Service Managers' BIGGEST Mistakes (Service Drive Revolution)

Welcome to Service Drive Revolution. We begin the show today with your questions.

Read a question. We have two today.

Yeah, two questions. The first one comes from Tom. He says, are there any written workflow and service lane operations and fairness, things that are written or best practices that I can be informed on? The reason I ask is because I believe I should have every right as a new advisor at this facility to have a customer drop their vehicle off as the next rider. But all of a sudden, the 10th training day of my new OEM rider position, they tell me the one other advisor gets the drop off in the morning. I am genuinely concerned that I'm being taken advantage of because I'm the new advisor. I love having the drop offs at the resale and prefer it. But I'm scared about the new position on day 11 when my survival is dependent on my ability to retain my customers. Any advice or podcasts or leads would definitely help me.

Well, Tom, first of all, what does an OEM advisor mean?

Guess he just means he's at a manufacturer, so maybe came from a. What it is or something. I don't know. Yeah, maybe.

Okay, so the first thing, Tom.

We got to have a deal that we're going to be honest with you, not placate. Like we appreciate that you that you submitted a question. We're going to send you some swag. We'll send you a little service driver revolution care package with a T shirt and mug and all that. But bro, you sound entitled, like you just started this new job. And what does he say off the top?

He says the reason I ask is because I believe I should have every right as a new advisor at this facility to have a customer drop the vehicle. Suddenly now I'm in day 11 of my new position and my survival is dependent.

So I understand that it's a little scary starting a new, a new gig, but you need to come in there and observe. Every drive is different. Every manager is different. You know, I don't. Everybody handles night drops different, all that. But I bet you 90 days from now you can beat all that. Like, I remember when I was an advisor, I used to come in on Sundays and write the night drops because there were so many of them. And then my manager, who.

I changed his name to Dick in the book.

Which book is it? The, it's the advisor one, right? The millionaire service advisor. I changed his name. I wrote the book with his real name in there and then I changed it to Dick at the end. You know, in word you can find a name and then change it in the whole book?

Yeah.

So like if Chuck was his real name, I took Chuck and then I changed it to Dick, which felt really good because he was a dick. I remember he, he was a moron. He used to do lines of blow and smoke weed on his three hour lunch. Like we would clean his demo when I was a porter, when I was a lot attendant and smoke weed, did blow, Just, you know, a complete moron. So he comes out one day and because this idiot service advisor that couldn't write seven ros in a day to save his life complained that he didn't get night drops. They took all the night drops away from me and they made the warranty administrator, who was also a piece of work, come in and distribute the night drops evenly to all the advisors. That was the new rule. How long, Christopher, do you think that rule lasted?

Not very.

And why do you think?

Because the warranty administrator didn't take care of him.

Because Dick, in his laziness, didn't understand that he was going to start getting a bunch of calls from customers whose cars had sat there for a day and nobody had called them. Because when I came in on Sunday, I called everybody. I told them I had their car. I told them they had to give me money to work with if they weren't in warranty. I, I told him what was going to happen and I touched him and I told him what to expect. So they distribute them to all the advisors. And this idiot that, you know, complained about it, they would sit there on his desk, you can see him, people would call the check and you would go, oh, you know, Thomas, that was the guy's name, Thomas has it. And they would leave voicemails for him and he would never call them back. And so my boss, Dick, would rather not deal with the customer complaints and have me come in on Sunday and write them. But in the moment, I could have quit, I could have complained. I could have been entitled. I just kind of let it happen, watched to see it didn't last two weeks and I had all the night jobs back and I was writing them again on Sunday. So the little blurb in my little timetable, it was okay. It made the point. It made me more valuable to my boss in the end. Right?

Yeah. And I think that's one of the things you hit on right there at the end that really strikes me with this is value. Right?

Right.

