The Top 5 Things Service Advisors Take For Granted (Service Drive Revolution)
Chris Collins and Jeremy O'Neal break down five things service advisors overlook: checking service history, building customer relationships from early visits, respecting technician time, doing preventive inspections, and treating your advisory role as your own business. They use real stories and listener questions to show how each one affects your bottom line.
Chapters
Foreign.
Welcome, everybody, to Service Drive Revolution. I'm Chris Collins and this is Jeremy o', Neill, creator of Advisor Fix, Profitable Service Advisor.
And.
And just an all around smart guy sometimes. And a fun guy to hang out with.
Well, it depends. If you add shop owner to that title, they.
Oh, yeah, and shop owner. We appreciate you hanging out with us.
Absolutely.
Now, did you. I got a little feedback on the Independence versus Dealership.
Yes.
Episodes.
I'm just totally glad that I won that debate.
See, none of my feedback was that the.
But you're looking at the wrong feedback. The official results are in. Independents win.
You're looking at the CNN poll. But look at the FOX poll.
Oh, man, here we go.
That's funny.
Good feedback, though.
Yeah, no, that was fun. Those episodes seemed easy to do. Yes, they did, because they were so fun. Yep, it was good. Today we're going to talk about top five things service advisors take for granted. And it's a good list. You're gonna. You're gonna learn a couple things, I think, from it. It's gonna be good.
It's funny because I see these things happen all the time. And, you know, there's that trap that you're gonna walk into and you just walk into it anyways, and then poof, the thing blows up in front of you. These are the top five things that happen there. So we had a very eventful weekend. So took my son mountain biking up to Big Bear. Big Bear is always nice in Southern California to get out of the smog and up into the fresh air. And he's very excited. He's about 12 years old now, and he's been trying some tricks at our home track in our backyard. And so he said, dad, today's the day I'm gonna do the one hander on the jump. And I said, okay, do it on this jump, not on these jumps.
Okay, wait. One hander is you go up in the air on the mountain bike on a jump. Are you flipping?
No flips yet.
So you're going up. You're grabbing the seat with one hand.
The frame. You start with the frame and then.
Frame with one hand in midair. Then you pull it back, get on it and land.
Yes.
Okay. So he says, dad, I'm gonna do the. The one hander.
Yes.
And you're.
You.
You think this is okay?
Well, he's got a helmet on. Yeah, sure, go for it.
How high up is he jumping?
He's getting up there. The first jump he hit, he was about 14ft in the air. And it's fun. To watch. I tried to keep up him now, but I'm at that point where I can't really.
Almost two stories.
It's. Well, 20ft would be two stories, right? Yeah. 10ft per story.
So a story and a half.
Yeah. So we're towards the end of the first run, and I'm just cruising because, you know, a little tired out of my cardio zone here, and I come around the bin, come up, and I see a pile of dust in the air, and I'm like, this is not going to be good. And sure enough, Landon's on the ground. Bike's all, you know, flipped out, and he actually had knocked himself out, got a concussion and broke his collarbone. Oh, yeah. So second collarbone break this year for him.
Oh, so he's broken it before?
He broke the right one snowboarding your collarbone. I did when I was five. Yeah.
So this is a family thing. This is genetic. It is, because I've never broken my collarbone.
You haven't?
No.
Have you ever ridden a bicycle?
Yeah.
Okay. Have you ever crashed on a bicycle?
Yeah.
Okay. Maybe you're just. Your collarbones are more stout than the old.
You automatically break your collarbone when you.
Depends on how you land. So. But, yeah, he did the one hand, didn't get his hand.
Teeth are fake.
Are they really? I didn't know.
I wonder, what, would I trip? Would I trade breaking my collarbone from my teeth? How bad does the collarbone hurt?
Oh, I take collarbone over teeth. I. I don't like mouth pain that just would like.
Oh, not only that. So I was a kid, right? I was 11. So then I had to have the root canals redone.
Oh, yeah.
Yeah. It's. It was nuts. Okay, so you come around here, he's in a pile of dust. So then automatically, do you go to the hospital?
Well, you have to triage that. So the first thing you do is you call your wife in a panic and you tell her there's been a bad crash, Landon's knocked out. I don't know if he's going to come back up. I'll call you later. And then you hang up on her. That's the very first thing you do.
What's the positive outcome of that?
There is no positive outcome.
You just want to scare the hell out of your wife.
You don't do that. Don't call your wife and tell you.
But that's what you did.
I called her about five minutes later, and I panicked her a little bit, so I made the phone call a little too early.
So. For all the dogs, did you call 911.
No, no, it wasn't that bad. So he came back to.
So breaking your collarbone isn't a big deal.
Well, he knew right away. He's like, put some dirt on it. He knew right away that his collarbone was broken. So he's holding his arm, but then he starts asking me the same four questions over and over again, which is, dad, what happened? Did I crash? Am I gonna be dumb? And where are we at?
