Chris Collins

If you’re thinking of getting some service advisor training for your automotive service advisors, then the best training course to go to would be my Chris Collins VT . With over 18 years under my belt, I have built a rock solid reputation in the automotive business as an automotive consultant. In just 3 years, I had grown Crevier BMW to the eighth largest dealership in the US, a phenomenal growth of 300% from its previous place as 123^rd.  Not bad, considering that I started in the business as just a car washer.

Before you dive in to this massive resource check out what the service managers tell about our service advisors training:

Another one is my Service Advisor Training: Table of Contents Technique:

Below is a comprehensive service advisor training resource:

1. Service Advisors: Smarter Than Your Average Bear - In Service Advisors: Smarter Than Your Average Bear, you’ll learn some great tips on how to be a great service advisor and beat the competition. As the camper in the story said, it’s not about outrunning the bear, it’s about outrunning the other guy.

2. The Dealership Consultant - With the economy still on its way up, most people would think twice about hiring a consultant. But in The Dealership Consultant, you’ll be convinced why it would be in your company’s best interest to do so. As stated in the article, ensuring a harmonious relationship between the manufacturer, the dealership consultant, the contractors, and the customers is a win-win situation for everyone.

3. Fixed Ops Consultant - Now that you have your automotive company up and running smoothly, do you think it’s time for you to relax believing that the profits will continue coming in? No.  Businesses that have been running for years have a tendency for complacency, a big NO when running a business. This is the time to bring in a Fixed Ops Consultant and ensure that processes are improved. As your business grows, so does your market, and processes that may have been applicable before may need to be modified to adjust to this growth.

4. Automotive Consultant at Work - Learn how an automotive consultant can become an invaluable help to your company. In Automotive Consultant at Work, know more about automotive consultants and how they can increase the profits in your business.

5. Service Department Training – Good customer service, this is the by-word of most service companies. But are you really giving “good” customer service? Learn the 9 questions that should be coming up in your service department training to ensure this.

6. Automotive Marketing Consultant - Marketing is an important aspect in any business. There are many ways to market your products and services, but which strategy is the best one? Can you really afford to try different marketing strategies before you hit on the best one suited for your company? You’re best bet would be to hire an automotive marketing consultant. Read the article to know more about the benefits of hiring one.

7. Automotive Product Consultants - Business doesn’t stop upon selling the car. Your next concern should be how to retain the customer. This is where automotive product consultants come in. These highly trained individuals focus on customer retention, among others. They are product experts and can give very good advice to customers to ensure their loyalty.

8. What Does An Automotive Sales Consultant Do? - Do you know those guys that welcome you with a big smile the moment you step in a car dealership? They are the automotive sales consultants. In the article What Does An Automotive Sales Consultant Do?, know more about these people and if you have what it takes to do this very challenging and lucrative job.

9.   Automotive Consultation Service - If you’re looking for a way to ensure your company’s success, then you should think seriously about getting an automotive consultation service. Automotive consulting is one sure way to fast-track your company’s growth.

10. Bulldog Marketing - Did you know that 68% of lost business in America is due to apathy? Don’t let your accounts be one of the  fatalities. Learn more about Bulldog Marketing in this article.

11. Tweaking Your Sales Strategy - Is your sales strategy a flop? Don’t start panicking. Read about the proper way of Tweaking Your Sales Strategy to ensure that you close that sale.

12.  The Art of Active Listening While You’re at Work - You have this great sales pitch which you’ve practiced over and over in front of the mirror. The customer comes and you start talking. After a few minutes, the customer shakes their head and heads out the door. What happened? Pitching is just part of closing the sale, the most important part is listening that what your customer really needs. Learn The Art of Active Listening While You’re at Work and worry no more about losing a sale.

13. The Top Seven Marketing Strategies of All Time - The competition over the market is always stiff. Learn The Top Seven Marketing Strategies of All Time and have an edge over all your competitors.

14. The Top 1% Precision Selling - Selling is a science and not based on luck. It’s a series of processes that when followed closely will ensure a closed sale. Know more about these processes in The Top 1% Precision Selling.

15. What’s Your Negotiation Style? - In order to negotiate well, first you must know that different negotiation styles and how to use them to your advantage. Read What’s Your Negotiation Style? to know what’s yours as well as what the other party’s style is. This way you can adjust accordingly and achieve the best solution for everyone.

16. The Ultimate Competitive Advantage: Trust and Respect - Need a way to ensure that you stay ahead of the competition? Read The Ultimate Competitive Advantage: Trust and Respect and learn how to use these two qualities to ensure your business’ success.

17. Just a Little Bit Better - It’s a tough world out there, and everyday new companies are coming out to steal your customers. So how do you stay on top? Simple, by being Just a Little Bit Better. In this article, learn different ways to ensure that customers will come and stay with your company.

18.  Sales Driven or Purpose Driven – What Kind of Businessman Are You? - What is more important for your company – sales or customer service? In the article Sales Driven or Purpose Driven – What Kind of Businessman Are You?, these two terms are defined to help you choose what kind of organization your company will focus on.

19. Sales Driven or Purpose Driven – What Kind of Businessman Are You? - Sending advertisements through the mail is an age-old technique in automotive sales. But with the advent of the Internet, is this still effective? A study was made to answer this question. Know more in Fixed Ops Case Study (Direct Mail or Email).

20. Become a Chief Networking Officer - Do you know who is in charge of handling community-based activities and networking to bring in more customers and prospects? It’s the chief networking officer. Find out if you’re cut out to Become a Chief Networking Officer by reading the article.

Chris Collin’s Team

21. How to Generate More Testimonials - A testimonials databank coming from your satisfied clients could be a very important asset to your business. Learn how to do this in How to Generate More Testimonials.

22. Make Your Irresistible Offer - Want to close a sale? Then learn how to Make Your Irresistible Offer.

23. Different Customer Personalities and How to Deal with Them - A good sales consultant knows how to estimate a potential customer the moment they step through the door. Know who these people are in Different Customer Personalities and How to Deal with Them.

24.  Service Manager Liberation - Do you want to raise your labor rate? Learn how Chris Collins helped Joe raise theirs by $4 in Service Manager Liberation.

25.  Crazy Ways to Increase Your Service Department Sales This Year - Are you running out of ideas to lift your sales? Then read Crazy Ways to Increase Your Service Department Sales This Year and see your sales shoot up.

26. Social Media for Buyer Prospecting – A Risk or A Must? - Are you thinking of creating a page in Facebook for your automotive company? Then read Social Media for Buyer Prospecting – A Risk or A Must? and learn the pros and cons of going through this avenue.

27. 9 Ultimate Reasons You Can Be Successful - It may be the year 2013 already, but you can still get some valuable insights on how you can make this year a profitable one in 9 Ultimate Reasons You Can Be Successful.

28. Strategies that Sell - Know why an automotive technician sometimes sell more than a service advisor in Strategies that Sell.

29. Poison Words That Could Sabotage Your Sales - When making a pitch, you must be careful with the word you choose to avoid offending the customer. In this article, know the Poison Words That Could Sabotage Your Sales.

30. Top 5 Reasons Why Service Manager Fails - Do you want to be an effective service manager? Then read the Top 5 Reasons Why Service Manager Fails and avoid making the same mistakes.