And I've heard Kris tell the story several times about his grandfather, and his grandfather used to tell him. And when you hear Chris share this story, he's like, hey, it's words I really try to live by. His grandfather taught him, you know, no matter what you're getting paid to do something. If you try to give more than that, it'll always work out for you. Right.

So you'll always be in demand.

Yeah. If you give them, you know, more than what you're receiving. So I would ask you, Tom, just flip your script a little bit, bro. You're right there. You got a handle on some of this. I see. You see the value in it. But, you know, whatever opportunities you are given, if it's not night drops, you know, give. Give your employer more than what they're paying you for if you'll flip the script on yourself a little bit and reframe yourself there, you know, I think it'll bring a lot of things into focus for you, and it'll always work out for you. If you. If you. You're willing to give more than you get, it's good.

So give it a little time, man. You're going to be okay, Tom. Relax. Concentrate on connecting with the customers. And what value can you. What value can you add to the department, not want what's in it for you and your perspective, and your luck will change.

Yeah.

You'll see it different.

Yeah.

Okay. Question number two. This comes off of Reddit.

Yep. Reddit user Rebels of Hell. Who has issues with Lifetime warranty? I keep getting one hour or greater hold times. As you can imagine, CSI scores tank out and customers get upset when I don't contact them. But what other choice do I have? I had to take work home with me a few times because of the whole times. I had to call on four different ROs and was on the phone for at least five hours all the way until 8pm when they closed. What do you guys do? I've been doing this for three years and Lifetime has thrown me in circles. Also, how many customers are getting pissed when Lifetime doesn't cover parts anymore? How do you deal with that? I give them the number for customer complaints, but I would like to see what you guys do. Thanks a lot in parentheses. No sarcasm.

What's that mean?

That just means when he says thanks a lot at the end, he's not saying like, thanks for nothing.

Okay, so there's. There's a couple things there with that. One is that I used to get in when I had extended warranties. I would get in really early and call early in the morning, and I'd be on hold before we open. So I would sit there. Now I would probably Dial the number when I was headed to work and just be on hold. Because you could be on hold for 40 minutes like you said, to an hour. Right. One thing that I've done in service departments that have a lot of a warranty like that is I'll have the warranty administrator call and get it approved because the warranty administrator sitting at their desk and not customer facing. So I'll make it part of the process that maybe just because a warranty administrator can sit there on hold while they're doing their other work. And it's hard, like when you're on hold of an extended warranty to take another call to update somebody to talk to a customer, because you're listening for that music to stop. Like I remember, like the music would stop and then you'd be like, hello, Hi. Like, you know, you're like, I've been waiting for. Okay, you know, so maybe there's somebody else that can do it as part of the process. And I understand as an advisor you might not be able to make that call, but you could propose it that the warranty administrator would make those calls for you while they're just sitting there. And then also they can do more than one at a time. So if the warranty administrator called, they can do three at a time. Like, hey, I got three claims for you. Here's the first one. And they can kind of knock them out, which also saves time. So if they were doing all the advisors that way, and the way that I implement that is I have a sheet that you fill out that says, you know, what, what the causes, the correction, the parts price is broken down, the labor, where the labor came from, what book, everything is on there. So the warranty administrator has everything they need when they pick up just to, to get the okay.

Yeah, yeah, I think that's good.

Now, if you don't have a warranty administrator, maybe there's a cashier or somebody like that, or it's just gonna be you, you have to do it the, the other thing. And it was funny when Tequila was in the emergency room hospital, you know, so he, they kept him two days. But when we went to pick him up on Sunday, I was sitting in the waiting room because he wasn't ready. And this, this guy comes in. He was Asian and he had a dog. So funny, the dog looked just like him. Like, people say I look like my bulldogs, but this dog looked like this guy. Like.

It'S funny. So he goes up to the desk and I don't know, there's something going on with this dog. But I heard him say, I have health insurance on my dog. And the lady behind the counter was like, oh, okay, good. So here's how we're going to help you with that is at the end we're going to give you a detailed receipt that you can call them, but you're going to pay and then you're going to call them, but you're going to have a receipt.

