A short coaching conversation (Chris Collins with Christian) for automotive service advisors about using language strategically to build rapport and surface service needs. Key tactics shown: personalize the vehicle (ask if the car has a name; refer to "health" or "bumps and bruises"), use progressive question sequences (move to 3–5 layered questions), elicit behavior changes ("Have your driving habits changed?") to cue maintenance concerns, and steer customers toward available logistics (offer a shuttle rather than a scarce loaner). The episode closes with calls-to-action (subscribe, hotline, offers).
Chapters
Once we've connected and we've talked about things that are personal, that align with the identity, you could shift and say, so how's the health of. And point at the car.
Yeah.
Now some, some advisors I've seen in over the years ask if the car has a name.
It's a good question.
Yeah. And it. You'll be surprised half of the time the name is not, not a, not complimentary.
The Tesla's name again, what did Missy name him?
Clyde.
Clyde. That's what it is. What's.
What's my rovers name?
I don't know.
Winston. You don't know that? No. Winston Churchill.
Because it's a Land Rover.
You just feel like you're, you know, the Prime Minister of England.
Got it. Okay.
Okay. But does that make sense?
Tons of sense that you get now.
You can flip it and you're in a different frame. You're in a frame of friend and identity. And now when you say how's the health? You're. You're referring to the vehicle as something that's living, moving, important, not as a dead vegetable that has no life or importance. Right.
Got it.
Because it is important. It's. It's carrying you and your kids and your life all over the place. And the safety and maintenance of it is important. So how's the health? Very effective.
Right.
What do they call that? Is that personification?
I had somebody send me, I think a DM on Instagram the other day saying that.
They use the term bumps and bruises, which used to. Was an Aisha term that we all adopted.
Yes, we did.
But that's another one is when, if you're doing a walk around and you're marking down damage or recording damage, you could say, oh, how did the bump or the bruise happen? Another question you could be asking that also implies a living important thing.
That's right.
Right. Yeah. What do you think so far about these questions? It's good stuff, Christian. Did not see these ahead of time.
No, it's the misfire at the beginning. Yeah. But there's a couple of things that were a reminder. One is that I remember you always saying this about there's a really, really good skill of service advisors and that you had. It was that natural curiosity. And one thing that I probably didn't do as well as I should have as an advisor is I would ask the first question, but I didn't always go to the second and third.
Yes. You just have to think of it as threes, fours and fives and somebody. That's really difficult. A5 you're going to run into once a month. Like, that's a rare human. But I don't give up because it's.
A challenge to then try to break them. Right. Yeah.
And I always look at those sort of things as a learning experience, not an indictment. Like what could. What. What could work? And then if something works, then I might move that up sooner in the sequence. Right. So the. The reason why where you headed today is my first one is because that worked in the most situations, because everybody's headed somewhere, they're in motion.
Right.
And even if they're waiting for an oil change, they're headed somewhere, they got plans. If they say, oh, I'm headed home. Oh, what are you doing the rest of the day? Oh, well, I, you know, I gotta get on some zoom calls at work, whatever. What do you do for work now? That's five, right? I'm five in.
Yeah.
But I'm just. They're leading me and I'm following, but they don't understand that really I'm controlling it. They're. They're not going to. Not going to squirrel away.
Yeah. And I definitely think that they might hold up. They might hold the fence up. One or two questions. By the third questions, they recognize that they're. Okay, they're connecting.
Now, another one that I've seen advisors use effectively that I did not use that often, but I have used it. Have your driving habits changed?
Christian is showing me that he had. Have your driving habits changed? Okay. Have your driving habits changed? And you could say in the last two years, give it a time frame, it opens.
I think that's almost. That's bordering on an elicitation question. Right, Cool.
Well, it makes them think about driving habits, and then they're going to think about, well, I, you know, I got a lead foot, I'm hitting the brakes. You know, it's going to. It's. It's going to.
Alert that part of their memory.
People also really like to talk about food.
Then one, this is yours, actually, that you said.
Would you like to take advantage of our shuttle today?
Oh, yeah.
Explain to everybody why you think that one's important. Because I. I see it a little bit different.
Okay. So. So one of the things that I'll see happen in the service drive is I'll head on there, and then I'll hear advisors saying to the customer, will you be waiting with us today? So one of the things that I've learned is if you get a really, really full waiting room, it starts to kind of back things up. And everybody has, like, a heightened level of awareness. And the one thing I would tell you is if you sit in the waiting room for 15 minutes, it literally feels like two hours, so that your concept of time is lost. So when someone says to me, will you be waiting with us? I believe my subconscious says, well, that's what I'm supposed to do. Right. And then there's another thing going on is that, you know, I think that we probably have recognized that over two years ago, three years ago, we were pretty lucky in the amount of loaner cars that we had in our fleet. And everyone knows now chip shortages and the such, no one's got any loaner fleet. Like, they. They've been harvested, they've been given back, and not many people have loaner cars selling them. Right. So what I do have is a shuttle. So I want to push them towards a thing that I have. So if I just say you're offering.
Up a solution in a preventative way.
That's exactly right.
I'm trying to get ahead of this bus. That's exactly right, because it's coming. Yeah.
So that's great. That's what I thought strategically is a really, really good way to do it. But, yeah. So I was telling you that everyone really likes to talk about food. Like, how do you make an egg roll?
I don't know how you push it.
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 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.
