The 5 DUMBEST Things Service Advisors Say After Getting a "No." (Service Drive Revolution)

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Neill.

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Today we're going to talk about the five dumbest things an advisor.

Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.

Sweet.

Service advisors never say dumb things. Come on, come on.

The five dumbest things Service advisors say after getting. No, we're going to answer your questions. But first, have you seen this new Hyundai, Jeremy?

Oh, I love the outside of it.

And what about the inside? Well, so this is Russo who works here when he put this in for show notes or whatever, right. He, he, he said Hyundai has unveiled a new electric concept car called the Prophecy that looks like something out of Blade Runner, but inside looks like groundskeeper Willie threw up on the upholstery.

So the thing does, it does look pretty. Night Rider. Ish.

It does.

The name Prophecy man.

Very sleek.

Yeah, it's a good looking car.

Alien. Like an alien might jump out of.

I've always thought that Hyundai should get more aggressive in their design like that.

Well, you know their mission, right. The company mission take over the world is to become the most loved car company on the planet.

Really? That's like their mission statement. Most loved.

If they could build good engines, they might be all right.

But are their engines garbage junk? Really?

Yeah.

Why?

That's. Well, there's a certain segment of them they have anyways. Yeah. They don't oil. Correct. When they have. They've warrantied a lot of them. So if they could figure that out, they might be doing all right.

Well, the, the, the look of this, you guys look it up if you're listening to this or go to YouTube and we'll put it up on the screen. But yeah, it looks, it looks really, really good.

I think Russo's right. The inside thing looks kind of a.

See, I'm probably more on the. I'm more open minded and experimental, so I kind of like it.

It kind of looks like a case of gobstoppers kind of exploded.

Yeah, but I like that. I don't know.

Okay.

I mean, I'm not in the market for a.

Explains a lot about you.

Yeah. Well, there you go.

What else do we have just a.

Little kick in the balls from Jeremy, free of charge. Kicking the balls on a Monday. No big deal. What do they call that? Like, when have you ever watched those videos on the Internet? Or guys get kicked in the balls?

I have watched those. Yes. I have no idea the phrase that you're searching for here.

I just wondered if you watch those kind of videos.

Well, I stepped right into that one, didn't I? Wow, great. So what I do on my free time. Chris.

Yeah. Are you guys crazy or you guys get a little freaky?

No. What do you mean? You guys like people?

You and your wife?

Oh, we're totally normal. You know, upstanding.

Nothing.

Citizens of the high desert.

Which is code for nudist colony.

No, it's not code for nudist colony.

That's where all the nudist colonies.

No, it's in the desert. That's a fallacy.

It's like saying all the meth labs.

You want your nudist colony to be hot and dry?

Oh, I'm not gonna say what just came to my mind. Moving on. What do you have there, sir?

I would have said it if it came to my mind.

Well, I'm not as bold.

I don't have the governor that you have. The restraint.

The restraint. That's just my good Christian upbringing, sir.

I was raised Christian, too, But, you know, the brain.

The brainwashing that my parents put me through when I was a young child.

Remember Top Dog?

Yes.

I think that. I think the person that spoke before you or after you, after you spoke on generational gaps. So most of us that are in any sort of leadership position are managing five to six different generations.

Okay, I would agree with that.

And they're all very different, Jeremy.

Oh, hugely different.

These young kids.

What do you call the younger kids now? They're the wise. The ifs.

What's the wise?

You had millennials and then what?

Gen Zers. Right?

Zers.

I think so. Is that it?

Gen Zers. Gen Zers are a lot different than you and I.

Yes, they are. Now, what's really sad is when you age like I do, and you realize that you are becoming a little bit older because their behaviors frustrate the hell out of you. So, for instance, I'm very proactive in my communication with my customers. Nothing frustrates me more as a service advisor than when somebody drops a car off. It hasn't even been there 30 minutes and they're already texting or back on the phone asking for an update, and it's one of These younger generations, the add kicking in or the meth or the marijuana or something. I don't know.

Can't be.

That's normal.

Yeah.

That is not normal behavior. No way.

I like, I like. A quick update.

