Is Service Training As Valuable As Sales Training? | SDR #240

Welcome everybody to the big show. Today we want to talk about is service training as valuable and sales training, arguably the most important department in the dealership. And we're leaving training to chance. We're going to talk about why and why we shouldn't. It's a pretty interesting conversation we have. And Christian tells us a story about how he got started.

In the sales.

Department way back when I was a youngin.

Very interesting. I'd never heard the story before. Love it. We talk about that and much, much more. Coming up on this edition of Service Drive Revolution.

Hey, everybody. How's it going? Chris Stone.

Good, good, good. I'm excited to chat today because another one of those funny things happened with you.

The library.

Well, the library books, I mean, that's really interesting. Is that for the longest time Chris is like.

I've got enough room. I don't have that many books.

And then on our library is already going to be overflowing with books.

Yeah. There's already more books in there now than what the library can house. And you have plenty more hidden in other places.

So the library is built. The bookshelves are in place. They're fancy bookshelves that were built just for us that have doors on them. They look incredible.

So movers come to. So I have books in three different locations. Storage next door. And then at my house, I thought more books were in storage than at my house. And so the movers came. On Friday.

My girl Missy ordered 100 boxes and I was like, that's too much. Long story short, I was maybe halfway through the books and they filled the truck. The moving truck. A moving truck?

Yeah. You ordered small for sure.

Then they came down, dropped those off, came back and we ran out of boxes. So now they had to come back today, which is Monday and finish. But we don't have enough room for all my books.

No, what you really needed, like you. You went with the U haul route. But like, you know, you see those semis that are for like nationwide moving. That's what you needed. You needed a semi for your books.

And I wanted to get the bookshelves out of there too. Well, they keep grabbing them today, but.

Yeah, but there's a lot of stuff going on there. But that wasn't. That is fascinating, by the way. Like, everything is so custom and so beautif.

You know what everybody always asks me, remember when all the books were in 102 at our old office?

Have you read all these?

Yeah. In the answer.

No.

I just. I have a thought that came to me In a dream. And I think it's a message from God.

Okay. Probably.

And it is that he who dies with the most books goes to heaven.

And I get to bring up five other people. I get to, like, pull them up into heaven.

Wow. E. Record their inventory.

You'll be one of my five.

Thank you.

So if you don't.

If nothing else, to have you entertain.

Like, you don't have that many books. Let's be honest. How many books do you have in the Christian library?

I'm probably close to, like, 50 books. Yeah. So which is one of the boxes?

5,000 or something books, maybe more.

So, yeah, so we'll build pretty soon.

Because they'll all be in one place, and we're going to inventory it.

And I'm telling you, I've seen these books coming in, and even I haven't seen all the packages. Packages delivered. But I know that I've been privy to a lot of deliveries, and they just keep coming. There's so much more than what you think, but. But my favorite thing that's happened is that. So if you guys listen to the show, you know, so Chris has spent a lot of his career, over half, I would say, on airplanes, traveling. And what happens is that over time, the luster of travel kind of goes away. And I would say even over the last three to five years, that travel has probably not been. It's not been.

If we're being. If we're being honest, Christian. If we're being completely honest, yeah, we should. Why did I build. Why did we buy this building? And why am I building the library?

So that people come to us instead of us going to them.

So we've spent a lot of money, a lot of time, and a lot of effort just so I don't get on a plane and people come to us.

So.

Because there's nothing more attractive for most of the people in the US Than to come to Los Angeles, the home of. Well, it's a. Whatever we're doing here in Los Angeles is an experiment with the government. It's like.

Yeah. We had on our morning call this morning, one of our salespeople, who's from Canada, God bless him, literally asked on the meeting, on our meeting, our, like, company Monday meeting, if we were okay. He's worried about us.

Yeah.

Because he keeps watching the news, and he's worried about California. He said, I'm worried about the US.

But I'm really worried about California specifically. And specifically the Southern half.

I never really answered that, but I'll answer it right now. I'm so busy with other stuff, I don't know what's going on in the news, nor do I care.

Yeah.

And I tend to focus on the things I can control. And I don't think I can figure out the government here.

Both of us on the day to day are unaffected by California politics.

Well, no, we're not because we, we deal with the homeless and all that. It does.

Yeah. But I'm not spending like a couple hours a day on it. Like, sometimes I trip over.