Oh, so concussion.
Yes.
Do you smack him on the other side of the head?
I don't know. I didn't try that. I could try that next time, right?
Do you knock sense into him?
You can. You just try to startle him and say, well, you're not gonna be any dumber than you already are, so you're good. So he liked that one. And then.
So now you crack jokes.
Yeah. Bring humor into it. For sure. So now I've got the challenge of getting the two bikes off the mountain.
Because we're about how far from your truck or whatever are you.
Oh, gosh, half a mile. So we're about a quarter mile from the end of the trail. So I'm like, dude, can you, like, ride your bike down one? He's like, no, Dad, I just gotta walk. So he starts walking down the trail, and I'm like, I got two bikes on. I'm like, this is not gonna work. So I leave my bike, tell him to sit down, ride his bike down to the end of the trail, park it, walk back up, get my bike. Little did I know how out of it he was, because when I got back up there, he's like, where you been? Where are we at? And I'm like, I just left. Yeah.
How many concussions has he had?
Two. This is the second.
How old is he?
12.
Bro, that's not good.
CT can't. Scan came back good. He's fine.
That's what they said about Aaron Hernandez. Well, he ended up killing a bunch of people.
But how many times did his head get hit? Two. So, look, I'll tell you this. My son's way better than any kid that's played Pop Warner or football with the head. Head thing, for sure.
Oh, really?
Because he hasn't played football.
I play Pop Warner.
Yeah, yeah, but look at how many times your head. And when we played, it was. You led with your head. So our brains got knocked around a lot back in those days. Right. So the second concussion, second broken collarbone. He loves it.
Put some dirt on it. So he didn't go. You don't go to the hospital.
But we went to er. Yeah, we went down to the ER and then.
Do they set it or what happens?
This is cracked. So it didn't. The last one, he broke totally. So it was separated. So they just set it back in place and that was it. This one's a crack. So he'll probably be back on the bike in about three weeks. I wouldn't surprise him.
How many times did you break your collarbone when you were.
Once?
Once.
Yeah, it's pretty bad.
So the. So they scanned his head, his brain?
His brain's good.
Fine. Besides it being a little pickled.
Yeah, it came. He came out of it about four hours later.
That doesn't scare you?
No. Happened to me when I was racing motorcycles. I got knocked out for like three days.
Knocked out for three days.
In and out of consciousness for about a good two hours. And then.
Are you in the hospital that whole time?
No, I went home, but I was in and out for three days. I should have been in the hospital.
Don't people sometimes die from that?
You can. Yeah. So. But I lost about a week's worth of memory. So you lose your short term memory first. Gone, don't remember anything. And then slowly, over time, you'll have these flashes of these memories come back. You're like, wow, that happened. So his concussion wasn't as bad as I initially thought. He came out of it pretty quick, so.
Holy cow.
Yep. You want to go riding this weekend?
No, that's okay. I have a mountain bike in storage, but I never get it out of storage.
Let's go ride.
You know what scared me the last time I went mountain bike riding was the ticks. I had a tick on me.
Where'd you go riding at?
In. In Northern California?
Yeah, somewhere where they had water. Not Southern California.
Well, there aren't ticks up at Big Bear. There have to be.
Yeah, but if you stay on the trails, it's not. You're not going to run into it if you're bushwhacking, you know.
You know what my mountain bike is now, Jeremy? Peloton.
Peloton. There we go.
They have these great. Where you can ride through Oregon. You can ride through all these cools.
It's fake. It's fake. It's fake. It's virtual reality.
I just put a fan on my face. It feels just like it.
Do they have like the aromas that come out?
You see my candle over there? It says Seattle. I just put a Seattle candle in front of a fan. It blows the.
All you have to do Though is open your door and get this. The smell of marijuana. And that's like la, Seattle, it's all the same.
So I try. Yeah, sometimes that haul out there smells like.
Yes. Can be really bad cannabis.
Okay, top five things advisors take for granted.
You like this list?
I do. I think this is genius. So top five things service advisors take for granted.
Number one.
Service history.
How important is the service history on a car?
Man, when I was an advisor, it was my go to.
Right.
I even tried to sneak looking at history before I went out to meet him.
And the reason I have this one at the top is this is the one that will undo a sale really quickly. So you have a good customer that comes in and you're busy, you're rushed. So all sudden you go, technician gives you the list and the car needs front and rear brakes. This, this, and this. Then you call the customer and you lead with the first thing, which might be the brakes. And then Mr. Johnson says, oh, hold on a second there, Sparky. Didn't you guys just do my break six months ago? And then what happens to that entire conversation when it could have been prevented by doing what?
No. Checking history.
Checking history, Absolutely. So there's millions of dollars.
That's two questions right there. I didn't know which one you wanted me to answer. I did no bueno in history.
