How Service Advisors Earn Lifetime Customers (Service Drive Revolution)

Okay, God. Do we have any good questions this week?

The voice of God has many questions.

Question 1.

My job as an advisor is to sell service. How do you deal with management that won't let you do that? I'm not allowed to convert a customer to a BCD service package. How do you deal with your hands being tied and not being able to sell what your customer wants to get done during their visit?

Sounds like you're pretty broken up about this.

God. Sometimes some questions answer themselves. So what we're saying is we don't want to keep our customers in safe and dependable vehicles. We don't care about our customers. We want to make our processes so difficult that we're like the anti service department.

Possibly. But let's help him because he's got some struggle with management. He said, okay, okay. Now, so I wrote down his. The first part of his question is, my job as an advisor is to sell service. Is that the job of the advisor?

No.

No. What is the job of the advisor?

To collect customers.

To collect customers. And how do we do that?

By connecting with them on a deeper level.

Yeah. And then the product that we do is to help them take care of their car, Correct?

Correct.

So instead of going to management and say, my job is to sell service, your job is to do what?

Collect customers for the dealership.

Yeah. Right. Or the shop. And then what translates into that is I'm going to help my customers enroll in the right product that's fit for them.

Taylor, wait, are you. Is this where you're headed? Let me guess, but tell me truth.

Possibly.

So you're saying go to management and say, I'm trying to collect customers here. So our retention goes up. So we sell more cars, but customers are never going to come back because they're breaking down after they leave here.

Yeah, that's exactly where I'm going with it.

And so it's a win. Win.

It is. If you tell management my job is to sell service, they're taking that as a negative. They're going to keep shutting the door on you. But if you say, look, we're missing the boat here. Our job is to collect customers. Retention, circle of trust, bring the customer back in. This is something we have.

So flip the script.

Flip the script. Absolutely.

Because everybody wants to sell more cars.

Correct.

So you go to management, you're like, hey, dealer, general manager, I know how you could sell more cars.

Correct.

If I could make customers happy. Retain them.

Yes. Good.

I like it. Good answer.

Yeah. There's probably some fear there with management. Of being. I'm gonna tie their hand so they don't upsell. Well, we're gonna take the upsell out.

Of it and have it. I think it's crazy that there's dealerships today that have processes in place that you have to turn the customer over to another advisor or you can't sell anything but an air filter in the quick lane. Well, those are pro super.

Probably the same dealership that has asbestos in the wall still. They can't afford to upgrade, so, I mean, come on.

Well, it's all about. Yeah, the system. It's crazy.

All of them.

Okay, next question.

God.

This next question was emailed in.

I hear a lot of negativity in the service drive. Meaningless complaining, blame and frustration coming out. This affects culture and performance. I would not trade the team I have for anything. But I find myself in a situation where I have to focus on lightening the mood. Do you have any advice I can use in this situation to get my team's positivity culture back on track?

Have you figured out how to change people?

It's one of the hardest things on the planet to do. Human behavior is hard.

Yeah, I always find that. I try to find people that I don't have to change that have the same kind of similar thoughts as I do. The same kind of ethical compass.

Correct.

The same level of happiness versus non happiness miserableness. But I've had a really hard time ever changing anybody that's miserable.

How'd you change Christian?

Christian's not miserable. He's funny. I have to reel him back.

I agree. I agree. But he says he's got the right team. He wouldn't trade his team for anything.

That's something that people say.

Well, I think he believes it though.

Yeah, but it's not.

You know what this is a product of? Right.

It's like an abusive relationship. It's like the. Have you ever. Have you ever known, like, somebody that will go back to the same abusive type relationship over and over and over again?

Correct.

Yeah. And I, I believe that they love the person, but the other person is a psychopath and they're not good for them. Well, I mean, I'm not comparing their advisors to psychopaths, but I'm saying, like, you. If, if, like, if you're a manager that goes into work every day and you're like, my job today, my goal today is to make my people happy, you will fail every time.

Well, that's the push pull syndrome. Right? Like, if you feel that you have to push your team or pull Them, you know, along, then you've got the wrong team. They should be motivating you. They should be, you know, you should be fired up by the people that you work with. And, and you should have to run to keep up with your team. Right? If you feel like you're pushing or pulling anybody, it's. It's the wrong, wrong way to go. I do have a couple tips for them, though.

Okay.

I think this is a product of GTJD that's get the job done. So what happens when we go to work is we just focus on getting the job done right, and then inevitably, if we don't work on our mindset, negativity will come out of that. So one word could help them change this. Gamify. Positivity. How would you gamify this?

How to gamify positivity?

I mean, you are the master of gamification.

How would you gamify positivity?

So think about this. If it's a GTJD world where you're just working, working, working, and the negativity comes in, and then I get these responses of, oh, man, another customer that comes in for just a basic service and I'm negative on that, how would you break that?

See, I don't. I guess.

I wouldn't approach it that way. So I don't know. You have to tell me what you're thinking. But for me, I would gamify performance, and I don't really care that much if an advisor comes in and has a big smile on their face as long as they're connecting with customers and their customers love them and they're performing like some of the top advisors in the comp that we have.

If you interviewed them on their own, they don't seem like they're that happy. They're more introverted. They're kind of quiet, okay. But their customers love them. They have an attention to detail, and they're really good at their jobs and they're competitive. So I feel like you can confuse the issue if you're chasing people's emotions. Like, if you're walking around and your sense of whether we're winning or losing is whether people are happy or not, you're always going to be lost. If your sense of winning and losing is are we making customers happy? Are we taking care of customers and are we profitable and running a good, healthy department, that's the barometer of winning or losing to me. So I wouldn't gamify feelings because you're always chasing people's feelings, and that's not a tangible thing. Results are tangible.

