Is Being Likable More Effective Than Being Right?

Foreign.

Welcome, everybody, to your Friday drive by. I'm Chris Collins. This is Chris, Sean.

Hello, everyone.

And this is Service Drive Revolution, where we answer your questions. Phone number, if you have a question, is 8333, ask STR. That's 8333, ask SDR. If we answer your question on the big show, we will send you some swag as our thank you for calling in and asking a question. So if you're stuck, you need some help, let us be of service to you. Complimentary. All you got to do is call the hotline and leave your question on the cloud.

And there's no limit to what we would talk about.

Jump to our first question.

Hey, Chris. My name is Dylan. I work at a parts department here in beautiful Illinois. My question for you is this. Why does the parts department get so much hate and backlash from the other departments in the dealership? Now, my dealership is. Isn't that way too much? But there is a lot of miscommunication between service and parts. What can we do to work on that communication and get the advisors to get their stuff in order, per se? Thank you.

One of your fellow countrymen from Illinois.

Yes. Beautiful, Illinois.

Yeah. Seeing by the spirit of this question, what part of Illinois do you think they're from?

Central Illinois.

Really?

Yes. I don't think that they're from the city. There's no real accent, so it's. I'm gonna guess, like a Springfield. Springfield, Possibly Peoria or the Quad Cities is where I'm headed with that.

So the question is.

Before you answer that.

Okay.

That was just an example of what parts hold might feel like to somebody.

Oh, man, you're funny.

You weren't expecting that one, were you?

What do you think about the parts thing? Like, do you think that people.

Pick on parts? They don't like parts. Yeah, you do.

I think. I think that they're the. They're definitely the underdogs of the store. There's not really a lot of sexiness to the parts department. I mean, everyone likes to bin stuff, but I don't know. It's definitely not the most glamorous of departments.

You and I have talked about this before.

We have.

Let's. Let's put the parts thing aside for a second.

Put it on hold.

Put it on hold. So there's people out there that will say, you know, Chris Collins is a jerk. I don't like Chris Collins. There's people that will say they don't. I don't agree with Chris Collins, even though they don't even Know what they don't agree with?

Yeah, that's for sure.

They don't agree with me.

I've had people say that they won't hire us because I have a beard. There's literally dealers out there that have a strict shaving policy in their dealers, that everybody has to be clean shaven. That the Steinbrenner group, that I'm some sort of hippie or something.

Oh, you're California too?

Yeah, California. I forget that part. Nobody's ever said that they won't hire us because I live in California, I'm not from California. But.

But they do point out that you're from California is why you're.

You have your views and so when, when somebody is prejudiced against beards, when somebody doesn't like me because I appear to be intimidating or mean, when somebody doesn't agree with something that I say, whose fault is that?

I believe it's your fault.

Exactly. It's a hundred percent my fault. Because you gotta ask, well, if somebody doesn't like me, what did I do to make them like me? Have I spent any time or effort? Most of the time, people that say they don't like me, I've never even met, I know nothing about them. So I've done nothing on my end to try to get them to like me. The only thing I can control is what I project.

Right? And so if I want to show interest in somebody, if I want somebody to like me, then I need to work on that. But that's the only thing I can control. I can, in a sense, I can control their opinion. Right. I know when I say certain things it's going to rub people the wrong way. I know that. I know if I'm authentically myself, I know that's going to rub people the wrong way. I also know that if I looked a different way and I acted a different way, I. More people would like me. But I. My goal isn't to be liked by everybody. That's not my goal. It's not. I'm not. I've never been one to care about other people's approval. I'm not looking for validation. In fact, when somebody says that they don't like me, most of the time the reason why they're saying that is what is that?

That's how you want them to think about you.

What else though? That's true too. But what else?

That they don't. They aren't basing it on facts.

No, they. They see themselves in me and they don't like themselves.

Oh, that's right. I remember having that discussion.

Yeah. And so I own it. So I would say when, when, you know, I, I rarely see a parts manager, but I have seen him. I'll tell you, I've seen him. They're out there. A parts manager that even comes out of their office and tries to engage with the advisor.

I can count on one finger how many parts managers came to shift meetings every morning.

I do love when they do that.

The advisors are selling parts on the ros, but you never see the parts manager. And so I would say if you want people to respect parts, get out there and run a campaign.

Be, be present, be involved, Ask people what they think with the genuine intention of hearing them not being right. So if you want to be liked, if the goal is to be liked, be likable. Get out there. But I find most of the time parts managers aren't engaged.

In that sense. They're. They're detached.

Yes. Being liked is not high on their priority list.

Yeah. And you know, I don't. But if you, if you had the choice of having a parts manager you liked or having a 99% fill rate, which would you take?

Fill rate. Fill rate, please.

Yeah. So understand too, like that's always been. My theory is I'd rather put out a personality that makes the people that I don't want to be around not like me and attract the people that want results that I want to talk to that, that I feel like I would be a good match with. And so that's intentional. Right. Like it's when we do strategy sessions or people call in and they're like, hey, we need help. We're interviewing them as much as they're interviewing us. We're not looking to have everybody as a client. That is not our goal. We'd rather have less clients that actually want to make a difference and want to change the industry and do good things and then be everything for everybody. That's not our, it's not our goal, it's not our intention. And then what was his other question? How do I get advisors to get organized?