Yeah, I do that a lot. Sometimes things come out of my mouth that I just have no clue what I meant to say.
I knew that too. So no bueno.
No bueno history. Service history.
Okay. What, so when you would check history, what were you looking for when you were an advisor?
Well, yeah, I'm always looking at maintenance and things such as, you know, timing belts, brakes, suspension. And I just want to make sure that we don't duplicate things. And it's one of those things. This is your paramount rule, which is, you know, stay in one place, build your clientele, build your loyal following of rich uncle. Rich uncle. Absolutely. It's all there. And if you move around a lot, the challenge is you've got to do more work to find the service history because you just don't know your clientele. But this can happen too, to seasoned advisors that take things for granted.
So yeah, you know what else I used to do is I would call the other places that they would get service of somebody like say I recommended something like, well, I think I had that done over here. I'd be like, do you mind if I call over there and ask them what you had done so we don't overlap Absolutely. And we can update your maintenance book, that sort of thing. So I would actually call other places. Oddly, other places aren't that helpful.
Yeah. That's interesting.
The gesture was nice.
Yeah. Well, you just have to be. Pretend to be Mr. Johnson.
Oh, I never thought of that.
Good.
You just see how your criminal mind.
The dark spot on my soul is coming out.
The thing, too, like that I loved about history is you could tell if somebody else had helped them, like another advisor.
Right, right. Well, one of the things I look at is patterns. And you'll notice you'll see gaps in the time that customers come in. Maybe they come in every 18 months or 24 months. And where, you know, what is it?
Where have you been, Chuck? Where have you been taking your car?
Well, I just go to the Quick Loop for service.
Quick lube. They're putting poison in your car.
I didn't know that.
But you see where we're going with that. So this is all very important. It's all about the history. And obviously you have things like Carfax, but Carfax doesn't give you the full detail on the invoice either. I want the invoices. So this is a great thing when you talk about. We're going to. This is going to kind of transition us into point 2. Talking about petting the dog. Asking the customer if they have their service records is a great question. Because if I ask you that question, I'm telling you that I care about you and your vehicle, and I want to see the history on it. But I also want to help you take good care of your records moving forward. And that's a huge competitive advantage that advisors are missing today.
Well, also, you're giving value to the records, which then you're giving value to maintaining and fixing things.
Exactly right. Absolutely.
Because the thing in everybody's mind is, well, if I ever went to trade this in, there's more value if it's been maintained, right?
Absolutely. For sure.
Okay, top five things advisors take for granted. Number two.
The relationship. And this is sad. I think this is Human Beings 101, right? Human Behavior 101. We take relationships for granted, but it's very easy to take a good customer who is a key thrower that throws the Amex at you, says, don't call me, just fix it. I don't care what it costs. It is very easy to take that relationship for granted, too.
I think more than that is the one they take for granted is that first oil change or early on when they don't need a Lot of stuff. And I always thought I make my money by them not needing anything early on and making friends with them because then when they do have a problem, I'm their go to.
Right.
And so a lot of times the, the relationship is neglected early on because it's like I remember watching advisors would like trip over each other to get to the old van again, bus or whatever because they knew that it was 2,000 bucks and it was the coolant hoses were leaking or whatever. Like they knew. Right. But nobody wanted to ride up the brand new Subaru.
Right.
But.
I always looked at that completely different.
Like, well, in, you know, in the.
End, a couple years, they're going to need their right. Maintenance or whatever. Right.
Well, in a dealership setting that's a huge advantage advisors can capitalize on is those new customers that are coming in. Maybe some advisors don't want to deal with them because there might be some warranty issues or some minor things they've got to deal with. And you don't really make, you know, you don't have a big sale with it. But I look at it, how do I provide that five star experience for the client that time? So then that sets the stage for what they want and they will come back and see you.
You know, on that subject, something that I've heard a lot on, strategy sessions that I've done lately is pay plans for advisors where they bonus them on hours per row.
Okay.
I like, I don't understand why anybody would do that. Because the thing that happens is they don't want to go out and write the, the smaller jobs like the oil changes. They avoid them. Even if you think they're not, they are. It's. If you believe that plans direct behavior. So if you believe that a pay plan affects the behavior of somebody. Right.
Oh, it's going. Yeah.
If you believe that in concept, then understand by having an hours pro bonus in your pay plan, your advisors are going to avoid the newer customers that need oil changes. And it's a big reason.
So now you're building a business that isn't customer centric. It's focused on what the business can extract out of the customer, which is how many hours can we sell you on every ticket. So yeah, we said we used to have. There was one pay plan I worked at back in 2010 that we got a bonus based off of our average repair order. And the advisor that had the highest arrow got like a $500 bonus that month. Well, we did smog checks. So guess what happened every time a Smog check would come in.
Oh, got to go to the bathroom.
We all run. Right. Because I mean, if it passed, it was a $50 ticket.
