How Service Advisors Can Overcome Sales Objections | SDR #198

Today on the big show, we're going to talk about do service advisors need to know how to overcome objections? Is that something service advisors should be trained to do? We're going to talk about an important event in Christian's life. Also, we're going to try to get to the bottom of the trauma and deep rooted pain that he has. I'm guessing from childhood, but we're still working on that and some exciting things in the news. So that and much, much more coming up on this edition of Service Drive Revolution.

Before we get to the big subject today, Christian.

Yeah.

There's an event in our near Future. Not the 200th episode.

I'm excited about that, though.

There's an event in our near future that is relevant.

Okay, what's that event?

Your birthday. What is just you go out in the backyard and play hockey on the.

Pond, like since you were three years old.

Yeah. And then you get drafted to Tampa, Florida. Could you imagine like a bunch of Russians and Canadians?

Could you imagine just asking, where'd I go? The Maple Leafs? The Oilers?

No, the Lightning.

Where's that at?

Not only that, but they've won the Stanley cup two times in a row.

They're, they're, they're on pace to do a three peat, I believe. It was a great game to go to.

So they're in the playoffs at this moment when this happened.

Yes.

And I said, well, we should go because we were right there. We were, we had nothing going on.

Hotel overlooked it.

Yeah. The hotel was right next door. So we get ourselves some tickets. Right on the glass.

Yep.

And we go to the, to the game. And I don't who you were talking to somebody that saw us on tv and you show Rob. So we, because we're on the glass, we end up. The back of our heads end up on tv and I've got a bald spot. I've got a, I know there's, I've seen a commercial on football where you can do like a virtual thing and they'll send you something to help you. But I got to do something, fill.

That thing in because I hear if.

You address it when you start thinning, it's better, it's easier to fix than like, once you're a rock. You can't grow anything.

No return.

Yeah. So that's on my list of things to do is.

Well, I feel, I feel it here, too.

I think they give you lotion or pills or what they do, but.

I definitely have a bald spot and I never see it.

Well, most people don't either because you're tall. So like I'm five foot one or whatever and people see my bald spot.

Made me feel old. But you have a birthday coming up.

I do. The number 47 I believe is what this one is.

So big. Real close to 50.

Yeah, I'm getting there.

But you know when you're. You know when you're having a good night is when you don't have to get up and pee three times?

Yeah.

Like just pee once.

Anything under two. I had a one pee. Or the other night it was.

You slept so good.

It was so great. That is when you're getting tonight actually. It's hilarious. But yeah, it's going to be a fun birthday.

Yeah, I'm going balds.

Yeah, you poor guy.

So depressing.

It's funny. You know what? I stayed out and I stayed out in Florida that weekend, so.

Yeah, I know. I flew home alone.

Yeah. So Chris flew home alone. Normally we like to travel together and I was playing golf with my son and he's really kind of starting to get into this golf thing and I don't know, I'm golfing with him. But.

I can tell you one thing. Takes a lot of balls to golf like me.

So funny. Like for a minute there I didn't think you were. I was like, he's doing a joke. And then I was like, no, he's not doing a joke.

I brought you back and forth.

Yeah.

Yeah, that was good. I had a feeling that maybe there.

Was a little story about your kid.

Yeah, you know what? He's.

You're one to share a lot of your personal.

Always you're yelling at me for sharing too much of my personal life and my emotions. But it is fun to watch him play though. It's really cool.

Why don't we get into some of your childhood trauma on the show.

What do you want to talk about? So I had a fairly boring childhood growing up.

You say that, but it's clearly your sense of humor comes from pain somewhere.

I don't know. I think I come from.

There's pain in there somewhere.

Of course, I think everybody has a little bit of pain. But I.

Where did the pain come from?

I come from a long line of pretty funny people. Did I ever tell you? So my grandmother was funny.

Doesn't come from funny people. It's not genetic. It comes from.

Oh.

I think that funny is ground out like metal with pain and suffering and humiliation.

So let me tell you about this non genetic thing that goes on in my family. My grandmother, genius, she was a Brilliant woman. She was a schoolteacher for a long, long time. And my favorite, like back in the day when they did pictures of the teachers in the yearbook, they'd have like a little quote underneath them. My favorite all time quote from my grandmother that was in the yearbook is, be quiet or I'll cut your tongue out with a dull knife in the yearbook. Which I think in itself is brilliant. And that's where I would like to attribute my humor from. Also to my grandfather. I'll be 47 next.

No, when that happened.

Oh, when that happened. Five.

Yeah.

See?

So what else did grandma do besides threatening cut?

