A short-form transcript excerpt from a YouTube episode of Service Drive Revolution (hosts: Chris Collins and Christopher) discussing the top mistakes killing service drive performance. Core claims: advisors' mindset and busy/transactional behavior prevent effective selling; managers often fail to build systems that allow advisors time (e.g., 20–30 minutes between customers) to call, update, and upsell; chaotic front-of-house experiences make customers feel like "herded cattle" and cause them to leave dealerships for independents; a cited claim that ~70% of customers who bought at a dealer later go to independent shops. The clip closes with a promo for the full episode and social links.
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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 come across quite a bit is 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 refer to Tom. 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 be.
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? Yeah, 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 in 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. Yeah. 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 going to have to sit in the middle? Like that'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 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 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.
Yeah.
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.
Yeah.
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.
Yeah.
And they piss it away because it's transactional, 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. 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.
