0:00
/
0:00
Feeling Burnout? Hear How to Manage It and the Expectations of Customers in Auto Repair
Feeling Burnout? Hear How to Manage It and the Expectations of Customers in Auto Repair
0:00
0:00
0:00
0:00
About this episode
Burnout in the auto repair industry is a pressing issue, and this episode dives deep into managing expectations for both technicians and customers. Hosts Jimmy Lee and Mark Sewell share their experiences and insights on advocating for vehicle health while navigating customer relationships. They discuss the importance of setting clear expectations, the emotional toll on service advisors, and the need for effective communication. The conversation also touches on the balance between customer satisfaction and maintaining professional standards in repairs.
Topics:
burnout management
customer expectations
advocating for vehicle health
communication strategies
service advisor challenges
empathy in customer service
digital vehicle inspections
setting clear expectations
financial discussions with customers
repair standards
Cars:
Byd Seal
Chevrolet Equinox
Chevrolet Sonic
Ford F-150
Kia Soul
Plymouth Prowler
Pontiac Sunfire
Tesla Model 3
Toyota Corolla
Toyota Supra
Like the show? Show your support by using our sponsors.
Promotive can help you find your dream job. Touch HERE to see open jobs.
Need to update your shop systems and software? Try Tekmetric HERE
Register NOW for Tekmetric's Tektonic Conference coming up HERE
Find The Institute for Automotive Business Excellence
Jimmy Lea and Mark Sewell are from the Institute for Automotive Business Excellence. Mark emphasizes the importance of setting clear expectations with customers to prevent dissatisfaction and reduce advisors' stress. The discussion further highlights the significance of maintaining personal relationships in customer service rather than relying solely on technology.
00:00 Career journey from demos to coaching and training.
06:34 Successful salesman became corporate trainer, teaching fundamentals.
13:46 Trying to reduce costs, can't understand why.
17:26 Technical team ensures tire specifications aren't modified.
24:30 Technician advocates for durable, cost-effective car repairs.
28:25 People enjoy activities without understanding mechanics.
35:19 Production incentives fail due to inadequate solutions.
41:25 Decide between fixing the car long-term or short-term.
43:32 Lack of empathy due to no prior consultation.
48:41 Industry grind deters shop owners' children's involvement.
52:12 Set code allows advisors and technicians autonomy.
01:02:11 Ensure everyone is clear about the next steps.
01:02:42 Avoid waiting; review and confirm process details.
01:08:32 Engagement requires active communication, not passive waiting.
01:15:14 Jimmy helps with objection-handling techniques.
01:19:07 Comment, share, and download podcast weekly, thanks.
Follow/Subscribe to the show on social media!
TikTok - https://www.tiktok.com/@jeffcompton7
YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/@TheJadedMechanic
Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100091347564232
Filter:
|
Technical
Too Afraid to Ask
Car
Plymouth Prowler
"... the Chrysler reference. They're bringing me in a prowler on a Saturday that has a flat tire. And they've a..."
Car
Chevrolet Equinox
"...ke somebody might come in and say, I have a Chevy Equinox or I have a Chevy with an ecotec in it. Right. An..."
Car
Kia Soul
"... I loved. I literally had a lady buy a little Kia soul with a knocking engine. And the Kias have that Wa..."
Car
Toyota Corolla
"...Davidson at home that, like, I drive a crappy old Corolla. But that Harley is where I have my fire for my p..."
Car
Pontiac Sunfire
"...nd way back, drove away in a brand new shiny 2002 Sunfire. She had the car three days and it wouldn't start..."
Car
Byd Seal
"...brakes on your truck, and we notice that the rear seal is starting to leak. Okay, what does that mean? W..."
Car
Toyota A90
"I get it. I get what? And I talk to shops. Oh my. I'm. My DVIS. I'm a 90% approval rate on all my DVI's. All I do is just send the DVI. Boop. Boop, boop."
Career journey from demos to coaching and training.
Successful salesman became corporate trainer, teaching fundamentals.
Trying to reduce costs, can't understand why.
Technical team ensures tire specifications aren't modified.
Technician advocates for durable, cost-effective car repairs.
People enjoy activities without understanding mechanics.
Production incentives fail due to inadequate solutions.
Decide between fixing the car long-term or short-term.
Lack of empathy due to no prior consultation.
Industry grind deters shop owners' children's involvement.
Set code allows advisors and technicians autonomy.
Ensure everyone is clear about the next steps.
Avoid waiting; review and confirm process details.
Engagement requires active communication, not passive waiting.
Jimmy helps with objection-handling techniques.
Comment, share, and download podcast weekly, thanks.
Select text to request an explanation
When you have a customer that comes in and says, hey, you know, let me. Let me modify that in some way, what would you tell them? No, it's just the same thing that your doctor would say when you say, hey, can I come in with the. Some sticks and some electrical tape? No.
Welcome back to another exciting episode of the Jaded Mechanic podcast. And I have two new friends with me. Jimmy Lee from the Institute and Mark Sewell from the Institute for Automotive Business Excellence. Jimmy, we were just admiring your absolutely beautiful coat, which, unfortunately, we don't have camera on today, but it is fantastic. And Mark is well dressed, too, so.
I'll never look as good as Jimmy.
Yeah, yeah. I was just saying I paid him a. Jimmy a compliment. I said I absolutely hesitated. Adore his fashion sense. Like, it is just. It's. It's refreshing to see.
It really is. I don't mean any disrespect on that. I'm not trying to make fun. Please don't take it like that.
Don't take it that way. I thank you very much.
Yeah, I hope.
I hope I still stand on that platform tomorrow when you see the jacket I have for tomorrow.
Yeah, Jimmy's got a brand.
Well, that's. And that's. Honestly, that's what it's about. Right. And so for me, with this thing now, this podcast, right, when I'm seeing my logo around and people are like. I'm realizing then it's like, yeah, this my mother. So my mother's like, you're going to shave that beard off before you go to asda. And I'm like, do you know, many people wouldn't recognize me if I shorten this beard up?
All of them.
Yeah. Would not recognize.
No, not at all. Yeah.
Yeah.
So it's your calling card.
Yep. So it keeps going a little bit more gray, but. So you guys, people that are not familiar, what's the Institute for Automotive Business Excellence?
We are a company that is put together primarily to help small businesses, auto shops, to build a better business, make better profits, so that way they can support everybody inside the business, ultimately making a better life for everybody that's in the business as well as the customers as well. I mean, our customers mean everything to us. And at the Institute, we see your customers, the shops, as our customers, too. And so really, it's a better life, better business and better industry. And better industry. That's really what we're here to do, is help out the industry itself.
Yeah, that's. I mean, I'm so blessed to be put in the platform that Luke has provided for me. Right. And everybody, David, everyone, that's just like. Because, I mean, I've, I've. People that know me know how much I love this industry. But I, man, it was a fickle mistress for me for a long, long time. Like I did, I was frustrated, I was burnt out.
Like I was ready to. I was jaded. Like I told Lucas, I was jaded. I was ready to quit. I try. I went and did the interviews at the Goodyear tire plant and I was going to go in there and fix their machinery. I didn't want to touch cars anymore. I was so fed up now, you guys, because.
So I don't know your backstory too well. Jimmy, how did you get into like this line of work, this kind of particular, you know what I said? Business coaching.
Yeah. Well, it's quite interesting. The whole journey of getting into the automotive industry is that I lost a bet.
Really?
Yeah. So way back in the day, I was working at a call tracking company and I did a demo for a company and the person said, you know, I really appreciate your passion, I appreciate your presentation. I'm not going to buy from you, but I want you to come work for me. And that was Auto Vitals. So I started working at Auto Vitals, was there for four years. Digital vehicle inspections. That was a drum I pounded for four years, getting everybody on board with this idea concept. I'd been to the future, come back to tell you all about it, and then went to Kukui for five and a half years and about a year and a half ago made a decision to get into the coaching and training side.
So for the institute, I'm in charge of the lead generation, marketing and sales.
Yeah. And mark you, what's your day to day? What's your kind of. How did you wind up here? Like you're more. Like we said before return on the air, you kind of, you've trained 4,000 at least service advisors in your day. So you obviously at one point you wore that hat.