So that would just gotta check on a car in the shop.
Yeah. And you can manipulate your aro or just by selecting who you work with and saying no, but you're not providing the service that the. The client client really needs.
Top five things service advisors take for granted. Number three.
You knew what's coming.
Parts, Parts.
It's not the parts. Come on, we got to give parts a break here. It's not the parts. Put that in there.
Because I knew you'd want to pick on parts.
I don't like to pick on parts. I love to pick on parts. Especially the parts manager who's sitting down listening.
Service advisors might take parts for granted.
You know, make them do parts department job for a week, and they would never come back to the service drive because they realize they don't have to work.
They get paid in so much trouble for that.
Yeah, you get paid for screwing things up. Supposed to have eight of these parts. I have six. Oh, well, don't worry. It's on backorder. It isn't really on back order. We just forgot to put the order in. You know, what about this, though, is. Here's the thing that this leads to is what they really are taking for granted is the technician's time.
Parts is.
Parts is. You've seen the lines out back where the technician has to wait for the parts, right?
Oh, yeah. You know, the tone is like, oh, these technicians, they're ungrateful, whatever. Meanwhile, their time is burning. You're just lighting money on fire.
Absolutely. So. Absolutely. Technician time is something that we do take for granted.
And so number three is technician's time.
Number three is parts manager's fault.
But it's technician's time.
But it's technician's time.
In reference. When we wrote the list was in reference to advisors because the list is top five things advisors take for granted. The technician's time.
Yes.
And so the idea behind it was they don't get good descriptions. They don't actually put their hands on the noise or the rattle. They don't go for a test drive with the customer. It's just, you know, customer says it rattles. Right.
Well, you got to realize that every minute of your technician's time is going to generate revenue or should generate revenue. And as an advisor, your job is to tell that story to the on the repair order so the technician can read it and get to the root Cause as fast as possible. And if you don't do a good write up, that's huge. And then also, you know, in the independent world, we use, you know, book time is one of the things that we use a lot of to estimate our jobs out. And you've got to take into so many different factors. Condition of the car, the history of the vehicle, and value your technicians time and fight for the time. You got to understand this, technicians only get compensated on one thing. What is that one thing?
Time.
Time. So they don't make anything on part sales. So if you give a half hour away, you're essentially robbing from your technician. And our job is to protect that.
Same thing with diagnosis. Right. You got to get them enough time. Like I don't the thing. I think we talked about this before. No vehicle has ever been fixed for an hour. I mean, right? Maybe it has. But truthfully, most of the time, if somebody comes in with a problem that has to be diagnosed, it's never less than 500 bucks. Unless it's like a clip or a fuse or something.
So I tried this out.
You know, you talked about my repair authorization.
Yeah, yeah. So we had this Ford Ranger come in.
What year?
Does it matter?
Yeah. 72 or 88. 88. Okay.
20 years old. And how many miles?
200 plus.
All right.
Yes, we're up there. You can open the outside door. You got to leave the window down and get in from the.
So.
Okay, so what is your thinking going into that? So the. It's a 1988 Ford Ranger with 200,000 miles on it and.
The door doesn't open.
Right.
The door handle on the outside doesn't work.
Doesn't. Doesn't work from the outside.
So what do you, what do you know in that scenario? How much does that cost to fix?
That's a couple hundred bucks right there.
Couple hundred bucks a minimum.
Yeah. Just to do the outer panel.
So what'd you do?
Well, he asked me how much a diagnostic test was. I said, well, we do things a little bit differently here. We're focused on your solution, not just selling you a diagnostic test. So do you want me to fix your truck? Absolutely. How much to fix my truck?
We gotta take the door panel off. Right.
Well, that wasn't even what he brought the car in for. He brought it for a check engine light diagnosis. So we have two concerns now. Right?
Oh, okay. So what's the scale of the check.
Engine light you're looking at? To start with, our level one test is 191.5. One for that package, which includes up to an hour of the technician time. But I asked him, does he want me to fix his truck? And he said yes. How much would that cost? So guess what number I threw out there?
Thousand bucks.
$15,000 and I'll fix your truck. And he laughed. He laughed. It was great. It was a great ice break. And he says, what are you gonna do for $15,000? I'm gonna make it run perfect. I'm even gonna have it painted. I might even put a set of new wheels and tires on it for you. You're a brand new truck when you get back here. But if you want $7,500 down, I'll have it done in three weeks for you. Does that work? He said, well, I don't want to go that far into it, but what are we looking at to get the check engine light fixed? And then I said, well, the level one test is 190, 151. He's oh, that's easy. So the power of contrast really worked there for me.
So you used it a different way.
Just a little different way. But it was fun.
I probably would have had him signed for a thousand there.
I think so.
And I would have had him signed for about a thousand.