31.  Auto Business Transformation Secrets Revealed - In these times, everything is changing fast – whether it’s technology, business models, and marketing practices. And as the manager, it is up to you ensure that your company rolls with these changes. In the article Auto Business Transformation Secrets Revealed, learn how to manage your company to keep up with these changes.

32. Where Do You See The Future of Automotive Fixed Operations Consulting Going - In Where Do You See The Future of Automotive Fixed Operations Consulting Going?, we see how having the latest technology isn’t always the answer. It’s still giving great customer experience.

33. The New Stuff for Service Managers and Service Advisors  by Chris Collins - Learn the importance of properly training your service managers and service advisors in The New Stuff for Service Managers and Service Advisors  by Chris Collins.

34. Service Manager Contest Winner – Meet Vicky, the Chris Collins $25,000 Service Manager Winner as they talk about the journey they had gone through to increase their sales.

35. 10 Things that Prove Why a Great Team is Always Better than a Great Idea - Do you have a great idea? Then it’s time for you to gather a great team together. Know why in 10 Things that Prove Why a Great Team is Always Better than a Great Idea.

36. Pet The Dog Instead Of Tired Old Walk Arounds - Watch this video Pet The Dog Instead Of Tired Old Walk Arounds! about Chris Collin’s famous story of petting the dog and how you can use it to boost your sales.

Other Useful Resources:

• If you’re interested about learning more on how to become a service advisor, then read How to be a Service Advisor: Step-by-Step Career Guide.
• In the Journal Service Marketing, the research tackles the impact of communication effectiveness and service quality on relationship commitment in consumer, professional services.
• Know more about the Automotive Repair and Maintenance Sectors. Learn about the laws & regulations, compliance, and policies & guidelines of this sector.
• Protect yourself from dishonest, deceptive and fraudulent practices in vehicle repair by reading the Motor Vehicle Repair Shop Registration Act.
• If you’re from California, here’s another article with tips on how you could keep your vehicle in good condition and ensure a good working relationship with your auto repair shop. Read A Consumer’s Guide To Automotive Repair In California.

Other Service Managers Training Videos that you may want to see:

Service Advisor Training – Circle Of Trust

Automotive Marketing Consutants: Fixed Ops Case Study

Growing up, I used to think that if I had just one great idea I would become a huge success with tons of money to spend. There’s Bill Gates with Microsoft, Jerry Yang with Yahoo, and Mark Zuckerberg with Facebook. Why can’t I come up with my own unique idea and become people like them?

Life however has its own way of teaching its lessons. I’ve actually realized that ordinary people come up with ideas everyday of their lives. The sad thing is that most adults dismiss these ideas almost immediately after thinking of them.

You see, coming up with an idea is not that hard, even children have them. Coming up with a great idea would be much, much harder. But also not impossible. What you really need is a great imagination and the right team to bring the idea into reality.

Coming into contact with a lot of people, I’ve learned that in any endeavor one needs the right set of team to get it off the ground. It doesn’t matter if the idea is great or mediocre. It all depends on the people doing the execution. There are a number of reasons why a great team is always better than just having a great idea.

1. Ideas are just figments of our imagination unless we actually turn them into reality.

As I’ve mentioned before, anyone can come up with an idea, but not everyone can figure out a way to make it reality. For that, you need people with the proper knowledge and skills to work out the details. You need people working doggedly, sorting out the details and solving the seemingly endless problems that come with creating a new product or innovation.

2. More brains mean more ideas.

Everyone knows that the more people you put to work on something, the more inputs you’re going to get. It’s like the story of the blind men with the elephant. Each member of the team would be able to bring up an aspect of the idea that the other members wouldn’t have been able to think of.

3. Mediocre ideas can evolve into great ones with brilliant minds working on it.

When you have a great set of people working with you, any idea can become brilliant. These people are trained to think big and to think of profit. They’re passionate about their jobs and are always looking for new ways to make things better.

4. Great ideas can lose its greatness in the hands of imbeciles.

Sometimes in the course of events, your so-called brilliant idea can get lost in the hubbub of working out the details. Between figuring out the production budget and the marketing angle, you might suddenly find in your hand a product or service that is really not that different from another in the market. A good team never loses sight of its goal. It rarely compromises and is committed to bringing the idea into fruition.

5. A great team takes care of all the minor details.

From making the initial drawings up to the time when you’re launching your product, a great team is there to oversee that your idea doesn’t get stuck in one stage. They’re there to ensure that it goes on to the next phase of the production. Having all those details handled by only one person is tedious and dangerous. One never knows when an important detail might slip into the cracks, resulting in greater problems later on. It’s better to have one person in charge for each phase of the production. This way, every little detail is given proper attention.

6. Other hands are there to catch the ball.

When you have a great team working for you, things go more smoothly. Every member knows their place, what their targets are, and what their responsibilities are. Even better, you’re not the only one working on the project, so you’re not the only one keeping the balls in the air. You have time to work on the different aspects of the project, knowing that you’re not neglecting any part of it because someone else is there working on it. From there, you can easily step back and look at where you’re heading.

7. Having a great team brings a lot of intangibles to the table.

This may seem elementary, even almost always overlooked, but having a great team behind you can boost a flagging spirit faced with seemingly insurmountable obstacles. There’s nothing better than a team member bringing pizza at 3am in the morning when you’re stuck with a puzzle. Even better when that same team member points something that you had overlooked and which turned out to be necessary to solve the puzzle you’ve been working on for the past 5 hours.

8. A great team brings with it an invaluable resource of experiences.

Having a great team with you is not all about working out the details. It’s also about knowing the process. These people have also gone through similar experiences before, or at the very least have some experience that they can draw on to help make your idea into reality. They know when to keep dogging an idea and when to give up on it and change direction, they know how to work the media and the in and outs of the niche you’re targeting, they even know how to fill-out government forms which you had no idea you needed to fill.

9. Nothing beats good collaboration.

Everyone will tell you that one great advantage of having a team is collaboration. It can start with just passing the idea around until it gains form, up to the point where each member gives a feedback on the finished product, and a lot more in between. An innocent comment could be grasped by another team member and molded to become an important innovation on your product.

10. Investors usually bet on a successful team.

Let’s not forget the practical side of things. Your great idea can’t get off the ground without financial backing, and for this you need to find yourself an investor. A new entrepreneur with an amazing idea might get the attention of a potential investor, but an amazing idea backed by a proven set of team would always have better chances of gaining favor. Investors after all are there to earn money and would always rather bet on proven track records.

Don’t get me wrong. Having a great idea is important. It’s what you need to start the battle. If you’re a genius with a passion for work and a stubborn determination, you might just be able to make a go for it. But not everyone’s like that. Most of us are ordinary people trying to break through the market with our extraordinary idea. And one way to achieve this is to gather the talent that you need and turn these people into a team who would also dream of making your great idea a reality.

We always hear the expression “Customer is King,” but how true is this really? How often do businesses really take the time to find out what their customers want? And how much time do they spend finding out what their customers need? People say that the bottom line is the profit, but really, isn’t it the customers? Because if you have no customers, then there won’t be any profit.

Below are some clever tips to help you find out what your customers really want.