Right, right. For sure. I started off, you know, as the, as, as a technician in the shop, you know, had, had broom pusher and every now and then they let me fix a car and worked my way up through it. And finally I was working at a company. There were nine locations. It was a tire company. We did mostly mechanical repair, but we looked like a tire shop. And the shop owner, the guy that actually owned the company, I never met him, but I regularly sold my own jobs because back in the day, service advisors were technicians.
That's where technicians went to go to die. And so my service advisor, my service manager, was this old dude that was drunk. And I'm all the time, for sure drunk, had a big old stogie, didn't want to talk to anybody about anything with anything computers or fuel injection or any of that. And so as it came to selling any of that type of work, I would just go sell it myself because it was easier.
Right.
The owner of the company happened to see me do that. They needed a service advisor at another one of the locations. He had an exciting opportunity for me. Little did I know I was jumping into a sea of pain and misery at first, especially because I didn't know anything about it. I was good at fixing things. I wasn't good at talking to people.
Yeah.
And so we were open six days, but we worked five. And so I worked six. Going to any shop that would teach me about being a service advisor. I spent a year floundering around, learning just how to talk to people, how to, you know, what. What things I could do. I learned from everybody that I could. And I got a style. I ultimately became pretty good.
I was their number one salesman. I went through their company and ultimately became their corporate trainer. Wrote a bunch of training programs, and ultimately some of that stuff I still teach today. And so, I mean, it's really cool. Cause a lot of the concepts are still the same concepts, right? People buy from people, and people buy from people that tell them the truth and show them some value and ultimately ask them to buy. And so that's what we do with service advisors. So that's a really short story for everything, but that's about where I came from, so.
And you're. You're developing the concept of a dvi, Jimmy?
Yep.
For somebody that hadn't actually been like, a tech.
Yeah. I did not grow up in a shop.
How did that come to you? That it was just like, something that you so got so far behind. What. What's the trigger that made it like, this makes sense to me.
Do you know? I have never told this story. I took the iPad. I was not even working for autovitals. I took the iPad and I went over to my mechanic in St. George, Utah. I said, jonathan, I need you to check this out. Is this real? Is this legit? Do I bet my family's future on this app that this crazy guy is trying to show me about that? Like, is this a real thing? And he looked at it for about a week, and he came back and he says, yeah, this is legit. This is.
This is awesome. He says, I was going to pay a guy to create an app for me for $30,000 to do what this app does. I was like, well, dang. All right. Sold, by the way, for 150 bucks a month, you can have this app. That's it? Oh, yeah. Yeah, that's it. Oh, man.
Okay. So I knew that as the public. I'm a public. I'm a buyer.
Right.
I'm a car driver.
Yep.
I'm your customer.
Yep.
I knew what I wanted to see and how I wanted to be treated. And if I could help shops to adopt that same concept, that same idea to form of communication to me, if they could. If they could communicate with me, then they could communicate with Mark or they could communicate with Lucas or with David or any.
Yeah.
Soccer mom, professional mom, soccer dad, professional dad. It doesn't matter.
Right.
When you show somebody something that's worn, torn, frayed, or broken, they can see it.
Yeah.
Yes, I can. I understand what you're showing me now, but if you give me a list, laundry list. That's all I see. Grocery list. That's all I see. All I hear is, wow, wow.
Wah, wah, wah, wah, wah.
$2,000.
Yep.
What? Wait, wait, wait, wait. What did you want to do for $2,000? So if you show. It speaks a thousand words. You've heard that often. A picture speaks a thousand words, video speaks a million or so. Yeah, it speaks $1,000. When you show somebody, you educate them, they make better decisions. Somebody who's educated makes better decisions than someone who is operating either out of ignorance or fear.
So if I am educated and you've helped me to understand what I'm looking at, and I'm all in fear.
Fear, I think, is the big thing that I'm running into when I see a lot of advisors that are failing. You know what I mean?
I think it's that the service advisors operating out of fear, so that a service advisor has a scarcity mindset.
Both wants to either avoid the difficult conversations or the emotional discounting that we see happen sometimes where it's like I am too well versed in that person's plight, what they're going through. And it's always weighing in the back of my head about how, like, I'm holding up my wallet here.
Yeah.
How do I keep as much of that in their wallet as possible?
Yeah. That's what the service advisor is thinking. So they're selling out of their own front pocket. And, you know, I've traveled all across North America, visited Shops all across North America. The best advisors are the ones that stop selling out of their own pocket. Yeah, I was talking to my own shop in St. George, Utah. I took my car in to get a.
An alignment because I just bought all new tires, brought it in to get an alignment, and the advisor's like, oh, man. You know, our alignments are usually 160 bucks, but on your car it's $300. And I said, great, good. When can you have it done right? And he's like, oh, well, I don't know. Let me see if I can get you a discount or something.
No, that.
I didn't even ask for that. I want to know when you can get it done.
Yep.
Anyways, long story short, they couldn't do it. They had to. The whole front end bushings were gone. The whole control arm, sway bars, everything had to be replaced because it was all gone. So $2,300 later, I did get my car back, and it took about a week.
You know, it's funny, I joke. Recently, I've become an adult. I'm nearly 50 years old, and I just now became a functioning member. I'm no longer on that side of the repair desk, of the service desk, because over the summer here, I was working with a group of shops, and I drove there because it was close enough to my house. I drove there and I had this wicked vibration at 90 miles an hour because that's how fast I drive in my truck. Well, it's fine. Yeah, yeah.
No, I'm not judging. I've been that fast.
And so I was like, well, I probably need a wheel balance.
I.
And so I took it in and I said, you know, I'm training you guys. Why don't you balance my tires, by the way, Change the oil, go through, whatever. And they performed an inspection on my vehicle, and they told me I needed brakes, and so I had them do it. So I'm an adult now because I paid somebody else to do something as simple on my car's brakes.
Right.
And. And what's. You know what's funny, Jimmy? It was the same thing. Like, I went to go to pay for it at the end, and one of the young gentlemen that I was training for the day, like, he had to go and finish out his day checking out customers. And so he was checking out customers, like, oh, Mark, let me get you a discount. And he gave me a $50 discount for nothing. And I said, where did that discount come? Like, I'm yelling at him at the.
Front desk, don't you Dare.
Like, why are you. Why? That was my question. Why? The store manager spins his head around and he's like, but it's a fair.
It's a fair question.
Right?
Right. Like it's the same as you. Like, you take that in there, it's like the immediate response is, ooh, Normally, like, we can do this for a buck fifty. It's gonna be twice as much for you. I want to see how I can get yours closer to 150. And me as the tech who's been to tech for 20 some years, incentivize pay. A lot of the time I look at it and go, I can't get my head into that headspace. Why you want to make it closer to that? Yeah, like profits.
Not a dirty word. No, like what you have already, you're like, sweet. 300 bucks. Could be 400 bucks. I just need to know when I can get it done. Let's get it done. And they're already in their head going, 300 is not going to. Like, that's going to be a tough sell.
That's the part that I always, when I say about fear. Well, it's a tough sell, man. It's not that tough. No, it really is not.
You know what it is, is not really understanding value.
Yes.
And so that's. It's really. It's less about fear. We always say it's fear.
We do.
I mean, that's the easiest go to word that we use. And it is essentially somebody's afraid to go to do it. But the reason why, the underlying reason is that they don't understand the value of what it is that they're doing. On Jimmy's car, he's got a Tesla. Yeah, Like, I mean, that's right. It's a Tesla, right?
Model 3.
Yeah.
Yeah. So, I mean, of course, yeah, it's going to cost more. Why? Because it's a Tesla.
That's right.
All the parts are made out of unicorn tears.
That's right, they are.
I mean, it's freshly ground and squeezed. And so the. But everything about it is just like that. And what it is is that nobody took the time for that advisor to understand this is the value of what you're doing. When we work on Tesla vehicles, we have to go direct to the manufacturer. Because they don't just give it out. No, they don't give out that information. So we have to come up with that information.
And there's some level of time that goes into figuring out whatever that information. Even for something as simple as alignment, specs Right alignment specs. So the, so it should be that on top of that too. You drive a Tesla, you should pay more. Sorry. Well, it's, that's what it is.
It's not necessarily so much like as me as a technician always set the back and kept my mouth shut about necessarily. We always looked at it as like, okay, so there, I'll go to the Chrysler reference. They're bringing me in a prowler on a Saturday that has a flat tire. And they've already been to two other tire stores that can put the tire on, but they want the tire plugged. True story. Happened. Right? And we're like looking at this tire and the guy, so he walks over and well, this is a Z rated tire, sir. I'm not really even supposed to plug this tire.
