An automotive service advisor shares six essential traits for success, emphasizing that low sales stem from lack of customer trust. He stresses ethical selling: never recommend work you don't fully understand. A Subaru valve-cover-gasket leak story shows how learning the technical details lets advisors confidently explain value to customers.
That is a band-aid. You're treating the symptom, not the cause. The cause is they don't like or trust us. And so the really good advisors have the ability of getting customers to like and, and trust us, right? Through their control, through, through taking away decisions and making the experience better for the customer. Uh, number 6, we have that they, they understand the business side of things. They're business-minded, so they know what hours per RO are. They understand pricing and gross. They, you know, they're, um, they're, they're very confident in what they're doing. And that, you know, that goes hand in hand with the learning part too. They're always learning. Like, when I was an advisor and I didn't understand something, I'd go back and ask the tech to show me. So I could understand or I could present it. I wouldn't call a customer and try to sell something that I didn't understand what it was, right? So the very first time I'm like 19 or 20 and a Subaru tech comes to me and says the valve cover gasket's leaking. I went back and I said, can you show me what the valve cover gasket is? And they popped the hood and they show me and then they explain how the oil starts to run down the side and they start smelling a burning smell and like, because it gets on the block, right? On those old Subarus, it was right on top. A terrible design, but I understood. So when I called the customer, I was like, hey, I don't know if you smell any, a burning smell when you park the car, but your, you know, your valve cover gasket's leaking. They're like, oh no, I do smell that. I was wondering what that was, you know. So I, I understood what it was before I called the customer., you know, just left it to chance. Like, I want— I also, the other thing is I wanted to believe in it because I didn't want to sell something that I didn't believe in. So I wanted to really know that there was a value to the customer and understand how important it was. Because if the customer says, well, I don't really have money or I can't afford it, you know, I want to be able to say, well, you can wait on that, but you should do it in the future. Or no, this really is something that you should do, right? I wanted to understand firsthand how important it was.