1. Use the tools available to you.

Technology is all around you. You use it every day. You just need to use it to your business’ advantage.

Take advantage of social media. Find out what your customers like, which pictures they see, which articles they read, and which videos they watch. Read the comments. Watch out for recurring wishes and complaints. Take note of the features they really find amazing. Granted you would have to be careful. There are a lot of spammers on these sites, so you need to learn to filter the information you get.

Get information from your own site. Check out the key words the customers use to find out what they’re really searching for. Find out from what sites they’ve been and which sites they went on to next. Putting a search box in your own site would also help you do that. Know what questions they’re asking.

Visit forums and create a blog. People want to know what other people think. It’s now easy to get reviews and opinions from the Internet. Most people would visit blogs and forums to find out about a particular product before buying it, so why shouldn’t you? They want to know if a product is effective, what side effects or defects it has, if it’s useful or a waste of money. From these, you can glean what works for your customers.

Revisit transactions. What age group are your patrons? What products did they buy together? How did they pay for it? You’d be surprised at what you’d learn about these combinations. What do diapers and beer have in common? Well, they’re both needed by new fathers opting to stay home instead of going to a bar. So maybe you can draw their attention to that La-Z-Boy at the corner of your store or that new car polish you’re promoting.

 2. Learn to listen and observe.

Most of the time, if you ask your customers what they think about your product they would give you one of two things – a generic answer giving you what they think you want to hear and which really doesn’t give you much information, or they would tell you what they honestly think at the time. Getting the first answer doesn’t really help you that much. On the other hand, getting the second answer can quite be tricky because half the time, customers don’t really know what they want. So what’s the best way to get the information you need? Eavesdrop.

Go to where people converge and talk about everything and anything. Go to your favorite coffee shop. Listen to people talking about their new toy or recent disaster. Go to department stores and supermarkets. Listen to what they request from sales clerks, or what they bemoan. Walk along street stalls. See which demonstrations get the people’s attention, which products are selling like hotcakes and which get ignored. But remember, go about it quietly. You’re there to get information, nothing else.

3. Step in their shoes.

Forget your bottom line for the moment and just be the customer. Forget deliveries, salary hikes, and revenues. If you were the customer what would you really want? How does your own product work for you? What would you like to see in it?

Stroll through your own shop or browse through your own site. Look at it from a customer’s point of view. If you were the customer, do you feel comfortable strolling through the shop? Was it easy to navigate through your site? Were there people eager to assist you? Were the clerks sincere in trying to help you out? Remember, customers like to feel they’re valued. If they do, they would give you an honest opinion. People like to talk about what they know, and if they’re comfortable with you then you can get some valuable information from them. They would talk to you about their own opinion, what their officemates think about your products and a story they heard from their cousin.

You should also adapt to their wavelength. Know their language. When they complain about wanting more volume from their shampoo, what are they really saying? When they say it’s okay, what does okay really mean? Use their own language to talk to them. Certain groups have their own lingo. Learn this and get their groove as they say.

4. Broaden your horizons.

One problem that most entrepreneurs encounter is that they often get stuck up over their own product. It’s time to get out of the office and smell the flowers. Or in your case, check out the competition. Go to their website. What do their customers want from them? How are they attracting customers? What aspect of their products do the customers like? What do they hate?

Not just the competition, you should also check out other industries. What tricks are they employing? How did they solve a particular problem? What innovation have they done recently? You never know what nugget of wisdom you might get from surveying your surroundings.

You should also head to the bookstore. What are the people reading? What are the topics on the magazines? Magazines and newspapers are popular for a reason. They reflect the people’s views and what they want. Browse through them. What’s the fashion for this season? What movies are they watching? What apps are they downloading on their phone?

 5. Get it straight from the horse’s mouth.

Since you want to know what your customers want, it would be best to get it straight from them. However, you need to be clever about this. You need to know what questions to ask and how to go about asking them.

Start a blog. Tweet. Create a Facebook page. Talk about the things that would interest your customers. As your followers grow, you would get more and more responses. And you need to be proactive. Don’t just blast out sales and openings. Respond. Give your opinion. Make recommendations. You don’t even have to limit the conversations to your product. Create a relationship with your customers. When the customers start to believe you really care about their needs, then they would become more open about what they want.

Talk with the front liners in your business. These are the people who have firsthand experience with the customers. Get your sales clerks in a meeting. Better yet, talk to them during coffee break or during a team building session. Conduct a focus group discussion with your customer service group. What are the common complaints? What features are the customers looking for? What are the questions they’re asking? What questions did your people have difficulty answering?

Go back to the basics. Conduct surveys at least once a year. Put a suggestion box in your store or a comments section on your page. Feed them the standard question for customer satisfaction. Ask a colleague’s opinion over cocktails. Discuss the merits of a product with a fellow churchgoer during a fund raiser.

There are many ways to find out what our customers really want. You just have to be clever about it.

Not everybody knows it, but bank savings, term deposits, bonds and shares are forms of investments as well. So that makes you and I, and any person who has a savings account with a bank, an investor. You may think that your savings account is only a safe way to store your money over a short period of time, but every time you make a deposit, you are actually investing. The interests the bank pays for your savings are the returns on you investments, again a fact that not everybody fully understands. Incidentally, the interests or ROI that you are earning out of your savings deposits are not very much, so from an investment point of view it is not the best option.

Term deposits with banks also pay interests but at a higher rate, so you will, in effect, get a higher ROI. The downside is that you will be lending your money to the bank for a longer period of at least six months or even years, during which you cannot use your money. In the event that the deposit terms allow you to withdraw money during the term of the deposit, your deposit will be earning a lower rate of interest.

If you have excess money and you don’t like bank savings because of the low interest rates, or term deposits because of the withdrawal restrictions, you can choose to invest in bonds. The interest is higher and you can sell your bond at any time. The unknown factor is the credibility of the bond issuer (if not the government), and the fluctuating price of bonds.  In the matter of shares, you buy a small ownership in a company and expect to share in the profits in the form of dividends. You can sell your shares if the price goes up and earn a profit, although prices can also fall down in value. Real estate property earns income and increase in value, and so are also considered as investments.

So, how vital are investments in our way of life? Perhaps it is more appropriate to ask what the importance of investors is. If practically everybody who has a bank savings or time deposits or counts bonds, shares and property as among their assets are investors, and that means a good number of the population, then the importance of investors cannot be underestimated. It would be hard to imagine a world without investors if the investors comprise the greater number of the people.

Investments are crucial to the success of a business because it is a source of much needed capital. A businessman will need capital if he wants to open a new business, or if he wants to expand his business to the next level. In fact, it will determine to a large extent the success or failure of a business enterprise, or whether or not the business will reach its full potential. Investments will be even more important if provided by investors who have a successful track record and can offer plenty of sound advice, experience and business expertise.  These investors would want to protect their financial interests and secure the returns on their investments, and thus are interested in the success of the business which will be your success too. The willingness of respected investors to invest in your business also gives the signal that your business venture is a good investment opportunity and opens the way for more investors to come in. Investors therefore are hugely important and pivotal in the world of business and their absence can mean the regression of all economic activity.