And I tell you that if I do plug this tire, I'm actually supposed to take a grinder and grind the Z speed rating off the tire because it is no longer a Z rated tire. That guy lost his lid and got in his yellow prowler and he left the shop.
Yeah.
Going sideways out of the parking lot thinking he was real important because he was mad because we weren't going to plug his tire. And the advisor was like, I don't know why you guys wouldn't just plug that tire. I don't know why you can't sell a tire to a customer with a prowler. Like money should not be an option. Shouldn't be a factor is maybe the better word than option. But it shouldn't be a factor, shouldn't be a huge contributing factor to why it's his emotional ideal of what he thinks should be done and the better repair is what should be done.
And the thing is that many times there's that disconnection between the communication between the technical team and the advisory team.
Right.
And so that technical team has a specific knowledge like, you know, that a z rated tire, 150 miles an hour, you can't go, you know, you can go up to 100, what is it, 149 miles an hour. Right. And they also have a, a weight guarantee on the side rating or on the sidewalls. The actual tread itself has to be able to work at a specific temperature and all those things. And once you do something different to it and you modify what that is, it no longer can be that way. And by the way, I don't think you should. I mean, no, it's like in that specific situation you shouldn't. And so no one told the advisor or if they did tell the advisor, they didn't understand it.
Yeah.
And so really, what it is one of the concepts that we teach at the institute. It's mint, Right. M I, N T. It's an acronym and it works backwards. It's. And so we first talk about trust. This is the reason everybody buys and I sell this all day long. This is like.
This is something that every class that I teach, we talk about it. So the first thing that we do is we build trust.
Right.
The next thing we do is we educate the customer so they understand the need. The next thing that we do is we talk about consequence. So that way they understand the immediacy. That means they understand the sense of urgency or the consequence of not doing whatever it is told them to do. There's a need, not just that you need to get it done, but that you need to get it done today. Or the reason why. Right. It's really the why.
And then the last thing is the money. That's the value. You know, what's the value of doing that? And so that customer that spun his tires leaving your parking lot, why did he do that? Well, because he either didn't trust you because you were telling him he was gonna. You're gonna grind off the side of his tires. Okay. He didn't understand the need because. Well, sir, you have a prowler, you have a Z rated tire. If we do that, we're gonna modify the type of tire that it is, and it's no longer gonna be rated the rest of the or just like the rest of the tires.
Yeah.
There's a certain consequence to not doing it. Right. You know, that consequence means you're gonna either lose that capability of that tire. It's just not going to be the same. The right thing to do would be to do this. And that's really, I think, what it. What it really was. And then certainly there was some value.
Yeah, I don't want to go buy a $300 tire when I could get a $30 plug.
Right, right.
And so. So really that's what it is, is when you're trying to get anybody to buy anything, you have to satisfy Mint. Trust needs, immediacy, value, money. Right. And so that's what it was in that. Excuse me. When I'm teaching advisors, that's what we talk about. How do you inventory the mint? How do you make sure that you know what, everything's there.
Because once you do, now you can confidently go and ask for the sale after you've inventoried Mint, you have It, Right. Trust needs immediacy, money value. You can then go say, it's this many dollars.
So, Mark, when you're working with service advisors, what is it? How do you get to that breakthrough? How do you get to that point where the service advisor is no longer selling out of their pocket? They now understand this concept. How do you get to that point?
So one of the things, like we talk about a few different concepts, and one of the concepts is being the advocate for the vehicle.
Yeah.
Now, that is a concept that it's difficult for some people to understand until we really explain it. Because a lot of people are like, oh, well, I should be the advocate for the customer. My customer comes in, I want to.
Take care of providing customer service. I'm supposed to be here for the customer. But no, no, no.
Hold on.
Okay, go.
You said it. You said it and you said customer service.
Yeah, yeah.
We don't provide customer service.
Well, because that's the word everybody knows, right?
Sure.
We don't provide customer service. We provide customer satisfaction. There's a difference. Customer service is user provide or is provider defined. Customer satisfaction is user defined. Why does your customer come to your shop?
Because they're satisfied, right? Yeah.
But even deeper than that, the whole reason why they come to you is because they need somebody to be the expert. They can't be the expert themselves. They can't do it. If they could, they do it at home.
That's right.
Oh, yeah.
And so they need somebody to be the expert. It's the same reason why you go to a doctor.
Yeah.
Because you need somebody to advocate for whatever it is. Your service advisor should advocate for the health of your car, just like your doctor advocates for the health of you. Right. And so what you do is you're positioning your service advisor to be the advocate for the car's health. And once we teach the advisor that once they understand that selling with their wallet stops, I mean, imagine, would you go to a doctor, and as you go to that doctor, you take your child in and I don't know, little Johnny broke his arm. Would you go and negotiate with the doctor about what the service is?
No.
The doctor's gonna say, well, we need to do whatever doctors do for a broken arm. Right. They put a splint on and catch them up here.
I bought a splint off of the Internet. Can you use my Internet splint?
There was some sticks in the parking lot as we were walking in here. And I got a roll of electrical tape, like, can we make that work? I got 20 bucks.
So much for that procedure.
You know what? And instead of, you know, it's like that old. Do you remember In Living Color?
Oh, yeah, vaguely.
You know, Fly Girls. No, the Fly Girls are the Jenny.
Jenny Lopez.
Yes. But there was a sketch on there where I don't remember even who it was that was in the sketches, but basically there was like a restaurant and it'd be like, oh, how about you just like it's like 499 for that. How about you just let me lick the plate for $4 or two, $2.99. I don't know, whatever. Right?
Yeah, yeah, let me lick the plate.
It was definitely Damon Wayans. I don't know. But anyways, like, that's what it is though. When you have a customer that comes in and says, hey, you know, let me, let me modify that in some way, what would you tell them? No, it's just the same thing that your doctor would say when you say, hey, can I come in with the, some sticks and some electrical tape? No, because, and you know, by the way, here, let's just give him a shot of whiskey instead of that.
Novocaine.
Novocaine or whatever.
Because to the technician in the back, we always look at those scenarios and it's far fetched, but really we just look at it as like if the customer wants us to put this crappy part in, or I know that I really should underneath that intake, put all three injectors in there. Because the labor to get back in there, if I have to do another one in a month or two months time is we're going to eat that labor or we're going to charge them again. Either way is not good for one of the two people involved. If I eat the labor and they shouldn't have to because I let them dictate that they only wanted one injector and I'm going to recommend three because of where it's located or if I only charge them for one and then next month another one fails and I come back and I have to charge them again, that leaves a sour taste in their phone. The customer has always been, as the tech has always been, a pretty good, I felt like a pretty good advocate for the health of the car. Where I've always seen it come off the track is when the emotional side of it comes in where it's like, well, he doesn't have $100 for that arm splint to go on his son. Well, he can put two sticks and hockey tape around it. There's the Canadian Me, hockey tape going around in the park at home.
If he's coming to you, it's because he knows he could do that, but he's not really sure that that's the right thing to do. He maybe wants a little reassurance from you that that would work. We have to now put our hand up and go, that's a really bad idea. And then sell the cast, right?
Yes.
I mean, here in. In Canada, you're Red Seal certified.
Yes.
Right. You want just like, oh, oh, he's.
Pulling it out of his wallet.
Oh.
Flashing credentials and all.
Skilled trade scanners.
They should give you a badge.
I'd want a belt buckles. I want a rest. I want a championship belt is what I want.
There you go.
Yeah.
So in the States, obviously, we have ASE and the whole thing. Asc, Automotive Service Excellence.
Yeah.
And you're Red Seal certified. Right. Like, there's a. There's a. There's a. There's a stigma that should come along that. That you're gonna do it right. Whatever it is.
You've been not only trained, but also you've been tested.
Yes.
You've been. You've been stuck in the forge. And can you do it right? Right.
Yeah.
And so you should be doing it right. You know, I really hate it. I see it all the time. These cars with the camber, like, at 4 degrees and they're driving around and they're. They're riding on the. I don't know, like you've seen them, right?
Yeah.
Somebody did that.
Yeah.
Possibly somebody at a shop that was certified. Like, who's doing that?
Yeah.
Anyways, I digress. The. When. When a technician comes and says, this is what's what, Wright. Looks like our shop has a specific standard of what right is. This is what it is. This is our line in the sand. And if the customer wants it a different way.