Hey, good news. The sun hasn't moved but 2 inches. Your car's still in the same place. We're waiting for the weeds to grow. The sun will fix it today. Don't worry. Leave me alone. I got work to do.

Man, you're grumpy.

I am. Gosh.

So these guys are going around.

How do we friends?

They're called generational consultants, and they're teaching companies and nuances of 5 different age groups currently occupying the workforce. It's called Genzers.

So generational consultants, they're focused on the workplace, but we can also take that information and use it on the customer base as well.

We have this right because we created this for Top Dog and it's in our platform.

It is in there, yes. On demand.

How to manage the different ones. And it really is.

It really is something to understand and think about and go through because I learned a lot going through the process.

Well, it's, you know, one of the things that, and I'm sure you agree with me, you want to match your client's preferred method of communication. If they want to text, you need to text them. If they want an email, you want to email them. If you're the type of person where you're more hands on, you don't believe anything somebody tells you over the phone and you want to come down to the dealership to look at the vehicle with the technician, then you better do that in person presentation. So you have to understand how to modify your communication style to match your customers.

Here's the thing that, that when I hear people say, like, oh, millennials, blah, blah, blah, or whatever, like, I remember.

People saying that about me when I was a kid, and I hated it because I was a generation Y. Right. Are you a Y?

Yep.

So you know why we're the generation Y?

No.

What was the generation before us called?

Boomers.

Right. No, there was no. They call them boomers now. But there wasn't. We were the first generation to have a name.

Oh, there we go. And you trailblazers.

Why do you know why we were wise?

Because people were always there. Why the hell they do the things they do.

These kids. These kids. Dumb kids.

Oh, if I ever turn into my parents, I'm just gonna.

But that's what they would say, right? So we sound just like them when we're talking about the Generation Z's and the whole thing.

Well, but at the same time, that's kind of like saying that all puppets are drunks. You're categorizing puppets into a category.

If you have one puppet and it's drunk, then all puppets are drunks, I guess.

But that's not fair to the other puppets of the world.

We were called the Generation Y because we were the first generation where our parents wouldn't stay together for the kids. Our parents were so caught up in their own.

Wants and needs that the kids didn't matter.

Okay.

We were the first generation to raise ourselves.

Interesting. Very interesting.

Think about it. How many friends did you have that didn't come from a broken home? It was rare to have a friend where mom and dad were still together than it was.

It was just rare for me to have a friend, period. So, I mean.

Oh, that's funny. Yeah. So there you go. Hey, what do you. What do you say we answer some questions? Let's go to your questions from the audience. Remember, when you submit a question, if we read it, you were going to send you out some swag. Speaking about drunk puppets, welcome Don Rito. Hey, Don, how are you doing today?

Drunk as a skunk with junk in the trunk. Chris.

I love it. We're about to get there, right?

Yeah, absolutely. We're right behind you.

It's five o' clock somewhere.

Always five o' clock somewhere. That's how time works.

Might be five o' clock in Taiwan.

But hey, Don understands how time works. That's funny.

What are our questions this week, Don?

Our questions this week are relevant to me specifically.

Let's hear it. All right.

This one comes from Katrina on LinkedIn. I have a question I'll toss your way. How does someone get the F out of corporate where there's a budget for pay plans and get into a different dealer group without shooting themselves in the foot by being transparent during their job search that they have a DWI on their driving record.

Katrina.

Katrina.

Yes, Katrina. That's a good one.

Well, let's remind everybody that just by submitting your questions, if we do read it on air, you get swag. Absolutely.

You can have a service drive Evolution T shirt, hat, coffee mug and the stickers.

Coffee mug can come in handy because if you find yourself unemployed with the dui, you can go collect money on the side of the street. So that could help.

Oh, good. Multi cross use, multifaceted cross use tools. Show your service. Drive revolution, pride.

So there's like two questions layered within that Question. Right.

I know what my answer is, but why don't you.

No, no, no. I want to hear yours first.

Mine kind it, so.

Go ahead.

Well, if I hated corporate and I had a dwi, I'd open my own shop.

Okay, awesome. That's a great idea.

