10 Reasons Why Service Advisors Fail (Service Drive Revolution)

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Welcome, everybody, to Service Drive Revolution.

We have an exciting show for you today. Today we are going to talk about the 10 reasons service advisors fail. We are going to answer your questions. We have some pretty good questions. And I want to remind everybody that we have the $50,000 service manager challenge where you are only competing against yourself. It's how do you better your best? And you can see all the information about that@chriscollinsinc.com chriscollins inc.com but first, please welcome my distinguished guest, Jeremy O'. Neill. How are you, Jeremy? Everybody give him a round of applause.

Thank you. I'm doing great. Chr.

Studio audience here.

The thousands of people getting blown away by the applause.

It's awesome. Not to scare you. What's up? What's going on?

You know, living my dream every single day.

I love that. I love your positivity. See, I don't. I don't feel that positive about everything, but you just wake up with a smile on your face, don't you?

Every day you have to, right? Every day that you're not six feet under means that it can be a great day.

I. I agree, agree, agree. You were recently. What was the drift thing you were at?

Went to the Formula Drift event at Irwindale. So it was the.

Who won?

Ken, Gushy, local Southern California guy.

Who's your favorite drifter?

Everybody out on the track.

You know, in my generation, a drifter was somebody who didn't have a home that, like, jumped up on railroads and trains, going from place to place. Now all of a sudden, it's. It's a cool thing to be a drifter.

Absolutely. My kids absolutely love it. We love going to the events. We go to Long beach every year and then also to Irwindale. So. So Irwindale's known as the house of drift. It's kind of where drifting started in Southern California. So it's just exciting, man. It's just good time and, you know, I love it.

Okay, so you want to. Let's start off with some of these questions.

Yeah, hit me up. What do we got?

Okay. This is from Little Jeep 1. Hey, Chris. Have been watching your videos on being a service advisor. I just started as an assistant service advisor at an Audi dealership in Michigan and was wondering where you think the best place to start learning basics about service itself. I believe I have the personality and drive to succeed. I just don't know how much. I just don't know much about cars and have willed my way into the position anyways. If you have the chance and would Be willing to help. I'd really appreciate it.

Thanks.

No, that's a great question. And so the first thing that I'm going to do is I'm gonna send you a copy of the Millionaire Service Advisor. Cause I think that'll help that book. I also will remind you that we have the best online service advisor training that you can get and the whole package of our on demand platform. We have a special going on the website. For $249 a month, you can get advisor training, service manager training, technician training, customer service training, technician, tree, most of that, which wouldn't be of any interest to you as a service advisor, but just the advisor training in and of itself is worth it. But I would say to your question that the first thing that I think is really important to understand is that service advisors are there to connect with the customer and improve the process. You're not there to diagnose or fix the car and so you don't have to have a ton of product knowledge. I remember when I was a service advisor, the Volkswagen techs pulled me into the shop and they all kind of huddled around and there was this one.

Technician that. He was a prick, honestly. His name was Shane. No, his name was Shane. You had a Kenny, that was a Frank. So this guy was Shane. And I remember I was so happy one day and I guess I'll probably go to hell for being excited about this, but he, he was doing an airbag recall on. No, it wasn't an airbag recall, it was a heater core recall. But he forgot to disconnect the battery and the airbag blew. Oh, nice. And busted the windshield and everything. And I just remember going, ah, you prick. Um, because what he did is he calls me in the shop and like all the technicians in the Volkswagen shop are around and he has this thing sitting on, on a box and he, he calls me over like he obviously had this planned and he says, what, what is this? And so I, I forget which, which it was, but I think I said it was a brake rotor and it was a clutch disc. And so then they all laugh and they're making fun of me that I don't know the difference. And, and the thing was is I was the number one advisor. Like I was the top advisor, right? And I remember he went to my boss and told my boss that I shouldn't be allowed to write service because I don't know anything about cars. And the thing that Shane didn't understand is that the reason why I was the number one advisor is because I didn't know anything about cars. What I did know is how to connect with people and get people to trust me. And so whenever a technician would come to me with an inspection sheet full of recommendations, I would just go back and say, hey, will you show me? So over time, they would show me what the car needed, and I would just learn over time. But I found that the more I knew, the less I sold honestly. And so I wouldn't worry too much about product knowledge per se. It will come with time. The one thing that I do think you have to know is you got to know the intervals of when cars are due for different things and when warranty runs out for different things. So, like, your powertrain warranty might be different than your, you know, basic warranty, and it might be even less for, like, rattles or whatever. Right.

That's interesting. Yeah.

What is your. What is your take on why?

I think it's important. I think the biggest thing I would focus on is the word help. I think most consumers view dealerships as a place that they have to go through. It's a grind to get in. It's hard to get a hold of anybody. So being that you're new, that's great because you have energy, you have enthusiasm. Right. So the job's fresh. So if you can be the one person that can help customers, you can be a customer collector and actually start to build your trust fund rather easily. So I would put help at the forefront. Now, helping with maintenance schedules is key. The dealership service providers have a key, distinct advantage over independent repair shops because they only have to master one car line in about 10 different models. Whereas if you service all makes and models, it's really hard to understand the.

Maintenance schedule completely different.

Absolutely. Well, the other thing too is being in Michigan, you should learn a lot about rust prevention on vehicles. Just joking. We don't have that out here in California. Yeah, thank God for that. Right?

No, that's a real thing, too.

It is, absolutely. But, yeah, helping the customer. So. And then with the warranty, how do you help your customer make sure that if they have a nagging concern, that they can get it taken care of? I remember when I first started my first dealership job, I almost got fired from an Audi client on an A8. And I didn't do, you know, rule number one, if you have a noise, you need to identify the noise with the client. Well, I didn't do that. So we fixed something under the hood, which was like an evap valve or something like that. That was Ticking. Well, the dealership principal got a letter the next week about how upset the customer was that I wasted his time and didn't value his time because we didn't solve his concern. And his noise was actually from a sun visor on the passenger side that was rattling on the highway. It wasn't anything to do mechanically. So I think that's a great point you make, which is, you know, focus on the customer and how you can help them, really, rather than the technical side of it, because you have all the technical experts in the back to help you with it.