In a larger sense, investors not only provide fresh and additional capital, but are also carriers of technology and pave the way for the opening of new markets. More capital investments mean more business opportunities which will create more jobs. With a larger segment of the population having jobs, the consumer base will be much larger and the purchasing power of consumers will be that much higher, and consequently the demand. The high demand for goods and services will in turn stimulate growth in the country’s economy. By implication, taking away the investors will set the stage for economic recession.

Talking of investors, why do people invest, or in another context, why should people invest? The main reason is to make some money and provide for the future in the long term.  People at some point in time will stop working for a living and investing is one good way of preparing for that eventuality. Instead of working to earn a living, your investment will do the working for you.  That will happen when your money earns interest or when your investment appreciates in value. On the other hand, your money will be unproductive if you keep it under the bed. In fact, the sooner you invest, the bigger will be the opportunity for your investment to earn money and/or grow in value.

The fact of the matter is that a large number of people knowingly or unknowingly are investors and investors collectively provide capital for industry and fuels the economy – thus ensuring the survival of a nation.  The bottom line therefore is that life would be difficult to contemplate without the presence of investors.

Transcription:

Chris Collins $25,000 Service Manager Winner

In my book, I’ve outlined the roadmap of how to increase your profits, your CSI, your effective labor rate and not the kind of book that a normal consultant would write just trying to get you to hire them, coz I’m not a consultant, I don’t consider myself a consultant but a book that really gives tips and I wanted that if somebody took the time to read the book that they really have a real roadmap to go implement and get results instantly from what they learned in the book.

Chris:   Some of the stuff coming from the book and some are just your skills, you increased your effective labor rate by $40, and you tripled your net to gross, and almost doubled your customer pay sales in a very dramatic fashion. And you’re one of my favorite people in the whole world and the most fun person to work with. But, what do you think about the effective labor rate increasing by that much?

Vicky: Well, I’m very happy with it because for a long time our effective labor rate was so low and I was surprised that just how easy it was by following the tips and the advice that you gave in the book and how dramatic and how fast that it changed. I’m not going to say overnight but I would say within the first month I knew that by following those tips that the sky’s the limit for us. We’ve grown and we’ve increased every single month and its fun on top of it. It’s kind of different way of doing business because you’re a real part of what we do every single day and you keep us focused on what we’re doing.

When we may at times tend to lose focus but you come in with your consultants, with your trainers and you always keep us on track. And on top of it, it’s fun and it’s motivating for not only myself as a manager but also for my service advisors, my technicians. They’ve never experienced anything like this. People come from different stores and they do not expect to have so much fun coming to work every single day. They don’t expect to be playing games. They don’t expect to be given the spiffs that they get for selling things that they maybe they thought they could never sell before. And I think that it’s really great when we’re having a good time in my office and you see people, maybe from the sales department or parts departments, they poke their heads around and they want to see what’s going on in the service department because they hear that it’s fun and we are absolutely blowing any other record that we’ve ever had before in our sales, in our gross, in our net-to-gross, in our expenses, in our CSI and having a good time doing it.

Chris:   If you remember back, it’s been a couple of years when we were in the middle of the down turn. Everybody was very scared. You were laying off people, definitely cutting back, right?

Vicky: Uh-huh.

Chris:   The mindset at the time was that your effective labor rate had to low and you have to discount. Do you remember that right?

Vicky: Right.

Chris:   And then we just kind of took a leap of faith and we are going to try this system and do it a different way even in a down market and you had tried for probably about a year to go after the independence and discount and you were chasing that. And then we went with “hey, we’re gonna be profitable and we’re going to give better service and we’re going to put a system into place where we’re going to kind of wow the customer”. The advisers are going to have to step up their game and really connect with the customers in a different level. But our competitive pricing is going to be fair in the discounted stuff but we’re going to be profitable in the other stuff. And, it worked, right?

Vicky: It worked, it worked surprisingly well. At first I was very skeptical because we have just spent probably $5,000 on this huge mailing piece that we sent out and it was discount coupons galore and I remember you were not very happy coming in knowing that were gonna ride that way with all these discount coupons. And the thought process was that we have to be competitive with the independence and the price scheme and that was not what we ended up doing. We ended up raising our prices and we were still getting busier and busier every single day and again in the beginning I wasn’t quite sure on how that was gonna work because that was something that I haven’t experienced before. But we did, we went back to fair pricing, not the cheapest, not cheapest to the independence but very fair pricing from what our service was to the customer, which was top-notch service.

Chris:   Customer service drive practice, customers greeted within seconds of pulling in, right?

Vicky: Uh-huh.

Chris:   And then a big difference for us in your store was the adviser is going out to the customers and greets them as they are pulling in, right?

Vicky: Uh-huh. Well, before, what would happen is the customer will just come into the driveway, they’d sit in their car and the greeters would go out to them but really don’t care if they’re there or not because they have no investment into these customers at all. Sometimes they talk to them, sometimes they wouldn’t. Customers would sit there, they’d get up, they’d go to the waiting room and sometimes we far forgot about. Now, they come to the cabana. We have the pre-write which we never have before. We have the pre-write that goes on the windshield. We’re doing the hat system, so all the service advisers have their own hats so they know when their customers coming into the driveway. They get up in their chairs, imagine that, they get up of their chairs, go out in the service driveway and talk to the customers at the cars. And they start a relationship with the customer when they’re walking out to the car. It’s very exciting. I was just, awesome. I was surprised at the way that it worked because we never have that in the driveway. It’s always been what we have for ten years. The change was smoother than I thought. Getting advisers out there in the heat and the cold and such, they saw the benefit for it. Nina comes up, she does the training, and she shows then how to pet the dog by walking around the car. They see the benefit, they see the advantage of why they need to have a relationship with the customer so the customers can feel comfortable when they start calling them and suggesting additional work on their vehicle. They’ve met them. They’ve had seeds planted by looking and turning the tires, by looking at the tires. And when service advisers call them later and tell them they need tires, they know. That’s right; I saw it in the service driveway. Or the hoods up and they’re looking at hoses, and the customer thinks again, that’s right, I saw it in the service driveway, you showed me that. You, Joey, showed me that. Not you, service adviser 402, showed me that. The relationship bonds them together and makes them feel comfortable.

Chris:   And the most important part of that is the customer connection and the customer feeling welcomed, right? You did it not too long ago, I think with Mario, right, with the smile game?

Vicky: Yes.

Chris:   Where you practiced with the service advisers getting customer to smile. You can see their posture change when the advisers are really just focused on connecting with them and creating that relationship. It’s completely different. It changes the whole dynamic, right?

Vicky: It does. And the smile great game is awesome and the service advisers have so much fun with the customers when they are telling them, look, my manager is looking at me and if you smile for me I might get a ticket and I could win a prize and the customer plays along with it. They walk by my office and they say “Hey, I’m smiling!” And it just completely, at 7am, completely sets the tone for the rest of the day. It’s fun and exciting and engages the customer at the same time. And I think that it sees, the customer sees us as not just a place to ring in their cars, they see that we are human and that we are likeable and that we care about them and what’s the best thing for their car and for the best service of their car.