But the car hearing you talk about that, and I think it's. I'm seeing more dealerships do this because I. Some of the harder cars that we get all when we get really busy, I'll sublet them to dealers and let them die again. Then I'll fix it. And I'm seeing the dealerships catch on to that now. So on electrical stuff, I'll get a call back from the advisor, like, hey, Jeremy, it's gonna be like a thousand bucks for us just to tell you what's wrong with us. I'm like, okay, you guys have listened to some of our classes here. But yeah, it really got my mind around to it. Whereas every time we have to make an outgoing call to ask for more money, that's a negative experience for the client. So I'd rather start a little bit higher and be able to make it a positive experience. I really like setting the stage on that a little bit.
I would always, if I knew, if I knew kind of that it was gonna be around 1500, I'd say 1700, because I liked it to be lower than what I said.
Absolutely, yeah.
So.
And that is one advantage I'll give concede to the dealerships is they have the pattern.
Well, I think it applies to independence even more because sometimes Older cars, it isn't as clear. And you know, you're not working on Ford Rangers all day, so you work on a Ford Ranger. Then you get a Hyundai or a BMW or something and it's a different kind of car. You might not know. You might not know that power steering racks go on BMWs or whatever it is. Right. You just don't know. Okay, so let's recap the top five things advisors take for granted. Number one was history.
Yep.
Number two was the relationship. Number three was the technician's time.
No, it was the parts manager's fault.
Number four.
Number four. I like to label this one prevention. And there's a great story that happened at our shop about six months ago. And I may have said this before, but we had a newer Honda pilot come in 2016 with 50 some thousand miles on it. And the first time it was in, the customer mentioned a concern and it was about shaking and the suspension feeling really rough. And we totally missed what was wrong with the car. And the reason for it after I talked to my technician was he felt that the car was too new to have these issues. So it had control arm bushings that were blown out and the front struts were gone. And in his mind, a car that's 4 years old with 56,000 miles on it doesn't need that repair. So he didn't even look at it. So that's when I said, okay, if we're going to really be the best shop in Hisperia, California and then move on to Southern California, then the world, we can't take anything for granted. So prevention is key. And I think a lot of times advisors can take prevention for granted and they overlook it. The prevention of a courtesy inspection, having a good technician thoroughly inspect the car so you can sign off at it. And when the customer says, so I'm good to go across the country, like, yes. You're not lying to them. Right. Because your inspections are good. Preventive maintenance. How do you feel about preventive maintenance?
Well, I mean it's proven that it saves, it saves customers money. Right. So the car care council says, what, every $800 saves you 8,000 or something like that. But it's a, it's a huge number.
Yeah, it's an 8 to 1 return on investment difference.
But I think as an advisor, I learned from a mistake.
Early on is I remember this customer had an Audi and he came in and he had a coolant hose leaking and we, we replaced the coolant hose and.
He took the car. And then like I Don't know. Over the weekend on a voicemail from him, he was very upset.
Oh wow.
Monday I call him back and he just did. He like hated me. He was so mad. And he said, you know, you guys fix that coolant leak in its back and it's worse or whatever. And my wife was driving to Spokane, so we were in Seattle. His wife was driving to Spokane with her kids, got caught the, the, and what happened was it was another hose, right. And we just replaced the one hose. Like at the time I was just thinking, like, how stupid is this? Like they're all the same age. Right?
Do a reho's on it.
Yeah.
And, and that's the thing that advisors.
Take the idea that his wife got stuck on the way to Spokane with the kids on a weekend when we were closed, we couldn't do anything.
Right.
Where do you tell it? Like.
Not good.
Right.
And so prevention comes in many forms. But you, you have to really, as an advisor, think about preventative maintenance. So one thing I, I think is crazy is that a lot of the manufacturers now kind of have this mentality that at a hundred thousand miles of cars are disposable. They're disposable. So they don't recommend power steering fluid. But it like power steering racks are going on some of these cars, right? It's 70, 80,000 miles. And when you drain them, there's literally chunks of metal in there. So the idea that you don't replace some of these fluids gets clouded by the idea that some people oversell fluids.
Right?
And so I don't think like if coolant is, is lifetime, which means 100,000 miles, right. Just think about that psychologically, like manufacturers call coolant, that's a hundred thousand miles lifetime. Listen to that metaphor. Like the car is disposable at 100. Don't replace the coolant, push the thing off a cliff or put it in a smasher. Right, right. Okay. So.
It'S just the manufacturers want the customers to perceive that they don't have to maintain the cars. But at the same time, and especially in extreme weather conditions and things like that, you do need to replace some of those fluids. And it's nuts, it's nuts to even debate that. But because people oversell and have over recommended and you have the, you know, the Bee Gees and all that pushing their products, it gets a bad, a bad reputation. But if you just think about preventative maintenance as a whole and you pay attention to what happens, like the connection between power steering and the fact you're Replacing so many racks.
Right.