Yeah, like how does what I kind of heard that as is that it's the advisors fault. Maybe that's why they're having such an issue. But here's how you do it.

Let me tell you. Go out there and spend a little time with them and diagnose where their constraints are and help them and encourage them and maybe gamify them or figure out something to, to encourage a different behavior. But you, you're not going to be able to fix it from afar, you got to get involved and you got to ask questions, understand their process and, and then, you know, be the leader, mentor, help.

Yeah. It might be a game changer if they knew you cared. Right?

Yeah. But you're gonna, you can't, you can't just stick your toe in and then run away. You got to be serious.

Good.

Good question though. Thank you. We should send him a parts holder.

Yeah.

Next question.

I'm a 55 year old male that has found himself without a good career. I have done towing in the past, but think that moving forward in a service advisor role would be the right direction. I have no experience in this field. How would I go about selling myself to the local service departments in my area? Appreciate the help, Chris.

So I've got a story about this back from my sales days. Like the thing I would say is that. So right after I started, I remember maybe six months, seven months, this guy came in.

So you were on the dark side.

I was on the dark side. I was on the sales side.

You were working in sales.

And we had this gentleman interview. His name was Jeff Fried and never sold cars before. He was actually, I think he was almost 60 at the time. And I hope if you're still alive, Hi, Jeff, how are you? But he came in, no experience.

Interviewed super likable.

And.

The general manager gave him a chance and he was phenomenal. He was a good car salesman person, great coworker, and it was good that he got a chance because he had told me that a bunch of people passed over on him before he got to our dealership. So the one thing I would say is a rule. Someone comes in, maybe they're a little bit older, they might have some wisdom to share, even though they've never been in the industry before. So don't throw the resume out right away. But I've seen this work before where somebody goes for a reset. Turned out they had an MBA from Harvard. Pretty smart dude, engineer by trade, but was just done with engineering thing. Wanted to try something different.

That's interesting. Yeah, I mean, so if, if it was me, I would go around your, your area and I would go probably more to the better car brands. So I might hit the luxury car dealerships first, maybe. But if there's a brand of car that you're a fan of, also would be one. And I would just go in and just watch, like sit in the waiting room, stand outside in the drive and just watch and see if, you know, you can tell from a hundred yards away, whether people are happy, if they're helping customers, their system. Sit in the waiting room for a minute, get a cup of coffee, and just listen to what people are talking about. And if you, you know, narrow down a couple dealerships that you feel fit your. Your, you know, style, then I would personally hand a resume to the service manager, to the general manager, and I would offer to work for free and write internals, be a porter, shuttle driver, whatever, for a couple of weeks and just say, hey, I'll work for free for a couple of weeks. And if the end of a couple of weeks you don't feel like I have a lot to offer, then no questions asked, I'll just go away.

Not too many people are going to decline that. They might not let you work for free, but they're not going to decline that, you know, enthusiasm. They're going to want to help you. So I, I would go about it that way, you know, offering to write internals, to drive shuttle, to do those sort of things.

In two weeks, you'll figure out exactly what's going on there, too. You'll hear everything.

You know, it's funny. My dad, so my biological dad never was really involved in my life, really, ever. You know, I don't know. I met him less than the amount of fingers I have on both hands. But when my mom and him were getting married or whatever, and she might have been pregnant with me, I don't know. That whole story is a little vague.

Yeah.

But I think maybe I was maybe more of an accident than is put on. I'm not sure. He was 19 or whatever, but he didn't have a job. And so my grandfather, who's my mom's dad, told him to go down to the garbage company in Bremerton, Washington, so, you know, the garbage men, and to apply and then show up every day and sweep, do whatever you can and help. And he did it for a week and then got a route. Somebody didn't show up and quit. And he had a route and he was on, so it only took a week. And so I think oftentimes a lot of people don't think about going on offense, but you. You can't.

In a world where most employees are entitled and it's like, what's in it for me? When. When you show that you're there and you, you know, you want to reinvent yourself and learn something and you want a chance, it's just kind of the American way that people are going to root for you.

Yeah, for sure.

But my grandfather would tell me that story all the time about, you know, my dad was a lot of things, but the one thing that he wasn't was lazy. That's what they would say. Like, he worked, you know, he worked hard. He was a deadbeat. He never came around, didn't care about me. But.

He had one redeeming quality. Oh, goodness gracious.

Funny. My daddy issues are coming out.

I was trying to figure out how far down this rabbit hole we're going, but that's it. Good.

Let's cover the hole up. Let's put it back. But thanks for the question. I, I hope that that helps. And we wish you the best of luck. Thanks, everybody for tuning in and have a great weekend. And we'll see you next time on Service Drive Revolution.

Thanks for watching this week's Drive By. I hope we gave you something to think about over the weekend. 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.