Do Service Advisors Need Technical Skills? (Service Drive Revolution)

Before we wrap up, let's take a couple questions. Remember, if you submit a question to us.

And we read it on the big show, we will send you swag, which is, yeah, these beautiful service drive revolution coffee mugs, T shirts, hats, stickers, notepads. We got all kinds of stuff. And it all has my face on it, too. I'm sorry about that.

I could show up at your house.

My face is on everything.

You would show up at their house.

I think it'd be voice of God. Do you have any good questions this week? Do you feel like the questions are good?

The voice of God always has many good questions.

Question number one. This question comes from Fit Mommy. 11:07o l dot com.

I am a service writer. I learned through a trucking company, and I worked at a dealership, and now I'm at an independent shop. How do I learn more hands on mechanical experience and grow in the industry?

Okay, so I don't know what I.

Think of the same thought on this one.

We do. Yeah, I think so. My thought is the. The mechanical experience is not that important. And so I remember when I was a service advisor and I was doing pretty well. Of course, when you start to do good, everybody starts to find reasons why, like, you know, trying to diminish your value. And I was just a kid. I wasn't even 20. And so this Volkswagen tech who still, I think, works at that dealership, his name was Shane. Shane, you're an. Pulls me into the Volkswagen shop, calls all the Volkswagen techs over, and on this wood crate box is a round metal disc. And I. I don't know. I think Shane's my friend or whatever. I didn't know that I was being set up, that this was an ambush, but all the texts were there. It was kind of weird. And he says, hey, what. What is this? And I go, I don't know. A brake rotor? And everybody starts laughing. And how can you be a service advisor? You don't know the difference between a brake rotor and a clutch disc, because there's a clutch disc.

And so what Shane didn't know and what. What you want to understand fit mommy. 1107. 1107. Is that your value in the marketplace is your connection with the customer, not the commodity. You don't need to worry about the commodity. You can learn the commodity. So what I did is I spent most of my energy on connecting with the customers and petting the dog, making friends. And then when the technician would bring me an inspection sheet or there was something I didn't understand, I would go back and ask him to show me. So I, I would just say like, hey, I can't present this to the customer if I don't understand. Can we put it up in the air and can you show me? And that's how I would do it. I'd ask him to explain it to me or show me a picture and that was it. And I, I really liked seeing it on the car because you know, you see the CV boot on a Subaru leaking and grease, you're like, no, you need to replace it. It gives you a little more conviction when you see the oil leak or you see the belt that sprayed. So go back and look in the beginning and don't worry too much about the technical. Just take every customer, connect on a deeper level, forget about the commodity and make friends with your customers. Over, communicate, over, deliver. And then when you don't understand technical, something technical, go ask the tech.

She, I think she said she's in an independent so she probably doesn't have a shop foreman, which should have been on my list of advantages. Oh yeah, good question. So do you agree with my answer?

I do. And I would say I, you know, find one thing about your customer that you don't know about them. Like get the initial write up, document down their concerns and then make sure you're proactive in your communication with them. Like those things are way more important than the technical side of it. Like deliver a remarkable and rememberable.

You don't build trust by technical knowledge. You build trust by empathy and genuine curiosity about people.

Absolutely.

And that's what I, what I was, I was curious about people like what they did, where they lived, what their kids turned out to be or not to be. Potatoes.

Tied.

Is that a crop of potatoes?

Jeremy has a bag of potatoes for kids.

My kids in the process are. Now they're french fries.

Any more questions? God.

All potatoes are God's children.

This next one comes from Jerry on Instagram.

It's a long one. Buckle up. I'm currently a tech with 15 years experience in dealerships and independent shops. Hold all of my ase master Chrysler and a Ford senior master. I want to get out of wrenching and into management. The trouble I'm finding is that I'm the second most productive tech in our dealer group and and management doesn't want to lose my productivity and move me into a different position. I have looked at other dealers in my area but I'm only being recruited as a mechanic. What am I missing? No one can tell me. In between the Books, podcasts, and your on demand training. I'm still clueless about what I can do to move up. Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

First of all, God took the knife and scissors to this question, so he cut out the whole part about. He said he listened to every podcast twice, blah, blah, blah. Right. All the compliments that they paid us. Right. Yeah. God must feel like we don't deserve that.

There. There is a way to help this. Jerry.

And Jerry.

Jerry.

Jerry with the James book.

Yep. The sad part is, because of your technical expertise, nobody's gonna want to move you from the shop to the front.

However, because there's a high demand for good technicians.

Yeah.

If he's willing to relocate to Hisperia, California, we do have a management position available. Put you right in. Can you start on Monday? Yeah. I think that that's the challenge is if you're a technician and you're really good at fixing the cars, that's the one thing that dealerships and independent shops struggle with today. And they do not want to give up the production. So my thought is, this is the voice of God was reading that question is you have to act as if, meaning you have your day job, which is being the technician and producing. Show up early and offer to write up the night drops and start to get familiar with the system, start to be a service advisor, be there when they need help. Go up and introduce yourself to customers more, get your cards out there, get from behind the toolbox and get on the service drive and just start being a service advisor and, and get into that management role or on that side of it with the service drive. And realistically, you are going to have to fight to get there. It's. It's just a tough thing because they're not going to want to lose a production.

Yeah. So I, I bet you that this. But I think your idea is good. But if you really want the position, you're probably going to have to leave there. But I would do. I would do two things, and one of them will work. One of the two would work. So one is you go to your current general manager or dealer and you say, hey, this is where I want to go. I want to become a manager. I'd love for you to mentor me on how to be a manager. Will you teach me financials? Will you teach me what you know? Now, anybody who's older in their career, who's been doing this a long time that's asked to mentor somebody on their expertise, there's a high percentage chance that they're going to bite and that they're going to mentor you. And so if they agree to mentor you, you need to estab like, hey, is it every Saturday? Like when are we going to do this? Once a week we're going to meet for two hours and I'm going to be able to pick your brain and go through what you know.

So that's. In your current situation, that's what I would do. Then I would hand write some letters to some general managers and say, hey, I'm a technician here, I'm the top tech and I want to be a manager. Obviously it's, you know, there's more demand for technicians and service managers, but I'm gonna move on. I would love for you to mentor me to become a manager and have some sort of an agreement and somebody will bite on that too. So I bet you if you sent out 20 of those letters and you, you know, found general managers or dealers names and sent them a personal letter like that, they would definitely bite on that. Somebody probably. Yeah, exactly. Yeah.

What about filling the void? So if he's leaving them back of the shop, what if he created a technician mentorship program where they bring in two or three entry level text and he's going to mentor them so he, when he's out of there, the production void is filled.

Yeah, you just. And that's a good one. Probably in combo with you asking to be mentored by the dealership you're working at because obviously there's going to have to be an opening to like maybe this, the dealership you're in, that manager is going to be there for a long time and he's doing a good job and you're waiting for one of the other ones in the group to managers to pop. So that's a, that's a great, that's a great idea. Yeah. So I'll mentor my replacement, but I'll do two. Yeah, that's great.

Great question.

Good questions.

Thank you so much for watching this clip of Service Drive Revolution. Now you can catch the full episode of on YouTube, iTunes or Spotify or wherever you consume your podcast. If you have any questions, go ahead and post them in the comments below. Make sure you subscribe and hit the bell icon so you're notified when we post new episodes. I'm Chris Collins and you can find me on Facebook and Instagram at Chris Bulldog Collins and I'll see you again on the next episode.