Q & A | Can You Be a Service Advisor Without Car Knowledge?

Foreign.

Welcome, everybody to your Friday drive by. This is where we answer your questions, the questions that are burning in your mind. The phone number is 8333 Ask SDR. That's 8333 Ask SDR. We have a special guest today. So Christian is here, but Hoagie is here also. He's in town doing a new customer master class. Is that what we call it? Yeah, we used to call it a boot camp. I still call it a boot camp.

I still call it a boot camp. Way too much.

You also still call crypto.com staples center.

Yeah, but he's here for that. So we're abusing him and using him as much as we can. And he will have some good insights for your questions. Also, let's go to the first question.

What's up, Chris? And service drive revolution. My name is Dylan. I work over here in the Seattle district at a local fleet shop. So we're not paid commission at all. Our techs are also paid hourly. There's not a whole lot of investment, you know, getting ros done and stuff like that. Listening to your show, I've kind of got more interested in going to the more traditional service service, you know, advisor route. If you have any recommendations in the Seattle area, let me know.

Well, Dylan, I hope you're a Seahawks fan, first of all.

I'm sure he is.

Can you imagine? He's a Cowboys fan.

Probably not.

It happens.

Yeah. They're everywhere.

They're everywhere. America's team.

Send your resume to infohriscollinsinc.com and we will pass it around for you. So love the enthusiasm. I'd give you a 10 on the revolution. It's pretty good. But yeah, info at chris collins inc.com and we'll see if we can pass that around for you. Let's go to the next question.

Can you be a service advisor or service writer if you don't have a lot of automobile knowledge like the components, the parts, is that possible? Can you become a service writer?

So I was a service advisor and had zero knowledge. I find that when technicians become service advisors, so they have a lot. You know, a technician has a lot of knowledge. So when a technician becomes a service advisor, they struggle because they're diagnosing it, they're trying to fix it. And really the job of the service advisor is to investigate, get all the information and communicate that to the technician. But the technician is the doctor. And so you don't need to know how to perform surgery. You don't need to know how to diagnose. What you really need to do is know how to connect with people. And if you want, we'll reach out. And I have a book called the Millionaire Service Advisor that we will send you. That kind of goes into my journey with that, that really, at the end of the day, a service advisor's job is to collect customers. That's, that's how you build a successful career. And it's about understanding people, connecting with people and, and having that. A hospitality bug. Right. A lot of people either have it or they don't. But you have to want to take care of people and, and, you know, be, be a good host. So you actually have an advantage by not knowing a lot about the vehicles if you approach it in the sense that you're trying to collect customers for a long time.

Yeah.

I don't know how many texts come and they're like, oh, my body's beat up. I want to be an advisor. And I'm always like, okay, here's the deal. I'll let you be an advisor, but you have to promise me that if it doesn't work in three months, you're not going to leave here and go somewhere else. You'll still go back in the shop. Otherwise, I won't let you do it. Because I would say 70% of the time they would rather work, you know, on a vehicle than deal with customers because they don't have the hospitality bug. The hospitality bug will help you put up with a lot of brain damage because it can be brain damage to deal with people. Constantly. You're listening to their problems, their concerns, their, you know, they're trying to get more out of you than is possible. They're pushing you. Like, you have to enjoy that.

Yeah.

Or you're, you're going to lose a lot of sleep at night because you'll hate that job. So it's, it's, you know, I, I would say it's a one in three that a technician can unlearn. Fixing the car in the drive or diagnosing and actually just focus on the customer. It's a hard thing to do.

Yeah. And I'd say too, that you, you know, if you're good, if you're good at connecting with people, you'll learn things from the tech, you'll kind of things as you go and you'll learn how to illustrate things. And you may not still know how they work, but you'll know how to communicate it to people in a way that they can understand. Right. So, like, yeah, great, great question. And Even as a tech and being a service manager, it still was a hard lesson for me to learn to, like, put my technician away. Right. In dealing with customers. Even as a service manager, like, you want to. You have this thing where you want to, you know, tell them how the sausage is made. Right. And they just want to know, like.

What time can I pick my.

How long it's going to be, how much it's going to be. And they want someone on the other side of the counter that's empathetic and cares, you know, and is trying to solve their problem. It is, it's a, it's a funny thing. And, and, and I think too, like.

You know, a lot of new advisors fall into that same trick bag of they think they need to have all this mechanical knowledge and they want to learn all these other things about the job. They want to learn the DMS and the warranty policy and like, they want to know. They think all of those things are the most important things they need to know right now to be a better advisor. And it's just having in your heart of hearts that you want to take care of people and, and connecting with people. Like, it, it sounds oversimplified, but it's the truth.

When you're, when you're an advisor, very little of your time is taken up talking about technical stuff anyways.

Yeah.

It's when, how long, like, you know, all that stuff. You will get a phone call every once in a while where somebody's like, oh, it's doing this. What do you think it is? And I'm always like, what do you mean? Like, I didn't know. I didn't know cards were supposed to start. Just make a joke.

I think, I think that the, that.

The advisor has to be technically skilled is one of the two biggest misconceptions in the service department.

And you do eventually become technically skilled. But it's not the thing that makes you. It's not the thing that makes you money.

Yeah.

It just saves you time.

Yeah, that's right. Yeah.

But you could ask and don't try, don't try to fake it. Like, if you don't know, customers don't. They'll forgive you for, you know, asking and getting back to them. But if you make it up or you try to, you know, I always.

Used to joke with them and say, there's a reason I'm here and not in there. Yeah, I kind of just did that thing where, like, here, my job is to give you the information. And, and it's definitely not to fix the car. And I'm always flattered when someone says that I'm their mechanic. But, but at the, at the truth of the matter, they think I'm the mechanic because I can explain what they need done and everything like that. And, and I just could to. I would tell you that as a manager, hiring advisors, I probably had a preference towards people that weren't technically savvy.

Yeah.

Because there's just, there's almost a D program that happens.

Just extra credit to on that. That I would say is you really want to pay attention to your relationship with the text. Because if you are honest with the text and you try very hard to make their life easy, if they write something down, you present it, you're very consistent and they can tell that they will go out of their way to help you. I, you know, being one of the top advisors, they, they want you to succeed also. Because if you succeed, they succeed. And so you want to, you really want to pay attention to that relationship and be a good steward of it because then when you do have a question, they'll help you. They won't joke around or, you know, it's great. Lead you the wrong way.

Yeah.

But if they think that you don't call the customers when they take the time to write, you know, the, or to fill out the inspection or whatever it is, they can get jaded pretty quick. Deservedly so. It's their time, you know. Right.

Yeah.

Great questions. Thanks, you guys. 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 Chris Collins inc. Com. Now that's Offers chriscollinsinc. Com. I'm Chris Collins and I'll see you in the next video.