Hi again, if you are just getting into our blog, please read habits 1 and 2 from the last two weeks before proceeding with this week's blog.
So here we go, habit # 3 of making your way to being a service advisor all-star.
3. Do not waste time… EVER, the play clock is ticking
Just like on a football field, nothing is left to chance. If you lose control of the situation you have lost the game so generally, there is a plan for almost every possibility. Every single action has a purpose. Every second matters, and how you spend every second can make the difference between a win and a loss. We need to work this way in the drive-thru as well.
An example of this habit in action is: Walking toward the vehicle with a clipboard in hand. You should already be putting your brain into walk-around mode. Completing the 4-point walk-round has to start somewhere. It might as well start when you head toward the car for the first time. This way, the customer is aware you are noting damage, getting the license plate, and looking at the tires. This also allows the customer a moment to gather their things.
Not every drive-thru works this way, in some, the porters do the walk around for the advisor. In this case, we need to utilize the time we are waiting for the walk around in a different fashion. Some dealerships don’t even have a drive-thru so again we must alter our process to conserve as much time as possible to do the main parts of our job. Which are building a relationship and selling.
If you are standing outside the driver’s door waiting, what good does that serve? Nothing but wasting your valuable time. Time is the one thing you can never get back, and the one thing there is no way to make more of. Once it is gone, it is gone. For this reason, we need to save as many moments as possible doing redundant things that serve no purpose.
Just this one example will show you some staggering information. Let's do the math:
If you stand outside the door waiting for a customer to gather their things, instead of starting the walk around as I just described above, you could be waiting there for 1 minute on average I would say. It could be more or less, but let's use 1 minute to make it easier. 1 minute does not seem like a long time. Unless you are on hold.
If you write 20 cars a day, and half of them make you wait that long, that is 10 minutes per day. That is not much right? But during a 21-day work month, that is 3.5 hours of your time you will never get back, and have wasted doing a non-productive task.
How could I spend 3.5 hours of my time?
Checking history
Doing follow-up calls
Reviewing estimates/and selling the work on them
Organizing yourself
Reviewing your appointments
Calling special order parts customers and booking them in. Properly.
ANSWERING THE PHONE AND BOOKING MORE APPOINTMENTS
Evaluate how you are spending your time. Right now. Before you move on next week to habit 4. See how many minutes of every hour you are wasting and how. How can you streamline your processes? How can you take steps out of what you do every day? Where can you shave seconds or minutes off your processes?
Doing everything with the purpose of saving time, is not really what I would call multitasking. It is more like when you are a waitress it is smarter if you treat your whole section as one table. So instead of going to one table at a time to see if anyone needs a refill on their soda getting those and then visiting the next, you visit all of the tables and ask, then, go get all of them and drop them off to the tables in one trip.
Doing things this way saves incredible amounts of time and energy. If I have to go to parts or sales, or wherever, I take papers I need to drop off in my boss’s office, and my water bottle to fill it up, I stop in the lounge and touch base with any customers I have waiting, I visit the sales department to chat about some issue with a customer, then visit the washroom, swing through the shop and check out what is happening there, and then get back to my desk. One trip. Period.
Do not let things accumulate and try to complete all tasks by the day's end. Time does not stop because you have too many things to do. When you have a task to complete, do it immediately in order of priority and complexity. The simpler things should be done first allowing you to focus on the more involved things as you can address them depending on time sensitivity as well.
Basically, you must work with a sense of urgency at all times.
Even when it is not urgent. Walk quickly, sometimes I even run if I have a lot to do. Leave your desk often to walk through the shop. Touch base with the techs to see what they are on if they are running into issues, and do this even if they are not working on your job. If the job they are on is not going well, they will not be pulling more work, and that is good to know.
Daily, my step counter gets to 8-10000 steps. And it is not because I am disorganized and walking randomly all over the dealership. I go around with purpose and with a plan of where I am going, and when I am going to go there. I could choose to sit at my desk all day and react to things instead of controlling them. But that would not be an excellent use of my time. Would it?
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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