Chris:   Yeah, most service drives are like mortuaries and you’re looking for an adviser to help you. There’s no clear path and they kind of miss that whole point of not only having a system but making it really fun and connecting with them to keep them coming back. So tell me, you and I have worked together for a long time and we’ve come and grown up together in some ways, but tell me about starting off in this business, where you started off and then what it’s like being a female service manager in our business.

Vicky: I started with BMW, up in Chico, California. And my dad was the service manager, my mom was an office manager and they’re both in the car business. I started as the pencil follow up girl. What that meant is we would keep a paper file and I would call the customers and say, “hey, you know your, at that time, your Volvo needs to come in for an oil filter change and this is the involved that you need to bring her in.” And that’ how I started, moved into becoming a warranty administrator which I loved, had BMW and Volvo had at that time were now. And then moved on to BMW Conquer where I am right now and I’ve been there since 1987. So long time, it’s a great dealership.

Chris:   Yeah, it is a great dealership and you bleed that dealership and very loyal. What do you think your strongest points are with your service advisers? I’m always so impressed how you recruit these service advisers, they’re so good and talented and they just fall into your system and they just drive. You won Manager of the Year last year in our adviser competition because your advisers just frankly out-performed everybody else in the competition for most of the year. What is your philosophy and key to recruiting those bulldogs and getting them to perform to a higher level than they normally they would think as possible?

Vicky: Well, I think that we expect nothing less from them than to be top performers. We let them know what we expect from them and there are no surprises. We don’t play any games with them as far as what we need them to do. Of course, we play all those games with such a whole different tone in a dealership. I don’t know if any other dealership besides yours that you get to come in and play Scooby Doo and the wolf or Roll the pigs or candy land on the morning meeting and to be able to do that for fun, plus it really focuses the service advisers. So, I think that by the system that we’ve set up, they see it as something special, that it is something different and that they want to be a part of it. They know that they can come in and they can make, earn top dollar because we have available to them and if they work hard and they do their best, them I think that they understand that they could really have a career there. And we have the competition that we do every month which is absolutely a huge motivator because, I wanna win. I wanna win for myself, I wanna win for my dealer. And I’m very proud of the bulldogs that I have. As you know, I only want the white bulldogs and I don’t want to share them with anybody else. I think that it is unique and it works. We’ve seen that time and time again how it works. You put those processes in place and they maybe work, and they maybe thinking outside the box. I remember when you first came there and you said the first thing we do is hire more service advisers. And I couldn’t believe it, that we’re going to hire more service advisers because I don’t think we have the work to keep those service advisers busy. And I soon learned that yes we do, and we need to hire more technicians on top of it because we were just getting busier and busier because we took the time with the customers and we didn’t write 25 repair orders, we wrote maybe 15 repair orders. But when we have an average of hours per RO at four hours per RO from where we were at maybe two, because we’re doing more quality and sitting down with the customers than just having quantity and just running them through and running them through which didn’t do anything for the customer and didn’t do anything for our bottom line.

Chris:   You were mad at me when couple of our stores asked that we adopt our service process to the sales department and so they wanted us to start a competition with their managers and their sales staff to compete every month in a competition. And your first question was, how are they going to get a bulldog if you’re mad at me? But we made a different color bulldog and it’s different, right?

Vicky: That’s right. Those bulldogs are very important. Anybody that’s an SSS will tell you that those bulldogs are important. They represent all our hard work; they represent camaraderie with all of us in SSS that I frankly didn’t want to share.

Chris:   I understand. Those are very hard things for me. Tell me what the SSS means to you and how it has helped you?

Vicky: I remember the first time that we flew down to the SSS and the anticipation of meeting all the other service managers because I was nervous, very, very nervous. I didn’t know if I can live up to their expectations, I didn’t know if I can be as good as them because I’ve heard so many things about them. What their profitability has been, what their net gross has been. Never knew if could be as good as Carol, because Carol does an amazing job or Terry at Pacific BMW. I was really nervous but I was really looking forward to it because I knew that I could learn a lot from them. I think that’s where I gained a lot of my knowledge from my peers. It was exactly what I though it was going to be. The things that we learned from each other are invaluable. It is like a 20 group without the fluff. To be able to sit there and share financial statements and get ideas from each other on how we can do it better or how they’re getting this percentage of personnel or how it that they lower car expense was is this and freely being able to share that information has helped me grown so much. I talk about that all the time still, you know, the service advisers asks me, what do you do in all those meetings? And I talked about what we do down there and I don’t go a month where I don’t have to call one among them or they don’t call me. It either service customer of ours that we share, ones at my store, ones at their store. Or I call Carol and say, “Carol, I just get my personnel down on my specialist. What are you doing?” Or, when we talked to Natalie and she changed pay plans with the shop phones. I just adopted those pay plans.

Chris:   She came up with that great idea for shop phone pay plans.

Vicky: And to be able to share that and not be afraid of sharing that information that somebody will steal something or that somebody will be better than you, that’s what you hope when you want to share information. To be able to sit in a meeting and talk about something and you see one of the other managers that you admire get out their pad of paper and write that down, makes you feel really, really good. And to share when you’ve won, and thank goodness, I’ve had my share of winning, and be able to read our motto and for you to hand us our bulldog and I take it back to my workplace and proudly put it up on my filing cabinet, its nothing like I’ve experienced.

Chris:   Yeah, it’s really tightening the grip now, right?

Vicky: Very much so, we have some new people coming in and it’s always like “Oh, how are they going to fit in, what are they going to do, what they going to share. But it’s working out really well, and I think we really look out for each other. You just have that extra bond when you see them at conventions or meetings. It’s different from just seeing some other service managers because you knew that they’re the best.

Chris:   Yeah, another quite, humble ones in the back of the room, right? Trying to be the quite, humble ones, who is it?

Vicky: It’s so exciting; you want to share it with everybody.

Chris:   Yeah. It’s funny, sometimes in those conventions; it’s hard to tell who’s real and who’s not. You know people exaggerate the results.

Vicky: It is amazing being in those conventions and talking to other service managers and you realize, wow, I’m really doing a good job. Because they’re not making a profit, they don’t even know our hours per RO is, they don’t know what our effective labor rate is and they’re running the department, sometimes very large dealerships. But they don’t have a clue and yet, they don’t seem to want the help either. And you just kind of go, smart up a little bit, you know, maybe see somebody else from the SSS and you kind of go, “Okay, we’re doing okay.”

Chris:   It’s funny thing that the SSS is like a safe place to ask those questions that you don’t understand or you know, it’s a safe place to lance, where everybody is rooting for everybody.

Vicky: I agree, and sometimes it’s uncomfortable because call us on the carpet, you look on our expenses and you call us out on it and you have really strong conversations with us which only makes us better. It never is something that hurts; it always moves us towards our goal which is making us a better service department, a more profitable service department, keeping the customer coming back, which is our goal, which is where we make our money. We have loyal customers and as we do, we’re making the process better. You don’t hesitate to call us on it, in front of everybody or in private.