Like, you can't lie about it. You're gonna get caught, and it's not good to lie. So if you have. If you have it, go start your own business.

Yeah. Or go get your own insurance policy. And then can you do that? You probably can. Let's see. I got a resume, but there's an insurance minder ahead of it. Why is that? Oh, yeah.

You know, you can't even go to Canada if you have a dwi.

I did not know that.

Yeah.

Oh, wow. Looks like I have to cancel a trip coming up. Damn.

You have a dwi?

No.

Oh, geez. You got me. Yeah, I don't know. I. I don't. I'm. I'm not a big fan of lying about stuff. If you. If, you know, if you're in corporate, you got to be in corporate, and you got to play their game, play their politics, and perform if they're giving you a paycheck. So I always try to adjust my feelings on things to who's writing me a check and doing the best by them. My. My grandfather said. Always said that if, you know, always give somebody twice as much as what they're paying you for, so if they pay you $10 an hour and you give them $20 worth of value, you'll always be in demand. So that's kind of where my heart comes from. And I wouldn't lie about having a dwi. So you're in a pickle. So, I don't know. You might want to. You might want to start your own shop.

Yeah. And the other thing, I mean, then if you're. If this is your situation, then you got to just really maximize your performance to maximize the pay plan of where you're at, Kind of sit tight till you can make the money to hire an attorney to help expunge the DUI and clean up your driving record, I guess. Yeah, you got to get things clean. So maybe you've got to sit in this situation for a couple more years, understand your pay plan, and just figure out.

Get another dwi.

Agreed. Uber.

Cut back on the sauce, Don.

Yes. Automated driving.

Don't be like.

Don't be like. Don.

What's the next question, Mr. Rito?

This next question comes from Ken on YouTube. Do you have any stories of Customers that are just insane and there is no way to talk them down. I have a few and one of them, I had to call the cops.

Yeah, that's funny. Yeah, I've seen that.

So have you ever had a customer tell you to f off on the phone?

Oh, yeah.

Oh, isn't that great?

Many times.

Yes, absolutely. That happened yesterday.

Oh, really?

Yeah. So this kid's on the phone and you can tell from the tonality, the type of person you're dealing, but he's trying to get me to help diagnose his vehicle or phone. He just did a clutch and all this other stuff. He's like, do you hear that? I'm like, I don't hear anything. I can't fix your car over the phone. Would you like it to bring us to. Would you like to bring your car to our shop so we can fix it for you? And he kept, well, check this out. Now it's doing this and this. And I said, again, do you want us to help you fix your car, man? F you click. And it's like, I just want my five minutes back. Right. Because that was two to five minutes of my life that it's gone. I'll never get back again. I should have just hung up on the guy right from the beginning.

I had to fire my top salesperson once because he was, you know, we recorded our phone calls and he told the customer to f off.

Are you serious?

Yeah. And I didn't want to fire him. He was good. His name was Johnny. He was a good salesperson, but that's tough. Yeah, there's no way you could overlook it.

What about face to face encounters with customers, crazy people? You feel like, is he. It sounds like the question here. He's had to have them removed from the cops.

I don't know. Like, in my experience, the craziest things are like when there's lots of guns in the car. When there's lots of guns and drugs in the car. So I've had that quite a few times where there's a, you know, there's a 9 millimeter under the seat and a brick of marijuana in the back. That's always a little weird. Cash.

Cash, yeah.

So customers. I've had it before too, that there was cash in a car and the. Supposedly the cash disappeared. And you know, the kind of people that are selling drugs and have cash usually aren't that understanding.

Right.

So they've come back and threatened and had to call the cops.

Ah, okay.

That I've had that happen. And then just ridiculous Customers that are just crazy most of the time. Like, only two times in my career have I ever had to fire a customer. And both times, the way that I fired them, they wanted to come back. I'm not a big fan of firing customers. Like, I'll put up with a lot of abuse.

Customer collectors. Right, right.

Yeah, I'll put up with a lot of abuse. But my thing is always, like, I. I would say, you know, Jeremy, I'm really sorry that you feel this way. We've clearly let you down. We're not a match because I'm not going to be able to live up to. To your expectations, but I understand your expectations, but we're. We're not going to be able to do it. We obviously are falling short of that.