Right, Yeah. I would say, though, to that point, though, is be the advisor that goes on a ride with the customer and really get good notes for the technicians, because that's an important thing, is like, the better your notes are and the more you touch the concern and you duplicate it, the easier it'll be for the. For the text to actually fix it. And they'll appreciate that.

Going into the shop, we had one this week that the girl came and she says, hey, can you fill up my windshield washer fluid? And I said, absolutely, not a problem. Well, I didn't ask the better question, which is why? And she made a comment. She's like, well, I've asked the dealership to do it for the last two times and they've missed it. So my tech services the car. And I asked him, hey, did you fill up the washer wall? He said, yeah, it was full. And I'm like, oh, wait a second, red light, stop. So I ran out to the car and I tried the squirters and they don't work. So I lift up the hood, I try the squirters, and they work. I'm like, wow, this is really weird. Come to find out, it was a simple fix. The hose was getting pinched, so we threw some tape on it, fixed it. But as an advisor. Yes. Getting the concern and documenting the concern properly for your technician, getting in writing. Look, our world moves way too fast. We don't have time for verbal communication with the tech because they're going to get the car and get it out if it's not on the repair order. Didn't happen. So. Absolutely. I think that's key. Write the concern down and write the ticket properly.

Good question, little Jeep. And we're going to send you some service. Drive revolution swag.

Next question. Mike, let me put on my Jeremy, I'm getting to the point where I can't read without glasses. I find that now that I wear the glasses, it makes my eyes even worse. Like you have to have them. It's the oddest thing. I should have kept fighting not getting them. Okay, Michael Angley. I hope I'm saying that right. Michael, I apologize if I'm not. My son began a job one month ago at a BMW dealership as a service Advisor. He has 17 years automotive industry experience as a shop foreman and IT manager. I bought him your book Millionaire service Advisor. He does a lot of things that you mentioned just not seeing enough customers. He is dependent on the person that sets appointments and walk ins. How can he generate more leads? It's a great question, Mike.

So the first thing that I thought of here was.

Getting there early and getting the night drops. Right.

Well, I thought you were gonna say spend a thousand dollars a month on Yelp. No.

Definitely profile on Yelp.

Yeah, exactly.

Yeah, the Yelp mafia.

Yeah, don't do that.

So get there early and get night drops was one that instantly came to my mind. The other one was working the angles like lunch. And when all the other advisors seemed to disappear.

Being the 1:10am like you look down the drive and everybody's gone. Yeah, keep riding.

Yeah, be there when they're not. So don't take lunch when they do. When there's the. Every, every like service drive will have its own like weird downtime. But be the, be the one there early, be the one there during lunch, be the one there in the, in the afternoon.

Especially like 4, 4:30, you know, customers come in for concern, be there to help them. You can get that car written up and put it into production the next day where everybody is not in writing mode. You know, they're getting ready to get out of there.

It's funny, I remember once.

My top advisor when I was running Crevier. Gary was his name. Gary Temple, actually.

Hello Gary.

Great service advisor. I think now he's at Irvine BMW maybe, I'm not sure, but great guy. Loved him to death. Amazing with customers. Total pro. But I remember one day I went back and our manager, our service manager had two advisors. They were kind of newer in there and they were, they were getting like written up for their numbers or whatever, but they were complaining that they didn't have any traffic or there weren't enough ros. Right, right. And when I was coming out of the. I was kind of overhearing it. When I came out of the office, Gary walks up to me and he, he's like, hey boss, what's going on? I'm like, hey Gary, how are you? And at the same time our drive manager comes up and. And was like, hey, Gary, your tow in is here. And Gary kind of smiles. And then our drive manager walks away and he goes, I just always tell him I'm waiting for a tow in.

He tells the driver, go to the guys that they're driving and be like, hey, I'm waiting for a tow in. So any tow in that comes in goes to him. Right. And so I don't know. I don't, I don't think that's unethical, is it?

Well, what I, what I used to.

Do, something I would do for sure.

I'd look out the window and you'd see the tow truck come in. So you'd pop in the license plate, and if it didn't have an appointment, you'd book the appointment with you. So then the customer would be like, you have the appointment.

So all those edges, you gotta be aggressive. All those things add up. Don't assume a social contract. I wish I knew your son's name, Mike, but don't assume a social contract. So that was one that came to mind. The other one that came to mind was prospecting. And so I've done this a lot of times in dealerships that struggle with traffic is I'll print up business cards that have a name on it. And then just on the back we'll say, you know, hey, we service, you know, your, your type of car, whatever the brand is. So I guess here it's going to be BMW, right? So we love to service BMWs and something really positive. And my name is this. Call me. I would love to, to take care of you. And whenever you go to a grocery store, like your son could spend, you know, just on the weekend, he could spend two hours in the Costco parking lot putting those cards on cars. And, and people will actually call you. Like, they're like, wow, somebody wants my business. And so, you know, just creating some sort of postcard that you can put on cars and having stacks of them. They're really inexpensive to do, but people will actually call them. It will work. And I've done this in dealerships where I struggle with traffic and I need traffic tomorrow, I will have porters go out and do that in grocery store parking lots, malls, Costco. And it really works. I mean, just because nobody's asking people for their business. And, you know, if he just puts it on BMWs, he'll, he'll, he'll get, he'll get some business, right?

Absolutely. I think a couple things, I think the, the ongoing training you guys offer, I would jump into that, like 100% absorb as much content as I possibly could. Because when you get the cars, you've got to be able to provide that five star experience to the customers and make sure that they want to come back in your.

