Why Car Manufacturers Are Wrong!
A Honda service advisor asks how to sell more maintenance while keeping customers happy. The panel says manufacturers deliberately under-prescribe services like coolant and transmission work to make cars seem cheaper to own, then fail early. They recommend inspecting parts with techs and showing customers the evidence instead of just telling them what they need.
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Hello, Chris. I am a service advisor at a Honda dealership.
Honda.
Honda dealership in the LA area. I currently reach about 45k to 65k sales profit per 2 weeks. What I notice myself struggle with at times is being consistent in offering maintenance and keeping my CSI above 91.7%. As you may or may not know, Honda service has a minder code that illuminates on the gauge cluster A. I believe in my mind I sell from the customer's pocket and prejudge. I've been told I care too much. What will your advice be for me to obtain and increase my numbers? And being more consistent.
I think this.
Takes us into our topic.
It really does. What a great segue that is.
Yeah. So do you deviate from the manufacturer's recommended.
Maintenance schedule? And I think what, what happens with a lot of advisors is they have this weird moral compass that they believe that their view and their morality on maintenance is correct and anything that deviates from that is incorrect. They are not aware of the theory that preventative maintenance prevents repairs.
Right.
Right.
Breakdowns, unplanned.
And so it's a. It's a complicated question. And I always say. What do I always say when it comes to maintenance?
Yes.
No herpes jokes.
Yes.
When it comes to maintenance? I always say yes.
Well, do the maintenance.
Oh, I have to because I'm Chris Collins. But yeah.
The maintenance pays eight to one.
No, if you. If you wouldn't sell it to your mom. Oh, don't sell it. Right. But now I didn't say if it's not recommended by the manufacturer. Because the thing that I know about the manufacturers is that they think or they want or they hope or their goal is that a hundred thousand miles a car is put into a crusher and the customer starts over again. Right. So I know beyond a shadow of a doubt with many manufacturers that there's no recommendation for power steering fluid.
Correct.
And power steering racks go like crazy. And there's really chunks of metal in there. Right. I know that even though they will spend tons of money cleaning valves, that there's no recommendation for injector services from manufacturers. Rarely is there one that has one.
None.
But secretly they have it. So they make it. Right. Like BMW makes one. They have a terrible problem with their turbos. They secretly recommend that every 12 months or 12,000 miles you do it. But they don't want it to be included in their old maintenance program. So they.
It's a really, really evil thing. At the end of the day, what the manufacturers do, it Is.
And it's interesting because when you're studying sales, you're more focused on consumers and human behavior and all that. But when you dive in the technical world of repairing and maintaining cars, when you read some of these technical bulletins, it literally blows your mind. Like, we just did a timing chain on a Cadillac and I was going through the repair procedure and it says, oh, you need to follow this reflash because it resets and updates the oil change reminder to have the oil changes done early so this problem doesn't happen. I'm going, if I was a consumer and I read that I would probably hire an attorney to have Cadillac pay for this repair because their initial maintenance plan was too long and it caused things to wear out prematurely and cost me 2,000 bucks. So I agree with you. I think the manufacturers, they are trying to lower the cost of car ownership and they're focused on selling the cars. And it's something that, it's hard when consumers are educated that you've got to read the owner's manual, do it by the book, and then we want to either accelerate or do a customized maintenance plan. It's hard to get the customers to believe that.
So if I say that I have lifetime coolant on my car, does, does lifetime insinuate anything but lifetime?
Well, I think that the interpretation from the manufacturer is your 100,000 mile throwaway. But they want the customer to think that it's a lifetime thing because.
But it's 100,000 miles.
It's 100,000 miles. And you have to see what this stuff looks like, like, honestly, physically, on a car like a seven year old car with 100,000 miles on it, the coolant looks like it's disgusting.
We have a Mercedes in the shop right now. It's got 82,000 miles on it, 20, 15. And there's all this just white corrosion and crud from the cooling system on it. And it's the original coolant. Yeah.
And so you tell customers lifetime. Right. Or what about with brake fluid? Some manufacturers two years, some four years, some, some not at all. Right.
It's all the same stuff.
Yeah. Here's interesting. I researched a Mazda owner's manual once and the owner's manual had the Mexico, the USA and the Canadian plant maintenance schedule in it. The USA schedule did not have a brake fluid flush in it, period. But the Mexico and the Canada one did. And I'm sitting here going, that's kind of weird. If I'm in San Diego and there's Tijuana, what's the Difference of the climate.
Same car hits the water.
It's the same car.
It's the water.
Yeah, yeah, it's the water.
And so this is a, this is a very difficult question to answer. But the thing that I would say to you as an advisor is get over this fake morality thing and really go to work on figuring out, talk to technicians, look at brake fluid, really get educated. Because every manufacturer is a little bit different. They don't always, they don't all use the same power steering fluid, right?
No, no, they're all just different.