That was pretty much it. I probably have a little bit of trauma from watching my grandfather walking around in his Speedo. That was tough. But I think maybe in comparison to.

The trauma that people had more than the Speedo, there's something a little bit in depth here. Yeah. See, Christian.

Someday Christian's gonna go to therapy. It's gonna fall out on the table.

I'm just gonna let it be like, what's that?

What's that elephant in the room.

It's great.

Just hold it inside, Christian.

Yeah.

This is a safe place. Our audience cares about you. They want to. They want.

Yeah, I get that.

Just think about how freeing it would be if you just opened up a little bit.

I feel so free already.

If you just stop, like, zipping that back up in the duffel bag and hiding it in the back of the closet.

It's got a really nice little storage space.

It's more like you covered it in concrete.

It's tough to access. That's so funny.

Then you're just wearing it on. You know, you're wearing it also.

I don't know. I'm a pretty happy guy.

No, there's a dark side there.

Well, there's a devious side. It's a little different than the dark side.

No, it's not. Only somebody who's trying to deflect. You'd say that you're trying to manage. You're trying to manage perception. I get that. Like a good salesperson. But.

No, this is not how it works.

For the record, like, this is a totally normal conversation that we have all the time.

What did you open up about? There was something. I was surprised. We were talking to somebody and you came out with some sort of childhood thing. It wasn't a lot, but it was more than I've ever heard before.

I don't remember.

Yeah, I don't either. So.

Both of us, you want to.

Do the news and then we'll get into do. Service advisors need to know how to overcome objections.

First thing in the News is our 200th episode is coming up, and we think we're gonna do it live. Only two more throw a party.

So we have. This is 198, right?

Yeah.

So we got a 199 and then the magic 200, which is cool. I might drink.

What about doing some Molly and Kosh?

Can you get me some Molly?

But I don't like the way he said. Yeah.

Like, he took a note.

Yeah, he's like.

But in the news. We'll have to put a picture up of this on, too, but Harley Davidson just came out with a new vehicle. It's a bicycle. It's an E bike, so kind of interesting. Look at the tires on that thing.

You want to buy a couple of these and we'll start an E bike gang? Well, I was like, Sons of Anarchy for the.

Literally, like, how funny would it be to have the leather vest riding an E bike?

Maybe not make them out of leather. Like, maybe make them out of, like, you know, velvet. No, like some sort of, like, you know, synthetic.

Oh, yeah.

Like, whatever they make, like, vegan.

Like a Doc Martens has the vegan boots. We get a vegan vest.

No, I think we make it out of, like, the same stuff as, like, the Members Only, but it's like a vest.

Oh, what is that stuff?

Yeah, that shiny.

Weird. Yeah, I'm in. I'm totally in on this.

Nerds for trouble.

Have you ridden an E bike?

Never. Me neither, but I was thinking about getting a bike for that.

Sounds like it takes the fun out of it.

Well, there's no exercise involved. What do you think about riding a bike to work?

I love bikes. The only problem in la, where we are, is it's the cars that hit the bikes. The people driving the cars aren't. You know, there isn't a. There isn't a test for stupid that keeps them from hitting bikes. Most of the time, it's. It's the car, not the person riding the bike.

That's true. Well, it's not motorcycles. I. I think I would wear a helmet if I decided to start biking.

I'm not in the market for a.

Harley Davidson bike, so. Harley Davidson, come out with a bike. See ya. All right. If you weren't in the market for that, you might be in the market for this.

A Mitsubishi dealership is selling a wonderfully ridiculous Learjet limo. The Mitsubishi Learjet limo.

If you guys are listening to this, you got to go to YouTube and see this thing? It literally is like they took a jet, took the wings off, and it's just the. The round part.

Yeah.

What do they call that?

Kind of looks like they put it on, like, a dolly almost. Right. Kind of what it looks like. You know, the. The hot dog float. Oscar Meyer.

Oscar Meyer.

Wiener Kind of looks at that. But the wiener. Straight.

That is.

It's a straight wiener. Not curved.

Don't make. Don't, don't. Don't make my thing dirty. I'm trying to explain something to people that can't see this. And you're. Yeah.

Amazon logo.

Your dirty mind on it.

It's terrible.

But it's like that, except it. It's not a. It's not going up. It looks like a jet, and it has the windows and the.

Yeah, the jet engines are.

So there's, like, a private jet, but. How long is that thing? You think it's long?

Yeah.

You couldn't park that. And they left the little. The wing on the top in the tail fin. Exactly. And the engines are there, but I'm sure there's no engine in there, but. Wow.

Unbelievable.