Yeah, that's a good point. That we're not. Yeah, that's part of it is getting more traffic, but part of it is making the people that he gets every day to come back and ask for him.

Right, Absolutely.

Yeah.

So that's definitely one key. And then the other one is, you know, grassroots marketing. I remember my first dealership job. I didn't have cars. Of course you'd go out and there's 40 cars sitting there, but there's the lull. So, you know, you set your goals. So I like my log books. I want to set my car count goal every single day and I'm gonna go get those cars now. Where do you find the cars at if you don't have anything? Well, a couple things you can do is I used to go around to the used car dealerships in our town and I'd ask, hey, do you have any BMWs I could run the VIN for to see if there's any open recalls on them and start to build those relationships. So there's 10 or 15 dealerships that could be a customer driver for you as well. And then also don't forget about the independent repair shops around the dealership as well, because they might need help as well. So, you know, there's this battle of customers going from the dealership to the independents. And I mean, BMW, let's face it, it's not a very complex vehicle. Most people can work on it with a crescent wrench in their backyard. It's very complex. They need experts to help. So even the independent shops that think they've got the game figured out, they might need a resource at the dealership. And your son could just be that resource for them and actually be an expert for them and drive more car count. So grassroots marketing, get out and, you know, hit the pavement on your lunch break, start to introduce yourself with those cards you talked about. I think that's huge.

That's. I've done that many times where I'm just like, there's no traffic. And I'm like, we need traffic now.

Absolutely.

And it works like, I don't know, for every 20 you put out, you'll get one.

You will. Absolutely. And then one of your favorites, declined items. So you've got a database of clients within the dealership. Right. How many cars are Being serviced every single month. Is there a way for you to go in and get the declined sales list and start to go in and market to those customers? Could you make a call, send a text, send an email?

You're gonna have to ask your manager for that.

But you mean we have to have permission for that?

Yeah, but I think your manager would love if you're, if you ask for that.

Absolutely. And then inactive customers also.

Oh, yeah, that's a good one.

Customers that are just going out of warranty, maybe, you know, what is the stat? 70% trail out to the independents. We want to bring some of those more back to the dealership. Cars that go out of warranty, they might just need a friendly reminder to, hey, come back in. Let's get your next service done. And now you got a customer pay ticket as well. And you can build those lifelong customers.

So an inactive customer might be a customer that hasn't been in, like, let's say on a BMW, they're due for a service every year. They haven't been in in a year and a half.

So.

So they're going somewhere else if they haven't been in in that long. So calling them and you know, asking like, hey, I know you haven't been in, but we would, you know, we would love to take care of you. And same thing. If you call 20 inactives, you're going to get one in. It's just a law of average. And I think your, your service manager would love you if you asked about that. That one's a good one. Jeremy declines. I'm thinking easy to print out too.

Just, you know, people don't like voicemail though. So what if he gets a voicemail? Does he leave the voicemail? Text him.

Right?

Yeah. So now here's the other thing. Now he becomes like a marketing partner for the service department. If I were you, I'd go talk to your service manager and negotiate a commission based off of the revenue that your campaign generates, whether it's you as the writer or the team. Because if he can go figure out how to get 20% of those inactive customers coming back in, he may not be able to write all those cars himself. So if he's bringing those customers back in, let's share the wealth, right?

Yeah.

Now the service manager of the world, don't throw things at me or don't yell at the screen. It's okay. Cause we're just gonna drive more revenue for your dealership. Right. So inactive customers. Huge. Absolutely huge.

That's great. Good question, Mike. I hope that helps. We also, if you will, reach out. But if you send us your son's info, we will send him a service Drive Evolution T shirt and coffee mug. Thank you for the question. Okay, now we need a drum roll here. We're going to get sound effects wired into this.

We need a. I'm not a drummer, so I'm not even going to attempt it, but.

10 reasons service advisors.

Fail Are unsuccessful. Are unsuccessful.

Fail is just such a harsh word.

Yeah. Well, okay, well, why, why do you have a weird thing with fail?

Well, I mean, you only fail if you stop trying. So is it an unsuccessful? Is it actually a failure?

Well, what is. What are the turnover? The turnover stats for service advisors. Pretty high, right?

Right. At the real estate agents.

Yeah, but it's. Isn't it over 50%?

Yeah, it is.

It's really high.

What's one of the hardest jobs on the planet?

So you wouldn't think that that's failure?

Like. No, I mean, the key to being.

A good service advisor is to stay in one place and collect customers.

Yes.

And not move around. And if 50% of the time they're moving around.

That. That's a lot of wasted opportunity. And then customers also hate coming in and seeing different faces all the time too. Right?

I agree. Absolutely. So they want the consistency within the dealership.

If it's not failure, what is it? A boo boo. A little. A little. A little mistake.

I'm going to call it an unsuccessful. Because they can turn the unsuccessful into a success at their next place. And then don't leave the next place. Stay there.

Show Jeremy. Come on.

Okay, so you want me to cave in and say, okay, it's failure. There we go. It's. It's failure. 10 reasons why service advisors fail. Let's turn it over.

One. They beg for CSI. It's so funny. Like, I, I don't know how many times I've had.

You know, just acquaintances that I'll meet outside of Automotive that will be like, what, what, what is the deal with. Every time I go in, they don't call me. The service is terrible. And then they're begging me to answer some stupid survey. Is that survey, like, mean a lot? Like, you know, and advisors will be like, I'm gonna get fired if you don't give me a good score. And they're like, they're literally begging for it. So I think number one is begging for CSI is it's just repulsive. Like, no customer wants that.

And so in our system and in our training, we're teaching you to commit to it up front, not beg for it. Tell them up front, like, not only are you going to want to answer the survey, you're going to give me a perfect score and setting it up and then living up to that, following some steps that actually, you know, you live up to.

