A viewer (service advisor) asks why advisor performance is undermined by technicians, parts, dispatch, and dealer culture, arguing that pay structures (flat-rate tech pay), favoritism, and bad management make providing five-star service difficult. Chris Collins responds by reframing the problem around locus of control and ownership: advisors should 'own' the customer experience, take responsibility for outcomes, and lead culture change even when systems are broken. He uses a Dostoevsky quote to underscore personal responsibility and offers analogies (recidivism, dieting) to argue that change requires willingness from individuals as well as systemic fixes. The video closes with a standard show sign-off and contact/promo info.
Chapters
I'm new. I just found you this morning and I'm like, wow, this is so cool.
I have a question and you might have answered this. So please excuse me if I'm, you know, asking something that's already been addressed. I apologize. Like I said, I'm new. All of these things about being a great advisor, and I really want to do this and become the best advisor I can.
My experience is that no matter how good and enthusiastic and energetic and everything that I am, that I bring to the table, I am obviously directly affected by the attitudes of the other people around me, namely technicians, parts, the lot guys, that's, you know, bringing up loaners, whatever. And I wonder what advice you have or.
If you could discuss that.
Because I feel like these are uncontrollables for me to give this five star perfect service every time to each customer. I'm just watching your video about text quitting in the first two years and I hear you guys saying that money is not the driving force. And in my experience that is so not true. These guys, I've been an advisor for a long time in, you know, several dealers, and it's always the same. These guys have awful attitudes.
And it all boils down to the same thing, which is they're paid flat rate and they have no control over their money in a sense that, you know, if the writer is no good, if the dispatcher doesn't like them, so they're only dispatching them junk. There's so much that goes into it. Bad leadership is another one, as you mentioned in your video.
But I think the heart of it is that they're flat rate and they really have small, little control over.
How to make that money. The manufacturers want to pay less and less, wanting them to diagnose it for free. I'm sure you've heard all this yourself. Then you have, you know, advisors that aren't you. Okay, so you're getting whoever will take anybody and throw them in the drive. And.
It'S just there's so much to that. And management is another problem. And the dispatching, because again, you get the favorites. You get the ones that they don't.
They don't like them.
So this idea of having the main, you know, experienced techs mentoring the younger guys is a great idea. I think it's a fantastic idea, but there's more to it. And, you know, unfortunately, I feel like the dealer system is pretty much.
Really broken and needs a lot of tweaking. Just very frustrating.
She just described America.
She really did.
Nobody wants to take Responsibility for anything.
It was no one's fault.
It's everybody's fault.
Everybody else's fault. I mean, I think that there's a couple things going on here is one is, you know, there's a locus of control issue. And the locus of control always starts with us. It's not with everybody else. So we're talking a lot about everybody else. But the truth of the matter is, is it's about us. And so we either believe that life happens to us or we believe life happens for us. One of the two. And so if we believe life happens to us, then we don't have a choice where we work. We don't, we don't have a choice how we interact with others. We don't believe that our actions affect the culture around us. Right. And so basically what we have in, in the automotive industry, and I, I do agree with you to some degree, the model's broken, but the model's gonna get changed. Like, the model can't survive the way it is for, for much longer. But it's renters versus buyers. Like, nobody wants to own the culture in the customer experience. Everybody wants to be a renter. So we want to trade time for money, but we, we don't want to own the outcome. And so, yeah, techs are flat rate. That's a great thing for a tech that's super motivated and talented. It's a bad thing for somebody who isn't motivated and talented. And if you're a really motivated tech and talented and you're working in a service department with bad advisors, there's a line of dealerships that will hire you in a second. Like, techs pretty much have the cards like they're holding the cards. If, if you're a really good tech and you, you know, put out quality work and you know how to flag hours.