I don't think you can give them.

Everything you need to take care of this.

Everything you need to, to call them. But we don't take insurance. It was pretty fun.

So that's your suggestion?

No, no, no, I'm just saying it made me think of that.

Yeah.

What was the, so what was the last part about them not covering parts anymore? Yeah, so I, I personally would address that up front and I would do some sort of thing at the time of write off, write up. Okay. So you have lifetime insurance. So understand that lifetime isn't going to pay for the diagnosis. And in some of the policies they don't pay for parts. I'm not sure what policy you have. Do you know? Because they're like, no, I don't know. Like you know, okay, well I'm going to do my best to get, you know, I'm going to do my best to get whatever I can claimed and covered for you. And then I'll tell you what, what is left over, what the balance is. But get your bluff in right up, up front that, hey, I'm here to help you. I'm here to be the liaison. But it's not my car and it's not my extended warranty. Even if your company sells the extended warranty, it's an outside warranty and you kind of gotta, in a very soft, subtle way let it know that you know, they're administered somewhere else by somebody else and you're gonna do your bestie, get them as much as they can. But yeah, everything isn't covered. It's not a bumper to bumper warranty like on a new car for sure.

More you can frame the customer up front with what's going to happen, you know, with.

What's the term for an extended warranty that covers items not like, you know, how they would have a detailed list of everything that was covered. Yeah, there's a term for that, but I used to say that like, okay, you have a policy. What was the name? I forget the name.

Not named. Inclusion. It's something along those lines though.

You have a something policy. Yeah, included or excluded or something. Like that. But if you use a term like that up front, then you know, you're, you're just educating the customer to the process and what's going to happen more than anything else. Yeah, it's a good, good question though.

Then. The next thing I have on here is the biggest mistakes keeping advisors from selling. What are the biggest mistakes out there keeping advisors from selling?

The main one is I. The main one I, I come across quite a bit is the, their mindset, you know, like getting, getting in their own way a little bit.

Their mindset gets in their own way.

Yeah, they, they get in their own way by their mindset. They think there's too many things. Yeah, maybe a little bit. You know, they think there's too many things that keep them from being able to do the items they need to be able to sell more.

There's too many things keeping them from being able to.

Yeah, they get busy with all the wrong stuff.

Busy bee. Yeah, okay. I think the, I agree with that for sure. The, the other one is that the managers aren't putting a system in the drive to support them. Yeah, right.

Yeah.

So the system doesn't support the advisors being in front of customers. Like let me give you an example. If you have your customers coming in every 10 minutes, so advisors have a new appointment every 10 minutes, how are they possibly going to call and update customers? How are they going to call and update customers before the customer calls us for an update? They're not, they have no time, they have no time to do upsells, to do updates. So as managers, like that's one thing is you want to give them 20 to 30 minutes between customers so they can over deliver. Right. A lot of times when the switchboard's blowing up at lunch and at four in the afternoon, it's because we haven't called them. Right. So we have to put a system in place where the advisors have time to call them. Right. So, you know, a lot of times the system and the drive is confusing. Customers are upset, they're. They don't know where to go, what to do. It's just, you know, it's chaos. Yeah, it's the manager, it's their role to fix that before then. A good advisor can plug into the system.

Right, Right.

And then on the advisor side, I feel like advisors are too transactional. Like I always think when I fly Southwest Airlines, like that's a lot of what advisors are doing. It's very transactional. Line up.

That's good.

Do this. But it's not fun. It's not friendly.

Right.

Like, I always get stressed out. Like, I'm in my A45. Like, am I going to get an aisle seat or am I gonna have to sit in the middle? Like, it's just stressful. Right. That's how customers feel when they come in. Is like, is somebody going to help me? Oh, they all look busy. Everybody's busy. Yeah, great. I had an appointment, but now, you know, are they going to be able to get me in? Are they going to, like, they doubt what's happening in the back if the front is chaotic.

