The 90-Day Plan to Train Standout Service Advisors

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Welcome everybody to your Friday drive by. This is where you and I and Christian Puppy Chulo get to hang out and we answer your questions. The number is 8333-ask-SDR. That's 8333-ask-SDR. I've had a couple people on Instagram send me pictures of their swag. It looks really good when we send it out.

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We are over delivering on the swag. By the way, the Papy Chulo coffee cup is missing. If anybody's seen it, please let us.

Know because I believe someone has commandeered it.

Who in their right mind would even think to commandeer or touch the Papi Chulo coffee mug?

I believe it's.

I always like reach around it in the cab. I would never touch it.

Almost needs its own space, doesn't it? Yeah. Oh, by the way, public service announcement. 5. 5 out of 6 people believe Russian roulette is not dangerous.

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Because there's six chambers.

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What if you have a 12 clip?

It ruins the joke.

Okay.

Okay, let's go to this week's question.

What's going on? Service drive revolution.

I just had a question here. So what is the most important thing to learn as a new service advisor? And if you could lay out a 90 day plan or you know as well as a one year plan of what the perfect service advisor looks like at each of those stages in their career, what would that look like? What goals should I set? And what does a millionaire service advisor entail? So I'm really new to the industry. About two weeks as a service advisor. Before this, I sold cars, sales, bdc, some Internet sales. So the service aspect is super new to me. Thanks, Chris and Chris Stone Hunter.

We, we appreciate the, the question and.

Thank you for asking. You're.

You know, you're asking for a lifetime of advice and experience on a simple Q and A show, which is hard to do.

But I think, I think there's a couple big ones. And so we'll, we'll give you the big ones that will make your life easier and set you kind of in the right path.

You want to go first.

Puppy Chulo?

Yeah, I think that if I had to pick one thing to do in that first 90 days, it's practice and then practice and then never expect to be perfect.

So like a feedback loop.

Yes.

Like just try it, learn, reassess, try it, learn, reassess. That sort of thing constantly. And what would be an example of something you would practice?

I would practice connecting with customers on the ride. So, like, I'd get really good at doing a walk around where I focus on the customer.

Okay. And so if you're practicing that Hunter, you're paying attention to when you walk up to a customer. Like, what's the difference when you meet a customer at their car or they have to come in and find you at your desk.

That's right.

So pay attention to the difference in their body language, how they treat you, how much they spend, what your CSI is, their tone of voice when you call them later in the day, whatever it is. Right.

And then when you're, you know, you're going to find that meeting them at the car is more effective then when you meet them at the car, when you talk about the car versus you talk about their personal life, how does that change the dynamic? How do they, you know, how. What is the outcome of that? So.

And that would have. The Christian is. Is saying it in a different way. But my first one would be the connecting with customers. That's the most important thing. When I was a service advisor, I didn't know anything about cars. I was not the kid rebuilding engines over the summer with my debt. Like, I didn't have a dad, nobody. You know, I saved up my money and paid somebody to put a transmission in a car. I wasn't doing it myself, so I didn't know a lot about cars. I was curious about people. And so if. And then the, the second one that will save your life is work on your relationship with the technician. So if you connect with customers and a customer asks you a question, you don't know, the technicians are your best resource. So then you can ask technicians like, hey, because customers will not care if you don't know.

They just want you to find out for them. So if you say, hey, you know, papi chulo, I don't know what that is, but I'm gonna go ask the doctor, the technician, and I will get back to you and then get back to him. That's it. But that's how you learn. And so you got to invest in your relationship with the technicians, because they are the doctors. They're the only ones that can fix it. They're, you know, they're the ones that are going to create opportunity for you. They're the ones that are going to save you in a lurch. And so when a technician takes the time to fill out an inspection sheet, tell the customer what is on There, don't, don't pretend like you know you're not an editor. Yeah, don't edit if you don't understand what it is on the inspection sheet. Go ask the technician to please explain it to you. Don't get discouraged if they're short with you and then over communicate with the technician. There's nothing worse for a technician than filling out and investing time and inspection sheets or diagnosing and then the car's gone and you never hear anything again. Go tell the technician, hey, I told the customer about it. They're going to think about it, they're going to come back in a month and I'll make sure you get the job. If they do come back, make sure that the job gets back to the same technician. Do anything you can to get it back to the person who invested the time and in it, you know, just do a really good job of being fair and communicating and taking care of the technicians. Don't, don't expect them to do a bunch of things for free.

Yeah, those would be the two things, the connecting with the customers and building relationships with the technicians. Try almost to show off and prove yourself to the technicians like how good you can get descriptions, how good you can pre qualify the issue before you write up the ro. Go on a test drive and hear the rattle. You know, just really, really try to make it easy for them because that will pay off dividends in the end. Your investment in, in equity, in relationships with the tax and listen, in every shop there's technicians that are negative and a pain in the butt and all that. Don't focus on that. Just do the right thing and treat them with respect and eventually you'll win them over or you'll have enough of them that it'll be irrelevant.

But well, they'll, if you do it right. They all want to work on your cars anyways.

Yeah. Even the, even the negative Nancy's.

It's funny when you say that like there's the parallel between the customer and the technician as a brand new advisor, is that the end game is that they're all your biggest fan?

Yeah.

Doesn't matter if they work in the shop or they're a customer.

It's the input and the output. Yep, that's what it is.

Then I've got one more that I just wanted to say because it would have, it would have helped me, I think when I just started out as an advisor, I wrote down don't try to be right. And sometimes being wrong might be one of your best gifts.

It's great. It's good.

So a couple of, couple of extra ones for him there. But like you said, it's a long conversation.

Cool. Thanks, Hunter. Thanks for the, for the question. It's a great question. And keep us posted on how you're doing. We want to, we want to hear the, the progress. But those two things, they'll, they'll set you in the right direction, man. Thank you. And we will 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. 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.chriscollinsinc.com now that's offers.chriscollinsInc.com I'm Chris Collins and I'll see you in the next video.