What Service Advisors SHOULD Say After a Sales Objection (Service Drive Revolution)

Voice of God, are you there?

The voice of God is here.

What's our first question?

The first question comes from Facebook.

What's your take on the technicians that may be out of jobs right now as most dealers are working with limited staff? Are you seeing dealers thinking about strategies to retain their technicians or. Or in some cases, looking to attract more techs that may be looking for other opportunities given the current circumstances?

Yeah, so that's a little bit of a loaded question because every market, every dealership, every shop is a little bit different. And so without having specific context, I would say the first thing, I would go back to what I said at the top of the show about if you're being furloughed or laid off, I would do a real, real inventory of. On how much value you're adding to the shop. Because if. If you're one of the top technicians, there's a. They're. They're not going to let you get too far away. They're not going to. They're definitely not going to want somebody to steal you. So I would.

Yeah, even if you're mediocre, I think, man, technicians are hard enough to find. They're going to bring the text back as quickly as they can. And if they don't, there's something going on there.

Yeah, yeah. Like, we know clients that are hiring tech, so it isn't even in the. In a downturn like this, technicians are what run the show. Like, without techs, we can't produce labor. Right. We can't put car parts on vehicles either. So I don't know, I'd look in the mirror and really ask yourself, like, is this a chance for me to reinvent myself and be more of a contributor to the positive side of business? Maybe work a little harder, put up some bigger numbers, you know, really be something different than I was before if I'm expendable.

I agree. I.

So right there I could see you were thinking, should I do another drink of moonshine? Not. And then.

No.

Okay. God. What's the next one?

The dumbest things advisors say after getting a no. But what's the best response to say when a.

Well, I mean, let's say. Let's say we're recommending tires in an alignment. So we did a walk around. We're petting the dog needs tires in alignment. And then what I would do is I'd say, hey, the computer here is saying, you're due for an alignment.

No, I just want the oil change today.

Okay, now I got it. Now I can come back to you when I do the inspection, right?

Yes.

So you didn't say no.

What do you mean I didn't say no? I did say no. I said no. I just want the oil change.

No, not really.

So what did I say?

You said you wanted to get whatever the others stuff was done.

Yeah, I just came in for the oil change. That's a common objection that service advisors get all day long, right?

Yeah. But now I can open up the phone call with, hey, it looks. So we inspected the car, and it looks like it needs some things. What are your plans for the car?

Ah, here we go. I love where you're going with this.

So now. Now I. I got a way to go. I never. I never really asked you a question that can be answered with no. And so to me, you said no. That's a priority. The oil change is a priority because it's, you know, it's been on your mind. You want to change the oil, it's overdue, whatever. But I have. Now I have room to get to know you. Now. The other thing that you'll find in the best sales book I've ever read is the Game by Neil Strauss. And you have to go into this book understanding that it's about boys trying to pick up girls. That's really what the book is about. But the thing about the book is, like, you know, if you ever met Neil Strauss, he's like a short little guy that's bald, not the most attractive guy in the world, and he ends up, you know, dating.

Very attractive, very attractive females. I guess.

It'S a true thing. But the thing is about that is, if you can. If you can put aside the fact that it's kind of douchey, and it's about guys trying to get girls, and you look at the process of how a nerdy guy has to reinvent himself, has to analyze every little thing about how he approaches somebody in a bar, how the body language matters, how your wording matters, how you. You have to kind of play the takeaway, and they can smell desperation on you. And all of the things that they have to go through to get, you know, to reinvent themselves through that book is exactly what sales is about. So if you got a no, I would say that all lost sales can be traced to a mistake made earlier on in the process. And to the. To the point that if I call on declines and this might be something you want to have somebody else do, like two advisors could do this for each other is you could go through a month's worth of declines. And Jeremy will call on mine, and I'll call on Jeremy's, and he'll just be like, hey, this is Chris from Bulldog Motors, and I saw you were in here a couple weeks ago, and we recommended brakes, and I was just curious why you didn't have them done. Right. Calling on declines. You learn more about that. Now, what you're going to find is that it's. You presented it when they showed up. You're going to find that they just didn't have the money at the time. You're going to find out that they didn't understand. So whenever these surveys are done is the number one reason people don't maintain their cars is they weren't told. And the second reason is they didn't understand. Right? And so that's a part of it. The other part of it is like introducing the inspection sheet early on. So then you're the hero and not, hey, I didn't ask you to look at that. Right? All those little nuances, petting the dog. You don't. You don't. The customer doesn't trust you because they had to come find you. And then when they found you, you were busy and on the phone, and you wrote them up while you're doing something else, and you just treated them like another transaction. You didn't call them, they had to call you. And now you're the other thing that you'll find. And the best sales book I've ever read is the Game by Neil Strauss. And you have to go into this book understanding that it's about boys trying to pick up girls. That's really what the book is about. But the thing about the book is, like, you know, if you ever met Neil Strauss, he's like a short little guy that's bald, not the most attractive guy in the world, and he ends up, you know, dating.

