If you did not catch last week's blog habit #1 please read that first. These habits form a complete list for your service advising success.
So here we go with habit #2.
2. Get and keep your head in the game, quickly and keep it there….ALWAYS
This is the habit of concentrating on the task at hand. Which, when you are service advising, is a rolling list of priorities that change by the minute.
It is especially important to those of you with restrictions on getting to work earlier which we touched on last week.
The minute you get to work, you need to “BE AT WORK.” Mentally and spiritually, not just physically.
When I get to work, I do whatever I need to do in order of priority. Although the priorities are different every day, priority 1 would be writing up the night drops. Then I start texting the customers that I have just written up. If needed, when there is no one to do so, I start moving cars that may be blocking the lane, moving parts out of the drive-thru where they are delivered, walking around all the vehicles I have written, and pressing things of that nature.
If there is nothing pressing, or if I have done all the above, I review appointments, make sure parts are available for the things that I have booked for the next day, or the day after that, and so on and so on.
As soon as I write a work order, time permitting, I review the history to see what has not been done or recommended based on the history and the mileage. I create a note for myself to add it to anything the tech finds. If time is not permitting, I keep those work orders aside, and unfiled, until I can do it. But I DO NOT let one through my radar net until I have done this part of my process.
If you feel that skipping this part of the process is "ok" you would be dead wrong. Unless you have a team of techs that are religiously going through the service history to add missed items to the estimate they are providing, you are throwing potential opportunities out the door.
If that is all done, I do courses pending online, write more of whatever book or blog I am writing, or tidy up things from the previous day. The very last thing I pay attention to is my service survey scores. I check in on these maybe once or twice a month. I like to keep my focus on the customer so that the surveys handle themselves for the most part.
I can honestly say, there is always something to do that is related to work, other than being on my phone. The ultimate waster of time is the internet for non-work-related tasks. Never in the history of the human race have spent this much time on a non-productive activity.
If you pay attention to people that succeed in doing whatever it is they have chosen to do, you will see how they spend their time. 90% of them are reading, researching, and finding better ways to do things. They feed their minds with beneficial information, not gasping at the latest "challenge" on the internet that is sending kids to the hospital.
I have been doing these rituals every day for several years and I can count on one hand the times that I have run out of things to do. But it was when we were super slow, and had too many advisors on staff for the workload.
However, I also had time to go through all my deferred recs for the past YEAR and offer to get them in at a discounted rate. Which kept me busy a lot longer than the others, and I also booked way more appointments for myself as well.
The point is I am always looking for opportunities, not the latest meme to share on FaceBook or TikTok.
If you start the day well prepared, (see habit 1) the issues that develop during the day are less overwhelming and easier to negotiate mentally. And your mental stability is a key part of your ability to focus on what you are doing and how you are doing it.
Every day can be a struggle. We live through some doozies every day. Rough customers, tough situations, and hard-to-find solutions to things that continue to happen. That is basically what you signed up for. Forever. So you better come to terms with it now or run while you still can.
In the 30-plus years I have been doing this, not once have I had a week without some problem to solve for someone. A few days without issues, sure. And as I got better and better at communicating and seeing where my own lack of communication was causing an issue, I had fewer and fewer issues to deal with. But there are, and always will be issues and problems to deal with. Period.
Seeing that this is what you are there to do is a very important part of being successful at this job. If you do not like dealing with conflict you will need to do some serious soul searching and self-development to make this job work for you long term.
You need to want to be there. Even when things get rough. I love getting to work to see what the day will bring into my life. What kinds of problems will I get to solve? What opportunities will come my way? Whom will I get to impress, or make smile today?
Finding my opportunities, and my solutions are how I make my day fun. Weird right? But if you can reframe your expectations and your mindset it is the key to the whole show.
Most people that do this job have raised the white flag of surrender. They have no passion for what they are doing. Maybe they did once, and they somehow lost it. They do not take the time to search for their opportunities and many are lost.
They write the work order as it was booked and cast it aside, never looking at the potential each one may hold.
What is more, they have lost sight of the true value of the relationship they could be building with their customer. And that is the greatest opportunity of all.
If you think you would benefit from some one-on-one coaching, real-time in your own environment message me at:
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