Yeah. I have two thoughts on this. One is I look at Amazon and anytime I buy a product on Amazon, they beg me for feedback. And I absolutely hate those emails and I hate getting asked for a review. If your product's good and delivered, I naturally want to go and give you feedback as a consumer. But if you didn't earn it, don't ask me for it because I'm not going to give it. It's just a waste of my time. And then the other one was my first dealership job. I remember I walked in and everywhere you looked, it said yes in five. I was like, what's going on with yes in five? Like, what is this? And so the service manager explained to me on the first day that you 30% of your paycheck is dependent on your CSI score. So we ask every customer for yes and five. I'm like, you'd walk in and say yes and five. You'd walk out. It said yes and five. They put a card on the, you know, odometer, said yes in five. And I was like. And so I watched the other advisors I observed for the first week and I was like, this is just ridiculous. I'm not doing that. I'm not going to end the transaction that way. I wanted to earn it. So for me, I never ever begged for csi. I always felt that if I provided that five star experience that it's naturally going to come. So I just didn't like that. I would never ask the customer about yes in five.

See, for me, I agree with what you're saying, but I would still have the odd customer where I'd get dinged on CSI because they didn't know that it was important. Right? And so something might happen after the fact, like they would get home and the car wasn't running right or whatever. So I, I found that it was very important for me to frame the customer, that I owned the responsibility. If something was wrong, I wanted to know. But that the survey was important. Right. I had to separate it and I wanted them to know that, like, hey, if something isn't wrong, tell me. I didn't want them. I didn't want to hear about it on the survey.

Absolutely. And that's where you were going to become the customer's trusted service advisor and build that personal relationship. If you're a customer collector and you're building a trust fund, you're staying at one location and you're building this book of business. You do have to plant the seed. So planting the seed, setting that framework is absolutely key. So at the beginning of the transaction, I think it's this. One of the things you teach is the two hour call. Right. Going above and beyond where the customer never wonders what's going on with their vehicle. Because you're going to be in control that you're managing the expectations and you're managing communication. So if you frame it right up front, you plant the seed and, and let them know I'm going to give you an excellent service experience. And then at the end you say, hey, by the way, you are going to get a survey. It's very important to me that we hit the mark and if we didn't, I want you to reach out. To me personally, I love that that's a system that works. And you know, I'm not really a systems guy so that can be a thing that helps service advisors out there but begging for it. I think you're right. What you talked about is there's no communication. They don't know what's going on. And then at the end you're begging me for a high score. Well, you didn't earn it. So I think the challenge is this, as a service advisor, you have so much bandwidth. You know what I'm talking about. There's so many cars a day you can process. Okay, so let's maximize how many cars you can process to maximize your income. We're going to maximize the sales on those cars as well. But what's going to be the driver of maximizing your income as an advisor? It's providing an amazing and a remarkable service experience for your client. And if you do that and then you let them know by the way, you are going to get the survey. And it's very important that we hit the marks on it. If there's any reason that we didn't, let me know. I'm your person. Here you go. I'm your car care guy. Yeah, yeah, that's it right there. So we don't have to beg for it, we have to earn it. Yeah. Service advisor, you have so much.

I agree. Okay. Number two, service advisors don't have a system.

No system.

No system whatsoever.

And you're asking me about a system. Yeah, well, I'm not really a systems guy.

Yeah. So I think there's There's a lot of advisors out there like you that like were good looking when they were younger and everything came easy to them and they could just show up and talk their way out of it. But I, I didn't have that. Like, I had to actually have a system. Like, I think it's the same thing. It's funny too, like the same thing with like sales people. Like, for me, like, I always, like, I'm trying to figure out what the system is. Cause to me a system is scalable. The advisors that just show up and wing it are never as successful as the ones that have a system.

Well, and there's a lot. So I don't know the percentage. But a lot of good service advisors are doers. They naturally can talk to people, they can connect, they can pet the dog very easily. They go above and beyond. They find those ways to do something truly remarkable and memorable for that customer. They connect at a very deep level. But if you ask them to put it down on a system, they'd be like, it's a white wall. I have no idea how I do it. I just do it. So I'm a doer. So you show up, I'm going to take care of you. I know how to do it, I know how to work the system. But I'm not going to be able to go from A to Z and give you every detail on how I do it. And there are some pitfalls of that too because now we talk about consistency. Right. So if you don't follow a system, you could lose that consistency later on. So not having a system can actually hurt you. I think it'd be worth it to possibly pay somebody to come in and write your system for you if you are a doer.

Yeah. Or study somebody else's and pay attention to it. But I think, like it's funny to me, my system that, that I followed when I wrote service is the same system that helped me create a system in a sales department that became number one in the country in new car sales. It's the same thing that's helped doctors convert more gyms convert more. Like that same exact system has been scalable because it's a system if you just went into every situation with the idea that you're going to wing it and do your best. You don't really have a starting and an ending point and you don't know where to figure out where it's going wrong. Right. There's a lot of similarities between doing a walk around and when you know if you're trying to fix a gym that first time with a personal trainer. And that, you know, that analysis, it's very similar. Right. You're getting to know the client and you're asking leading questions. It's the same thing on the new car side, doing a needs analysis. It's the same thing in a doctor's office of breaking down your health. And so it just kind of goes. I mean, it's funny to me too. I was talking to somebody yesterday who is familiar with life coaching like that. It's the same exact thing, really, in a weird way. So if you have a system in an approach, then you know when your results aren't there, you know where in the system it's breaking down, right?