Very attractive females. I guess.

It'S a true thing. But the thing about that is, if you can put aside the fact that it's kind of douchey and it's about guys trying to get girls, and you look at the process of how a nerdy guy has to reinvent himself, has to analyze every little thing about how he approaches somebody in a bar, how the body language matters, how your wording matters, how you have to kind of play the takeaway, and they can smell desperation on you, and all of the things that they have to go through to get to reinvent themselves through that book is exactly what sales is about. So if you got a no, I would say that all lost sales can be traced to a mistake made earlier on in the process. And to the point that if I call on declines, and this might be something you want to have somebody else do, like two advisors could do this for each other is you could go through a month's worth of declines, and Jeremy will call on mine, and I'll call on Jeremy's, and he'll just be like, hey, this is Chris from Bulldog Motors, and I saw you were in here a couple weeks ago, and we recommended breaks, and I was just curious why you didn't have them done. Right? Calling on declines, you learn more about that. Now, what you're going to find is that you presented it when they showed up. You're going to find that they just didn't have the money at the time. You're going to find out that they didn't understand. So whenever these surveys are done is the number one reason people don't maintain their cars is they weren't told. And the second reason is they didn't understand. Right. And so that's a part of it. The other part of it is like introducing the inspection sheet early on. So then you're the hero and not, hey, I didn't ask you to look at that. Right? All those little nuances, petting the dog. The customer doesn't trust you because they had to come find you. And then when they found you, you were busy and on the phone, and you wrote them up while you're doing something else, and you just treated them like another transaction. You didn't call them, they had to call you. And now you're telling them, hey, you want to spend $2,000 with us? But they don't like you. They don't trust you. And you seem disorganized. Right? Think about another thing is customer pulls into a service drive, that's a disaster. There's. There's stuff laying around. It doesn't look organized. It's chaos. They got to go find you. Like, why would they want to spend money in a place like that? They want to get the minimum amount of work done, their vehicle and get out. That's what they want to do. Because it's not comfortable, they don't feel welcome. So a lot of sales are lost, A lot of no's are created because you didn't pet the dog. You think that it's a transaction about a car. And that car is a commodity. The value that you have as an advisor is your relationship with your customers. Knowing where they work, their kids, what they do, spending that time Building rapport, making it about everything but the car. Anybody can service the car. Right. So my background is dealerships. Jeremy's background is dealerships. And he, he owns a shop and he, you know, teaches shops and advisors in shops. Why do 75% of customers start off. Wait, sorry. Why do 75% of customers that start off in a dealership end up going to independent shops when the dealerships had home field advantage? Because they don't like us, they don't trust us. We take them for granted. It's like, oh well, they have to come to us for the warranty work. So we're going to torture them. We're going to make it an experience. It's right up there with going to the dentist. Right. So it's all in the process. So as an advisor, you might not be able to control some of that stuff, like what the drives, like what the process is and all that, but it definitely matters. So, I mean, that's a long winded answer to a simple question. But it's not simple.

No. Can I add to it? Because you've got my brain just churning here because you're right. So much of our sales made at the initial drop off and how.

Only if you do another shot of moonshine.

No, I'm not going to do another shot of moonshine today. I got to work after this, man. Now you just lost, made me lose my train thought. But here's no. Here's the actual answer. And this could be a trigger phrase. And as a service advisor, if you're getting a lot of no's when that customer says no, you should think about I'm sorry. And the reason I would trigger myself to say I'm sorry. Right. Like snap. That rubber band that we talked about last SDR is if you're getting no's, it means you drop the ball somewhere earlier, Mr. Service Advisor. And you need to figure that out because the no's should not be there. It should be a natural progression. And then essentially, Kris, what we turn into is we become financial planners, which is, okay, you're in agreement that your car needs all of this. How do I help you get to that? Because that's what you want. And then you basically work through their budget and what they can afford today with all of our different things.

So yeah, and let's be honest about this too. Jeremy is like, no, let's lie to lie to them.

Let's lie.

There's guys out there.

There's guys out there that say service advisors or salespeople. I'm Telling you right now.

A service advisor that thinks that they're a salesperson has never sold. Go sell cars. Go start off the month at zero. Like the idea that, oh, being a service advisor is the hardest job in the dealership. No, the hardest job in the dealership is probably being a salesperson. That's hard. You start off at zero and.

You have to go get customers and get them to buy a car. Now a service advisor, you get built in traffic. I don't know too many service advisors. In fact, I don't know that I know any that go out and get their own traffic. The traffic's built in. It's coming in. Your job is to get in front of it and then make the process better. And so you're selling something that they need. They don't need to buy a new car. They need have to have brakes. They have to maintain the car that if the car is broken down, they have to fix it. That's not sales.

Right.

That's just making a process bearable. That's it. So if customers are declining brakes, the brakes aren't going to grow back.

Not yet anyways.

You're not. You're not some amazing salesperson that you got somebody to agree to something that they need. Like you're literally selling water in the desert.

Good point, right? Yeah, good point.

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.