Handling Burnout as a Service Advisor

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Yeah, you'll just be walking down the street and people be like, hey, are you the guy from str? Right.

That happens every once in a while, doesn't it?

Hey, Chris. My name is Peyton.

Longtime listener, first time caller, and my question is this. Been an advisor for about two years now, and I'm starting to feel a little burnt out, and I'm really questioning if this is something I want to keep doing or not. But I don't know how to bring up the conversation with my service manager and talk about it, and I don't know how to have the conversation with myself.

Be helpful with anything or any kind of help you can give would be much appreciated.

So, Peyton, I get the sense that there's a little something else going on there that, that you're struggling with besides writing service, because it sounds like it was some sort of. Some sort of struggle there. And so let's talk about the advisor part and then hopefully that will. Will bleed over to. To the other part that you're struggling with. But I want to send you a book.

The Millionaire Service Advisor, and I want you to just read the first couple chapters. But in there, the thing that I found as a service advisor is that after about three years, so you're almost there, you're two years in, but after about three years, if you try every day to connect with one customer, and I say one, but really, if you're good at this, you'll connect with five.

But if you just connect with one or two new customers every day, after three years, you will have so many key throwers that your job should get tremendously better. If you're petting the dog and you're building rapport with your customers, really being a trusted advisor, forgetting about the commodity, which is the car, and talking about their kids, their work, their vacation plans, how, you know, how they've navigated Covid, working from home, school, all of the things that are important to them, and you update them, you really, really take care of them over time, it's like a. It's like a bank. They're just going to come in and throw the keys and. And your job gets so much easier. So Much easier.

It's really interesting. So I was out over the last month or so. I've been pretty fortunate. I got to do some advisor training, and I was really, really lucky to have somebody in the class that had been a service advisor in the same dealership 37 years. Now, I don't know if I'd ever seen that before, but talking to him, you could just tell that he was a customer collector. And he'd kind of said the same thing. Those first two, three years were really, really hard. And since the first 34 years, since, it just keeps getting a little bit easier every year. And that's what he said. He's like, I'm so glad that I didn't go to 10 different dealerships and I stayed at the same place. And he was kind of telling me he's outlasted ownership in a lot of cases. I think there was like two or three buy sells that he'd been through, but his customers just come to him and he doesn't take fresh customers anymore. It's just a matter of he's just at that point. And I think that at two years, first off, I would say one is I understand the burnout because I think that this job, it's physically demanding, it's mentally demanding. And at two years is where it hasn't gotten to the part where it's easier yet because you're still trying to figure out there are certain problems that maybe you're dealing with for the first time. But after two years, you've about seen and done it all in terms of comebacks. I think Chris always says that at six months is when the magic that you haven't heard any new problems. But at two to three years, you really hit your stride. If you do that conversation with yourself and you decide this is the industry, just know that the easier portion of the business is coming to you. And man, three years is a magic time.

Yeah. And so another thing that that I did is I used to go work out at lunch. So I had a deal with my manager that I took a little longer than an hour and I forced myself to go work out at lunch because, you know, you're. I was there trying to get the night drops at 5, 5, 30. I wasn't leaving until 5 or 6 every day. So that little time in the middle of the day where I actually ate a lunch and I actually worked out made a huge difference for me. And so you want to make sure you're taking a lunch, you want to make sure that you're taking Care of yourself. And, I mean, I don't. I don't really think that I.

Knew myself when I was an advisor. I definitely didn't love myself. I probably hated myself, to be honest. But I'll tell you, the one place that I found satisfaction and I found something bigger than myself and something that fed me in a way that was rewarding, and that was that I took really good care of my customers. I put my customers first. I really wanted to know about them. I really cared about them. And by making them my focus and not worrying about myself, it was rewarding. And, you know, I would literally go home and think, like, hey, like, I, you know, I. I saved these customers from all kinds of issues, even to the point that I genuinely believed that customers should pay more to have me as an advisor. Like, I wasn't discounting anything. Like, I genuinely believe that. And because I believe that, I don't. I don't think I was asked that many times if I could cut the price on something just because of my presence and my mindset and what I was projecting that I, you know, I was projecting that authority. I'm in control. I'm. I'm the person here that if I don't know the answer, I'm going to find out. But I'm working for you. I don't know. That's very rewarding. It's rewarding to be the person that somebody can depend on. In an industry where, let's be honest, most advisors don't call people back. They're writing 25 to 30 customers a day, that the customers are just another number. You know, they walk out. Well, the customer probably comes into them, and they're like, did you have an appointment? What's wrong with your car? Truck? There's. There's very little banter or human connection. I. I wanted to be different in. In that scenario. I wanted to be a pattern interrupt. And that was very rewarding to me. Putting the customers before myself helped me get through that period when I didn't really know myself, if that makes sense, because I was young.

Oh, yeah.

Wow.

Yeah. That's pretty insightful.

So pet the dog. Get, like. And understand that you're. You're at the point where, you know, two things. One is, you should be creating key throwers. Now, if you're two years in and you haven't been petting the dog and creating key throwers, you need to start that tomorrow. And then the second part into Christian's point, like, take care of yourself. Take a lunch.

You know?

Yeah. As coaches as we go into the stores, we don't even need to ask at 3 o' clock who's taking a lunch, because you can physically see it on the people, right? The advisors that haven't taken a break, they look beat down.

I know probably 90% of the people listening to this are gonna think I'm crazy. But I'm just gonna also tell you the truth is if I could go back and talk to my 19 year old, know it all, advise herself or whatever, I would, I would tell myself to go do transcendental meditation right away.

Wow.

Because I ate bad, I drank too much. Like I would have started transcendental meditation way back then. So I don't know. Look, look up videos, you know, on YouTube, on Howard Stern, transcendental music, meditation or Oprah. And look into that too, because that might be something that'll help you. I know it definitely helped me, but pet the dog. We're going to send you the book and then, you know, if you read those first two chapters, let us know, let us know your thoughts on that.

But I think you would also tell your 19 year old self to invest in Google. Jeez.

Yeah, Google. It's going to be a list.

Yeah, you'd have a long conversation with you.

I made some money in Microsoft back then.

Did you really?

Microsoft used to split constantly, so it's kind of like bitcoin now. Like everybody was making money.

You know what, I would guess in your area that everyone was willing to take a chance because the locals, we.

Used to call them Microsoft millionaires. A lot of people that worked at Microsoft that had got stock were all of a sudden really, really rich.

Yeah, there was like stories of janitors driving Ferraris and stuff like that.

Right.

That's so cool. We, I used to ride them up, you know.

Yeah.

That's neat.

It's fun. So thanks for the question, you know, hope that that helps. And we're sending our, you know, love and good vibes your way, but make it about the customer. Be a customer collector, heat throwers and that. That should all work out. Thanks so much for watching this clip of Service Driver Revolution. We're uploading new stuff every day, so make sure you subscribe and click the bell icon so you don't miss out. If you have a question you'd like us to answer on the show, call 8333 Ask SDR and we'll answer your question on the show. That's 8333 Ask SDR for special deals on our books and training head over to offers.chriscollinsinc.com now that's offers.chriscollinsInc.com I'm Chris Collins, and I'll see you in the next video sa.