Absolutely, yes. And I think there's two sides. I think for the service advisors out there, obviously, if I'm a service advisor, I'm focused on my paycheck, the team's goals in the shop and the service department's performance doesn't really matter to me. But if I'm a service manager now, yes, following the system is an absolute. You've got to. So you can be a service advisor within a system, within a service department that doesn't follow the system, but you still get good results. Right. Because. But it's a lot harder work too. So I think if you want to have more personal time, if you want to work smarter, not necessarily harder. I think following the system is absolutely key. And with any business that's there and then analyzing your sales, I think absolutely. One of the things with. Let's talk about auto repair consumers real quick. The biggest thing auto repair consumers deal with when coming into a dealership or a shop is the fear associated with the transaction. And the number one fear is that they're going to try to sell me something I don't need. Well, the system will prevent that. How does our system prevent that? Okay. Petting the dog alleviates that. We're not focused on our sales agenda. We're focused on your goals, Mr. Customer. Our process is going to help you do a number of things, save you time and money, protect your investment, and then get your concerns resolved in the most affordable way. We do that by following the system. Okay, so absolutely, I agree. We have to have a system. So if you're a struggling service advisor out there, I think absorb as much of the training as you can and then follow the system that Chris has built. And it works.

Yeah. So the system that we have in the training is called the circle of trust.

Circle of trust.

Because at the end of the day. That's what we want to build. But the log books, everything kind of feed into that. The next one that I have on here is no pregame. So they don't have a pre game.

Yeah. So with the pregame, I've labeled it my golden hour of power. So when we look at service advisor performance and I've. It doesn't matter if you're a service advisor, service manager, dealership principal, gym owner, entrepreneur, solopreneur, Whatever you're doing, you've got to start your day out right. I think the one thing that has determined whether my day has been successful or not is that hour before I start to work. So whether I'm at my shop, working at a dealership, or doing an on site training, getting there in the morning to do a couple things. Number one, getting your mind right. Okay. If you walk into the service drive and there's a customer standing at your desk and you're taking your jacket off, putting your coffee down, you know what that day's like? It's downhill all the way. Why? Because you're in reactionary mode all day long. So we want to drive our day, we want to control our day, and we want to control our results. And that golden hour power does that. Couple things I do is I never work on administrative tasks during game time. Game times from 8am to 5pm that's where I'm writing tickets up, consulting with customers, petting the dog, making sales presentations, going through all that. I can't do administrative stuff during that time. So I do all my administrative stuff either in the morning or in the afternoon. And then I also get my logbook out and set my goals, car count goals, sales goals, and then I look at my slow day plan. So now I'm prepared for what I want to do. I've got my mindset right. I do some reading, I might listen to one of your podcasts, all that stuff. And then I look at the appointments that are coming in, make sure I have everything prepared, and then I'm ready to go. So that hour in the morning sets you up. So it's the golden hour of power. And you've got to have a pregame ritual to get yourself set up for success.

Yeah. And I think that's really good. One thing I would add to that too is advisors is like, write the night drops before you open. Like I used to call people at 5:30 in the morning and be like, hey, I got your car here. You got to give me some money to work with. Like, you know, yeah, because you got to get it some sort of authorization, figure out what's going on, the whole thing. But if you're trying to write customers once you open and then the night drop hasn't been written yet, you don't get to it until 10 or 11 and then it's too late when that could be the first one in the shop. And so no joke, I used to get there on Sundays and write the night drops because I could write like you know, five to 10 of them. And what's funny is at some point the advisors complained. The other advisors, they took night drops away from me and then they gave them back to me two weeks later because nobody ever wrote them and customers were calling in and they didn't know where they were. Right. Where when I wrote them, the ros were created, I had pre authorizations, I did it all because I had a pregame. So yeah, I think a pregame. And the other thing is if you have appointments, check history. Like I would check history, you know, in the morning and know kind of what I was going to recommend so I could spend the time with the customer building rapport and not, you know, there's an awkward thing if you're on the other side of the desk where you're checking history and looking through and the customer is just going, yeah. And I don't know, for some reason 30 seconds feels like 10 minutes.

It does.

And so you know, if you have appointments, you can, you can check history beforehand and kind of know, know what the pre, the pregame is. The number four is pet the dog. They don't pet the dog. And you said something really good earlier. What's the number one reason that advisors say they don't pet the dog?

Well, it's a four letter word and that word is busy, busy. So let's remove that word from our vocabulary because we're never too busy to do our job. Right. And this goes back to following the same system. Every good repair order that we do, every five star review that we generate has been generated from what? Connecting with that customer and really doing something remarkable. And the one reason that service advisors don't pet the dog is they say they're too busy. But you're not.

No, you can't. It has to be the most important thing is building rapport and that connection. So when you're, when you're petting the dog, the thing that advisors do that fail is they walk up to the car and they say things like, do you have an appointment? They make the conversation all about the car. And hey, newsflash, the car is a commodity. It is that your asset is your relationship with the customer, not the car. The car is a commodity. Like, it's funny you guys were, they were joking around earlier that I don't really care about cars. And it's like I always say, my favorite car is the one that selling. I care about people. The reason why I was so good as a service advisor is because I genuinely was curious about people. The car was of no interest to me whatsoever. The car was an excuse to connect and learn about people. And so, you know, you want to ask questions, you want to get to know them on the level of the things that are important to them. Their family, their kids, their work, you know, whatever it is. Now there's 10% of the customers where the important thing to them is a car. Like if, if a customer drives in, in a Toyota Scion that's all tricked out and has nitrous in the center console, you should talk about the car and ask about that. Right? But even me being a novice to that, I can say like, oh wow, like how does that work and how much did that cost and where did you get it done and have you raced and what about the new laws for like racing and you know, are you going to go to jail? Like things like that. But they'll start to tell you, you know, what, what's going on. So petting the dog is not optional.

It's not.