Chris:   I think that’s what makes the group so tight. You know, I use to hate going to 20 group meetings because you sit there and you looking at the 20 group composite and you know, at the time I was number one in the country, were selling cars and breaking sales records. We were like one or two of the 20 group overall profitability and we will just sit there and didn’t say anything and the guys that were talking were the guys losing money on the right hand side and they had everything figured out. They were the experts, they knew it all and it used to crack me up and nobody was doing how are you doing that? Explain to me how you get that. You know, how can I sell more cars? What’s your system? Nobody talked about that. It was just a big ego feast, so it’s really important to me that the Secret Service Society be about results and about the truth and not about how people feel. I think that’s the big thing, right? If people tell you how they feel, we’ll tell you what we know. We’re making mistakes constantly figuring our how to improve customer experience and how to run a better business.

Vicky: Like in the meeting today, when one of those service managers were talking about doing coupons or doing discounting and you know, there was not really a choice given to her and it was something that she was really struggling with and there were things that came back and some truths that were told that maybe weren’t that easy to listen to, but I think that it only helped everybody go forward. We’re in the event this weekend and we’re really proud because we’re at this top dog event. I’m the manager of the year, my sales manager for BMW is the sales manager of the year and my Mini sales manager is the sales manager of the year. So, we’re very proud and it’s just brought us closer together from service to sales because we have this common ground with each other with the SSS and the top dog events, and let me see your bulldog, what color is your bulldog. It’s very exciting and it’s not something that we’ve ever shared before.

Chris:   Do you have your speech prepared?

Vicky: No.

Chris:   So tell me, where to you think this industry is headed?

Vicky: I think that the industry is headed back to more personalization with our customers. I think because we have all these gadgets, we have all these means to communicate and I think that people are feeling like they’re not being connected enough to the people that are helping them in many industries, in the travel business, in the banking business and such. And I think that we have so much technology in our life and I think that it needs to come back down to the basics. My dad was a service manager in the 70s and what I tell him I do, he says “So, what are you telling me something new about? What are you telling me, you’re going out there and you’re greeting the customers; you’re getting to know the customers in the personal basis, so how is that new?” But it has evolved back to that. Before it was, let’s try this, let’s try that. It’s like people wanting to lose weight. God knows I know what that’s about. But it’s all down to the basic. You eat less, you exercise more, same thing with customer service. You have to be somebody who is personal with the customer and have to be genuine with the customers because they see all through the bullshit. They don’t any of that kind of stuff. They get it when they’re working on their daily lives. They want to come in and they want to know that you recognize them as a person and know you’re going to work them off, and you’re going to tell them what your car needs and you’re going to sell it to them in a fair price in a nice environment with exceptional service.

Chris:   I saw you today and you’re currently talking about tablets and digital inspection systems and all that?

Vicky: I think that is just an excuse because you could have the tablet, you could have all these fancy things in the service driveway, into this, into that, but if you’re not doing anything, if you’re not following through, that’s one of the things with you, is you make us consistent with follow through. A lot of consultants come in, they charge you a baloney fortune and then they want to change everything up instead of going back to the basics and then they leave. You never see them again. And then you go right back to what you’re doing before because that’s all you know. With your group, you come in, Nina comes in and Mario comes in and we have to be consistent of what we’re doing because the process works. And myself and Carol are good at that.

Chris:   What are you gonna do with the money?

Vicky: I have been with BMW since 1985 and I have never seen a BMW plant. And I’d like to put that towards a trip to Germany and love to see the Fulsome building, my heritage is German, I’d love to go to Germany. And one of the things I want to do is to be able to go to the factory and I’m really looking forward to that.

Chris:   Wow, that’s awesome. I didn’t know that. That’s really awesome. So, what would you say in closing to service managers out there about their quality of life and having fun and loving what they’re doing or be miserable and hating what they’re doing? Kind of coming in, grabbing the cat by the tail, getting dragged around all day and going home not knowing whether they won or lost, right? What would you say?

Vicky: I would say that if you keep going to work and doing it and try to find new ways to improve things that you know how to do it right, and you do it consistently, and then you are going to exceed, succeed and be successful. But if you’re always having people lead you in different directions, your general manager or your consultant and you don’t really have a feel for that and that or you don’t believe in it, you’re never going to progress. And the way that you all have us do it, again the process being successful and doing it single day with fun, were there more than we are with our families. We’re there with the service advisers, with these technicians, with the graders, the cashiers more that we are with our families. We need to be able to enjoy what we’re doing and enjoy the people that we work with. And I think that people don’t come to work wanting to do it wrong, I think that they come to work wanting to do it right and feel pride in their jobs and feel success. I think that with the systems we have setup now, they do. And they’re very happy of what they’re doing, and in playing the games.

Chris:   Yeah, well, thank you very much and congratulations, and I hope you have a good speech tomorrow for manager of the year.

Vicky: Thank you.

Video Transcription:

People are talking about the new stuff we have. It is the new stuff that everybody in the industry has been craving for. Our system isn’t like what most traders have where people are coming into the workshops, and then they leave and go back to their dealership and maybe have a couple of tours while they are motivated that will last a week or maybe a month.

We are creating an environment where service managers are trained. We are giving the resources they need because service managers seems to be the least trained person in the whole dealership, second to the service advisors as the least trained. Also, we’re creating an environment where they’re supported, were they’re given the resources to succeed and a timeline where they’re taking a chunk of time. This is not just “Hey, come in this workshop and learn everything you need to know in one workshop and then go home.” and then they left without the support.

We’re creating a culture and an environment in this industry where we are helping each other. We’re getting everybody to work together and everybody sharing ideas and I think that’s why we have come from zero to a hundred that fast. We have everybody. All of our clients are contributing to our system because are also sharing with everybody else. And so it’s that family atmosphere, we’re that village I guess.

Some training programs gives you the idealistic version of how service department should be, and then you go back into your dealership and says, “It’s so different here in my market, it snows all the time and I’m going metro market and it’s different than the guys out in the country.” We’re getting, “Hey here’s other guys that you know have the same exact environment you are and they’d been where you’re at.” You know we put them together and we help them through the steps and help them succeed and it happens very quickly.

Our internal motto in our company is 90 days to your best month ever. We just finished in Chicago dealerships, we have increased their customer pay sales dramatically, and their net grows dramatically. I mean the results, they have a record month, and the best month they ever had. And I mean 10 years of best profit they ever had all in 90 days by implementing our system.

But I think that if you went to a workshop, you wouldn’t be able to get that. I mean you need the support of the community in order to move that fast and to get results that fast. So, your company doesn’t just commend and give all this numbers and point out the mistakes and the wrongs and then leave.

No. You are there for the long haul.

We surround the dealers and the managers with other managers that have been working with other managers that are now performing high level. We create a community where we share with each other and pushing and encouraging each other because it is being in management. The higher up the ladder you go in our industry the lonelier it is and so you need to surround yourself with talents that will give you honest feedback but will also encourage you and say, “Hey, I’ve been there.”

I think it’s the twelfth step in thinking courage, I could be wrong in number but it’s about the mastermind. The key to our success is that we create a community that everybody is masterminding together and helping each other and encouraging each other.
When you started in this auto service industry, you were right at the bottom. You were washing cars yourself, if anybody can say, “I know what you’re feeling” you can do that. That’s a big advantage. I think with our company, everybody that works for me is from the service side of the business and I think for a long time, service and fixed ops is the afterthought in the industry. A lot of guys that couldn’t were trainers and consultants that couldn’t make it on the sales side.