How much is it?

So, you know what if you got a special deal on financing, just under $3.8 million is what this will go for.

So the payment on that dude's gonna be like, what, 25 grand? Oh, I feel like depending on the rate. What's that? No. Well, I don't know.

Well, there's probably no 0% financing on that thing, but it's really cool. Red color, actually, but I think it's neat. Wouldn't want to buy one but that. Yeah. So, Mitsubishi Learjet.

Learjet limo.

Sorry, I forgot that it seats seven.

There's gonna be a bunch of people going, oh, they're making a jet now? No, they took a jet, turned it into a car. Do you know what a Mitsubishi dealership is?

No. Other than a Mitsubishi dealership, it's a.

License to sell used cars, which is what that is. Right.

Yeah. We have had some Mitsubishi dealerships that were good with used cars. You're right.

What it's good for.

Yeah. Amen. Tough new car franchise.

Good for used cars.

Right.

You know, I heard a commercial.

Yeah.

On sports radio in Seattle. Because that's what I listen to.

Get all the gossip on the Seahawks and the Mariners.

But did you say they. They rarely talk about these Seahawks, which is why you want to listen to it. And then they just hold it from you.

The problem is the Mariners, I guess, are doing pretty good, so a lot of it's about the Mariners. But today there was a lot of Seahawks.

Nice.

They, they had a commercial on there for a dealership. And the commercial was something to the spirit of, we will buy your car, pay you, and then when we sell it, we will split the Commission with you 5050. So we'll pay you on the spot. Like they were very clear. Like, if you want to sell your car, bring it to us. We will pay you for it on the spot. And then when we sell it, we will split the commission with you. Now, they don't specify if they'll split the front or the back end or both.

It's an even split.

But if you think about it, it's genius. Where if you were going to sell your car. So let's say, I don't know, you had a Honda Accord. And let's say that thing books out for $25,000 just for a nice round number.

Yeah.

Let's say this guy will give you 24 for it. You know, you can sell it for 25, but in the market now, he might sell it for 28. You make a little more. So I bet you the guy's buying them for a little less with the understanding that they'll split the commission. And then. And I don't know if he's doing this, but a lot of consumers don't understand. You could move some of that money to the back.

Yeah. Make it on finance instead of on the.

The front end growth something. You can move it. So.

Because I don't know if you can split the back end with somebody in a lot of states, you have to reserve. They would have to have a finance license or whatever, right?

No, it's got to be front end.

Gross. Yeah.

I think it's brilliant, though.

I bet it's working. But that's how aggressive.

I would say that's a really good.

Way to build the inventory commission with you.

That's pretty smart.

So speaking of a used car entity that's not doing so well, Carvana was.

Told for a while that vending machine of used cars.

Vending machine of used cars was not able to sell cars in my home state of Illinois.

Yeah. I think they were doing some shady stuff.

So it was about titling issues. So they failed to properly transfer titles for vehicles.

They were selling cars without having the title. And then people were trying to get the title and they couldn't get the title. Something like that.

They were also misusing out of state temporary registration permits. Like the whole thing, the shady car business thing, like totally.

Carvana so also the outcome of growing really fast, because they grew really fast, and it's hard when you grow that fast to put enough controls in place sometimes.

Yeah, I think it was a little too loose. But they're allowed to sell cars in Illinois on just a little basis. But there's nothing that tells me Carvana is a good thing to invest in right now.

Consumers like it. Oh, you were thinking about buying their stock?

No.

Oh, no less thinking about selling their stock.

Well, if I had it, I'd probably sell it.

You're short their stock?

No. There makes no sense to short everything. Like, I've got cryptocurrency right now that I'm not going to short. Doesn't make sense.

Well, if you have it, you wouldn't short it.

Right. But I'm not going to sell it. Well, short buy versus.

Do you know what shorting a stock is?

That's when you buy it low, right?

No, you're saying that the stock's gonna go down. You make the same amount you would make if it was going up. So let's say if I, you know, let's say I buy Tesla stock at $1,000.

Yep.

And it goes up to $1,200. How much did I make per share?

$200.

Let's say I short Tesla stock at 1,000. So I short it and it goes down to 800. How much did I make?

You lose? 200.

No, I made 200 because I shorted it.

Yeah.

I don't really know what I'm talking about.

Then that's explaining it to you.

Yeah.

So because, you know, our audience, they're. They're probably curious about this.

Oh, some of them dabble, for sure.

But what happens is when you short stocks, when people with a lot of money short of stock, it. It puts weight against it. And so that's why Elon was so mad that Bill Gates and other guys were shorting Tesla, because the momentum shifts the other way.

