Ian, a BMW service advisor, asks how to boost shop productivity when a colleague generates high volume but leaves cars sitting idle. Chris Collins advises focusing on what you control: answering calls fast, writing up customers quickly, and following up consistently. The key is winning customers through your own reliable habits, not confronting the tenured advisor.
Hi, my name is Ian. I work at a BMW in Florida.
I was. Had a question about.
So myself. I'm the second leading advisor there. The leading advisor ahead of me writes more volume. But the problem with the volume that he writes, he doesn't send back his quotes to his customers. He doesn't follow up on the stuff, lets cars sit on the bays. It leads to dead time. So I'm trying to think of a way to bolster my dealership as a whole, less myself as an individual. It's not like I want his sales. It's more of the issue of I want more productivity in my shop. And the way that he handles his business as he does his advising doesn't really work well for others. I've been told by text and such that, you know, it causes issues that, you know, his cars get pulled outside because they don't get called up, they don't get followed up on. And I'm trying to find a way. I'm not service manager myself. Trying to find a way that I can approach this situation, try and find a remedy to it. I've offered to help him with his such, with his tickets and such to get calls out and such. Doesn't really seem open to it. I'm not sure if he's doctoring the appointment list to get this many customers. He's also kind of got a little bit of tenure, so it's a touchy stuff. Six for me to kind of try and approach any topics or any pointers. I'd greatly appreciate maybe a way I can approach this. I appreciate it very much. Thank you.
You want to go first?
Sure, I'll go first this time.
Okay. So this is.
I do like when you do that. So I think there's a couple of things going on there. One is, you know, honestly, I think the question's really good and valuable because I think that we've. A lot of us have seen that happen with an advisor that they. They have all the customers because they've been there for a really, really long time, and then they just. They're tragically treating them like. That's the thing is you. You helped somebody out over five years. It does not give you a license to not call them back or anything like that. But the. The fact, matter of fact, is that it's affecting this fella. Right. Because when something's sitting on a lift, it means my car's not getting worked on.
Fella?
Yeah.
This fella?
Yeah. It's a northern term.
The Yankees.
Yeah. I don't know. Yeah. Fella's a northern term. I say that. I said that in Illinois. However, I think the big point is that I would probably be letting it be known that our work's getting held up because we're not getting responses back. The other thing is I would say hang tight, because eventually that customer will migrate towards him.
So I would just sit there and collect all the scraps. He ticks somebody off and they can come see him the next time.
So this is what I would do.
Strategically. I would create a scenario where I was number one and he wasn't. So I would beat him. I would do that by doing one thing. And I was reading this study the other day, and it said something to the effect of, it's really about 15% of our life or a situation that we can't control.
I would focus all of your efforts on the things you can control and completely forget about this guy. Just focus on what you can do and you can control. And let me give you an example.
When I was a general manager, I had an advisor. He was our top advisor. His name was Gary.
Gary Trummel, I think, loved Gary. Just a great guy, great advisor.
One day, I go back and our service director at the time, and I don't know, we had 18 advisors. We had a lot of advisors. There's two advisors in his office that weren't hitting minimum requirements or were in trouble for their performance. And I walk in and I'm kind of listening, you know, and they're talking about they don't get appointments. They don't do, like, all the things that they, you know, all the excuses in the world. I'm kind of like, okay, whatever this is. I was back there for something else. I don't know. I come out of the office and our drive manager, Hector, is there, and Gary comes up to him, and Hector goes, gary, your toe ins here. And Gary's like, okay, thank you. And Hector walks away. And Gary goes, I always just tell him I'm waiting for a tow in.
So you control when you go to lunch. You control when you get there to right up the night drops or whatever, however the night drops happen. You can. You control how available you are to answer the phone? You know, I. I'll tell you, there probably isn't a dealership in this country where if you go to the receptionist and say, listen, if you ever need somebody to take a call, I'll take it. Take every call. Write every customer, write customers up for him and hand him the ro and just connect with those customers. I. When I was an advisor. I would steal customers from other advisors all the time just by writing them up for them in their number. And the next time the customer came in, they wanted to deal with me. I wasn't, I wasn't doing anything shady. I wasn't changing numbers. It's just they liked how different it felt when I wrote them up and was talking to them and building rapport or whatever. So focus on the 85% of things that you can control when you get there, what your availability is like. Take every call and in a very short period of time, you can flip that thing. You can flip it quick. You know, six months, it wouldn't take long. So focus on the things you can control would be my advice. And forget about that guy.
Thanks so much for watching this clip of Service Driving Revolution. We're uploading new stuff every, 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.chrisconsinc.com.com I'm Chris Collins, and I'll see you in the next video.
