What Service Advisors Get Wrong About The Walk Around

Now let's talk about the things that people think that are important, that are not important. And I'm. I already can hear you morons in the comments. It's great. I love it. What people think is important about a walk around that isn't. The first one is show and tell.

Interesting.

So the, the thing you want to understand about show and tell is not that that's what sells the customer.

The thing that sells the customer about show and tell is the consistency and.

Probably a little bit of control too. Right? Like you have a system and a process.

I think it confuses customers. Whenever I've come in to a service drive where our competition is trained, the advisors or the chemical companies have trained the advisors and, and they're doing the dip thing on the brake fluid and whatever. The customers look confused and like they want to be anywhere else but there. Whenever you're doing the show and tell dog and pony show, I, I don't feel like customers feel that way. When you measure the tread on tires so that show and tell I, I do think is important and works. But when you're, when you're dipping brake fluid and cooling hoods and all goods and all that, it's not selling you anything. Trust me when I tell you this. The only reason why you perceive it is is because you're consistent with it. And what happens is if you consistently are bringing attention to something, you're going to sell more. But here's the thing that I will guarantee you. If you spend more time on the connection and making friends and just check history and advise that they're due for brake fluid, they're due for whatever it is they're due for. You will sell way more and your customers will come back and you'll have more key throwers than if you do the stupid dog and pony show showing them that their brake fluid's black when it should be clear. Whatever it is, it's buffoonery. Trust me. The only reason it works is because it's consistent. That's it. Now, some of you are going to disagree and I'm sure you work for BG or whatever or that's the only process you've ever tried. And so you're selling more than, than the people around you. But I will outsell you by a huge margin and I will never pop a hood. But I will spend all my time talking about their kids, their work. I will be genuinely curious about them and I'll make friends and they'll come back to you. They'll be asking for me. It'll drive you crazy. I remember used to drive the other advisors in the driveway. We're crazy. They'd be like, we hate it when you're gone because customers pull in, they find out you're not here and then they leave.

That's so great.

And I was never popping. I mean, I did it a couple times when you were kind of forced to do it, but it never made sense to me. And it's the consistency that makes the sales go up that you're actually doing it. It's not that that is a better way to do it. If you're consistent at presenting and making friends, you will. You will do better in the long run for sure. Okay. The next thing is that the purpose of a walk around is a lot damage. I find it hilarious when advisors.

Are spending five minutes taking pictures on iPads of cars from every direction that they'll never. You're just following the direction of whoever you work for or whatever. On a diagram of a car on the pre write. You do not need to take a million pictures. If you. If. Let's just say over a period of time that you end up fixing a scratch or a bumper or a set of wheels, you're throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Most of the time you just are. You're spending all this time focusing on playing not to lose instead of playing to win that you forget to present, connect, do all the other things that you're supposed to do. Yeah, but it blows me away when advisors are doing pictures and it's all because we're scared of customers. It's like, well, one guy, one time, and it's like, just mark down that the wheels are scratched on the lake. We don't have to do this big. You'll spend more money on software and hard drive space to protect yourself from lot damage than you will on service manager training, advisor training. Like things that actually would make a difference.

Yeah. And it puts so much reliability on computers. And computers are crazy. They like to party. Did you know that computers like to party?

No.

Yeah. You know what they do when they party? What? They take a lot of screenshots.

Nice segue.

Thank you.

Next one that I have that people think are important on a walk around that aren't that tablets make the thing more efficient.

I have yet to.

Be able to create higher sales with tablets.

Yet to do it. I know manufacturers force people to go to tablets. Like, I get that there's people out there selling tablets that love tablets. Most of the time they're boat anchors and they're collecting dust. The. The problem with tablets is that the advisor is staring in a tablet and not connecting with the customer. And then this brings me to my last one here, here I had on the list. It goes with tablets is we're assuming that people want to get out of there quickly.

And it's not true. People want to get out of there quickly because we're not connecting with them, we're not building trust and they don't like us. But if they like us, they're not in. They got 10 minutes. You can do this whole process in 10 to 15 minutes really well and connect with them and have a conversation with them and make friends and. And that it does not exceed their expectations. They want to get out of there and they tell you they want to get out of there quick and you think that tablets are going to allow you to get them out of there quicker. But you're missing the most important part and that's the connection and making friends. And there's something about separating them from the vehicle and taking them to another desk that allows you to put them into another headspace and then present whatever it is and talk about the things that. That matter in a different environment. But I've yet to see it where at the vehicle tablets create a better experience or more sales. Most of the time it drives the average per ticket down.