Yeah.

And then just about then, they start going, no, no. And then they turn around and they, like, no, don't. No.

Walk back in.

Yeah. And so I've had that happen. But. Yeah, but I. I don't know. I would think guns and drugs are the hardest ones. Like when a tech's going to work on a car, and then, you know, he doesn't want to be responsible for the drugs disappearing or the gun or.

Right.

And then you got to call him, and that gets really awkward.

I mean, their system can only handle so many drugs in a day, so they're probably already loaded enough. Have you ever done the page, like, to get out of something? Let's say you got a crazy person in front. You want to extract yourself out of the situation, so you just go, oh, my gosh, I just got paged. And you hit your hip. Now this is really old school, right? When did. When were pagers around 20 years ago, and I just got paged. I got to the back, and you walk out and you get your good cop, bad cop partner and be like, hey, you're up. Go talk to that person.

No, you know what my. You know what my move is? No, you're going to like this. Don, are you ready? I just stand up.

Oh, really?

Yeah. And I did this the other day to somebody like, I like. He clearly like his. He had an hour on my calendar. We were at an hour. I had another meeting. I'd mentioned leading up, like, for 10 minutes. Hey, I got another meeting. I got another meeting. So then I did the thing where I just stand up. Didn't phase him.

Just kept rolling.

Chat, chat, chat. And then finally I had to be like, hey, I gotta go, like, and I clapped. But no, with customers like that, I stand up and it changes the Tone especially. I'm kind of intimidating.

Yeah, absolutely.

So the standing up usually ends everything.

Don, what's your favorite way to get out of a sticky situation?

Let's do shots.

Let's do shots.

Well, you can clearly see that the problem here is that we're not drunk.

I would say standing up, but as you know, three out of my four limbs do not work.

There we go.

That's great. Any other. Any other questions?

Nope. That's it this week. Chris.

Great job, Don. Thank you so much.

Thank you, Chris.

Okay, now let's talk about the five dumbest things advisors say after getting no.

Okay, so let's frame this for the audience so they understand what we're talking about. You've done your job up to this point. You've made a great presentation. And then the customer just stonewalled you and flat out said no. And I want to talk about the reaction. The reaction. Right.

What do you do once you get no?

You've had this happen. You've been on site, you've traveled, you've been to other dealerships. What's the dumbest thing you've heard an advisor say to a customer at this point? What do you think the number one.

Thing is after they hear no?

After they hear no?

Yes. Oh, man, I don't know.

Well, the first one on the list is why? So they ask the customer why Now.

Logical. But that's funny.

We talked about gen Y and Y and Y. So why is that a dumb thing to say? Well, it's because it puts the customer right on the point, and you put them a lot of pressure on them at that point when they say no. And think about the genera. We just talked about generational demographics and the different type of people that we're dealing with. Certain age groups. When they say no, that's it. No means no. And I could damage the relationship if I keep going further. And I point that question to you at why. The reason I say this is number one on the list is because it creates a lot of negative emotions in the customer. We want to go beyond that first. No, but in a way that's not attacking or putting the customer on the spot. Does that make sense?

Yep.

So if you came in and let's say I quoted you $15,000 for a lift on your Jeep, you know that we're giving away the glass for 1500. 15,000. Oh, and you told me no, you're not going to do it today.

Right.

So good. Let's do just a quick role playing. Chris would be 15,000. We can have that on Friday. Does that work for you?

Why is it you guys that live out in the desert that have nudist colonies always want to roll? Role play. What is it about that swingers?

The only time we get action man.

Okay, what am I supposed to do? Tell me me what I do?

Tell me. No. Okay, you're not going to do that.

I'll do it. Go ahead.

Why?

No. Why no.

Why don't you want to do it, Chris?

So do you see how attacking and. And to the point it is?

Yeah, it's very adversarial.

Yes, very adversarial.

So that's even just in the role play. It felt weird.

See, role playing feels good, doesn't it?

There you go.

Number two on our list of the five dumbest things that start service advisors say after a customer says no.

