How to Influence ANYBODY (Service Drive Revolution)

Is the voice of God there? Are you there? By the way, the voice of God is always early for meeting zoom meetings. He's always, he's usually on there before me.

Well, that makes sense since he is omnipotent.

He's God. He's everywhere, all the time.

Exactly.

The voice of God is never late. Punctuality is important to the voice of God.

So voice of God what? The question that somebody was, was asking about Christ or they worked for Christian. I'm curious, Christian, about this person. Before we answer the question, could you give us, you know, were they a good employee? Were they crazy? Did you ever catch them doing anything nutty?

No. So nothing.

Go ahead, Voice of God. Read the question.

This one comes From Kelvin on LinkedIn. Backstory is that I worked for Christian Lafferty a few years ago and I learned so many things as an advisor. What should I do as a service manager if I have upper management that won't listen to me because of my age versus what I can offer to help grow the service department, even though my results in the service department speak for themselves.

So the context, Christian, what do you think, Kelvin? Why is he getting himself in this situation? So I think that there's a couple.

Of things going on with Kelvin. One is I think that we hit the nail right on the head with the mindset to start, is that he's really aware that he's young and an up and comer and everything like that. And the backstory is when I hired him, he was a super young kid, but even then, in his early 20s, he knew that he wanted to be a service manager, like he wanted to run the show. And he wanted me to kind of teach him everything that I could about managing a team and being a leader and everything like that. And the kid paid attention. So I don't have anything but great things to say about him. But my advice to Kelvin would be to use his youth as an advantage, not a crutch. And I think that there's things that he has learned and that he can use to make sure that he is getting the voice and the ear of upper management and using the youth as an advantage as opposed to, I think right now it sounds like he's using that as is something that, that is detracting him from his performance. But I would, I'd embrace the heck out of it.

How old do you think Kelvin is?

I think he's probably right around like 28, 29 right now.

28. So here, here's.

Here'S my thought. Kelvin is Enjoy being the young kid. Because I don't know, coming up, I was called the kid. Nobody calls me the kid anymore.

So enjoy it while you enjoy this, this handicap while you can, because it's fleeting. Then all of a sudden you find yourself knocking on 50 and nobody looks at you as a kid anymore. So. And all those guys like Christian that you worked for, dead.

One foot in the grave. One foot in the grave.

Hey, I have some thoughts on this.

How many of the mentors or service managers know. Coming up, they're gone. They were heavy smokers. What do you think, Jeremy? What would you say to Kelvin?

Keep that youthful energy going. Keep your passion unbridled. And if management won't get on board with your dreams, save your money and go get your own store. Break the mold. Find a new niche in this marketplace because you've got the passion and the energy. Do not let society tamp it down and put your fire out. So keep fighting. Save your money. Find a dealership that's going belly up and go get your own store.

I. I would. I think that's good. That's good advice. I think there's another layer to this if you want to get really, really deep, is the thing that I learned. So I was 24 when I started going around doing training and consulting and service departments. And so I was the kid. And every, it seemed like every time I would go into a dealership, mostly in Washington in the beginning, where I grew up, the state of Washington, I would get hired by the dealer to come in and train the advisors and work in the service department. And I would be there for a week, Right. So I'd come in on Monday. I would spend all day Monday in this service manager's office who had like the short sleeve dress shirt and a bottle of gin or whiskey in his drawer behind him.

And the clip.

I would spend all day in there. Yeah, I would spend all day in there with him asking me like, well, what have you done, kid? And what do you know? And the whole time I just want to be out in the drive where the money's made. And so I would tell you that the thing that I learned is there's another way to influence the situation without taking it head on.

Oh, but come on, Chris, that's not fun, though. That's not fun.

No, it's not fun. But you're going to learn that either way. So maybe just embrace it where you're at and see if you still can't create an outcome that is positive. But by controlling the narrative and creating Momentum in ways that nobody can stop. Right. Creating a customer experience that nobody can compete with. Like the thing I always had going for me is I had more key throwers than anybody.

So you know what's interesting too is the other side of this is you've got to be covert with it. Which why he's running into roadblocks is because everybody resists change. It's human nature, right. We do not like change. So if you've been a manager or your dealer, principal and your dealership has been successful for 20 or 30 years, who's this young new kid to come in and tell me that I'm not doing it right or we want to change. So anytime that you force people to change, you're going to get that natural resistance. So Chris, you're right. You've got to show them a little bit of success first and you know, maybe just be like the stealth bomber and just come in under the radar and then just blow everything up. And then when the dust settles are like, man, that was really cool. Let's keep doing it.