But when I drive to work and I go into that underpass and all those homeless people are there, I'm like, this is our new mayor, our new corrupt mayor cleaning up the city.

Yay.

You know, promises kept.

Anyways, what were you gonna say? Travel. I don't like to travel.

Yeah. So. So today, also in our, in our debrief, Chris has not one, but two opportunities to go and speak.

Those are new opportunities.

Those are new opportunities.

What have I done to all the other opportunities in the last couple months?

So he has an amazing new system, which I think is actually really cool.

I don't even look at him.

Yes.

But remember, I didn't even look at him when what did I say?

No, no. And I also.

And then what happens?

You still get them in front of you?

No, they. They come. The people that really like, try or, I don't know, they make friends with somebody in the office or something. Then they pitch me again.

Yeah. So. So these two that you got, I, I really, I really like these groups and their ideology and I'm doing it. I know. But. But my favorite part about this is that one of the events in August and if you could pick a place that you would like to avoid by 500 miles in August, what would that place be?

Austin, Texas.

Okay.

What would be second anywhere in Florida.

Yeah, Tampa, Florida, specifically. So Tampa. But we've spent some time there this summer in August. It's. It's. Yeah, we went up, we were up.

We started to walk.

Yeah. We walked at 6 in the morning, and by 6:03, we were both pouring with sweat. I remember this.

Then we saw an alligator and Chris.

Got to see an alligator. Yeah.

Yeah. So no, I don't want to do it.

I remember.

Do you remember what is my. What is my. What is my system for speaking engagement?

Is he's, is. He's trying to decide if he would like to do the speaking engagement or not. His question that he asks himself is, how much should I pay not to do this?

And in every situation, I would pay More than they are offering to pay. And they're offering a lot. It's not like I know people would think, like what I'm getting offered to turn it down is nuts. Like they would think I'm nuts.

Yeah. For literally you hours with the work. It's. Yeah.

It's not a few hours. People don't understand. You got to fly there.

You have to go the day before. That's true.

Because you can't. The. You can't. You know, if you take on a thing like that, you gotta be there and they're planning an event around you. And you. Once you sign on, your job is to make their event a success. So whatever you can do to make somebody's event a success is your job. Right?

Yeah. And you don't take that responsibility lightly. So that's true.

You gotta go the day before and.

Then usually you really want to do a good job.

You want to go early so you're not jet lagged and, you know, you're. You're settled. And then.

Then there's never a flight out that day. Right. So you're. It's three days. No matter what. It's three days. Still, if you took the. What, you know, what people would pay for me to speak and divided it by three, it's still a lot of money.

Yeah, for sure. Yeah. It's a. It's a very fair amount of money.

But, Christian, I'm getting old. I'm 51, bro.

All right, soon you'll have your midlife.

Crisis, high cholesterol, and large prostate. I mean, I'm falling apart.

I thought your cholesterol was normal.

It's always a thing.

How's your stress level overall?

I don't know. I'm. I'm. In a lot of ways, I'm having more fun than I've ever had. Right. This library, even though it's taken forever, is incredibly fun. The stuff word, the.

The leadership book and all the stuff that we're creating that nobody's seen yet feels like it's bigger than us.

Yeah. I just feel like right now I. I would say that you're doing a really good job of eliminating stress. And more often than not, when you and I talk about the stuff we're doing, you are so much more excited. I think that I remember you being in a world time. So that's why I'm thinking you're.

Why ruin it with travel?

So your stress is low. I think that your cholesterol is manageable. You're very healthy. You've lost a Lot of weight lately. You're picking up pounds.

I went up. I went up in weight today at the gym.

Yeah.

I benched more than I ever have.

900.

900?

Yeah. No less than 900. Okay, just checking.

Have you ever benched before? You're throwing out numbers that don't make sense.

I would guess that you can bench 350, though.

How many plates is that? I never add up the number. I just don't have any plates.

4 plates is 225. 6 plates is like 310.

4 plates in a little bit. I'm not doing. I'm not doing six plates.

Okay.

Yeah.

So I'm not doing. What did you say?

350?

No, I'm not doing.

I also think that, that I always.

Think, like, you got to be able to bend your weight. Right?

That's the. That's what they say.

Yeah. So I'm doing that.

That's good.

I did push ups, too. Push ups are hard.