And that's why I always say, like, if you wouldn't tell your mom to do it, don't do it. I told my mom to replace her power steering fluid.
Right.
Because I would rather have her do that than spend two grand on a rack.
Absolutely. For sure. So this all comes down to, you know, going back up to number two, which is the relationship. We have a great tool in our. Our coaching program, which is the vehicle timeline, and we start the relationship out with that so we can understand what are your goals for the car. That way we can plan and avoid surprises. Exactly. So prevention is key. You've got to be able to believe in the preventive maintenance that you're selling. Understand, it gives your customer an 8 to 1 return on investment. So if you spend $1,000 of maintenance, it's going to save you up to $8,000, you know, down the road. It's a great return on investment for the customer.
So I'll tell you that the thing that changed with me is a couple incidents like that where the guy's wife was stuck. I never did not do an inspection on a car and not tell the customer what was wrong with the car after that.
Absolutely.
Like, something in me change. Like, I'd rather have you be mad at me than have you stuck on the side of the road because I didn't tell you what I knew. And I'd rather have a technician re rack a car and inspect it than have a customer leave there and not not know. So it changed me.
Absolutely.
And I think everybody should feel that way.
You probably weren't attached to the money of the ticket. And you can see a distinct difference of.
Just think about it. Somebody's wife and kids.
Right.
Like, that's a big deal.
It is a huge deal.
And the guy hated me.
Oh, yeah.
Because in his head, you fixed the coolant leak and it got worse. He doesn't. People like, I don't know, the guy was a doctor or something. He doesn't.
Right.
He doesn't care.
Absolutely. That it's a good lesson.
He doesn't want to hear excuses like, I paid you a bunch of money. I left and it broke again.
Yep. For the exact same thing I brought it in for.
Yeah.
That's even worse. Double whammy.
Yeah.
Did you blame it on parts.
You should have?
No, no, I. It was hard. That was a hard call. This is a good list, kid. I was like 19 or whatever. Oh, I felt so bad.
Yeah. I almost got fired from my first dealership job because I took a noise for granted from a doctor who drove an Audi. And I remember, I. This is where my gardener rule of if it's a noise, somebody from the dealership has to drive it with the customer to hear the noise, because customers hear all sorts of different things. So anyways, I remember a shop foreman fixed it and he's like, hey, I got it fixed. It was a solenoid valve up under the hood and wasn't even what the guy was talking about. What he was concerned with is on the freeway, the passenger advisor would rattle and I just, I blew it. I missed it. And I'm like, okay, from this day forward, if it's a noise concern, I'm going to document the noise and we're not going to work on it if we don't.
Yeah.
Yep.
So that's huge. You got to verify it. Number five of the top five things advisors take for granted. Business inside a business.
Yeah. This can transform their entire career. Yeah. It's interesting too. I talked to an advisor this morning who is new to a shop, not from this industry, completely outside of the industry. And this concept right here, if she would just take this and run with it and understand that she's creating her own business within the business that she's working with, it would be lights out. It would be nine day different. So what do you see on the dealership side with businesses inside a business?
Well, I always thought when I was an advisor and even selling a little bit, that the phone in the building and all that was the, you know, I was paying that rent with my numbers and I got a piece of what I did. Right.
So a lot less liability from.
And.
Yeah, I didn't have to stay up at night worrying about making payroll or anything like that. So, yeah, I always looked at it as my business and the business was collecting customers. The more friends I had and the more people I could collect, the better I did. And I wasn't consciously creating key throwers, but after a while, I just realized how busy I was.
Right.
And I remember at one point looking around and the other seven advisors or standing around and I got. I'm three deep, right?
And then it's waiting for you. No, I'll wait. I'm good. I want to see Chris.
And then I've seen that over the years with certain special advisors that have been in our, in our system, in our program that they, you know, people wouldn't, Wouldn't let anybody else help. I remember one time at the Cadillac store, I wrote service. I came back and I Don't. I used to have this deal where I could go play. So, you know, my band would play. Right. So we would tour and sometimes I would get like a Thursday off early, and then Friday, Saturday, Sunday off. And I remember I came back from one of those and the advisors were like, in a little huddle, and I'm like, what's up? And they're like, we hate it when you're gone. And this whole thing. And I was like, why are there. Your customers just pull in when they find out you're not here, they leave. And I was like, that's awesome. What. Tell. What happened? Like, tell me.
That's great. That's great.
That's what you want, right? Like, they don't. They don't trust anybody else but me. Like, that's it. And if I tell them to do it, there's. There's no reason why they're not going to believe me because my intentions radiate. Like you can tell if somebody's authentic or not. And there is absolutely nothing inauthentic that I would do or have done to them that they wouldn't trust me.