Yeah. So I'm going to give you a couple examples of what I, what I learned. So I, after getting trapped, you know, 10 times in an office with a service manager telling me I, you know, I didn't know what I was doing, I'd never been a manager, I didn't understand and you know, it just, it wasn't a conversation that I ever won. I could debate it all day long and I could point at the results, like I could sit there with their financial and point at the results, but in their head there were a million excuses why they had the results that they had. And it, you know, honestly, even though the managers were 50 or 60 years old, it was like arguing with a two year old. It was a waste of my time. So what I learned to do is create an agenda. So I would send an agenda to the dealer and I would say, this is what I'm going to do on Monday. I'm going to come in, I'm going to interview everybody. I'd like those pre set up. And also I want to go to lunch with you because someday I want to be a dealer and I want to learn how you did it. So now my first day I'm talking to everybody ends up after I interview all the advisors and the text and I talk to them, I know more about the department than the manager ever would. All I've done is shake the manager's hand and get to work. I go to lunch with the dealer, the dealer's teaching me how they became a dealer, how they handle cash. Like I'm learning all kinds of things about how they got loans, what they did. But now the dealer feels more like he's mentoring me. And I have a direct line to the person who's making the decisions at the end of the day. And now the service manager sees me come back from lunch with the dealer. I have a different authority than I did as a 24 year old kid walking in on Meek going, I'm here to train your advisors, right? So I changed that narrative by the way I planned ahead, by the way I came in, by how I framed it and the presence that I had. And you know that that sort of thing works. So you can do that, you can do that right now where you're at. And you're going to have to learn that one way or the other. But the thing that was great about going in and fixing service departments the way that, you know, we do and we did was you have no gun in a gunfight, you barely have a spit wad, you're an outsider, you can't fire anybody really. You can't really change the pay plan even though we do. But you, you, you know, you influence all that stuff. But at the end of the day, you can't hand it to HR and say, this is the new advisor pay plan. It's got to go through the dealer and the manager and debate and all that. And so you start, you just start to learn over time how to influence situations where you have no, you're, it's not a fair fight, but it, it makes you think a different way. It makes you plan better ahead of time, it makes you execute it. You know, every little thing that you say and you do matter, like say, for example, if I came in to a service department and I'm interviewing the advisers and they're like, are you going to change my pay plan? And I go, yeah, we're going to look at the pay plan. I'm done in the water. That advisor leaves that meeting, tells all the advisors that we're changing the pay plan. And now all of a sudden the thing is, how do we get this guy out of here? Even if my pay plan was better, they don't want me to change the pay plan. And so every little thing that you say matters, like, oh, I don't the pay. Why do you like the pay plan? Like I just flip it on them, like, tell me what's good about the pay plan. Right? And so you learn influence that way. I, I Would. There's a great book called Winning Through Intimidation that is about this real estate.

Guy who bought apartment buildings. And basically the whole book is about attention to detail and how you show up. Like, he would show up and contracts would go from lawyer to lawyer and things would change. So he learned to show up. He had a secretary there. And this is like in the 50s. Had a secretary there to type up the documents, had a lawyer there to do. Like, he got ahead of everything. So, you know, it all got done when it was agreed to. It was agreed to. And he. He has an analogy in that book that there's three kinds of people. There's the kind of people that tell you that they don't want your chips, but they want your chips. There's the kind of people that tell you they want your chips and go after your chips. And then there's the kind of people that kind of tell you, like, I didn't want. You know, I didn't want to, but I had to get your chips. But that's all there really is. Everybody's trying to win, and somebody's a winner, somebody's a loser. And you. You have to learn at a very young age if you want to move up in management is unless you want to be a victim to the hierarchy for the rest of your life, and your excuse is that you weren't in charge or you couldn't do it, and you want to get real results, you're going to have to learn influence at a higher level. So I'd read that book. It's a good insight into that. Don't let the title scare you, because it's not Winning Through Intimidations. It's an aggressive title, but it's actually a pretty well thought out book that will. Will teach you that it's attention to detail. The other story, I've told it on here before too, is Johnny, who was an advisor with me, saying, you know, I always thought you were a douchebag because you wore a suit to work. Like, start thinking and dressing and looking the part you want to be now. Like, start. I was the only advisor in a suit.

Yeah. Nobody else was wearing a suit. They were wearing khakis and polo shirts that they got for free at the Volkswagen convention. Like, you gotta separate yourself.

Why do you have to pick on Volkswagen?

I'm not. I'm just saying they're wearing the polo shirt that they got for free. Like, they don't even invest in the way they look. Right?

Yeah, but, Chris, you don't understand. Sometimes we work on Cars and we get dirty, bro.

None of these advisors were working on cars.

They.

Their fingernails. They wouldn't even work on their mountain bike if it broke. Trust me.

That's true. That's true.

I might have been the most mechanical one out of all of them. And that's not saying much.

You know what I love about just answering that question? He's got three different segments to go from, and if he takes a piece from each one, this kid is going to be very, very powerful. I mean, I can already see the tenacity that he has. Obviously, having to put up with Christian at work is just. I mean, that's in and of itself.

He's already been to hell and back. What Christian, what would you say about our answers? Like, do you think that'll resonate with him?

I think it'll definitely resonate. The thing. One of my favorite things, thinking back on a minute, kind of brings me up to a history thing that I'm gonna get to in a second. But one of the things that always stuck about out about Calvin is how coachable he was and how he would sit. He would listen to you, he would listen to me, he would listen to. To the other coaches, and he was that person that would take that feedback and go out and change and execute. So he's not afraid to change. And I think that that's one of the advantages that he has is that he's got adaptability. And as Jeremy said, he's a super tenacious guy. And I actually really like your thought about, like, if he starts to dress for the part and then use his other advantages, I don't think anyone would stand a chance against him. But, yeah, speaking of that history thing, you know, as we kind of talk about this coronavirus.

You know, everyone wants to get political with it and everything like that.

They really do.

They do. It's crazy to me. And if we really stop for a second, we know, like, Trump didn't create the coronavirus, right? And really, whether you're left or right, it doesn't matter. Obama didn't create Ebola. Right. And Bush didn't create sars. And. And Clinton's really only responsible for a handful of herpes cases.

That's political. Christine, you got political.

Oh, man, I'm out.

Jeremy loves that a Democrat joke. 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.