wait until month-end to discover the store is 30 units behind on sales. A GSM wouldn’t allow someone on the floor to adjust a unit’s price below what the desk manager approves. I hold dealer Fixed Operations to that same standard. Fixed ops requires a defined goal, clear dollar or percentage metric with a specific checkpoint, shared visibility, accountability, and clear ownership when a gap opens up. The accountability has to be there, and so does the visibility, where GMs can go in and track it just like the manager can. Profitability shouldn’t live exclusively with the Fixed Ops director. The GM needs enough visibility to ask better questions and reinforce accountability alongside the team.

Full Profit Potential Is Managed, Not Discovered Once

None of this means your Fixed Ops department is underperforming. A department can be genuinely successful and still have unrealized opportunities sitting inside it. What separates top performers from the rest of the pack is whether you have a system in place to find that opportunity and manage it consistently: define it, quantify it, break it into daily action, and hold the organization accountable.

The data shouldn’t live only in a monthly review or a coaching call. It doesn’t create the outcome by itself, it gives you and your team what you need to spot the gap, prioritize it, and coach the behavior behind it. I tell every dealer I work with to lean into their data for their everyday business, not save it for a scheduled check-in. Taken together, these five disciplines reflect Fixed Operations best practices, not a one-time audit.

Ask yourself:

  • What specifically are you trying to improve, and how will you know it’s working?
  • Can you quantify what you’re actually leaving on the table at the repair order level?
  • Can you translate the larger opportunity into something a manager can influence today?
  • Are you catching performance gaps soon enough to correct them within the current month?
  • Does your GM have enough visibility to know if Fixed Ops is on pace, and to hold the team accountable if not?

If you’re looking for how to increase dealer profitability without adding headcount or chasing more volume, the answer often starts with the metrics you already have. Let’s uncover the profit potential hidden inside your Fixed Ops department. Request a Fixed Ops performance assessment.

About the Author

Picture of Thomas Sirmons

Thomas Sirmons

Thomas Sirmons is a Client Performance Coach at Dynatron with more than 15 years of dealership Fixed Ops leadership experience. A former Fixed Ops director and longtime service manager, Thomas now works with dealership leaders to turn performance data into measurable, actionable improvements.