You have really talented trainers in the sale side that might think they couldn’t compete with the sales force and just say, “Oh, we’ll train service.” But what we see from the feedback that we’re constantly getting from dealership are like “Wow, your training really is great!” You really get the service side because they take sales training and then they pop it over the top of advisor training. But it really doesn’t work. You can’t teach a service advisor how to close a customer. It’s a completely different transaction.

Our industry is completely about relationships. And the game is intentionally in getting the customers to comeback over and over again. So, when you see trainers saying, “Hey, you know you going to practice your closes,” really, it’s the wrong approach. And people in the industry, in this service industry get that. They understand that because if you find yourself, if you can imagine you taking your car for service and the service advisor suggests that you do a service, let’s say a service on alignment to prevent tire wear or something and you go, “I’d like to think about that.” And then they go on to some sort of close that inquires on what you want to think about. And then ask you five times and then call you later on and ask you again. When you come to pick up the car they would ask you again.

That’s the kind of training out there and that it’s all about, “Hey, if they are going to ask you five times, you’re going to be the lucky ones in a while. But that isn’t what consumers want. The new consumer is more educated and they understand relationships. They don’t want to be sold and they don’t want to be pushed into anything and they have really good BS detector. They understand when they are being pushed and when they’re being sold.

When someone wants to get their car service, they have the fear that they are going to be BS. They are going to be talked into all of these extras, all of these things that they don’t want to pay for. Let’s be honest, most people don’t want to spend on things especially if it’s pushed in your face. So, there really needs to be a relationship on trust. Customers can feel and say “I trust you, you trust me I can feel that your comfortable and not screwing me.”

And you can feel it right away, right? You can feel when you drive in that tension, that like you’re a deer that you can feel the hunter is hunting you down.

You know there’s this package for $499, or this package is $599 and I don’t even know what that is and why I need that. So, you have to let customers know that and make sure that it’s a little bit of a softer blow to a customer.

Unfortunately in our industry, that worked 10 years ago because the service advisor weren’t doing anything. So, if you think that it is better to ask five times than not ask you at all, if you’re going to ask five times you’re going to sell more, but you are not going to retain the customer and get them to come back. So, what we have in this industry is what we have during the recession. We didn’t sell as many new cars and there is less cars coming in to the service department and your traffic is down and will be through by end of this year and into the beginning of next year. So, if you’re not retaining your customers and you are not creating relationships, you do not only fail to get back for service but you’ll also lose them in the sales department because they’re going to go for another brand.

I would think that during this time where there is a recession, people are probably trying to hold on unto their cars a lot longer and that is where service is even more important. They have to maintain if they are going to hold on to it for a while. And I’m going to a lot of friends that aren’t loyal to a brand anymore and it’s odd. It’s like for the longest time since my grandfather bought Ford and save his money and every 3 or 4 years he would go down and buy another Ford and then pay cash for it. The consumer now, most of the time are leasing or financing. They don’t own a car; they don’t have the same connection to what my grandfather had because he thought that he was really protecting his investment when he maintained the car.

Now, leasing or the financing for years and for them, the car now is almost disposable. You have to understand that dynamic creates a system in your dealership while you’re retaining the customers and creating those relationships. Otherwise, you’re going to lose them to another brand because they will just try other brands as they go. Our friends they had a Ford and planning the next time to get a Mercedes and then Lexus and then a BMW. They just going to jump around and have no loyalty and no service advisor ever created a connection with them that will make them feel safe in a relationship that they would want to go back there.

As a customer myself, it doesn’t matter what industry you’re in or what level you could be at, you could be selling lemonade on the corner. People want customer service and they want to be spoken to like a human and have a solid relationship with that person. So I think you’re headed for the money there.

That’s what all of our system and why they’re saying in the industry that we have a new stuff that everybody wants and our systems create an environment for the customer that they graded instantly. When they come in, within the three seconds of coming in, they’re being graded and have a plan for them that will take away all of their worries. When you take away all of the customer’s worse worries and decision making, they don’t have to wonder when they are standing at their car door like “I don’t know if I find an advisor or are they going to come out.”

When you create that environment, it’s their worries that you have to take away. You have to create an environment where you grade them instantly and tell them what the plan is and give them instructions but not in a bossy way. But giving instructions in a way that will take away their worry like “This what’s going to happen,” and make those things to happen.

The service advisor needs to come out into the customer at the car and then when they come out to the car, you don’t want to approach the customer with, “What brings you in today?” nor “Did you come with an appointment?” It’s more like, “Hey, what did you do in this weekend?” or “What are your plans today?” or “Where you headed?” In our industry, all manufactures will survey customers for customer’s satisfaction after the fact. And when service advisors get bad ones they will complain, “Oh, this customer gave me 50 or they gave me 3 instead of a hundred.” And I’ll ask him, “Let me ask you a question, where does your customer works?” and they like, “I don’t know?” or “How many kids does the customer have?” or you know, “What are their hobbies?” the advisor would say, “I don’t know and it’s not about the car.” But it’s what everybody needs to understand.

So let’s say if people feel safe, they spend money.

We have a thing in the industry, it happens when all this public company is running dealerships like Best Buy. And so customers are just like commodities to them and they just want a market. That’s all they want, they don’t care about comfort because it’s a public company and comfort is not different from your family, or a dealership that is focused in profitability or the return on their investment. When you’re using Wall Street money, you don’t have to run things as tight and they are more worried about consistency than their results.

So, what happens when you’re competing with that as a family in a dealership is that, if you don’t have another approach to that or another way in creating a relationship with customers, you are just competing on price and cars just as commodities and anybody can go buy a Ford anywhere. They can shop on the internet and get the Rolls price and that’s where they going to buy. So you want to make it about the relationship and not about the price.

One of the metrics that shows the stability of a business organization is its capacity to deal with the changes of technology, business models, marketing practices and other factors as time goes by. Commonly, the problem in providing or developing a solution for business transformation relies on the inability of the decision makers to comprehend and accommodate innovative ideas especially for auto business. Other dilemmas include the following:

The right solution is not always the best answer to the problem. Business transformation is a journey. It is an endless cycle where problems keep arising and at some given point of time, changes are inevitable. So if technology is introduced into the auto industry, this doesn’t necessarily mean that you need to adapt it right away. You first need to consider your customers’ demand for this new technology and to consider if your business structure will benefit from it; otherwise, you don’t need to do it right away.

Make the decision maker understand and accept your innovative ideas. Explanation is everything. However, you need to support your new idea with details and statistics that will greatly help explain what you are proposing. Substantial information from the latest trend and innovation will help you convince your bosses that in fact the auto business is up for a change.

Generally, auto business will reap profits if the organizations are taking initiatives that incorporate holistic approach of sustainability. These approaches might require massive changes on the business structure and will require setting of new goals, corporate culture and work attitude. Changes within an organization shall need alteration on the mindset of employees, stakeholders and organizational leaders.

Of course, it is a fact that auto business transformation is a profound significant change. Mostly, information technology is the primary factor that brings changes to business conducts. It brings significant effects to business operations like obsolescence of skills and knowledge that leads to re-organizations of functions and jobs within the organization.

Simultaneously, business transformation has both negative and positive effects. For one, mobile communication devices as well as the growing dependency with the Internet allow greater flexibility but provide challenges to workers in separating their working hours from personal time.