I'm sorry, they're not our customer.
Yeah.
Because we have a specific standard. And if the customer mistakenly wandered into your shop thinking that you were going to be the shop that was going to use the sticks and the duct tape. Okay, well, that's cool. We didn't figure out that they were the wrong customer yet. And that's part of our problem, too, is we didn't do the proper vetting in the initial inspection. But really, when that happens, we have to draw that line in the sand and say, no, I'm sorry, that's not what we do. We're ASC certified. We're Red Seal certified.
We just have a policy A standard as to what it is because we know what right looks like. Because we're the expert. We're the shop that does it right. And you can go to the shop that does it wrong. They might charge you less and they might give you that hey, can I just lick the pan for $1.99? Okay, that's cool. But that's not what we do.
So where is it we're always seeing then that the routine has always been that we always had to like what sword? I want to bargain with the customer about what the right way to do is. Why is it because it's been trained him wrong tail as old as time. Right. Like why is it that's always been that way? I look at it as like I used to think it's just because people for the most part are not car nuts the way a lot of technicians or people in the industry are realize what I now feel is that it's like if that same person might have a Jet Ski, doesn't know a lick about how that thing works either. But riding around on that thing is like their escape. That's their. I love that. Whatever that thing needs.
Yeah, that's their Zen moment.
It needs that. This car that I just put tires on or I put constantly pouring gas into it or need a friggin wiper blade and they wouldn't put the wiper blades on for free or that's what stresses everybody out. But that, that Harley Davidson or that Jet Ski or whatever throw money at that thing. And so the whole idea that I used to think it was because customers didn't understand about their car was why they didn't want to spend money on it. I've since changed my perception on that. It's got nothing to do with. They don't understand. It's got everything to do with unfortunately what that car means to them.
To them they don't realize it's their freedom. It's your ability to get to your job, it's the ability to provide for your family. It's your ability to put the kids in and take them on a trip to wherever the amusement park next Sunday. We don't appreciate that because it's been such a just. I've always had one, I've always had a car and it was always I threw money on it and I hated it. But that's just life. It's death and taxes and car repairs are all ripping you off. We're so why did we ever allow them to negotiate the process with us years ago?
And here's I've actually thought about this question a lot and I can only halfway answer it.
Okay.
Because I'm not old enough to know. Like I didn't come into this industry when I like in the 60s or 50s. Right. But what I can understand, it's in the 50s and 60s you had a lot of people that were talking to customers that they were also the people repairing the car.
Right.
And somewhere along the line, somewhere in the 60s and 70s, the service advisor position was created. Somewhere, somewhere along the line somebody said, ah, got a great idea. Let's hire somebody that can speak technician and speak customer and then bridge the gap in between and actually be able to explain those things. By the way, we can have them do all the paperwork and stuff that we don't want to do anyways.
Because I can barely read and write. Right. The reality was, well, back in the.
Day too, I mean, anybody that was dyslexic or if you had ADHD and they didn't diagnose it because they didn't do that.
Right.
They push you into, you know, go, go be an auto technician. Go to auto shop.
Yep.
Go to auto shop. Go to auto shop. Right. And so a lot of people, I mean, you still had to be intelligent to do it. Right? You still had to be intelligent to. I mean, I can't rebuild a carburetor. Carburet. And I can't do it.
But so you still to be able to do it. But you're right, many, many people had this ability because they, you know, they kick numbers back and forth or because they lost focus on doing something and had to go do something else. I mean, granted for a service advisor, that's like the best, that's a superpower because you can pick up 10 work orders and work on them all at the same time.
Yeah, that's.
But at any rate, the, the whole, everything that you get from that, that is the reason why we have a service advisor is just for that reason, customers got this, they got this stigma from. In their mind, they started to believe that the people that were the mechanics were ripping them off. And it was because they didn't know how to communicate to them.
Yeah.
And in the beginning days of service advisors, we didn't know how to communicate to people. Right. And so we had lots of years of that. And so because of that, what ended up happening was when we had a problem and there was some type of conflict, the easiest go to was, oh, they're arguing about price. Let me go backwards.
Right?
Let me go backwards. Let Me just modify. Let me just do this, whatever. And what would end up happening is we would shrink our profits by not selling something at the same profit because we believed that the first time that a customer objected or gave us some kind of conflict or something like that is that they were complaining about the price because they said it right. Holy crap. Customers lie.
Yeah, I know.
When it's about an objection, that's amazing. And so what ends up happening is we didn't really go back to Mint. That's the reason that everybody buys. And we didn't go back and inventory that and say, okay, do they trust us? Do they understand why they need it? Do they understand what the consequences of not getting it done is? And do they think it's a valuable service? Like something that's worth their money? Hmm. We didn't do that. All we did was just said, oh, you think it's too expensive? How about this much?
Yeah, let me find you a cheaper part. Or let me, let me. Can I find some overlap in that labor?
Yeah.
And then it's like, so for me, from the technician standpoint, all the time, like, I don't really get too wrapped up in about the parts thing until the part fails and I have to donate labor to rectify that, then I care about the quality part. Otherwise, listen, do you want to bolt on the crappiest crap? Cool. If it doesn't affect my production hours, doesn't affect my pay, go ahead. It's you that is now letting your customer down because you're trying to help them with cheap parts. And yet they keep coming back now.
But what happens when you go to install it and it, like, the bolt.
Holes don't line up well. So if I'm. If I'm hourly and I keep coming back to this, if I'm hourly, I don't care. I'm going to stand there and I'm going to play on my phone and maybe, you know, Tinder a little bit, and who knows, right? Until. Until the. Another part comes along that maybe will fit better.
Right?
Or they're gonna say, okay, push that back outside or put it back together and whatever. Cool. I'm paid the same.
They got to figure it out.
As soon as I'm on production based or, like, incentivized, like, and it's like, guys are like, jeff, why do you care you're paid hourly? Because it's still at the end of the week, we look at our numbers and we go, oh, our numbers suck. This weekend, our numbers suck because we were trying to make Something work that wasn't going to work. We're trying to fix a broken arm with some twigs and some hockey tape. You know, and you're, and you're. You're then talking about the bone splint. Took two months to heal instead of six weeks. Why is that? Because it's hockey tape and, you know, bone and sticks. Twigs, twigs.
So I always care because it's always the riddle for me, which is. Always keeps. It's just a circle going back and forth again, you know. Where does that circle keep coming? Well, it's always. Because the production comes down to where did we waste time? Yeah, well, we wasted time trying to appease the customer from a financial standpoint. And instead of advocating for the car.
Yeah.
How do we like, we talk about emotional investment. How do you keep those at them at a comfortable arm's length where it's like, I genuinely are. Want to know what you're. I like annoying, you know, your family, kids names, how's the dogs, that kind of stuff when they come in to see it. But I'm there to like, first priority is to make profit off of you. How do we keep them? Where do we find that happy balance?
Well, so really, a couple of things. Most of your customers, I like acronyms and so I'm gonna say. I'm gonna say another one. But most of your customers, when they want to talk to you and it's about emotional things that are happening to them, it's. It's form F O R M. Okay. Their family, occupation, recreation, motivation.
Right.
These are, these are the things like when you're, when you're asking the diagnostic questions out.
Yes.
When you're, when you're asking things like, oh, well, when does that happen? When you're going down the, the street at 20 miles an hour or making parking lot maneuvers, hard turns left.
Yep.
Who drives the car?
Yeah.
Oh, it's your daughter's car.
Cool. Okay.
Does she drive it to work or school or. Oh, what, what school does she go to? Yeah, what's she going to school for? Oh, is. Is she going to be taking this to college next year?
Yeah.
Awesome. Do you guys. Does she ever drive this with her friends and stuff on vacation or anything? Like, is this on, on the highway ever? And so I'm asking all these questions that are diagnostic related, but I'm also asking form questions.
I'm showing interest.
Right.
Yeah.
And. And so the form questions do a couple of things for us. Right. Like we start to develop a relationship with somebody, but then also later when the Customer objects to something, and they tell me, no. Remember, I'm the advocate for the vehicle. I'm going to use all the information in front of me as possible. I thought you said this was your daughter's car. Are you getting a different car? Is she going to be driving a different.
Right.
Yeah, yeah.
This car.
You shouldn't. You. She shouldn't drive that car.