Right, Right. And even if they. Even if it's a controlled chaos, they feel like herded cattle. Right. That's the thing I always think of. Like when Southwest, when you're boarding, you use that as an example and they open it up like it's just like this. Here comes this whole, you know, and it almost feels like the. When you're fighting for your place in line, you know? Yeah. And. And it's, it's easy to, you know, it's easy to get that as an advisor, especially if, like, you're saying the system's not set up for you to win anyway, then you're just trying to make it from 7 o' clock to close with, you know, the least amount of heat as possible. And once you're doing that, like it is transactional, then.

So they think about this for a second. Christopher, we have clients that are dealerships, we have clients that are independent shops, and then we have heavy truck clients. Right.

70% of the customers that start off buying their car at the dealer end up going to an independent shop.

70% end up leaving the dealership and going to an independent shop. Now, if you talk to an independent shop, the dealerships have home field advantage. They have home field advantage. You had them first, Right. They were coming to your party and now they're not coming to your party anymore. Because your party was that bad.

Yeah.

If your party was good, they would never leave.

Right? Yeah.

Like, that's failure on a massive scale. You had. The thing that everybody wants in a transaction is home field advantage. You want it in sports, you want it in business, you want it in any way that you can have home field advantage.

Yeah.

You want it.

Sure.

And they have home field advantage and they piss it away because it's transactional.

Yeah.

It's chaotic. It's not friendly.

Right.

And then we, we think like, oh, it's a Toyota. They're a Toyota customer. We're going to talk about Toyota. They could care less about Toyota.

Right.

The car is a commodity.

Right.

It is. What matters is them as people connecting with them.

Right.

Like people say, we have the new stuff, we're teaching the old stuff.

Yeah.

We're talking about human connection.

Right.

The biggest asset that any dealership or repair shop has in the market is your relationship with your customer base. That's your asset. Not Toyota, not Ford, not BMW. That's a commodity.

Yeah.

Now they buy a BMW for a different reason. So you talk to them different.

Yeah.

Because you can buy a Kia and get to and from work for half the price.

Right.

So the Kia customer might be more focused on price than the BMW customers buying for image and ego. So you, you talk to them differently, but you still connect with both of them and understand that the car is a commodity.

Right.

Right. So that's one of the biggest things keeping them from selling to me is it's very transactional. They think the car is the star when the customer is the star of the show. Right. Then if it's transactional, if something is transactional, then your only competitive advantage is price.

Right.

And so that's why a lot of advisors are in the habit of. So you need breaks and I can discount at 20%.

Yeah.

Like, the next thing they're saying is discount when the customer hasn't even asked, the car is there, the truck is there, they need brakes. And you're discounting it as a, as an operating system. Your way of selling is to discount because you haven't done the other stuff. It's all transactional. And it's all about price. And you've trained yourself that. And you've lost customers and had customers complain about price. So, so you just automatically default and your closing technique is to drop your pants and get naked.

Yeah.

Right.

Yeah. Yeah. And it's almost like we, we've gotten in the habit as advisors to, to speaking something into existence that's not even there yet. Like, we're walking on eggshells. So much afraid of what's going to happen. Sometimes I think that, you know, it becomes our system of selling. And, and, and like I said, we end up competing on price when we could be competing on, you know, what we offer that some other place doesn't. Right. Offering some type of convenience like pickup and delivery or whatever it is. I don't know, type of customer experience or relationship with me.

You know, like, listen, bro, when I was an advisor, so people say, say to do this, and I think it's moronic. And when anybody says it, for my whole life, I've thought that's the most moronic thing. But I, I didn't, like, I don't know. I didn't know what to say. But. So let's say like, you're talking about the difference between a dealership and an independent. Right. And, and a customer's like, well, I can get it done here for this. And you're this much, you're more. Right. And so what are we trained to do? We're trained to go, well, we have factory trained technicians and factory parts and all that. At the end of the day, does a customer really care about factory trained technicians?

