The Right Way to Sell Service (Service Drive Revolution)
This is a transcript of a Service Drive Revolution episode (hosted by Chris Collins with Christian, Jeremy and a commenter labeled “God”) responding to viewer comments about toxic business partners and ethical practices in automotive service. The hosts discuss recognizing and removing psychopathic partners, personal accountability and boundary-setting, and contrast ethical advising versus overselling in dealer environments — emphasizing that they do not condone ripping off customers and that preventative maintenance can save money long-term.
Chapters
This next one comes from Facebook. I saw your video about psychopath business partners. I just had the rug pulled out from under me by someone just like that, and created a scenario where he got all the control and got all other partners to side with him. And he took me for all my money, which was almost 30k, and countless time and energy spent helping him. Jesus, when will they lose?
So I. I believe he's referring to a Business Outlaws episode, not sdr. Right. Because Big Mike and I talked about that a couple times on there.
So, yeah, I'm getting. I'm way better at pointing out psychopaths. I think I've gotten rid of all the psychopaths in our company because I had a couple. The last one, I kind of. Kind of.
Still lingers a little bit, but is gone. But, yeah.
More psychopath free here. It wasn't easy, though. Those psychopaths are hard to get rid of.
Oh, they're. They're leeches almost. Right?
They are.
It's pretty crazy because they feed off of the drama, and so they just. They keep trying to gaslight you and make stuff up and they lie if the truth is better.
But.
Yeah, we'd almost do a whole. We could almost do a whole show on gaslighting, actually.
We really could.
Holy cats.
The thing that I come back to with that, though, is it's all my fault. I allowed it to happen. The older I get, though, and the more I give Big Mike a lot of credit because I didn't really understand it until he really started pointing it out. And then I really went to work on. On learning it and figuring it out and read books on it. And I just. Going back in time, like, I can't believe how many. How many psychopaths I've. I've dealt with, because I'm a. I'm a codependent. So, like, I try to please people, and I get taken advantage of in the worst way. And it's all about boundaries and, you know, holding your line. I pride myself on trying to be really fair. And like, this last psychopath we had working here, they took advantage of that is. You know, I let them, but they did.
So. Yeah. Do you want to add anything to that? Jeremy? I feel like Jeremy is probably better at this than. Than I am.
No, I'm just kind of disappointed in the questions this week.
It's like they're more like comments.
Yeah, exactly. So I have a challenge now. Here's the thing. I'm gonna be on vacation for two weeks, so we're going up to Yellowstone 2. Totally stoked to spend some time with the family. And I am going to give $100 bill to the best question that comes in over the next three weeks that we read live on the next SDR that I'm on. So 100 bill coming your way.
Throwing your own skin, driving you to ask a good question. Are there any more?
God, there's one more comment, but it's not a question, it's a comment.
And.
It comes from YouTube. I left a family owned small service center and used car dealer to go work for a BMW dealership. They told me that they don't rip people off. Then three months down the line I got multiple complaints from the manager that I wasn't selling enough. I will not tell a customer they need a 5k bill on a 1k car. After telling the manager that the place was an overpriced scam center, I asked for my job back at the small independent family run center and went back back. The way you talked about it in your video was the normal tell them it needs something even if it can wait another two years. And to me that's not acceptable.
So this is another comment.
Yeah, okay.
We have never, we have never, ever, ever condoned overselling a customer. In fact, we're in the hundreds of how many times on this show I've said if you wouldn't sell it to your mother, don't sell it. And treat customers like family. So you're kind of a dick.
Like if you want, go. What I would do if I was you, go start your own show. Don't listen to our show.
That's not going to happen.
Hey, so we have nothing is condoned overselling anything to anybody.
No. Our job is to educate and inform the customer and fully disclose everything the car needs every time it's in and help the customer make a good decision based on their goals for the car. So something that is due in three years is going to be labeled as green on the checklist. That's not even going to be brought in the conversation. So I don't know what this guy's smoking, but I think he's way off base with his comment.
Yeah, I mean there's definitely service managers that might take over a BMW store, a Toyota store, or anything that over recommend and aren't ethical. But I, you know, you shouldn't work for them. I wouldn't either. There's no way I would service drive where I was told I had to sell things that customers didn't need. The thing is though is from your Tone, I can't tell if you're a pain in the ass or if you really are ethical.
Right.
Yeah. I think.
The floor is yours. Go ahead, sir.