Yeah.
In that condition, how it is. I don't care if it drives just in town or out of town or whatever. I don't get it. And I mean, by the way, like, all of these things, right? I mean, it's. It's. It's not just family, that occupation. What do you do, where you go? How do you drive the vehicle? Where do you drive the vehicle? Recreation. Does it have a trailer hitch on it? Do you pull a rv? Do you pull a boat? Do you do whatever.
You know, those things matter as well as motivation. Do you plan to keep the vehicle?
Yeah, what's.
What, you know, are. What do you do with cars? Do you drive them for five years and trade them in, or do you drive them for 10 years and then trade them in? Or do you drive them for however long it takes you to drive it into the ground?
Yep.
And that was out loud.
Yes, we drive them into the ground.
You can't drive your Tesla into the ground.
Well, no. So quite recently here, my daughter got a Chevy Sonic.
Oh, yes.
And she was so proud of this little vehicle that she bought two years ago, and she paid $9,000 for it or had a loan for $9,000. A couple months ago, we get a call at about 12:30 at night. I barely coasted off the freeway. I'm on an exit. The car lights are flashing, and it's got no power. I don't know what's going on. Had completely blown the engine. Still owes $7,000 on a car that we can go on Facebook Marketplace and buy for $3,000 to replace the engine.
We got a quote anywhere from 10 to $12,000 to replace this engine.
That's a Utah money, though. I mean, everywhere else it's like eight.
Okay, eight.
It's still a lot of money to.
Repair a car that's worth three that she owes seven, right? No, it's now a paperweight waiting for her to pay it off so we can take it to the scrap yard. Oh, my gosh, that's terrible.
So now, how do I. How do I say this? I. I struggle sometimes with what seems like a lack of empathy, because it's like somebody might come in and say, I have a Chevy Equinox or I have a Chevy with an ecotec in it. Right. And they're known for burning oil. Mm, no. And now I have this car where it's like, you drove it in here and it's rattling away. Yeah.
And it's down on power, and we caught it just in time. It only supposed to have 5 liters of oil in it, and it only has a liter and a half. And I know that your oil light has not even come on yet, and your oil life monitor is still showing 50%. But, like, there's no oil in the engine. I'm sorry. So we put some oil in it. It quieted down the coat. Some of the codes went away.
What is the. And the customer is now flipping because it's like, okay, so the fix. Proper fix for this, as if from a technician standpoint, is you need an engine.
Yeah.
Unfortunately, now, when it comes back to, like you said, all the questions that I'm vetting, what is the. Oh, you still got a $7,000 nut on this car. Okay. The best thing, really, for this car is that, like, we either fix it properly so that you can get some extendable life out of it, or we walk away from it. What is it we have to do? Because the technician. I can fix it two ways. I can fix it long term, or I can fix it short term. What's the short term? It's got oil in it.
It might last two days.
Yeah.
Two weeks, two months.
You can probably get to a lot to trade in and put yourself farther in on something, but maybe make a better choice this time. Don't get an equate ecotech.
Yeah.
Like, I. For so long, it was always like, technicians are not empathetic. The service advisor is always empathetic to customers. You guys just want to rip people off or you guys was. It's not that. It's just we know so much and we see so much, and we do all the research that's like, these cars are prone to this. These cars are prone to that. Technicians don't normally have emotional attachment to a vehicle unless it's something that comes from.
Like, this is what made me want to be a tech. Or I have a Harley Davidson at home that, like, I drive a crappy old Corolla. But that Harley is where I have my fire for my passion. Right. Whereas the customer. Now it's an infatuation. Was I loved. I literally had a lady buy a little Kia soul with a knocking engine.
And the Kias have that Warranty on the re on the engine. Well, she takes it in. She's like, she bought it from used knowing it was knocking because the person that sold it to her, don't worry, honey, you can take that over the dealer and they'll put an engine in for you. She of course, buys the car knocking because she loved the ambient lights inside of this little Kia soul and the particular sound system that was factory in it. She loved it. She just thought it was the coolest thing in the world.
And that's only good for the first buyer.
So she drives over to the dealer and the dealer says, there's no warranty on this. We can't help you with that.
Right.
So she's now like, how do I get rid of this car?
Oh.
And I'm like, my. So my boss at the time is like, you guys are not trying to do anything to help road. I'm like, help her out. How do I help her out? Did she ask me first before buying it? Hell no. Did she ask you first before buying it? Heck no. Did she bring it over to get it checked out by us before, which was $150 pre search inspection? No. Why all of a sudden would I have empathy for somebody that a doesn't even feel I'm worth $150 for a pre purchase inspection or isn't worth the time to ask me, what about buying this? And you don't have to ask me. You could go on Google and see.
Yep.
But everybody just becomes absolutely enamored with that new car purchasing experience that all of a sudden the experience of me coming to see me the guy they hate, taxman and mechanic. Right. But yet the salesman. I love car salesman to love them. I was so on cloud nine when I got to drive away. My ex. Ex girlfriend way back, drove away in a brand new shiny 2002 Sunfire. She had the car three days and it wouldn't start.
Mmm.
Defective starter motor. Now, they kept the car two days to be sure that it was fixed. It didn't even have a thousand miles on it yet.
Oh, boy.
Brand new. She was still so absolutely over the moon, enamored with that car that she sent the sales lady flowers. But everybody in the shop that kept her car for two days. Somebody unlocked the back door of my car. Like when I dropped it off, it was locked. And now it's unlocked and I don't know why. The back door. And it's got 40km on it that it didn't have when I like, what have they been doing? I Can't believe it.
But don't worry. I sent the sales lady flowers, and I'm looking at this like, are you got rocks in your head? Like, the sales lady doesn't even remember you from a month ago. Like, she remembers you. Hi, Janet. But she doesn't. Like, you're just a stack. Whatever. Meanwhile, the technician in the back, he's like, what? It's not a common failure for this starter to be bad.
How many other things are likely more common?
They kept it. They kept it to make sure there.
Weren'T anything else, and they were the jerks.
Yep.
But the sales lady that sold you a car that didn't start in three days, she was great. That's the whole part of this whole industry to me, that it's just like, I struggle with because, like, maybe I've been exposed to too much, or maybe I'm just wired to always see the negative of it.
I was gonna say, I think I. I think you're. I think you're pulling yourself into that hole. And. And I think maybe just by a few different experiences, because I can. I. I can say that in my life, I've had lots of customers that have come in and been over the moon, ecstatic to be our customers.
Right.
You know, like, and are the shop. You know, I mean, and they see customers. See anybody that works in the shop as the technician.
Right.
They don't. I mean, they. When. When. When you pick up the phone and you say something to the. I mean, if you say the technician, they're like, who. What? What do you mean? Once you say we, they're like, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, a lot of times we get caught up in the difference between sympathy and empathy.
Right.
And sympathy is, you know, to define it. Sympathy is feeling for somebody else. Like, really, you know, oh, my gosh, I can't believe that this happened to you. And I feel for you. Whereas empathy is understanding it where you're not. You're not taking responsibility for it.
Right.
Sympathy is more. There's a responsibility attached. And so a lot of times, and I mean, you said you're a little bit disillusioned and unempathetic, right?
Very much so.
I regularly have to teach advisors empathy, so don't think you're alone. But I regularly. I mean, this happens all the time. People will pick up the phone and a customer will start spewing out whatever problem that they have. Oh, my car is stuck on the side of the road and this and that. And the first instinct that the advisor has is to go into. All right, cool. Let's.
So, so let's. Let's get it fixed and let's. Let's get you towed in and all that. You know, they're, they, they have to. Really, what I teach them is to stop and think about what the situation they're in and say, oh, my gosh, I'm sorry to hear that. Are you, Is everybody okay? Yeah, you know, it's. And that's the thing. We, you know, we as advisors, we do the same thing that technicians do.
We go into fix it mode.
Right?
Because that's primarily the reason why advisors have started in this, in this industry at all was because they had this need to go and help people. They were like, oh, you know what? I'm, I, I know something about cars. I may not be a technician, but I can go get hired as, as a service advisor somewhere, and I can still help people, right? And hopefully they don't get beat down too much where they start to hate the job. Because I mean, this, this job can do that to you.