Yep. And so this is interesting too, because we can flip this to the service managers and to the shop owners. So one thing I've noticed as a shop owner is when I really have coached my employees well, my team members, and they take ownership in their position, their behavior changes, they show up early, they stay a little later. You know, they take pride in their job and they really view it as it's. They're not just making X number of dollars per hour and they're not bleeding the clock. They're actually more productive and their behavior changes too.
So quality of life improves.
Oh, absolutely. So it's interesting. And my personal assistant now, I've preached this to her for the past six months, is you're never going to get where you want to go making an hourly rate. So we have to figure out a way for you to add more value to the businesses and be more productive. So stop focusing on hourly rate. And then she finally got it about three months ago, and you could see it click. And it's. It's just really awesome to see that when they understand that they are creating their own business within their. Within the business. So it's pretty awesome. Great point.
So top five things advisors take for granted. History. Number two is relationships. Number three is the technician's time, parts manager, prevention. And number five is that you're running a business inside of a business. Collecting customers is the secret to success. Now we're going to take your questions. By the way, if you post a question, we read it on the show. We're going to send you some service Drive revolution swag, which means like a T shirt, stickers, coffee mug, all that trucker hats.
The voice of God is here and has many questions.
Question number one.
I love what I do, but not a fan of the pay plan. It's all averages. I noticed some advisors avoiding customers at the end of the month because they've already hit their good averages. I actually love helping customers, but at the end of the day, a simple oil change hurts my averages. Any advice?
So I can't tell if this is communism.
Or averages.
Well, it's obviously in California.
Communism and California kind of go hand in hand.
Very close, your political jokes aside. So I'm not sure if they're saying they average all the advisors numbers together because I run into that sometimes.
I think they're saying that they're paid off of averages. So average repair order hours per ro, those type of averages. So if he gets a simple oil change in, there's no potential to upsell. That's going to hurt his pay plan.
Here's the thing that I learned about being a service advisor and pay plans because I accidentally accepted a job once where I didn't understand, like, they showed me the pay plan. I looked at the percentage, I did the math, and I was like, oh, this is a nice raise. And I took the job. And then I went to get my first paycheck in the. The. In front of me. The advisor in front of me that never got up to help a customer, never did anything. Goes something to the effect of.
I hope you never quit because you made me a lot of money. And I was like, oh, it is not me.
Wait, he got a piece of your.
I didn't know that they averaged all the advisors together.
Oh, man.
And so this guy's writing like 40,000 and I write 100 and something.
Yeah.
And I got paid on like 80. Yeah.
Yeah. It made absolutely no sense. So here's the thing that I know about that is they didn't want to lose my 150 to make the guy making 40 happy.
So they changed my pay plan.
I would have been like, fire him. Let me hire an assistant. And my team will do more than.
So performance drives your influence. So if you're putting up the numbers, then they're not going to want you to go away in that pay plans are negotiable.
And here's the thing that we're overlooking every Service advisor is a sales professional. We have to make sales every single day. If you're not happy with the pay plan, it is not written in stone. You just have to find a way to influence the powers of baby to make a change for what you feel is right. So I would say tear it apart, come up with a better plan. Remember what's in it for the dealership. Give them the wins but just look at it like a sales presentation. You just got to go in and.
Put up the numbers. Let your numbers talk.
Absolutely.
My numbers talk. So I, I got a. I got the pay plan that I thought I'd signed up for.
Hey, he could join coaching, pay for it out of his pocket and tell them that he's doing extra work on his own and then that'll be another feather in his cap to actually get the pay plan changed.
Oh yeah, get him in coaching. We'll fix your advisor pay plan because it sounds like it's terrible.
There we go.
Sounds like a pay plan from 1984.
Looks like we solved that one then, didn't we?
The voice of God Question number two.
I'm in Europe and I just finished high school as a technician. But I'm more interested in becoming a service advisor. My father owns a shop, he's a mechanic and he wants me to keep building our company. Should I go to college for a more technician related degree or management? I would benefit from either choice. But I would love to hear your opinion. What would you do?
I would move to la.
The right person to ask this question.
It's. You're not.
No, I.
You probably have a great answer to this now.
What were you going to say? Move to LA and what?
Join the. Get a coach and don't even go to college. You're going to spend less money. You're going to learn more through our coaching program.
Right.
And then go back to Europe in 18 months and you'll be slaying the dragon.
True.
Right. I think the technologically side is going to change so much that I would invest my education and human behavior and management side of it.
Yeah.
I think, I think if you, if you really wanted to there's, there's enough like literally you could go through our program and you would know more than you're ever going to learn if school honestly about that job. But I'm not big on, you know, two or four years. I'd rather work personally. I'd get to work and read books and do other things. But I mean, I mean I've maybe told you this before but I, when I was single, I dated this psychologist and she said that I know more about psychology than she would ever know. And I never went to college, but I've read more books. Like I've read, you know, well over a thousand books and classes. One year I spent over half and half a million dollars on my own personal development.
Wow.