Is they try to validate and get an agreement with the customer and they say well the other things that you declined weren't that bad anyways. So it wasn't that bad. Have you ever seen that happen?

Yeah.

What does that do?

It makes me want to kill them.

Like really?

Yeah.

That's a really strong emotion.

No, but it's. Yeah, it's so ridiculous.

So why do you think service advisors say that?

Well, I don't know. At the heart of it, they don't believe or they're insecure.

Insecure. Right there. That's it. They need to have the customer like them. Yes. So their acceptance from the customer, their self worth is predicated on the customer accepting them.

It comes from the same places. Some advisors that won't ask.

Right, right. Yeah.

Because they want the customer to like them and they think by letting the customer leave in a car that's going to break down then they're going to have to come back or that's going to leave them broken down on the side of the road. That that's better, right?

Yeah, absolutely.

Than telling them the truth.

I agree. So maybe the customer approves something they said no to the other stuff and then the advisor agree, you know, tries to get an agreement or alignment with the customer and says well those struts, they weren't really that bad, we can do it next time. What they're really trying to do is set their next sale up. But what they're doing is completely discrediting their credibility because you should never ask for something you don't 100% believe in. And if you back off of that much and that statement just completely kills your credibility. So get that out of your language and don't say that ever again. So that's two out of five. What do you think the fourth one is?

Third one. I can't count today.

Chris just gave me this look like, are you a moron? No. Third one.

I have no idea.

Let's go to number three.

Number three.

Oh, there was an advisor at one of the BMW dealerships that I used to work at and he sold on fear. This one is based in fear. So when a customer says no, one of the dumbest things I've heard an advisor say is, do you love your kids?

So think about that.

That's right up there with, well, what do you want to do? Slide into a school bus full of kids and kill them?

That's right up there. So do you love your kids? Mr. Johnson, you need to do the breaks today. Do you love your kids? Okay, that's just, just don't go there. Don't sell in fear like that. That's fear based selling. That just does not work. Right.

That's terrible.

It is. So that's the, the third one. I heard that. Do you love your kids? And if they don't have kids, that's an even worse question there at all. Can we move to number four now?

Number four.

What if I gave you a discount?

Now this goes back, I think one of the episodes we had a while ago we talked about discounting the diagnostic to save a sale. This is in the same mindset there. Why should we not offer a discount at this point in the sales process? So we've made our presentation, we, we've asked the customer to buy, they say no. And now we're going to try to throw the life ring out there. Save the sale by offering what a discount? What does that question or that statement send to the customer? What message am I sending?

Well, we're devaluing ourselves.

Absolutely. Could it possibly send the message to the customer that our normal pricing is too expensive anyways? Absolutely.

We discount a lot.

We discount a lot. Right. What if I gave you a discount? So yes, my opinion on this, and I'd love to hear your take on this, I've always built my pricing in a way that I always have my best pricing on the ticket for the customer. So whenever they pull that discount card out and they ask me for the discount, I always come back with Kris, I've already given you the best pricing I possibly can. The fee for the service would be X. And then you ask the closing question, can we move ahead with it?

Yeah, I think there too asking more questions like just going right to discount. Like ask questions.

Absolutely.

You want to know, like, you know, the answer might be, well, I'm selling the car. Like, you know, you don't know what it is.

Absolutely. If you did your job in the beginning, you would know what it was.

Yeah.

Get that information when you do the write up. So that's number four. What if I gave you a discount now? The fifth dumbest thing advisors say after. No.

It'S the parts department fault.

He's got to do the parts thing.

I got to drag in the parts thing.

Really? This is the four dumbest things.

It's the four dumbest things that advisors say after.

Oh, that's funny.

There we go.

Poor parts department. I know.

But hey, you know, I really think we're not only are we helping service advisors, service managers out, the parts managers that watch these things are they're going to revolutionize their department as well.

Oh, yeah, for sure.

Yep. I think it's a great thing.

It's awesome.

Yep.

Well, that was great stuff. Thanks you guys for tuning in to Service Drive Revolution. We will see you again next week. Be safe. 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, 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.