Service advisors across the country are working on approvals every day. But most advisors are trying to “sell” those approvals, versus simply explaining why the customer needs them. Do a Google search of “nobody likes to be sold” and note how many links pop up. Seems everybody knows not to push the sale—a challenge facing some industry coaches who keep recommending it. Pushing the sale puts your customer in “defense mode,” making your job of getting the approvals much harder. You now have to deal with objections.
Think of the uniform sales reps who try to sell you the benefits of their uniform service. When you question their pitch, they try to sell you more benefits, hoping to persuade you. Similarly, when you pile on the benefits of the additional work a customer needs, they sense your persuasive selling attempt and their defense mechanism goes up. Again, nobody likes to be sold. A customer’s car either needs it or it doesn’t, so why do you have to sell it? Instead, if you sell them on you, if you've created a great relationship, they would trust you and the approvals would be much easier. They'll also be fun because that great relationship has you dealing with customer “friends" and because you're talking with your “friends” about their kids, their interests, their vacations, etc., and not only their car problems. Your customer’s mental attitude is now: if this is what they say it is, I’m in. At the same time, you are improving the reputation of our industry since you are advising, not selling.
Advisors are told to sell the benefits, value, and safety of each additional item from the DVI. Heck, some suggest having two benefits for each job. That’s old-school, 20-year-old advice. Psychology and neuroscience have come a long way in 20 years.
Advisors need to get a real approval decision that customers are comfortable with an hour later, two hours later, the next day, when they tell their spouse, etc. Make them comfortable with that decision because of the relationship and trust you’ve built up.
What’s perceived as a bad reputation regarding the auto repair industry is built into it. It’s our current model, our business-as-usual method of working on the car and talking with the customer that gives us a bad reputation. It’s our incentive to do our job, keep the shop owner happy, and make money. Let me explain.
It’s the technician’s job, in a sense, to maintain the customer’s car. That is, to determine what’s needed to keep the car running well and to be reliable. It’s also to limit future financial surprises for the customer.
The technicians and service advisors have additional motivations, which can get us into trouble. They need to make money to support their family, their lifestyle, and to set some aside for vacations and for retirement. They also need to make money for the shop owner in to keep the shop smoothly running next week, next month, next year, and so on.
The tech isn’t supposed to pick and choose what they put on the DVI: it all goes on there under the green, yellow, and red. The service advisor on the other hand is in a delicate spot on how they present this list to the customer. Do they present everything and risk looking like they are overselling? Do they pick and choose, maybe choosing the high-profit items or the quick fixes? And oops, like the technicians, they too have to make money by getting approvals for the additional work. Now add in the pressure that those approvals are being measured—a KPI.
This hierarchy can vary. That’s quite a priority juggle: the shop, the shop owner, the technician, the service advisor, and, oh yeah, the customer.
Another way to put it: Would you rather help your customers get their kids through college or help your kids get through college? The obvious answer is what creates the perception that we’re out to get the customer. How many other businesses exist where when you do your job, the customer suffers; they feel they are being taken advantage of. It takes one heck of a service advisor to keep everybody happy. And it’s not accomplished by selling “benefits, value, and safety,” nor simply using a DVI, as if that was the end-all. Two bad DVI examples come to mind. One picture showed slight cracks in a rubber differential mount and recommended replacement, even though no clunks were going into reverse or drive. Another mentioned a windshield washer pump operating at less than full pressure and had a current draw slightly above spec. It would need the bumper removed to replace it—$900 for slightly improved windshield squirters. So much for the DVI building trust, which I’ve read about over five times.
Final thought: Does the advisor put everything from the DVI into the estimate, the red and the yellow? How about we put the yellow into the recommendations for two or three months later? If you’re concerned about less business or work for the tech, you’re probably going to be working on something tomorrow that was a recommendation two or three months ago. You now have a happy customer who knows you aren’t going to oversell them because you deferred a few things. So, next time when you tell them their car needs a few things, they know it does. You’ve now made that customer more comfortable referring you and that new customer comes in already trusting you. And your shop and the industry get a better reputation. What could be better than that?