It has to be the heart and soul. Connecting with customers has to be the heart and soul of what you're doing. And if you don't understand what pet the dog means, just go to YouTube and type in Chris Collins pet the dog. And a little cartoon video will come up and it'll explain that to you. But it's really, really important to pet the dog. The next one that I have is they prejudge people. They prejudge. So service advisor, that one's tough.

I think we're all guilty of this pre judging man.

I, I feel like I was really good at that. Like I learned.

Well, it's because you had a system early on.

Yeah. But okay, so when I first started writing service, I wrote in a university district. And so what happens in, when you're riding for Volkswagen in a college town, all the cute girls come in with the beat up Volkswagens. Right. So there were a lot of young college girls that would have like a Volkswagen GTI that was, you know, leaking oil, just like, was, you know, was just a piece of junk, really worn out, rusted Whatever. And all the other advisors, they would see a customer like that, like a young, younger girl, or they would see a customer with an older van, again, that looked like they lived in it. Like, I remember advisors would make that comment. They'd be like, they live in it. They don't fix it. Like, they would have all these like, sayings and things like that. I wrote them. I never. And then, so the other thing, what happened is then the technicians, I would have to coach the technicians too, because the technicians would do this thing where they'd be like, well, it's not, you know, the repairs it needs are worth more than what the car is worth. And I would say, just write down what it needs. Like, to me, I wanted to tell customers the truth, right? That actually could have been another one on this list. They don't tell the truth.

I agree.

You got to tell the truth. And so I don't know how many times.

This is what would happen, right? There would be a Volkswagen, and maybe that Volkswagen was worth $3,000 and it needed $5,500 worth of repairs. And I would tell the person that owned the car, most of the time it was a younger college student. Oftentimes they would cry. I remember that happening a couple times. And I would just say, like, you know, I'm really sorry. Then I would get a call from dad, and then dad would give me a credit card and we would fix the car. Because dad wasn't going to fly out from Michigan to Seattle to buy his daughter a new car, but he didn't want her in a car that wasn't reliable. And so by telling the truth and not prejudging, that's, you know, that's. That's what happened. And then I remember too, then later when I rode at a Cadillac dealership, these Cadillac customers sometimes look homeless. They would come in, in these Cadillacs and they're in flip flops with the, you know, big open shirt and like, just, you know, they didn't look like they were going to spend money on their car. And they, they were farmers that had tons of money. Like how they looked in their bank account did not match, right? And same thing. Like, I just treated everybody with respect. I was curious about everybody, and I told everybody the truth. And I would ask my technicians to do the same. I'd be like, just write down what the car really needs. That's it. It's not, it's not our job to, to be God. Like, the worst thing that could happen is you don't tell somebody something and Then they get stuck or they break down or the worst.

You tell they buy $2,000 worth of work, but they need $4,000 more, and they think the car's fine, right?

Yeah. They do $2,000 worth of work, they think they're okay, they leave, and then another hose goes exactly like, let's really tell them the truth of what they need. That's a good. That's a good point.

Absolutely. Yeah. Telling truth is absolutely key. So. So my thought on this is. And this is where I can always.

Judge whether I'm prejudging a customer or not, is if I listen to that first thought that goes off in my head. So we always have this initial subconscious response to things, especially visual information. So when I look at a car or I look at a customer, I try not to listen to that very initial thought that comes into my head, and I just do my job, which is to help the customer out, go out there, get the information off the vehicle, pet the dog, connect with the customer, and then ask them how we can help them. So that's the biggest thing, is if you're struggling with this, that initial thought car is not worth fixing. This customer won't spend money, whatever it is, never discriminate on a human condition or a vehicle condition. And, you know, going back to what the car is worth, I look at it this way. Transportation is worth a lot of money. So if you're a traveling salesperson and you live in your vehicle and the car is literally worth 1,000 bucks, okay, no, the car is not worth $1,000. If you make $80,000 a year, that car is worth 6, 7200. 7,500 bucks a month to you. So if you miss your next appointment and you get fired and you're out of work for two months, that car just cost you $15,000. That car is worth 15 grand. In 60 days. It's worth a lot more. And if you have to go take Uber everywhere, it gets very expensive. So if you have a good vehicle now, our friends in Michigan or up in the Midwest have to deal with rust. They have a little different example of what they have to do as far as due diligence to make sure the car is not going to literally fall apart. Luckily, here in Southern California, we don't have to deal with that. It's really nice. But the economic value of the car is key. And remember, our job is to educate and inform, and to tell the truth, I think that's absolutely huge. So we're not going to prejudge Anybody.

The next one is they diagnose in the service drive. So service advisors that try to be experts and diagnose what's going on in the drive, a lot of times this happens to technicians that become advisors is they sabotage themselves because they presume that they know, they presume they can diagnose it. When the service advisor's job is to get all the information, put it on the repair order and let the technician diagnose it.

Absolutely. I think on this one what just came to mind is don't be the hero. You don't have to be the hero for the customer. Fix the car on the drive. There's no magic wand that's going to go out there and fix it. The system works. I think a lot of times with information. Today you've got YouTube, so most customers are going to do some sort of research before they come in, whether they watch a YouTube video or just Google the code or whatever it is that they got. I think diagnosing in the drive, whether it's a sound or anything like that, today you can't take anything for granted. And I, last week at our shop, we had a really good customer come in a 2014 Mercedes E350 with 106,000 miles on it. And this all goes to prejudging and following your system. And I'm glad I didn't try to diagnose it in the driveway. And I'm glad I didn't just go to a pattern failure because the car ended up having an internal mechanical failure in the engine. That if I had told the customer, hey, no problem, a tune up will probably take care of this, or spark plugs or a coil, I would have set myself up for failure. So following the system and not diagnosing on the drive is. We need to begin with our Level 1 testing and analysis package to get to the root cause of your concern. Here's what we're going to do. I'm going to get it back to the technician, let them do their testing, and then we'll have the answers for you. Okay, that's going to two things for me. It's going to drive additional revenue because you're going to buy my testing package. I'm not going to guess and I'm not shortcutting the answer right there. So definitely, anytime you catch yourself trying to diagnose on the drive, just slap yourself in the face and say, no. Follow your system. Because the car, the components on these cars today. Chris, systems overlap. You need to do a full inspection on the vehicle. How are the fluids? How's the maintenance records? What else on the vehicle needs to be addressed rather than just that one concern of the one cylinder? So everything overlaps. There's so much opportunity in this business right now. It's actually crazy.