I think push ups are the best way to get yourself really, really strong without needing any kind of assistance. You don't need a gym membership. You don't need weights. You don't need a fancy trainer.

I'm trying to get in shape for summer. I'm going to walk around with my shirt off all the time.

Yeah, I do that. I do that too.

I always admire people like.

I just like to hear the shrieks.

Whale.

Okay, what's in the news?

Oh, gosh.

So we've got.

Not me speaking. I'll tell you that.

We've got one.

How many times do I have to say no to a speaking thing before it stops getting presented?

I enjoy that the team continues to present and I feel like I like their persistence. It's really fun to watch. But.

This is impossibly what might be one of the most obvious headlines I've ever read in my life, believe it or not. So the Automotive News came out with its list of the hundred top dealerships. And the ones that were at the top were the ones that had strong focus, whereas the ones that had no strong focus didn't make the top 100.

Strong focus on what?

Well, there was a lot of. It had to do with sales and customer satisfaction and retention. So the volume, which I thought was.

Really interesting, that's where we're at in life now that. That's news.

Yeah.

The strong focus on customer.

Experience and retention.

Gets more sales.

That's right.

That's news.

That is.

But yeah, that's how far we've slid.

Yeah. So not being News is news. But. Well, this is actually technically the used car rankings, but several of our clients.

Top in the newscar use car.

I don't have the. Who is number one? Yeah, they didn't say.

Oh.

But a couple of our clients made.

So it's not ranked in order.

Well, I just don't have the list.

But they sold more used cars in 2022 than 2021. But, but this next one, this is a little more an orthodox, if you will. And Kevin's going to play this video. So if you want to go ahead and roll it. Kevin.

Crazy.

So a Toyota dealer in, would you call it central Northern California. So it's south of, it's south of San Francisco, closer to like a San Jose suburb. Milpitas, you heard of this before? Yeah, this area.

So that's Vicky's old.

Her stomping ground. Yep. So Toyota dealer there.

I don't know. Coach Vicky, did you ever see.

When you were in the dealer world, disagreements between employees?

So this is new? Yeah.

Yes.

Between employees or customers?

Well, both, but like employee to customer, customer to customer, employee to employee. I mean we've kind of, we've. I would say that both of us probably have seen our fair share of.

That, but I saw a service advisor punch a customer and put them into a glass window that broke. And the service advisor didn't get fired.

I think that's the best part of that story is that like that happened.

That's when I was a poor job.

That's amazing to me. But, but at this, this Toyota dealership, the general sales manager and the used car or one of the regular sales managers had a disagreement and they got captured on video having a brawl right on the showroom floor.

How would you, how would you rate their fighting skills?

I would say like if.

If there were two chimpanzees fighting.

Probably would have been a little more. Yeah, it would have been a little more strategic.

They're not. I don't think either one of them have been in too many fights.

No, not too many fights and certainly not trained.

Yeah.

In the art of hand to hand combat.

Interesting though.

But it was fascinating. One, one guy was clearly the winner at the end of the day. But, but the chair throwing was kind of fun. But I remember somebody saying, watching too much wrestling. Yeah. And I remember somebody saying to me after that video, like, is that normal? I'm like, no, no, that's not normal.

I wonder what they were fighting about.

I don't know.

I think what's funny is the guy that comes in after. And he's like, they're gonna call or you're gonna get arrested or something.

You're all going to jail.

Yeah, you're all going to jail.

But.

But not if you're in California. They don't. That's not something.

You go to jail. You can steal a car in California, not go to jail. So I'm pretty sure that guy just.

Moved in from a different state.

Right.

Used to. And he's up in the Bay Area. It's probably even worse.

Oh, my gosh. I can only imagine what it's like up there.

That's a great segue, though, because you know that that sort of stuff doesn't really happen in service that much.

No. Except yours is the only thing I would say that I've had times where I've seen interactions with customers get a little bit crazy, but nothing like where they're not physically fighting each other. But yeah, so that is a nice segue. I love segues. It's a lot of fun. So what's our topic for today?

Is service training as valuable as sales training? And so the idea here came up from. I get hit up on Instagram all the time, and I always feel bad, too. Like, sometimes I'll be like, hey, give me your address. We'll send you a book or something. But they. They say, hey, I just got a job as a service advisor and I'm wondering what to do.

Frightening that we have to ask the outside source. Yeah.