Well, they are. But his question is, how does he get rid of the negativity? Because he likes his team, but just negativity is kind of set in.

I still would gamify the performance, and then I would call in the ones that I think that are negative one by one. And I would close the door to.

My office and I'd say, slap them around.

No, I would just say, like, listen, here's the thing that I'm trying to do here. And I know you're better than this, but sometimes your attitude rubs off on other people. In fact, it demotivates me. And we spend a lot of time here together. We're all after the same thing. And I believe in your heart you are meaning to do the right thing. But what you're projecting with your negativity has an effect and I need it to change. And so I'm going to remind you every time you do it, but I need you to commit to me that you want to change that like you're going to be a part of the solution. And I think if you give people the out, if you say, like, I know it's not your intention. Like, I always use the example of people. I'm like, it's not my intention to be intimidating, but. But I intimidate people. I know that. So I'm a big guy. I got a beard, I got these piercing eyes. I can read people's minds. I'm psychic. It's intimidating. It can be, yeah. And so I'm trained in interrogation.

What else don't I know about you? No, but.

So I understand that. And they usually, like, get it. And I'm like, so you come in and you're negative a lot of times. And the things that you say affect others. Now, I try really hard to smile more, to be conscious of how intimidating are. I pay attention to people's body language. I can tell if they're getting intimidated. I try to break that ice.

So what you're saying is he may need to work more individually with each member of his team who's more negative. And if it is more of a global scale culturally, then the team can work together towards. My thought was this. Remove negativity, find one thing that you have a pattern or a trigger with each week and replace it. So when a customer walks in with that unemployment center going, oh, let's go. Yay. Right? There's a difference there physiologically. And the outcome can be positive versus negative.

So changes the outcome dramatically when you respond a Different way.

Yeah, absolutely.

Yeah.

So they can start to train your mind to, to see the positive in things.

Yeah. So then you're getting the team to work together so you can create a little bit of a game on this if you wanted to, to have each member of the team identify a negative behavior they're going to change each week and then replace it with something positive. Do that for four to six weeks and watch where they're at. And then if they still don't respond, then bring them and talk to them individually.

Yeah. And so just to kind of close this up, I find that the most important aspect of this is that ultimately you play poker really well. And by play poker really well, I mean that you're willing to make a change if it doesn't change.

Yes.

If they're in control, then you'll always be a victim to them. Setting the pace and tone. If you're in control and you're setting the pace and the tone, you will eventually attract people that are like you. But if you're, if your mindset is, oh, everybody's great, but the culture's bad, the people have to change to change the culture. A lot of times.

Yeah.

And people get that wrong because they don't want to think that way or they don't want to hear it. But here on Service Driver Revolution we tell you the truth and that's the truth.

That was a good answer.

Do you have any other questions?

God, yes. God has another question.

I seem to be having trouble with repeat customers not wanting to do work and only coming in for warranty or oil changes. This seems to be almost 50% of my clients in a day out of 19 to 20 ROs. Any advice to help change as this is lowering my monthly average.

Where do we get all these self serving service advisors from? Like, I mean that's just like me, me, me. I drew a sad crying face when I was listening to that question. Go ahead.

No, go ahead.

I mean, come on, we're here to serve and help.

It's like I know that when I was an advisor I made a lot of money off of warranty.

Absolutely.

I think that you're going into it with the, with the wrong mindset.

Can I share a quick story with you about warranty? So my sister in law has a Kia and they put an engine in it like a couple months ago. So last week I was elbows deep fixing a car. She happens to call. So I throw on speakerphone and she's asking me questions about should she approve this customer pay. Work now two Months later. And so she starts talking about the coolant hoses, and I'm like, wait a second, didn't they just do your engine? And she's like, well, yeah, but they did it under warranty. So now she feels indebted to them to pay them some of the money back for this warranty engine. Right. And I'm like, well, if you had a good service advisor, they would have done all of this with a package when they did the engine at the first place. So it's warranty. Is warranty, customer pay internal. It's all customers, customers, customers. So it's just funny how when you're focused on the sale, you don't serve the customer.

Yeah, serve the customer, and the rest will take care of itself. But just by the tone of that question, I'm gonna guess that you're projecting all that on your customers. If you make friends with your customers. And we've talked about this before, but the thing that I would do when I was an advisor is if a customer was taking their car somewhere else for their work, I would ask them why, And I would say, will you please? What do I have to do to get a shot at your work? How can I get that work? Because that's why we're here. And then I would get the work. Like, that's it. Like, you got to ask for it. So, hey, are you taking your car somewhere else? What are they doing that I don't do? How can I, you know, how can I get that work then? A lot of times, like, don't get caught up on price because the other shop will. Will have the perception of being cheaper. But a lot of times they're not cheaper. So you got to go into that with an open mind.

Absolutely.

Because a lot of times they'll charge more for the part, or they'll charge three hours when you would do it for two.

So, you know, we did a survey recently on selling maintenance for independent repair shops, and one of the questions that came up with our customer panel, the feedback they gave us is when they leave the dealership and go to the independent, one of their concerns with maintenance is, are you going to hurt my car? That's from the customers. So if you're a dealership advisor, man, you've got the. You're the expert. You've got the game one, because you have the best technician there. So who else is better to service your car than right here?

So.

So that's kind of a. That's a gimme. You should be able to capture that sale very easily.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So change. Change the way you're thinking, change the way you're talking and your destiny will change. But I like the projection. Everyone's a. Every customer is a friend. Make friends.

So he should videotape himself at the next write up and just watch what he's projecting. So you don't want to do the maintenance today. You're just here for warranty work. Oh, yeah, that's probably what he's saying.

Yeah. You're oozing negativity. Thank you so much for watching this clip of Service Drive Revolution. Now you can catch the full episode 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.