And same thing with transmissions. Right. Some of them don't want you to ever service the transmission because they'd rather replace it. Right. And so I would go to work and get educated on it. But the thing that sold me was I had a, a shop foreman tear the top of an engine off and show it to me, put it back on doing induction service and then take it back off and show me. And literally customers would say it drives like it's new. Again, that was the comment I heard over and over again. And so I don't trust anybody, including the manufacturers. I, I try to get involved, try to see for myself. I take a used car and do the induction, you know, I, I'll pay in a shop, I'll pay a foreman to take the top off and take pictures and show all the advisors in a little show and tell. But like I pretend like it's my mom and what would I advise her to do? And my mom keeps the car for a long time. So the other thing, and one thing in your training that's so good in your advisor training is you, you want to learn what the customer's plans are. And that don't shortcut that either. Like if the customer has a three year lease and they're trading it in, I don't know, you know, I don't know that you're selling them a bunch of stuff right before they trade it in. Right.
Well, and I think that's the important thing. We want to lead with the understanding the customer's timeline, what are their plans with the car? And then when you have that information now you can create a customized maintenance and repair plan, tailor fit not only for the car, but for the customer. And now we want key throwers, right? I mean, that's what you talk about all the time. We want somebody to toss us the keys. That's how you build more of those relationships. That's how you get people to wait for you when all the other advisors have no customers because you're the one that's matching your goals to theirs. You don't have a sales agenda. You're not in it for the spiffs. You're there to really serve and help your customers save money. And then they feel the difference when they don't have the breakdowns later on and they've got a trusted professional that's helping them out.
But I'll tell you beyond a shadow of a doubt that in my experience, and I've had people object in the beginning, but, but when I've had them take the top off and do an induction, you know, put it back together, do an induction and take it off again. Every tech and every foreman agreed. And also have them drive it before. Fuel services are a huge benefit to the customers. They improve gas mileage, performance, everything. And a lot of customers with the gas that we have now will say two years in, oh, it doesn't drive like it's new anymore. And so I would get educated on that, but I would, I would not just assume that it's snake oil because it's not the Mach one, the BG one. Some of the manufacturer ones are really good and I find that on the turbos and I'm not a tech like you are, but the induction is, is a way better value to the customer than the injector service. But it depends on the engine in the, in the model. Right.
Well, and that's another thought that I wanted to bring up is as an advisor, you need to become an expert on the cars that you service. So you know, you have a background in BMW. So if all sudden you're doing 10 rack and pinions a week on these cars that are 6, 7, 8 years old and it's customer pay and it's a $3,000 job, what are you going to do with the new customers coming in that you know are not doing the preventive maintenance? Well, do a study and show them. Look, we charged, I don't know, $325 for the service, but the repair on it is $3,500. That's a 10 to 1 return on investment that your maintenance dollars will pay you back. And if you're an expert and you take this profession seriously, those are the things that you can do to separate yourself. Don't rely on the manufacturer to give it to you. It's your job as the insurance.
No, the manufacturer is criminal in that scenario because literally it's right when they go out of warranty and literally there's chunks of metal in there and if you replace the Fluid and maintain it. It'll go. It'll go past 100,000 miles.
I think that flipping. That. That morality flip, like what you said is exactly right. I would say that take your ethical beliefs on preventative maintenance and flip it 180 degrees. And now you're right. And I think that that's the thing, is that we find so much more often, like the industry standard and belief is that we oversell. And I don't know that I've been in a situation where we go in somewhere and it's not undersold. Yeah, it's always undersold, and everyone thinks the exact opposite. But I think that that's the thing, is if you want to do the most morally correct thing for your clients is you give them the opportunity to not break down. Like, that's the thing is, maybe it's a cost thing with the power steering is that it's three grand. But what is that time cost of breaking down and not breaking down?
They never break down at the right time.
It's always.
The power steering doesn't go at the right time.
Nope.
It's always when they're late for a meeting or.
Well, earlier he said an unplanned breakdown. I was like, well, let's plan a breakdown. Yeah, I want my water pump to fail when I'm towing my trailer up the grapevine with the kids and the dog and it's 108 degrees outside.
It is. The brake fluid one's hilarious to me because it is pretty much all the same brake fluid. And they're all. All the manufacturers are different, and some don't even recommend it at all, which is a joke. It's a complete joke. So as an advisor, don't assume anything. Go to work. It's a journey, not a destination. Be ethical. But. But don't. Don't assume that you're the moral compass for anything. You. You know, unless you're a scientist and you can, like, dip your finger in the brake fluid and taste it and know, like, horrible.
Doesn't it?
Yeah. Like, you. You. You have to go to work. But it's not that simple. And every manufacturer is a little bit different.
Right? Speaking of science, why do centipedes have 100 legs?
Herpes?
I don't know. Why do centipedes have 100 legs? Yeah, I don't know why.
So they can walk.
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.