And so now.

I'm supposed to.

Tell you through DMs on Instagram how to be a service advisor. It's kind of nuts, isn't it?

It's a telling story for sure.

Why did. Why do you think that happens? Why. Why do dealerships value sales training but not service training, when clearly the service department is.

Very important to the success, overall health of.

Yeah. Like if you didn't tell people it was the car business and you said, okay, I've got a business that's got two departments. One department, the employees talk to between one and four customers a day physically, and then maybe make 15 to 20 phone calls. And then the other one, the people talk to 12 to 20 a day and make another 80 phone calls. Which one would you think would get the most training?

The one that touches the most customers every day.

Yeah. And on top of that, the one that has the biggest potential for profitability. Yeah. At the end of the day. So.

So sales is. And I think you said this is intentional service is reactionary.

Yeah. Have I ever told you about my Start in the business?

No. Okay, so started in sales, right?

I did start in sales. So I remember. Did I tell you how I got the job?

No.

So there was this ad in the newspaper. Anyone remember that they used to get jobs pre demo. Newspaper. No. It was a blind ad. It said, guaranteed $4,000 per month. Call this number.

That was it.

And then didn't say what it was. No. And in the 90s, when you drop out of college with 10 credit hours left to go, 4 grand a month looks really good because enterprise was paying 30 grand a year at that time. So I'm like, okay, 30 or 50 grand, I'm down. I also thought that whatever. Whatever the guaranteed part, I would always make more. So I go and I call the number and I go and I sit down. It's a Nissan dealership. And the way that I got the job.

Told a couple of jokes, and literally the guy looks at me and says, you're funny. When can you start?

And so, yeah, your personality gets you quite a ways.

So my first day, I walk in to the training center, and the gm, his name was Dean, was the teacher for the class. So we had a training manual that was put in front of us. There was eight of us in the class. We. Which I didn't understand all this till later, but I'm trying to go really fast through the story. So the first thing that Dean does. And I wish that I was a little more mature and understanding because I could have learned way more from this guy if I was really paying close attention. But the first thing he does is he looks at everybody. There's eight of us in the class. And he looks at me, looks at everybody and says, follow me. And he just walks out of the training room. So we all, like, scurry up and we're following him out. So he walks out in the showroom.

Well, great way to get compliance.

And then he. He walks around, like three or four cars, then walks out the front door. And then he walks us to the front lot. Hasn't said a word, by the way. We're at the front lot. He hasn't said anything except, follow me from when he said, when he's in the room. Walks us all the way to the back of the lot where the trade ends are, you know, like those wholesale ones that get parked where nobody can see them. And then all the way to the back fence. And then walks us right back in through the service department, through the parts department, and then back into the training room. And he says, sit down.

And then he said, What I thought was one of the most genius things I've ever heard at that point in time. It's like that's how you establish control.

Yeah, yeah. See I said that's a great way to control.

So I thought that was amazing compliance. So, so it was very, it was very laid out.

How to, was that in house sales training?

It was the GM of the dealership. He was a great trainer. At the end of the day it was way above his pay or it was way below his pay grade. But really, I really think it's awesome that he did it. So the other thing that I didn't know and I don't know if this happens now, but when they hire the eight people in, how many are going to make it at the end of two weeks?

Two.

Yeah, there were two of us that made it through and I. Yeah, but, but it was later on I found out that that's what happens during that class. But I thought that it was interesting that they would invest that much time and energy into six people that didn't even get the job. And on the service side, we won't invest any of that time into somebody that actually works for us. That's kind of the lesson that I was thinking is that like it's worth it to them to train somebody from the outside world.

Yeah. So let's, let's kind of go through a list. So what does it say to new employees coming in when they're being onboarded when there's no training?

That they don't care is the thing I think.

Yeah. And how, how important do you feel?

Not very important.

What is something that younger, enthusiastic, bright eyed kids.

Think is valuable?

That they're a part of something.

Training.

Yeah.

They want to be trained. They want communication. They, they.

Feedback. Lots of feedback.

Feedback, the whole thing. Right. How can you bring in people with no experience in our industry and create a career path for them to be successful? Starts with the T and ends with.

The aing t. Reigning training.

How can you avoid bad habits for new people coming in?

Stick them with the crotchetiest advisor that you have.

Can I say crotchety on this?