The next one is service advisors discounting as a rule. So I don't know how many times I see service advisors that the way that they sell is to offer a discount. And what they don't understand is they're diminishing their value right out of the gate. A customer isn't asking for a discount, and you're just assuming a discount and you're giving away the profit on just about every RO that you write. Basically, yeah.

I think this goes down to poor sales skills and not feeling confident in your product. One of the things that I like to coach advisors on, first and foremost is believing in the recommendations or the concerns that we talk about and making sure that you don't discount. I believe this. If you're going to provide a client with an estimate, it better be your best pricing right out of the gate. If I. If I'm overcharging you and I can offer a discount, then something's wrong with my pricing model right out of the gate. So I want to offer you my upfront pricing and the best pricing I possibly can. And that's how you're going to collect customers long term. The other part of that is you have to become an expert at dealing with sales objections. And the initial reflex. Know that I call it from a customer. So if the car needs $5,000 worth of work, there's an initial response which is, no, I'd never put that kind of money in that car. Well, long term, five grand is not a lot of money to invest in a vehicle today. You know, over the course of a year, it's monthly investments on that are less than the car payment. So get really good at your sales skills. And if you need help with dealing with sales, objection. That's what the coaching's for, right? Your coach will help you understand what words to use, when to say it. How do you get beyond the first no and really get there to a yes without actually having to give a discount? And you got to defend your pricing. If you can't stand up for your pricing, you can't even stand up for your own paycheck. And they should take your paycheck away from you.

It's sad, though. Most advisors aren't even defending their own pricing. They're just assuming that they're worth less it's like a self esteem thing.

It is, right?

It's crazy. The next one is that they don't like people. It always amazes me.

Are you serious?

Yeah. Like service advisors fail because they genuinely don't like people. They're grumpy and they hate people. But they're in a customer service position and it happens all the time. I don't know how the advisors get hired, I don't know how they get past the managers, but they literally just don't like people.

Why are they in this job exactly?

Because they need a job there. Because their spouse said, hey, go get a job. And so they answered an ad and the manager's hiring warm bodies.

Well, okay.

It happens all the time. They're sitting there at their desk, they look miserable, they're unapproachable. They don't smile ever at anybody. They don't, they don't. They don't have like a, you know, I don't know.

Drive to serve or take care of people. They just don't like people. They're pessimistic.

Well, I think some of that can be a product of the job. And after years in this business, you do get a little calloused and a little. There's an edge to you that you get. But in thinking about this right now, what we just went through gives you an entire system and an entire blueprint on how to turn that enthusiasm up. How do you get reignited? This is why I love going to a class like stepping out of the shop and actually getting into a classroom, because I get away from the reactionary responses that we have to deal with. And I think part of the job can be so frustrating because you can be building an estimate, working on something very important. But if that door opens or the phone rings, what do you have to do? You've got to stop your task and then go there. And that's a psychological issue that a lot of people can't deal with. If you're not a multitasker, this job is going to be very, very challenging for you. But if you don't like people, I mean, I think you've got to get over that, you know, you've got to learn.

I don't think you can teach that.

A servant's heart is hard to teach, right?

Yeah.

You know, so you go to a restaurant, if the server is doing it just to get to their next gig, they're doing it as more of a task oriented job rather than actually serving. So I think what would be a.

Better job for people that don't like people.

Go to parts. Yeah, parts, go do inventory. I mean, come on, go straighten out the inventory in the back.

Be a parts driver.

It could be a lot Porter, I guess. Yeah, car washer could do that.

Work in the business office.

Maybe they could do that.

But you shouldn't be on the front lines.

I, I mean I would say that. And it's, it's the same thing. Just like at the top document. You know, I challenge all the service managers there that, you know, the person that you think needs to not be on your team, help them on to their next thing. You'll put, write their name down, go back on Monday morning and have a conversation and fire them. And yes, even in California it's very expensive to get rid of people, but it's worth it. And if you honestly don't like people, look, there's so many other opportunities in this new economy that we have.

Just go do stuff on ebay.

Yeah, go, go do something else. Absolutely.

Number nine, they're not consistent.

The system, man, it's all about the system. Consistency is key. So one thing that I've observed that independent repair shops will do, dealerships will do as well, the consistency, the level of service can be conditioned to what.

The amount of money you give me. So if you come in and spend $6,000, we're going to go to the nines, we're going to, you know, do everything. We're going to wash your car, we're going to polish the wheels, we're going to do many detail on it. I got a nice gift for you in the car. I don't make you do the walk of shame. I actually walk you out to the vehicle, open the door and shut it. Well, the next time you come in it's, you're due for an oil service, that's it. So now it's a hundred dollar ticket. The level of service drops because you're just an oil change customer.

So but those oil changes set up the next big, you have to treat them the same every time and be consistent.

Yes, absolutely. And that's one thing with new customers and repeat customers. A lot of times that first time customer will get just an amazing service experience and then the second time they come in, it lacks, it's not there. So that's where the consistency is key. And I think for the service managers of the world, their biggest challenge is how do they get their team to deliver that amazing service experience to every customer every time. You know, whether they're doing 100, 200 cars a day. It doesn't matter. Every customer deserves that level of care and that will drive repeat business. You won't lose your vehicles to or customers to the independents then.