Yeah, I agree with that 100%.

And it's not that we haven't tried. We've tried. It still don't work. And I'm not so in love with the fact that people have invested millions of dollars in tablets that I won't tell you that it won't work.

Because I'm focused on your results, not. Not your idealized version of. Well, you know, I got cognitive dissonance because I spent money on the tablet, so I got to prove that they were. But all I have to do is pull the numbers. It's all I got to do. I mean, I remember the same experience years ago where everybody was like, you got to get rid of the back parts counter.

Because if the technicians are in their stall and they order the parts through the computer and they never go to a back parts counter, they will be more efficient. And so.

It was never the case. In fact, I went so far as to putting parts people out in the shop.

Yeah, that's not a bad idea at all.

Yeah. Ask me how much the efficiency went up a lot.

How much did efficiency go up?

Zero.

None.

None. Oh, wow. How much did the, the efficiency of the parts person go down Probably a lot. Yeah. They're standing around and they feel obligated to be at this kiosk, but they're not that, they're not that effective. They can't just go grab it. Yeah, that's true. There's something about a back parts counter like, is archaic as it is or whatever that they can turn around and hand you the part. Like you can look at a screen and explain to them what it actually is. Because some of these manufacturers don't, they're not a, they're not really easy, especially in heavy duty truck, like, oh, there's so much, there's so many different variables and whatever. And you think that a tech is going to be able to do that in, in the computer. So what I have found is that if you can get the shop to order 70 to 80% of the parts on the computer and, and you make a back parts counter with that other 20% is available to them to go ask a question to get it quickly, your efficiency goes up. But if you completely eliminate the back parts counter, it doesn't make a noticeable difference. Wow. But people like, I mean, I literally have been yelled at. They're like, you're telling me I got to put in a back parts counter and I just built this stupid building without one. And I'm like, well, you should have called me. I would have told you. Right. It was a bad idea. You guys all sit in a 20 room meeting and you're all like, you want to, you want to feel like you're progressive and you know ahead of the time. So you're making up all this stuff that, you know, you could convince somebody that not having a parts back parts counter could increase your efficiency. But if it's not, it's not. And let's be honest about it, like, I'll try it, I'll try putting somebody in the, in the shop. And I tried it at three different dealerships. So I'm not saying like I tried it once and it didn't work. Not only did I try it, I, I got everybody enlisted in making it work. I was very positive about it. Right. So like let's say for example, there's dealerships that are like, this still happens every once in a while. Well, we, we tried to open on Saturdays, but it didn't really work.

Most of the time. I can, I know because of experience that it didn't work because you didn't want it to work.

The back parts counter didn't work because it didn't work, not because I didn't Want it to. Putting the person out into the shop didn't work because it didn't work, not because I didn't want it to. I tried really hard to make it work.

On paper it makes sense.

Yeah, but it's the same thing with tablets is like everybody thinks that like because we're talking about replacing advisors with kiosks and all this, that customers want to be shoot out like a Southwest Airlines. Like they want to be cattle, they want to be shootout and that they want an advisor staring in a tablet. I mean just think about how moronic this is. If you watch it from 200 yards away. The advisor is staring at a tablet, going through the process. They're taking pictures with the tablet. Right. You'd be better off to hand the tablet to the customer.

Can you help me with this?

Yeah. Tell me what's like here, push this button. At least there would be interaction. Yeah, you would have some sort of rapport. I mean especially if you were the customer. Oh my God, you're the anti technology guy.

It'd be a mess.

It's so funny. We, we had this on a Zoom the other day with who was it the elite group where we were talking about updating our comp software. Yeah, we have this software.

That's right.

And believe it or not, of all the people in our company that's in charge of it, Christian kind of is the. He leads the developer. So he manages that in the updates and whenever they're changing in the software because there's always stuff being changed or fixed or whatever and he can't even get Zoom to work on his computer and he's the one in charge of these developers. But I mean, I don't know. The software works, works and we've made.

A bunch of improvements.

You've done a good job with that. But you can't get Zoom to work.

I've had my moments with Zoom for sure. We're not friends right now.

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