I was just gonna ask you. So do you see that a lot, like, when you're, when you're teaching advisors? Because I know, like, when I talk to a lot of mechanics now, a lot of shop owners, like, they're beat down. They. Some of them don't even know how beat down they are, right? They're just like. It's kind of like when you step outside of this circle of these kind of training events and you start to talk. Everybody else, they're like, there's no effing way I would ever have my kid go into this industry. There's no effing way that even if I own a shop, I would want my children to take it over. It has been such a grind.
I hated it. I should have stayed in school and done a hundred other things right. I've never worked with too many advisors. Even if they seem to be lacking the next level of effectiveness, to be really good at their job. I never heard them say too many times, like, I wish I hadn't done that as a career. It's funny to me, you know what I mean? But yet you're saying you see them where they're ground down and beat up and like, discouraged.
It's. I mean, you, as a technician, you might fight the problem with a car that's the same problem. You have a marriage certificate to that car as it comes back and comes back because you can't fix it, right? Well, advisors have to, have to not only see that problem but they have to be empathetic to the customer.
Right.
And I'll tell you what, that's way more taxing than working on the car. I mean, just that pain of having to deal with somebody who's angry. Now you've got to look at a car that's inanimate and the advisor has to look at the customer who has emotions, who has problems, who want something, who can articulate their words, and many times takes it out on the advisor. And don't get me wrong, most of the time there's a comeback. I blame the advisor. We didn't set the expectation right. We didn't do something right that made it all happen. We didn't sell the job, set the expectation, do whatever.
Right. But still, yeah, advisors get as beat down. I think, I think anybody doing any job anywhere on the planet has the capacity to be burnt out. I think, I don't care what it is. I mean, it's hard. Unless you're Jimmy Lee.
Well, no, it's hard, it's emotionally taxing to take on all that empathy and all that emotional attachment to somebody. But what an advisor needs to do is to take the advocate of the vehicle. And that is their job, is to advocate for the vehicle.
Well, that's the thing. So that's exactly what it is. Whenever I have an advisor that's beat down and all that, I say, hey, wait, let's step back, let's look at what your job is. Let's define it, let's define who you are, let's define what your job is and let's figure that out. And when the customer comes in and they're talking about whatever it is and they're talking about doing wrong and all that, you say, no, I'm sorry, we do things right here, you know, we even spell everything right most of the time. And the, you know, we have a process for this, we have a process for that. We're going to always do it right.
Yeah.
And this is what it is. We're going to advocate for the correct repair of the vehicle.
Yeah.
Whereas once you set the code for all of that, that's, that's, that's when we start to do the reset, when advisors finally become happy. It's when they get that release. And the same thing for technicians, by the way, when they get that release, when a technician, when you tell the technician, hey, guess what? This is, this is what it is. You are, you are the professional, you are the person that's going to do it right. And if for whatever reason it's not going to be right. You have the right to not do it. You can say no. I'm sorry.
That's. That's not. That's not inside of the scope of what I know to do.
Right.
That's right on the vehicle. And if you do that with the advisor as well, we have so many customers that are out there. You know, if you lose a couple of customers because you decided to do it the right way, so be it.
So that's a crazy concept. Really is. And now I don't mean it crazy like it doesn't work because we're talking about it works every day. But, like, how did so many shops then get in this trap of where they need every job?
Oh. Because what happens is they. Somewhere along the line, someone told them to be in the yes business. And while that absolutely. In many cases, you need to be able to be available, but you don't need to say yes to everything.
Agreed.
You know?
Yeah.
Like it's. I used to have a joke that I would say with all my texts. I'm like, hey, I'm sorry. You know, this. This really isn't Burger King. You don't get it your way. And then I started to think about it. Maybe the customers need to understand that sometimes too, is that they don't get to come in and be like, no, I don't want onions.
Sorry. That's how we make it. With onions.
Yeah.
We, you know, we will do this job this way with this service and that thing there. If we can accommodate the no onions thing because of whatever. Okay, we'll accommodate. But ideally, I mean, we need to be everything to somebody, not something to everybody.
Right.
And that's the big difference.
Yeah.
Is because when you start to believe that you need to be something to everybody, that's when you make all the wrong decisions. When you decide that you as a shop need to be everything to somebody. I might. You might be my customer at my shop. Jimmy has a Tesla. I can't fix his car.
Right.
I have no way to fix his car. He can't be a customer at my shop. I can't be even anything to Jimmy.
Yeah. Just so. Yeah. Just somebody that might be able to put some air in the tire one day when it comes by.
And what's the point?
What about when the. So the advantage. I see a lot or hear a lot of the time. That's not even probably the right word. But the adage I see used a lot and I've heard it from more than one advisors. Well, I can't make the customer spend more than what they want to spend. And thank you for saying that, because I believe that, like, that immediately sets the limit on my performance that I'm going to get. Like.
And I understand the customer. I only have a budget of 1,000 bucks. Cool. All right. But if it's $1,500 is the correct repair to advocate for the vehicle like we talk about, then somebody maybe will do it for a thousand bucks.
So if you took in little Johnny into the doctor's office with his broken arm.
Yep.
And you didn't have insurance and you had to pay for it, and the doctor said, okay, the way to do it right. We're gonna. We're gonna splint it up properly, put a cast on it. We're gonna make sure we give them some whatever. I don't know, whatever they're gonna do. They got all their process. And the doctor comes back and says, It's $1,200. And you're like, why? I only have five.
What can you do for five?
Well, we can get the saw out and, you know, cut the arm off.
Like, what the doctor is going to say is, well, it's 12.
Yeah.
And what are you going to do? You're going to figure it out whether it's. I mean, and I hear this. No customer has ever paid me to be their financial advisor.
That's right.
I am not their financial advisor. My job is to be the advocate for the customer. A financial advisor might tell them that it's a bad idea to go get a payday loan. I don't really care where they get the money from. I'm sorry. This is. This is. This is where a lot of people are like, mark, you're.
Well, expletive.
Because. Because. But here it is. I know what doing it right is. I know for me to do the job right, to do whatever it is right, I have to do it the right way. And I don't care where they get the money from. That's not my problem.
Right.
I didn't buy it, build it, or break it. All I'm here to do is fix it. And if. And if doing it right costs whatever it costs, and they're going to go off and get whatever money they're going to get it. I don't care if. If they. I. I'm going to maybe offer them some options.
Right.
Hey, I've got this, you know, this credit card. I've got a synchrony credit card or a CFNA credit card or whatever. Hey, you know What? We use this company sometimes called snap finance. Great company. 30 some percent interest. Like they will come and take a foot from you if you don't pay them. Just pay them.
Right.
And hey, maybe. Maybe Aunt Freda or Uncle Fred have a. You know, have a couple extra bucks that they might be able to loan you at a zero percent interest. Yeah, great. Go get that. I'm not here to figure out where you get the money from. I'm here to figure out how to fix your car.
Yeah, well, that's that unique relationship you have with the bank, right? That you both have decided you're not the financial advisor and the bank is not going to fix cars.
Right?
Huge. Huge.
I didn't even know we had that agreement. But, I mean, you know, that's good.
It's a good agreement.
It's a good agreement.
Well. And I'd love to tell a story of an advisor doing the right thing.
Right thing?
For the car. I took my truck in for an oil service, and I. I needed the next day to drive to Vegas, grabbing a flight to go wherever. Trucks in for the oil service. And about two hours later, I get a phone call. Hey, Jimmy, you remember we talked about those back brakes? Yeah. Well, it's time. You're down to 2%.
You need new pads. And while we're doing it, you're. We're gonna put on new rotors as well. Okay, but why? Why are we doing that?
Mm.
Because that's the right way to do it. You put on new pads, you put on new rotors.
So.
On the rear of your truck.
Yep.
Well, but hold on a second. Yeah, those rotors, they're. They're not that worn.
Yeah. They're not pulsating. They're not.
They're. Okay.
Yep.
Can't we just throw the pads on? No, that's not how we do it here. Yeah, but. But I'm Jimmy Lee. Can you do it for me? No. Okay. Crap. So my $90 oil service went to a $900 brake job, right? Full rear brake job?
Yep.
Ford F150. Okay. Okay. A couple hours later, you get a phone call from the shop. Hey, Jimmy, we're just about done with the brakes on your truck, and we notice that the rear seal is starting to leak. Okay, what does that mean? Well, you know, we could fix it now, or we can fix it later, right? You're probably three months down the road, you're gonna be doing this again. What do you want to do?
Crap.