Oh, that's interesting. I thought shorting was. When you sold it, when you. When it was less than what you bought it for. That's essentially just losing.

That's just a loss. Yeah. You ended up short.

I will be short.

You came up.

When it's all said and done. I don't know.

Shorting a stock is betting against it. So you can make the same sort of money betting against. There's a lot of guys that will make money betting against stuff. It's riskier, though, because when it goes up, you lose a ton.

Have you spent a lot of Time on the stock market.

Yeah, well, I've, I've. Yeah. The other thing is, is a lot of times if you're going to do a lot, you have to have. You have to have kind of a guarantee against it in a sense. So if you're going to short stuff in a big way, if it goes up, you, you, you got to pony up or you lose all that money. And so I see it's a little different than if you just buy it.

Yeah. So you're trying to plan the ones that are going to suck.

It's a mess. Okay, do service advisors need to know how to overcome objections? We get this a lot. Could you train our advisors?

Over.

Problem here is our advisors. Our advisors. Our advisors. I've yet, I think in the last year to talk to anybody where it actually was the advisors. It's usually you need more techs, you need better systems than the advisors. Right. Most of the increase that we see, very little of it has to do with advisor training. In the beginning, it's the systems and the addition of production. But what happens is the service advisors are riding 20 hours a day. They're not calling everybody back. They're not selling stuff. They're scared to sell stuff because they don't have enough production in the shop because technicians have been quitting and we haven't replaced them. So we had 20 techs before. We still have the same amount of advisors, but now we're down to 14 techs. And we think that teaching the advisors how to sell is the problem.

Yes.

It's a common thing.

Bottleneck. Yes.

Let's put that to the side for a second. And let's talk about when does an advisor get into a situation that they need to overcome an objection? And let, let me frame this a little bit.

Most of the time, what you are recommending to a customer as a service advisor.

Is needed. So let's say you call a customer and you're like, chris, Joan, this is Chris over here at Bulldog Motors. And you need brakes.

Like, how bad do I need the brakes?

Let's not turn this into an improv, please.

That was a ridiculous question.

What's that thing from Chicago, the improv thing? Bill Murray came from Groundlings. Yeah, this isn't the Groundlings or whatever. Second City.

Second City.

Second City.

Groundlings. Here is here.

This is service driver Lejon.

Yes, continue on.

You need breaks, Christian. Oh, no. Now, if you don't get breaks.

What'S gonna happen?

I won't stop.

It's gonna cost you more.

Yeah, for sure.

If you don't get breaks from me means you're gonna go somewhere else to get the breaks. But eventually, Christian is getting brakes. The only scenario that you're not getting breaks is you trade the car in or sell the car. But in every other situation, Christians buying breaks. What objection do I need to overcome? Except for the objection of I don't like you, I don't trust you, or you're telling me I need breaks and I'm here to pick it up.

Those would be the. That would be the trifecta, wouldn't it?

Now, are those objections or are those situations.

Situations, for sure.

So most of the time, what we perceive.

Advisors needing training on overcoming objections really is a failure in the system, or as they would say in Canada, process. The process.

And the advisor's lack of petting the dog and building rapport. But I cannot remember as an advisor ever thinking I need to be better at overcoming objections.

Mostly what I thought is I need to be a better listener and I need to get to know my customers better. But overcoming objections. So the only objection out there that's a legitimate objection is a customer says, I can't afford it. And then in that situation, you prioritize things or you help them or you give them advice, but even then you're not. We're gonna talk. We're gonna say, do you, you know, we're gonna talk them into, like, maybe. Maybe in some situations we have a 0% for six months financing option.

Financing stuff for sure.

Not overcoming an objection. It's giving them options.

Right. It's still solving the problem.

But we're not. Are we going to talk somebody into doing something they can't afford to do?

Probably not.

We could give them options, but I don't, I don't see it as a good idea to talk somebody into. Is a service advisor. I remember customers coming in on payday or, you know, after payday.

A couple of paydays.

Yeah. They would get things done and I would prioritize and I would work with them and that sort of thing. But.

Most of the time, my experience is when we think advisors need to be good at overcoming objections, they're writing too many ros. They're not building rapport. And then we're trying to sell customers on something either they don't really need or they don't trust us. And whatever we're saying is going to come off as us trying to sell them something they don't need. Because here's how the process should go. Hey, Christian, how's your son?

He's awesome.

How's your job? How's whatever. And we're talking about the things that are important to you.

Yes.

And then I'm like, hey, Christian, the computer says you're due for an alignment. Whatever.

Okay?