You'Re going to, you're going to have a lot of suitors if you want to look. And so they're not victims. They're literally in control more than anything else. And so I just believe that it starts with us and we gotta own the culture. And yeah, there's people that trade time for money and they don't care. And there's people that do care, but we have to be the ones that started and care. Right.
Green.
So I printed out, when I heard this question, I printed out this quote by Dovskievsky and I love it. And if you don't know anything, and I'm sure I'm pronouncing Dostoevsky, it's Pretty close.
Dostoyevsky, I think.
Dostoevsky.
There you go.
He was Russian, by the way.
He was very Russian.
I first heard Jordan Peterson say this quote.
There is only one way to salvation, and that is to make yourself responsible for all men's sins. As soon as you make yourself responsible, in all sincerity for everything and for everyone, you will see at once that this is really so and that you are in fact to blame for everyone and for all things.
It's pretty powerful.
A little deep.
It's pretty powerful.
Well, I mean, it's a deep conversation, isn't it?
Yeah. Well, I think that that's a thing, though, is when you think about your best advisors, they are endearing to their customers because they own everything from start to finish. If a tech doesn't get something done and they call the customer, they're not blaming it on the tech, they're saying, it's my fault. I gave you a time that it was incorrect and I'm so sorry. And here's what I'm going to do to make it right. And they always own every portion of the outcome, right? They're checking their cars before they're giving it back to them to make sure that it's clean. All the reminders are reset and everything, like they're owning everything, every little bit of it. But I believe that in this age of renters, that people really appreciate owners. And as an advisor, if you're an owner, you're going to be head and shoulders above the rest of the group.
I just believe that you can't fix any problem in society without both sides taking responsibility. So let's just say you want to fix the re incarceration rate here in Los Angeles. And I'm just throwing out a random analogy to make this point. So the reincarceration rate of somebody who goes to jail and then ends up back in jail is like 60%. Now, we can put programs in place, we can, we can educate them coming out of prison, we can give them a guaranteed job when they get out.
But unless that person wants to change.
Unless that person actually wants to take advantage of those resources, it isn't going to work. And it's the same thing with, you know, giving everybody checks and extending unemployment and extending their. Their rent and all that. The truth of the matter is, is those things only work in a society where people are actually trying to find a job. But we have a scenario where a lot of people aren't. They're not even looking for jobs because they're making more on unemployment than they were working. And so you can't fix a situation unless both parties are willing to accept responsibility for what's going on. It can't just be a one sided thing in every scenario, in every business that I've ever gone in to fix. I cannot fix the business if the people running the business don't actually want it fixed. And I run into this all the time where people want Chris Collins and they want to hang out with Chris Collins and they want to drink tequila and smoke cigars with Chris Collins, but they never really wanted to fix their business. And it's one of the most annoying things I have to endure is, is I actually wanna fix stuff. I wanna learn. I wanna see how fast can we fix it and how big of a turnaround can we do. And then.
Nobody really wants to fix it. Just like people buy diet books, they do all this stuff, but they never actually. You actually don't need a diet book. The truth of the matter is there's nobody watching this that doesn't know how to lose weight. There's nobody watching this that doesn't understand that if you eat right and you exercise, you will lose weight. That's it. You don't need a, you don't need a diet book. You don't need any of it. Like, it's pretty simple. We're just looking for that thing to give us permission, that thing to, you know, have, have that, you know, keeps us interested or whatever, right?
Yeah, for sure.
What would you call it? Nostalgia? What is it that, like, it's just new, Right. If it's packaged and it's new, then we're excited about it. But the truth of the matter is, is you're going to work out and you're going to eat. Right?
Right.
That's the basis of every diet.
It will be the basis of the next diet, for sure.
Yeah. But they just give it a cool marketing name and a new thing like, oh, you can eat cheeseburgers with no bun or whatever, but you're, you know, you're cutting out the carbs. It's all the same.
Yep.
Right. I agree. So she. You just described America. Thanks so much for watching this clip of Service Driver 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 at 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.