Okay. Can you still get it done today? Yeah, we can. Okay. How much is it? It was an extra $450. So my $90 oil service is now $1,500.
Right? Yeah.
But it was the right thing to do.
Right.
And I appreciate it.
Yeah. Because you didn't go in and say like this is the kick I get a lot of the time and I struggle with your 300%, like you're not 300% rule, but your DVI.
Right.
Because like I deal with a lot of time with a lot of customers that come in and it's like we're gonna do a complimentary inspection on your vehicle today. They don't give a flip. Right. It's just to them it's, it's upsell. Upsell, upsell.
That's what they think you're trying to do.
What I'm trying, I'm trying to drive the $90 oil change that it came in for into a fifteen hundred dollar turnaround. There's nothing. Is there something wrong with that? No. If we're advocating for the vehicle, the vehicle didnate, all that stuff, that's the right thing that we're supposed to be doing. But when I, you didn't come in and say, hey, I only want an oil change. Don't call me about anything else. You didn't say that.
No.
You let them follow their process. Right. So when I, when I hear the customer or I give the estimate then, and somebody's like, they've been talking about trying to get rid of this thing maybe like maybe three years, it's going.
To be for sale next month.
Maybe I won't even let them know about the oil leak. I'm just going to let them know about the brakes because that's the safety thing. But I'm not going to let the.
But that's a problem.
Sure it is. Of course it is. Yeah. 100% it's a problem because the rule is the rule.
Right.
You let them know of everything that's going on.
100%. Yes, yes.
But it's even, it's even deeper at the very beginning stages, from the phone call and then to the, to the initial check in and all that, the expectations need to be set. In fact, that's the biggest problem. Like if you want to go and say for service advisors and you want to say, okay, here's the secret, I'm going to put myself out of a job. You want to be part of the 1% of all the service advisors out there, be really good at setting expectations.
Yeah.
If, if you can do that, you don't need to come see me to get some training. Because when you and how expectations work is at every next step of the process, you're stopping and making sure that everybody's clear as to what's going to happen next. So when the customer calls in, right before you hang up, you go through. Okay, so here's what's going to happen. We're going to see you tomorrow morning. When we do that, we're going to check you and it takes about 15 minutes. So make sure that you're here with enough time. I need you here.
Like don't have your ride standing outside waiting for 15 minutes. We need to then go through that. I'm going to go through everything that's on there and we're going to talk about all the stuff we talked about today and then tomorrow we're going to go through all this stuff for 15 minutes. And the last two minutes of it is me talking about our digital inspection and me talking about what the next step in the process and who's going to call them. And let's make sure I have the right phone number and let's make sure all this is right. And by the way, this is how we do things. This is why we do things and this is all of that.
So what you're saying then is like, how do we implement that when like I've made a bunch of appointments, which is this is your slotted day to come in. But when I walk in, the keys are already in the Dropbox.
So then you call the customer and you go through the whole process on.
The phone, still setting the expectations.
You have to set the expectations.
What about the people that only want to send digital vehicle inspections over via text or email and wait for them to fill them out and agree or disagree? And I don't really want to talk to customers.
Are you talking about the people, meaning this people in our industry.
Our industry.
Because there are shops that will send the digital inspection and expect no communication.
Yep.
They just send it and they expect the customer to look through there and understand what the description is, what the picture is.
Well, Jimmy.
So they don't understand.
Jimmy. That's why I'm gainfully employed.
I know.
Can teach all those people.
Exactly. So there's a button that says approve or decline.
That's right.
And they're expecting.
I get it. I get what?
And I talk to shops. Oh my. I'm. My DVIS. I'm a 90% approval rate on all my DVI's. All I do is just send the DVI.
Boop. Boop, boop.
They approve everything and they approve everything. You heard that right. They approve everything. And the estimate comes back. They have signed it already. Every, all the, those additional items are big. I, and I disagree with it.
How much you want to bet people.
Don'T know what they're looking at?
How much you want to bet that a couple of things are happening? One, they're not following the 300% rule.
They're not 100%.
They're not following the 300% rule because I know that sounds weird. The. There's. There's absolutely no way that they're getting 100% of everything that they estimate, have estimated, customer estimated, inspected, estimated and presented.
Yep.
They're not getting 100% of those things. So their close ratio isn't what they believe it to be, as well as their customer isn't getting that difference of service.
Yeah.
I mean, what I believe a 1% shop, like a top 1% shop, they have conversations with people, they make relationships with people. And let me tell you, I don't have a crystal ball, but I'm going to tell you what's going to happen inside of my lifetime. There will be this, this industry will be completely different. And the only shops that will be left are the ones that have made personal relationships.
Oh, yeah.
All of the other, like, I mean, you'll go to anything that's big box, anything's. That's a dealership, anything that's, that's any of that stuff, and it'll all be kiosk. I mean, you can go to a McDonald's right now and you don't have to talk to anybody. You can order stuff on the app and, and roll through the drive through and be like, My number is 674 and that's it.
Yeah.
Or you can walk in and you can touch the big, the big screen and, and you can order stuff and, and if you don't, by the. It's not just there. It happens everywhere. There's thousands of places that are doing that. And when that happens, it strips out the human element.
Yeah.
And for what we charge and what we do, the only way you're gonna make any money, make a difference is to make a difference is actually, it's to actually be different. You know what? So there's all kinds of different retailers that are out there. And way back in the 20s, when Nordstrom's were started, the whole reason, like one of their biggest things, they were just a shoe store. They didn't sell anything else. They were just shoes. And they had this thing like part of their mantra, part of their rules. It was called measure both feet. What does that mean? When they're, when they're selling shoes, they're gonna measure the left side, measure the right side.
That's the whole reason why the shoe measure thingy has a left and a right side on it. If you flip it back and forth. Well, why do they do that? Is the left side really gonna be that much different than the right side?
Half a size.
You're half a size. Okay. Well, I mean, you would know that because you own those feet. And you might tell somebody here, measure, measure my right foot because it's a half a size bigger or whatever. But most people are about the same left and right.
Yeah.
The only reason that you'd measure both feet is so that way you can spend more time with the client. It's only about that. It has no, it has nothing to do with getting the right thing. It has everything to do with the client seeing some value that you didn't just go like they walked into every other shoe store that's out there to go and measure. Okay. They measured the foot, the person ran into the back and grabbed six boxes of shoes for you to try on and hopefully one of them fit. And then they rang you out. Right? That's what happened at every other shoe store.
At Nordstrom's, it was different. They measured both feet, they went back, they got the set of shoes that they needed. And if that, if that shoe salesman had to walk back and forth over and over and over again, that's what happened. Obviously their business grew and they became what it is today. It's a, it's a premium retailer.
So what about the. Because we talk all the time about the new millennials and the way they want to do business and we keep going back to the DBI and the thing like that. What I hear you saying is about, like you're not about just sending it off and waiting for happening. You're very involved with conversation and phone calls and follow up texts and all that kind of stuff. But yet I'm seeing a lot of the coaching, not necessarily from one group or the next, but they're saying you've got to just like, don't ring their phone, they're not going to answer the phone, don't ring them. Blow them up with a bunch of texts, they're not going to answer back. Just get that DVI off to them and wait for the result from that. And I struggle myself.
Here's the struggle that I have lately is because it's like I just threw.
Up in my mouth a little bit.
Yeah. Because I'll get handed a car. So here's the thing. I had a 2011 Civic came in last week. Dead battery, dead customer. Suspects need alternator. Cool. Half an hour diag is approved.
I go to the car. I can't really do too much and, but I do a quick check. Yep, the alternator is plugged in. I don't have a code that would tell me that the field is not being controlled. So it's probably going to be. It likely needs an alternator. It's the original alternator. It's an old car.
Cool. Whatever. I can't do our 36 point inspection very effectively when the car doesn't run. Yeah, car doesn't. I can't drive it. It's gonna leave me stranded. What am I gonna do? How do, do I bother to in this point of time? Rack the car, go through everything, whatever. So I go through all that and I tell them, shutter, I don't know how this thing drives yet because I can't run it.
Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. The brakes look terrible, but I don't haven't driven a car. Cool. So anyway, I get lots of kickback. Sometimes it's like, well, I don't know how to even send that estimate off or till the to the end inspection is done. So I just go back to like, what is the customer really here for? Are they here for an inspection or are they here to get a problem resolved? Well, that customer is here to get a problem resolved. So we go about, we get that, we quote up the alternator, we give them the alternator estimate, alter meter, alternator estimate. They approve it.