How do you create a culture of performance when people start and the training is. Your desk is over there. Follow Joe around for a week. Here's your login. Get to work.

Yeah.

How do you establish a culture with that?

Well, you do establish a culture. It's just not a quality, healthy culture. My favorite is the one where they always tell you, let me know if you have any questions. But they don't Mean that.

Yeah, I remember somebody asking how your day is.

Yeah. I remember when I became an advisor, it was like, let me know if you have any questions. And I went and asked the questions, and then he was always like, go ask somebody else.

Also, when you're speaking of culture, there's.

Basic language in our industry.

That's all.

You know, it doesn't come from restaurants, it doesn't come from other industries. When you hire barista from Starbucks to be a service advisor, they don't know anything about our industry. If you don't put them through training, they don't have the basic understanding of what anything is or what it means.

Yes. And then the employee. Other employees just think that person's dumb.

So we're. We're. You know, you said sales is intentional because they always have training. We're leaving the. The culture to chance. We're leaving the career path to chance and our retention of employees.

Right? That's right.

We're leaving the success of them to chance and our results to chance. And it's all fixed very simply by having training. By the way, guess who offers training? Chris Collins, Inc. Yeah, we have some of the best training, or at least that's what you will think for everyone. Yeah, we. When we think about it from your perspective, like, yeah, what would you want? And then we try to design it.

Oh, I would say that. You know, it's funny is that advisor training is just like that. It's like, I don't know if you did it when you recorded those videos was like, what's all the stuff? I wish I would have gotten told, but that's how it seems when you watch it.

Same thing with the book, right?

Yeah. The book is. Is identical in terms of, like, you wrote it. From the perspective of like, if I'm trying to teach my fellow man and woman how to write service, that's how you wrote that book is from that perspective.

You know, so there's a part of this new leadership book at the beginning that I'm trying to get right. Because it's a setup, right? Yeah. And I was reading the beginning of the advisor book where I'm talking about church and all that, and it's pretty. I was pretty vulnerable in that I was surprised how honest I was. Looking back, I don't know. Because once. Once you finish a book, you kind of forget what's in there because it's so much work.

Yeah, I would.

But it's very vulnerable, that book.

I think that's what's. That's what makes them Good.

Like if you honest, right?

Yeah. And if you can read a book and be emotionally affected by it, I think that that's huge.

Well, I think that's what I like and I like in books, when people are honest, they're not telling you the idealized thing. You can kind of feel. I think people have a good.

You.

Know, detector for that sort of thing. Like they, they can tell that it's just you're saying the thing that is supposed to be said, not the thing that actually is going to make you effective.

Yeah. Did you, when you were writing it, were you like, I want to write something that'll unlock Christian's childhood trauma. That cross your mind a little bit?

It is in this leadership book. It's a big part of what I'm trying to do. When you come kicking and screaming.

How many ep, when you, when that finally pops, when the top pops on that bottle, how many episodes is it going to take for us to go through that trauma? Is it a 13 part series?

We'll lose everybody after three, but I think we go 13 anyways.

Oh, I bet we don't. I bet a lot of people it'll pick on steam. I bet a lot of people relate.

I think we all have, you know, we all have our issues.

So funny. I can't wait. I'm really excited for the book. There's just in a 22 part series, we unpack starting Christian's child starting at 3 years old. Okay.

Well, I think everybody's looking forward to that.

If you take anything away from this episode, it is.

You dramatically increase your chances of success and retaining good people by taking training seriously and being intentional about what you're trying to build in your culture and your results. Don't leave it to chance.

That's right. Be intentional. Yeah, yeah. And don't, don't pawn that training off on somebody else. Do it.

If you are going to magically be trained.

Just because you leave it to chance.

Yeah. I think that they're, they're your people and they're your responsibility at the end of the day. So you have to have some sort of an initial effect on them and then you can have other people help out. But that first, that first kind of impression of what we're doing as a, as a team, that's got to come from you.

You're light on the jokes today.

Little light on the jokes because you're busy. Yeah, I got a lot going on.

Well, we really thank you for listening. We appreciate you being here with us and we'll see you next time on Service Driver Revolution.

Thanks so much for watching this episode of Service Job 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 8-333-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.chris collinsinc.com that's offers.chris collins inc.com I'm Chris Collins, and I'll see you in the next video.