Yeah, the thing on that, too is like, if your level of service is dependent on your mood, that's very inconsistent. It needs to be dependent on the system and doing it right the same way every time. Not. Not how you feel like you had an argument with your wife on the way to work. You got to leave that on the curb when you step into work. You got to put all that stuff aside.

That's where the pregame ritual comes in, the golden hour of power. Get your mind set. Absolutely.

Do a little Tony Robbins like moment of gratitude, right?

Yes.

Number 10.

They are not pros.

This one's really big in my book. So can I share a quick little story with you?

Yeah.

Okay. So New England Patriots, Seattle Seahawks. They were in a Super Bowl a few years ago.

No, you can't. No.

Why not?

No, you're going to be like Chris Collinsworth and talk about the play.

Well, I'm not going to really talk about the play. I'm just going to talk to you.

About how, you know I'm a Seahawks fan, right?

I love the Seahawks. I mean, I'm a Cowboys fan.

Nobody who loves the Seahawks would bring this up.

Well, I was saving this one. I'm blindsighting you with it just to see how you would react.

I was there, right?

You were there.

I was there.

Okay. So you remember that play, right?

Yeah, I remember that play.

Do you think Pete Carroll called the right.

I couldn't watch sports for like three months after.

Do you think Pete Carroll called the right play? Yes or no?

Well, it's. That's too easy to answer because the outcome was terrible. But at the end of the day, Russell threw an interception.

Okay. It wasn't Russell.

So if you got. If you're not a sports fan or whatever, the Seahawks and the Patriots were in a Super bowl and it came down to the last minute and the Seahawks were on the, like, two yard line with the number one running back in the league and one timeout and 30 seconds on the clock, and they called a pass play and Russell threw an interception and the Seahawks lost.

And this is my story. Do you know the difference? There was an eighth of an inch difference in the placement of the receiver's foot, and the defensive back who was covering him knew that if he turned his foot an eighth of an inch in, he was running the slant route and that's how he jumped the route and intercepted the ball. So my point is this. It's not the outcome of the game that matters, it's preparation. So if you look at service advisors and how we prepare for our day and our work, we never practice. Okay? So if you look at an NFL player, the game's an hour long. And they've done studies, the wide receivers actually involved in the game, 11 seconds out of that one hour. Now, how much practice do they do each week? They do about 50 hours of time. Right? Okay. So yeah, that's how they make millions of dollars because they're experts at what they do. Yet when you look at the average service Advisor, they work 60 hours a week and they don't practice anything. So why is that?

Why is that?

Yeah, why is that?

Because they're not pros.

So we have to become professional, right?

Yeah.

So what now? A long time. Like when I was growing up, all I wanted to do was race supercross. Well, to race supercross in motocross, you need a motorcycle, right? Well, family didn't have a lot of money. I didn't have motorcycle. So I would pretend all the time. Well, I never got to that level. And at some point in time in my life, I had to make a decision. Am I still going to go race motorcycles or am I going to take my career seriously and become a professional at what I do? So if you're in this industry and you've fallen into it, we welcome you. Welcome. To the automotive repair industry. But cherish. Welcome. Welcome. Right.

If you're two weeks, that's gonna happen. You're gonna eat lunch at your desk. You're gonna gain weight.

Absolutely.

You're gonna be stressed out for sure. You're probably gonna get a divorce.

If you have a welcome, if you have a 401k left, just leave and quit and go.

You're gonna have weird health problems nobody can explain.

Yeah, but everybody has challenges. Everybody. But we have to take our job as a profession and actually be a professional at it. And that's how you're going to rise to the top. Now, look, I went to the. I left the independent gas station world that my dad had had. I did that for six years. And I went to the dealership world because I wanted to make $100,000 a year. And I did that. But the only way that I did is I took it serious. I had my logbook, I wrote out my goals. I practiced every single day until I master. I still practice to this day. And if you want to get to that six figure income and Even higher and build a trust fund to give you everything that you want. You've got to practice. Yeah.

Customers, you got to train like you got to be read books, train, get on our on demand platform and get better at your craft. But the difference between, to me, a pro and a non pro is somebody that's looking at it long term, that wants to be really good at it. And it's a crazy career. So it's either a career for you or it's just a temporary position. If it's temporary, you're not a pro. And that's why you're going to fail. If you don't go into it thinking long term, then you'll always pull up short.

Absolutely.

You won't push through the hard times. You won't practice, you won't work hard, you won't show up early. You'll just get by. And all of the magic is in the edges, in being early, working a little harder, being better than everybody else, paying attention a little bit more. You know, I just, I remember role playing.

Constantly on weekends, at night, role playing, selling stuff, role playing, all kinds of different things to get better. When I was an advisor because I just couldn't believe that I could make that kind of money without going to Harvard or Stanford. Like I was making more money than doctors.

Absolutely.

It was nuts. And. But that's because I approached it like I was a pro. Right. So that's the top reason service advisors fail. Or as Jeremy would like to say, the top 10 reasons service advisors have a boo.

Boo.

Is that how you want to say?

It's not what I said. Listen to how quiet you got when you said the top 10 reasons why service advisors are unsuccessful. And we can get into a sex terrible. That's a good game plan, man.

Make sure you go to ChrisCollinsInc.com and get involved in the service manager challenge. I'm giving away my jeep gladiator pickup truck. You can win it. It's the only thing you have to do is beat yourself. That's it. But all the information and rules are on there. So check it out. I appreciate you coming on here, Jeremy. This was fun. We got to do this again. Jeremy and I are working on some stuff together that is pretty good. So he's done some service advisor training for independent shops because that's his area of expertise. He owns a shop and is very successful at it. And then the next thing we're going to do is kind of like financial how to. How to run a shop. Right. So that stuff is coming out, which is very, very fun. But thanks, everybody, for tuning in, and we will see you again next time on Service Drive Revolving.