I let them know we have not done the inspection on the vehicle. It's not completed yet. Cool. The customer, this is like a 2011 setting expectations.
Right?
Right. So the customer, we get the thing done, we call them up and they're like, okay, it's charging, we drove it. The rest of it is this, this, this, and this all really should be addressed really soon. You know, the customer asks us, can I wait three weeks to pay you?
Oh.
So for all this talk in the industry right now about the power of the DBI and the power of the 300% rule we have to remember sometimes. And again, we can make the argument that maybe that isn't even the kind of customer you want in your shop. And I wouldn't, I wouldn't say that you're wrong. We have to remember at the end of it though, to that customer, the priority is just to get that friggin car back to where that's usable again.
Well then the proper response to that question is yes, you can wait three weeks to pay me and as soon as it's paid in full, we'll give you your keys.
That's right. Yeah. And that is the answer because it's like we don't, we're not a financing company.
No.
My boss has been burned enough times where it's like, you're not going to drive away and pick away payments on this. He's now finally good at saying, do they not have a credit card?
Right.
Because he's been burned enough.
Yeah.
But again I'm not being like, I'm not a. Hold on. I moved my microphone earlier. So I'm not, I don't work for a financial company. I'm not a financial advisor for a customer. That's not my job. My job is to do what I can be an expert at. And what I can be an expert at is advising them on the things that they need for their vehicle and advocating for their vehicle's health.
Yes, that's what I can do now. Yes. You can argue that maybe that customer isn't our customer. And you can also argue the other side of that, which is maybe they haven't yet figured out how to be our customer.
Right.
And that's fine. Like I get that we're, you know, we have all stages. Right. You know, we have all kinds of different stages of people that can be your customer. What you do is it just takes a lot more explanation and expectation setting. Right. So it's, you walk the whole customer through every everything and you say okay, so we've inspected the vehicle. It does need the alternator.
We 100% know that we, we visually inspected different components on the car. The braking system visually is in poor shape. We will need to replace some components with that. What I can see from here without road testing the vehicle is that a minimum. The pads and rotors need to be replaced. We, I mean even, even just to check the calipers, I'll need to remove the wheels and go through other things. I haven't even done that yet.
Yep.
What are your plans? I don't know your motivation yet. Right. For m. I have to get that information before as part of my diagnostic stuff. What are your plans for this vehicle? Like what, what are we doing with this vehicle?
Yeah.
Do you plan to keep it? Do you plan to do this? I can better offer needs to somebody and I can Better I can better tailor my presentation to advocate for their health of their vehicle based on knowing what their motivation is on the vehicle. So that question I would have asked, I would have had that answer well before I gave them a price on the alternator.
Right.
Long before.
Yeah.
And. And I would have, I would have understood who it is, by the way, like sometimes. And I hate to pigeonhole and I hate to do things like that, but you could look at a vehicle and you could a lot of times figure out what somebody's going to do if you see that. You called it a Civic before, I think. Right, yeah.
If.
Well, if it was a 12 year old Civic and it looked like somebody lived in the backseat. Well, not to stereotype, but you at least got to get prepared for whatever that answer might be. And, and so I'm not saying that that's what the answer is going to be, but you got to be, you got to be prepared for what that could potentially be.
So you guys are not teaching other method that you only make one phone call then.
No.
Oh, no.
See, that's wherever that came from in this industry from a coaching standpoint to a lot of advisors, it drives me up the effing wall.
Yeah. So agreed. So again, would the right advocate not, you know, would that. Would the advocate for the vehicle make one phone call? Fact. I teach an objection class. I'm teaching objection class. And Saturday afternoon. Saturday afternoon.
Jimmy. Thank you. And if I wasn't for Jimmy, I wouldn't know where I'm at. And, and like one of the, one of the big rules, like, I mean, within the first 10 minutes of the class, we start talking about some of the rules on what you have to do for objections. One of the rules are everybody, actually, it's the first roll. Everybody gets a second chance to say no, minimum. And if you do it right, they get four. Because the first time that they say no, most of the time that's a knee jerk reaction.
What do you say when you go on into Best Buy and you're looking at a television and the Best Buy employee comes up and says, can I help you with something? What do you say?
No.
You say no. I'm just looking. Looking. Well, it feels good to say no, doesn't it? Yeah, it's empowering to say no.
I'm in control.
So. So now. Yeah, you're in control.
Cool.
You're in control, buddy. You got it. All right, cool. So. I know, but yeah. Are you sure? Yeah, because you know, the. Ignore an override. We do a car strategy Thing.
But, I mean, there's all kinds of different ways that you can. That you can manage an objection. And the very first rule is everybody gets a second chance, at least one more chance to say no. And many times, I mean, I can tell you in my own life, several times, you know, one of my service advisors would fail to sell the job, and I'd be like, you suck. Like, you should not have taken no for that.
Right.
Let me go and call Mrs. Jones back, because I know. Mrs. Jones. Hey, Mrs. Jones. So, Fred, my service advisor just called you, and he told me that you didn't want to do something. I don't understand.
It's okay.
Sometimes somebody else will get the yes. You know, that. That's fine. And it wasn't like. And. And at my shop, it was okay. Like, people understood that whenever. Whenever I would do that.
It wasn't like I. Like I was digging them for whatever reason. I just know that sometimes Mrs. Jones just likes me better.
Right.
And there are other times that Mrs. Jones likes him better.
Yeah.
But, you know, it's just. It is what it is. The idea is, if you're the advocate for the vehicle, would the doctor be like when you said, no, I can't afford that. You know, I'm gonna go get some sticks and some tape and see what happens. What would the doctor say?
I strongly recommend you don't do.
They would not say recommend. They would say, you need to do it my way. There's a very big difference between recommend and required.
Yeah.
And in fact, recommended is so overused in this industry. We should. Many, many times we should say, that is required.
Right. Because that's a key word, really, when you think about the difference. Right. We interchange it both a lot, those two words, but really, it has very different meanings.
Very much.
I love that. Guys, I want to thank you for coming on. I mean, it's been. I've been wanting to. I've been wanting to share some of the things that I've been struggling with as I'm trying to adapt always and learn. And as Lucas says, seek first to understand. And so the more that I can sit down with you guys, the more that it empowers me. And, I mean, you know, I'm admiring the jacket again, and it's just like.
And then the Tesla thing I didn't know about. You're pretty cool, dude. Jimmy Lee. And Mark, I want to thank you. I mean, you and I have just met Jimmy. I know a little bit, but, like, I'm very impressed with you. Very impressed. I like your.
I like your attitude. I like your. You know, I can. I can sense that. That. That passion you have, and I'd like to share that with as many people as possible.
So you're all right for a Canadian, too.
Thank you very much.
Yeah, you know, let's try on this jacket and see if it fits.
You okay with that, everybody? I'll let you go, and we'll talk to everybody soon. Thank you.
Thanks.
Thanks.
Hey, if you could do me a favor real quick and, like, comment on and share this episode, I'd really appreciate it. And please, most importantly, set the podcast to automatically download every Tuesday morning. As always, I'd like to thank our amazing guests for their perspectives and expertise, and I hope that you'll please join us again next week on this journey of change. Thank you to my partners in the ASA group and to the Changing the Industry podcast. Remember what I always say, in this industry, you get what you pay for. Here's hoping everyone finds their missing 10 millimeter, and we'll see you all again next time.
Request an explanation for:
10 cars
Scroll for more
10 cars featured
Request an Explanation
Heard something you'd like explained? We'll add it to this episode.
Sign in to request explanations for terms you heard.
Want to learn more?
Browse our glossary for plain-English explanations of automotive terms, jargon, and concepts.
Help improve this episode
See something that's not quite right? Our annotations are AI-generated and can sometimes miss the mark. Click the flag icon on any annotation to suggest a correction.
Report incorrect info
Suggest better explanations
Flag missing cars
More from The Jaded Mechanic Podcast
Why Shops Lose Technicians Overnight | Lisa Coyle and Kat Ayers from Promotive
Jun 2, 2026
Why Repair Shops are Toxic and Why Technicians Deserve More with Greg Hilliard
May 26, 2026
Derek Amodio Was a Chef but Now He’s a Technician?
May 19, 2026
Christopher Clingerman Compares Fleet Life to the Dealership
May 12, 2026