No.

What do they want? They want their car fixed and they want to feel like there's value. And value is created when the benefit outweighs the cost. That's value.

Yeah.

Not when you're cheaper than the competition.

Yeah.

When they're shopping you against the competition, they're saying there's no value.

Right.

I always feel like my value in the marketplace is my relationship. If you feel like you're my friend and I can say to a customer, look, I'm straight in the eye, straight in the baby blues and say, yeah, but you won't have me, you can go down there to Chucky's. Chucky's. Lucky breaks and whatever. Go to Chucky's. Look, I find that a lot of customers that try that end up coming back to me and apologizing because I'm gonna take care of you. I'm gonna make sure that you don't get ripped off. I'm gonna make sure that it gets done. You, you have me. I'm the reason why you're going to pay more. Yeah, right.

Yeah.

Factory, train, tech. Give me a break. Nobody cares about that. Yeah, No, I just say, well, yeah, but then you won't have me. And I'd be quiet. It worked like.

Yeah, no, that's, that's true. And your customers will even tell you that a lot of times. Like, I, I can't tell you how many times I've heard, you know, a customer will say, you know, my mechanic or something like that. Right. Like, and that's an objection to a sale sometimes. Or I'll, you know, I'll have my mechanic do it or something like that. That's what people want, is they want their guy in the car business. Right. Like your customers want it. They even tell you, sometimes they tell you in the, in their objection to the cell, you know, like, oh, well, my mechanic said, or whatever, you know, and a lot of times they don't even have that person, you know, they're just saying that.

Yeah, they're blessing.

What people want for sure is they want to have and, you know, and even family members. If you're in the car business, I know that you have family members calling you all the time about, what should I do in this situation? Or, hey, I got my car over here, you know, they won't help. Everybody wants their person in the car business. And if you feel like you can do that for your customers and one of the greatest word tracks I've ever heard of, somebody with that objection, you know, hey, my mechanic, blah, blah, blah, is to tell your customer, hey, what can I do to become that person for you? You know, like, what. What can I, you know, and. Because it's definitely what, you know, what your people want. Anything you can.

Do to, you know, connect with them on a level where they feel that they can trust you. Right.

That's good. I like that. Then the last one was kind of what you said about them being victims. Like, they feel like they can't control the outcome. That's what advisors feel like. So they don't sell because they're so worried about, oh, the car wash, the cashier, and they don't understand that they still can create a relationship.

Yeah.

They still can get things done. The things that they can control are the things that they're not doing because they have all those excuses.

Right.

They can still pet the dog. They can still follow up before somebody has to call in and check on status. Right.

Yeah.

They can still still say, what can I do to earn your business? They can do all that stuff. You're not a victim.

Right.

If you focus on the things you can control, you start to forget about the things that you can't. But if you're only focused on the things you can't control, it's that. That saying, like, whatever you. Whatever you put on the fire will catch fire. So if you want excuses to catch fire, then you can make them catch fire. But if you want results and connections with customers and key throwers, like I wanted to collect key throwers when I was an advisor. I wanted people to like Kris. Yep, here it is. Right. Then that's what'll catch fire. If your focus is to create key throwers, that's what will catch fire. It's up to you to create that. Yeah, that's good stuff. So biggest mistakes keeping advisors from. From selling.

Good stuff. Well, thanks, everybody, for tuning in to Service Drive revolution. We hope you have a great week and we'll see you again. Real soon.

Thanks for watching this episode of Service Drive Revolution. If you have any questions, go ahead and post them in the comments below. Make sure you subscribe and hit the bell icon so you're notified when we post new episodes. I'm Chris Collins and you can find me on Facebook and Instagram at Chris Bulldog Collins and I'll see you again on the next episode.