So dang. I don't know, I wouldn't do it, but I'm, I'm odd. Like I feel weird saying that to some people because they need college, they need structure and they're not motivated. So I, it's hard for me without knowing somebody.
I've got some kids coming up. I got a 15 year old, 12 year old and a 10 year old. And in our family, our kids are going to go and they're going to get their bachelor's degree. That's just kind of what we have decided for our children. Now, whether you work in that field or not, your life changes so much from the time you're 18 to 22. And maybe one of my children will take till they're 26 to get their bachelor's, but that's fine. But at least you have that foundation. So in Europe does things a little bit different than here in the States as far as the education system? So, so if he's going to have to go to school for four years, I just think I would really look into your passion bucket and find out what you're really passionate about and then follow that. And he may hate people. Like, he may be like, man, every time I have a counter, tell me.
What a passion bucket is.
You don't know what a passion bucket is?
What's a passion bucket?
It's where all your passion is at. Like it's always full. Like, you know, good service advisors never run out of energy. You know why?
No, why?
Because their passion bucket's always.
So you, you think that passion is.
It is. Absolutely.
Okay, it is.
Do you disagree? I mean, if you're in parts, no, it doesn't matter. But if you're in service or sales, yes, it does matter.
I don't know. I'm just hungry. Like, I grew up hungry.
Right? Right.
I grew up poor. I'm hungry. I don't. It doesn't. A lot of things that I do in the day, I have no passion for, but I do them because I'm hungry and they have to be done.
Yeah, but. Okay, so your passion is, is your hunger is part of that.
But I have drive. I don't, I don't need, I don't.
Need the passion, I think, to answer to help this guy out. He's got a family business and he's got a technical road he can go down or a people road. He can go to the counter, run the business, or he can learn to work on cars. If you're gonna have to work on the cars and you love working on cars, then go follow that. If that's where your passions lie, go do that. If it's more on the office side.
Of it, I'll tell you this too. I've never met a really good entrepreneur or business owner that attributes their success to a degree in business.
Right?
Never. Never happened. In fact, I meet people with degrees in business that need my help desperately because they're doing it all wrong. They don't understand. And you can't learn that stuff in a classroom, in a textbook.
No, the real world is way different.
It's good. Is that the end of the questions?
God, there's one more question. This one comes from YouTube.
God, do you have a passion bucket?
God has a passion bucket.
Is God love or is God hate?
God is love, my child.
God has many passion buckets.
Do you have many passion buckets?
God has infinite passion buckets.
Wow.
Question number three. I have a question for you guys. This pertains to both advisors and service managers. What do you do and how do you handle a vehicle that comes into the shop under factory warranty with a drivability concern? Your master technician finds himself unable to track the source of the issue. After multiple attempts, he's followed technical assistants who are often slow in response and vague. The customer is restless and there's seemingly no end in sight. I feel like both positions at different times in the process. Both are bound to find themselves dealing with this issue. Assume also the customer's a good customer. He's been spending money and building trust in your drive for several years.
So you should have never put it in the shop without verifying it. The way I think I've explained this on the show before, the thing that I would say to a customer is, listen, there's a five mile dome over the. Over the shop and whenever you come within five miles, your squeak, your rattle, your runability problem doesn't happen, so we need to verify it. So I just set that with the customer. Like, because it happens to you doesn't mean it happens here. Then I go through, when does it happen? Cold, hot, going over a bridge in a rainstorm first thing in the morning or when you pull in and park and then run back out and get it like, when, when does it happen then? Then I make the technician drive the car home. So I get permission from the customer. I'm like, it's not. We can't verify it, but can I have him drive it home a couple times? Because it happens first thing in the morning or something like that. So those are my tricks. But I wouldn't have put it in the shop without verifying it.
Absolutely.
And verification, listen, you probably can't verify it, but it changes the customer's perception because if they can't show it to you and make it happen, then they understand how difficult it is for the tech to find it.
Right.
And so we're trying to do.
For dealerships, they've got to be careful because repair attempts matter. You know, limit law, buyback. If the car is under warranty, you've got to make sure that you're not, you know, 1, 2, or 3 on the same repair. Also number of days in the shop. So you've got to document it. And then I would enroll the customer, too. I've asked customers, look, you know, I want to fix your car, but I'm not just going to guess until it does it. We. If we can't duplicate your concern, there's no way for us to test it. So when does it do it? You know, where does it do it? And then I've asked them to, you know, have a passenger take out the cell phone, do a video of it and document it for us. And then that's helped us.
That's a good one. When I was an advisor, we didn't have cell phones.
Correct. Why had camcorders? We gave them.
I didn't have a camcorder. I was spending my money on drums.
That's good, though. Yeah. Just make a video of it.
Absolutely. Let's roll a minute.
Thank you, boys to God. Good show. That was fun.
Great show, man. Absolutely.
We will see you next time on the big show Service Drive Revolution.
