Why Oil Changes Are Your Tech's Best Friend

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Ding.

Or something like that with a title and a thing. And there's got to be like a drum fill in the middle of it. 8333 ask SDR. And for those who are too lazy, it's 833-327-5737. But if you have a question.

Call that number. Leave a voicemail. So you're just gonna ask your question on the voicemail and then we'll play it on the show. If we play it on the show, you get some of this beautiful swag, which is sdr, coffee mugs, T shirt like Christian is wearing. Those are, those are hard to get. You don't sell them. You can only get them by asking questions.

That's right.

Maybe a notebook. What else do we throw in there? Do you know? Hats, Pretty cool hats. Oh yeah, the hats are cool. Trucker hat.

There's more, there's more swag than just that.

I don't know if the question's really good. We might put in a little bottle of tequila or something. Right? So let's, let's, let's do the question. So question number one.

Hey, Chris. I have two techs that complain that they never get any maintenance service work for me. I upsell all those off of oil changes, but neither of these two techs will perform oil changes. They think it's beneath them. How do I deal with these guys? They're great techs, but I can't get them to do these upsells. My lube tech is also a regular tech. He's on flagrate and I have no clue what to do. Thanks a lot.

So so far, knock on wood. I have never sat down with a technician of this personality and not been able to explain to them how business models work and get them to buy in. But you gotta kind of step back a little bit. And so if it was me, I would call him in and you know, or take him for a cup of coffee. Something that was non confrontational and easy and kind of a neutral, neutral ground. Right. And I would talk to them about just how business works. And I would say like, so let's say you are Hewlett Packard and you're selling copy machines or printers. How do you make the money? Well, you make the money on buying the ink. And I would just go through different business models and I'd say, okay. And so our business model in the service department is we have loss leaders. The loss leaders, like an oil change, is to drive traffic. Then I would just explain how the business works and how those lost leaders are an opportunity to inspect the car and make an impression on the customer. And I would just change their point of view so they understand how the business works and not make it about your feelings or their feelings. It's the business model. You guys are all in the model, the way that it functions. And oil changes drive traffic, and then the traffic is an opportunity. And do we want the opportunity or do. Do we have a better way? Is.

Does.

Does that technician have a better idea for a model? And chances are he doesn't. He just doesn't understand the system. And, you know, how much we lose. I often like to explain to them how much money we actually lose on an oil change to get that lead in. For them, we're doing it just as much for the tax right to get that traffic in. So I think treating them like an adult and like somebody who's running a business inside of a business and talking about strategy and marketing and business models has always elevated that. That conversation to something very constructive. I also wouldn't expect.

When you have that conversation the first time, for them to completely flip around. Like, you're gonna say it, you're gonna. You're gonna be friendly, and you're gonna let them sleep on it, and then they'll come back a little different, and then you'll talk about it again. But.

And then it just might be that the person isn't meant to be a technician, and then they're in the wrong industry. But I always like to start by elevating the conversation because people are smarter than you give them credit for. And when you start talking about it in those terms, they often will have good ideas.

And.

And when their ideas are then implemented, they own the system.

Yeah, that's great. I think that the one thing, too, is when you actually reach out to them and you start to talk to them about the business that no one's ever talked to them about before, they get a little bit of gratitude and loyalty as well. So I think that it's pretty cool. We do a lot of times when we'll go into stores and we'll talk about financials and financial training, and I've had a couple of technicians sit in on those classes, and they're just blown away because they've never seen it before. They didn't understand how it worked.

Yeah. Also, we. You Made me think of something. We have a course in our on demand for technicians that kind of does just that. My goal with that course, even though it talks about best practices, how to, you know, be efficient, maximize flat rate and all of that, the real goal of it was to explain to the technicians what the advisors are doing and then explain to them the law of averages. Like baseball, like the, the closing ratios most of the time are 30%. So if you're doing it a multi point on every car and you find something on half of the cars and then those, you know, half end up being 10, three of those are going to sell. Right. And so of the opportunities created. So in a day, if you're a technician, you might touch some cars that don't need anything, but if you filled out, you added something or recommended something on 10 cars of those 10, most of the time with how terrible service advisors are trained, it's going to be a closing ratio of 30%. But the whole thing breaks down if you're not consistent, if you're not consistently doing it because that throws the ratios out. That was the whole purpose of that, of that course. And we've had, you know, great feedback on it. And also when I go into shops, technicians on a couple occasions said, hey, I really like that thing you guys did, but I want to know more. And so then we made on the recommendation of a technician in Virginia, right?

Yep.

We made how the financials work for technicians too so they would understand what discounting does to the bottom line and lots of fun stuff like that. So I think elevate the conversation and educate them and treat them like somebody in a business and you'll get away from the attitude and all that. Even with the most difficult of personalities, that usually is a good path to chip away.

That's a great question.

Thanks so much for watching this clip of Service Driving Revolution. We're uploading new stuff every day, so make sure you subscribe and click the bell icon. Subscribe so you don't miss out. If you have a question you'd like us to answer on the show, call 8333 asksDr and we'll answer your question on the show. That's 8333 ask SDR. For special deals on our books and training, head over to offers.chriscollinsinc.com now that's offers.chriscollinsInc.com I'm Chris Collins and I'll see you in the next video sa.