3 Reasons Your Service Advisors Aren't Performing Well.

I'm new to the automotive industry, having only been working in it for 4 months. 

But what I've personally witnessed in that short time has shown me that the majority of Service Advisors are not doing their jobs properly.  

If you currently believe that you have advisors like this, there are a number of reasons that I'm going to cover in this post. 

I'm also going to provide solutions that will help you and your advisors change things for the better so they become high-performing employees and have a rewarding career.

And also make your service department a lot more money!

With that said, let's get started.

Why Must We Address This Topic?

Because if your advisors aren't performing well ....

1. Your dealership's potential for profits is going to be negatively affected in a big way. 
2. Your customer satisfaction and retention is going to suffer.
3. You're going to have highly unengaged service advisors and your turn over will be high.

And you don't want any of those problems, do you!

Why Your Service Advisors Are Not Performing Well!

How do your Service Advisors feel about selling preventive maintenance?

Reason #1: They don't believe in preventive maintenance. 

Believe it or not, there are service advisors who don't believe in preventive maintenance and they're happy to let you know that, in which case you've hired a service writer and not an advisor. 

Translation: You've hired the wrong person ... and I feel for you. 

That's because the difference between a service writer and an advisor is that a "writer" simply writes the customer's concerns on a repair order and gives it to a technician. 

But an "advisor" does more than that. 

She or he also walks around the vehicle with the customer, INFORMS them of any OBVIOUS service needs and RECOMMENDS a maintenance package to the customer based on the odometer reading. 

In short, a writer writes, while an advisor SELLS! 

Solution: When you're interviewing people for the role of a service advisor in your dealership, you MUST be clear on how they feel about selling preventive maintenance.

The way to do that is simple. Just ask: 

Service Manager: "How do you feel about selling preventive maintenance?"

Interviewee: "I don't believe in preventive maintenance. I think it's a complete rip-off."

Service Manager: "I wish you all the best, but you're not going to fit in here. Thanks for coming in." 

Yep, it's that simple. It all starts during the interview process with finding out how the interviewees feel about selling, and about preventive maintenance. 

Reason #2: They believe in preventive maintenance, but they wouldn't be able to sell bananas to a troop of monkeys. 

Do you have Service Advisors who couldn't sell bananas to a troop of monkeys?

So imagine that all of your service advisors are strong proponents of preventive maintenance but they have no selling skills. 

All is not lost. 

Solution: During the interview process you MUST find out if the interviewee has a PROVEN track record of successfully selling preventive maintenance. 

If she does, YAHOO! You've found a winner. 

If she doesn't, what then?

You have two choices. 

1) Don't hire her.

2) Find out how strong her WILL is for learning to sell. If she's high on the WILL scale, you may want to hire that person and immediately begin training and coaching her to improve her selling skills. 

KEY POINT: A person's attitude towards selling is far more important than technical knowledge and abilities. There are lots of technicians turned service advisors, who can tell your customers every detail about their vehicles until your customers eyeballs roll back inside their heads, but couldn't sell them an oil change. 

Reason #3: Because you've got a service manager who is more focused on tasks - doing stuff like shuffling paper, preparing reports, etc. - than he or she is on people. 

How much time does your Service Manager spend shuffling paper compared to developing his or her people?

In service departments where success is high, meaning ...

• there is a lot of money being made through sales of preventive maintenance.
• customer satisfaction and retention is also high because customers are extremely well cared for and service is exceptional. 

... are managers who really care about the training and development of their team members.

These types of managers: 

• have personally had outstanding success in sales. 
• are lifelong learners who continually pursue self-development.
• understand the business and have real business sense.
• have learned effective coaching skills. 
• schedule time every week to work with, train, and coach their team members.

If you're one of these managers, kudos to you. Well done!

Unfortunately, based on what I've observed in our market over the last four months, these types of managers are few and far between. 

Managers must learn to lead, and leading is not the same as managing. 

Tasks are managed. 

People are led.

And the best way to lead people is through: 

1. example 
2. great communication
3. training
4. coaching

And leaders who coach their people "see personal involvement in the development of talent as an essential activity for business success." (source)

Summing Up

• Only hire people who believe in preventive maintenance and have the will to sell or at least to learn to excel at sales.
• Service department managers must be more focused on people than tasks. They must lead through example, communication, training and COACHING.

Coaching is the most neglected, yet single most important activity people leaders should be regularly engaged in with their team members to achieve sales success. 

We want to help. 

If anything in this post resonates with you as a dealer General Manager, Fixed Ops or Service Department Manager, please reach out to me. 

Phone me direct: +1 204 770-9285 

Email. mike@emissionimpossible.com

LinkedIn Message: 

https://www.linkedin.com/in/mikeallisoncoach/

I will help you and your teams to: 

► Massively Increase Your Parts & Service Gross Profit. 
► Train & Coach Your Service Advisors To Drive Retail Sales.
► Help You To Significantly Improve Your Current Business By Driving More Traffic To Your Service Departments & Creating Customers For Life.

"Your positive action combined with positive thinking results in success."