In another note, software solutions allow workers in auto businesses to create complex reports that ultimately add to business value. While in the negative side, the less physical storage space requirement poses greater risks for hackers which in turn will require jobs or functions that protect these data. Thus, from simple filing to online storage, the job has evolved but the requirement remains, protect company sensitive data at all cost.

The popularity of automated operation has presented huge benefits. It enables workers across all levels of the organization to share information and collaborate without any geographic constraints. This also opens the door for communicating with co-workers even if they are located elsewhere in the world.

Meanwhile, attracting, serving, reaching and engaging clients from all over the world becomes easier. For one, you can book a client for an auto service by simply using the internet. You can make constant reminders for the next service checkup or offer services to prospective clients with less time and effort.

Finally, experts in the field of information technology see that business transformation that are driven by this aspect will be long-term and remain strong even at times of economic slowdown. There will always be technological innovations to be developed. So, if you intend to stay profitable in auto business, then keep a keen eye for transformations that may affect your industry.

Where do you see the future of fixed op’s going?

I think it’s a lot like in the computer industry, where you had Microsoft that dominated the market for the longest time. And because of the new technology, everybody had it and you had to have it but I don’t know if you have experienced it years ago that you’d buy. You know I’m on the road and I’d buy a sony viao every couple of years, sometimes every year because it’s almost disposable.

It’s hard to get new brand laptop and you’d try to print with your printer and it wouldn’t work so called the 1-800 numbers, right? And you get somebody in India and say it’s Microsoft. And then he didn’t get Microsoft on the phone and says its Lex Marker HP partner, and you’d be caught within that gap and then along comes Apple. They kind of took away all that.

They took away all the worry and the decision making and then you walked up into the genius bar and then there’s some cool kid there who knows more about computer there is. You chat with him and you’ll know more than you’ll ever know and he just fixes it. And that’s it; you don’t have the same issues as you did with PC. Apple has been really smart and been called the post PC era now, just kind of minimized any idea of PC’s value. This is not about whether PC is any better than Apple. It’s about the customer experience and that’s what’s going to change in fixed op’s “it’s the customer’s experience.”

We’ll no longer be able to compete in this industry with a sub par customer service in fixed ops. The customer needs to be able to come in, they need to trust us, we need to really take good care of them and they need to experience that when they go, they’ll say, “Hey I want to go back to that dealership. I feel like a part of something, I feel that they care about me and it was a very easy experienced for me. It wasn’t a hard experience.” It wasn’t like you know the rate into going a car dealership when customer is survey, they rate going into a car dealership with going to the dentist. And it can’t be like that.

You need to go to the genius part; I love it to the genius part.

It is fun, I mean here in Santa Monica I needed something at the Apple store last night and I went there and the place is packed. I mean there’s energy and it is fun and so many wanted to talk to me and I tell them what I needed. They grab it and they hand it to me and they swipe my card and they email me my receipt. And it’s very easy. And the thing that the industry is craving now is the fixed ops. The craving, the technology and the solution. The misfire has vanished and everybody is signing off for all this technology. They don’t have the basic system that comes in training in place so that the technology is enhancement. The technology becomes just another layer of advancement for the customer.

So you want somebody who’s going to come out and ……….. Hey, how are you George? Good to see you again. Let’s go and get this fixed. As simple as that.

So our system has a lot of times going to big deal groups and so we get rid of all the technology, set it to the side and do the basics. Arm with paper and we’ll do really good at that and add in the technology so it’s an enhancement. If we don’t have the system and the training and the consistency in place, then the technology just becomes a problem. And I understand why our industry is craving for that technology. However, you have to have your basic instructions systems right in the beginning in order for that technology to help you. So, technology isn’t always the answer although technology is valuable industry. The customer experience is taking away customer’s worry and is the decision making in the process. It is the key to success.

Most service managers do not know how to supervise, train and keep track of the performance of their sales personnel. You need to accomplish all this tasks to be able to use the best of your sales force sales effectiveness.

How to keep track on your sales people:  Maintaining consistent and uniform process, benchmarking and monitoring all sales activities during the sales process. Neglecting any of these activities might lead to failure.

Most service managers don’t have the skills in prospecting and target marketing. Hence, most of their sales people’s time is wasted focusing on customers who are not interested in buying.

How to concentrate on possible buyers: Set demographic, attitude and situational standards for the prospects that are most probable to buy. Booked business can be used as basis to develop criteria.

Most service managers think that salespersons must be able to persuade prospects to buy. Hence, make their salespersons try harder to convince prospects in buying even if they are merely interested. It doesn’t occur to them that there is nothing their salespersons can do that will affect the decision of prospects if they are not willing.

How to put a stop at losing in “Persuasion Game”:  Quit the game entirely, nobody wins consistently. You should insist that your sales persons treat prospects with respect and trust, using an actual sales process, and will quit all methods of persuasions, manipulation and false urgency.

Most service managers do not understand how human mind work, how it acknowledges or rejects information. Salespeople distinctively throw up features and benefits in style of industry lingo.

How to communicate properly with your prospect: Use more simple words that prospects can easily understand. They will feel more motivation by simply listening to information that they can absorb and retain. Eventually they will be actively participating in the sales process.

Most service managers think that prospects rely on reason for their buying decision. And if it’s true, enlisting in logic courses could be the way to succeed in sales.

How to truly get straight to prospects: Involve prospects emotionally.

So, how will you dramatically increase your sales performance? By developing a uniformly structured, effective and measurable selling process that maximizes sales process and thus increasing the chance of closing the sale.

Majority of the service advisors in the field understands their role. But with the waning of profits in dealership, we are increasingly dependent on our service advisors to generate sales more than ever. Another thing that I learned while doing service clinics with our clients is that technicians are far better at doing sales than most of our advisors.

We just finished a mini cooper clinic during the weekend, and we make a sale of $32,000 worth of labor and customer paid parts in just one day. We expect to get that much work again within the next several months. While conducting car doctor service clinics, one thing becomes very obvious to everybody, it is very easy for a technician to make a sale. And the reason is that, the technician is basically the one who shows the customers what needs to be done with their car and nothing more. And the transaction usually goes something this way…

While a customer in the waiting room waits patiently, an automotive technician walks in and talks with the client. He will then bring them into the shop and will talk about a 32-point visual examination with the client standing near their car. They won’t be using any sales techniques, just show the client the car and pointing out the worn and torn areas like cracked belts and leaks in their car.
Usually a technician makes a bigger sale than any sales advisor, and that’s because of their much closer relationship with the customer. The technician is more likely to make an impression and develop trust between them.

Customers live in a totally different environment and most likely have never popped the hood or have never seen their cars’ underside. Their last visit with the technician and all the work done will be useless if a customer see a cracked belt or their vehicle leaking oil. They would want it to be repaired or replace and will need another trip, most probably to another dealer. Nothing can persuade the customer more for a comprehensive check up of their car than the technician working on it.

Service advisors learn many things from a technician selling more by just showing their clients what is best for their car. The technician was able to present two powerful things that go together, opportunity and sales. And that’s the service advisor’s job, creating sales and not talking their clients to save on service or products. Make customers eager of your services and keep technicians at their respective work place.

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