So based on there was a little more to the comment than what God shared with us today. I think the thing.
Read this.
Yeah, you're checking.
Well, thanks for sharing the insider knowledge with us, bro.
Like so. So there's something that's really natural to you guys having no clue what's going to happen before it happens, which is a lot of fun. It's kind of like my jokes. Like I have all the jokes prepared, Jeremy. But I don't tell you a darn thing because it's great to see the look on your face when I tell them. But I do believe that word ethical is being used in convenience in this whole comment. Right. So I think that what our responsibility, as Jeremy said, is to make sure that we're telling people the truth and also letting them know what is do or not do and then properly defining what preventative maintenance is. And I think that we have a band of people that are service advisors out there that feel like the ethics and the truth is to not tell anybody anything and, and just assume that the cars are going to live forever and they don't need any kind of preventative maintenance. But if you've worked in a shop before, you know that's not true.
Oh well, the stats, like whoever this person is, can't argue with the stats that preventative maintenance saves people money in the long run. In fact, a lot of manufacturers under recommend, like, let's just talk about BMW and power steering fluid. There's literally metal chunks in the racks and the racks on a lot of BMWs are disposable at 100,000 miles and they never, they don't recommend to replace the fluid. Right.
Because it's, because it's lifetime or whatever.
So I don't, if it was my mom's car, I would tell her replace the fluid, there's going to be metal chunks in there and you're going to have to buy a rack. And it's like that with a lot of manufacturers because the manufacturers try to get customers to perceive that they never maintained them. But the truth of the matter is is the cars aren't disposable at 10 years or 100,000 miles. The average car on the road right now is almost 13 years old, the highest it's ever been. And if you think a 13 year old car didn't need its fluids changed at some point.
I don't I'm not a tech, but I'll tell you, there's. There's a lot of texts that'll tell you that that's not. It's just not factual. But what else, what else did the guy say?
Well, I have a comment there's another side to look at this. So it goes from a small mom and pop over to was it a dealer? Is that correct?
A BMW dealer, he said.
Right. So. And then they judge you based off of your sales ability. Right. So your KPIs now become. Sales are the highlight. Now here's one of the things I've discovered working on both sides of the fence. The. A lot of times some of the independents can create a business model that is working on older vehicles and then they're triaging and just become a repair shop and then the cars become a little bit older. So the maintenance is. Is kind of out, you know, is taken out of the equation. But when you go to an expert, you have expert technicians that understand these cars inside and out, down to every nut, bolt and torque specification and they know how to make these cars purr and just seeing there's differences that come out of what's recommended, what's not. So it possibly could be that the advisor went over to this new place with a bunch of experts and just was overwhelmed with what they were recommending and felt that this stuff didn't really need bent, when in fact it actually did and it's going to provide a better product for the customer. So there's a lot to this that we just simply don't have the answers to right now.
Yeah.
Anything else that we should know about this guy?
Maybe, maybe not about this guy. But I do think it's important that I tell everybody that. That I wasn't.
That was your question. That was your question.
You. You laughed for the delivery. This is really getting chall.
Conspiracy theory, Jeremy, is that was your question?
You were the one that actually sent that in.
It's not even a question.
No comment. That wasn't me.
These are the worst questions we've ever had.
It's been.
I know.
That's why Question segment anymore if we don't.
No, we are. That's why I'm breaking out the camera.
Holy cow. It has been busy in Hesperia.
Send your questions in.
It would appear that Jeremy's been to a strip club before.
He made it rain for sure.
Have you done that in a strip club?
Cracker Barrel.
Will you come visit me in Vegas?
Yeah.
Strip clubs there.
No, I won't go there, but I'll.
Go to Vegas, you know. You know, Jeremy, that.
That this year Covid has kept me from taking my one month vacation in the Bahamas.
Well, I'm sorry to hear that. You typically take a month off in the Bahamas every year.
No, normally I can't take that vacation because of time and money.
So this year it's Covid.
It ruined your imaginary vacation.
Yeah, exactly.
I get it.
Down with COVID Down with COVID Okay. Are we good? God? Is that all the comments?
That is all the comments. God is going to crack a beer and put his feet up because they gave him a headache.
I agree.
Thank you, though. Good job. Sorry about what Christian said about your son. Thank you so much for watching this clip of Service Drive Revolution. Now you can catch the full episode on YouTube, iTunes, or Spotify or wherever you consume your podcast. 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.
