Arming Your Service Advisors For Battle

0:00Shop Reckoning: From Chaos to Control. Because too many shops today are running on chaos— phones ringing, technicians frustrated, front counters overwhelmed, owners buried in problems with nobody to call. Kevin Brown has spent over 30 years in the trenches learning how to take that chaos and turn it into control. Shop owner, operator, consultant, leader— through industry shifts, insurance games, bad hires, great hires, and lessons learned the hard way.

0:28This isn't theory. This isn't corporate training fluff. This is real shop experience, unfiltered. On this show, Kevin breaks down what actually works— running profitable shops, front counter control, training technicians, negotiating with insurance companies, building systems that make your shop run instead of burn, and the mistakes that quietly bankrupt shop owners every single day. No corporate scripts. No sugarcoating. And yeah, somebody might get offended.

0:56That's okay. Disney's 2 doors down. But if you want the truth about this industry, buckle up. This is Repair Shop Reckoning: From Chaos to Control. Let's get started. So, you know, when you start talking about that, let me just get Pax, you know, here you go. People don't buy parts, they buy a peace of mind, like you just said, you know. One of the biggest mistakes I see in our industry is that people think they're selling repairs.

1:24Doing repairs is what we do. Yeah. We're selling confidence. Customers don't wake up, you know, in the morning excited to buy brake pads. I said that earlier. You know, I sit there and I dictate. I just talk and they say, can you put this thing in order for me? You know, nobody dreams of buying a transmission. Nobody wants to spend money on tires.

1:42What they really want is peace of mind. They're buying safety, right? Like they want their family to make it home safe. If your brakes are grinding when it comes in, they want you to say, don't worry, we're going to put it back to the condition it was before the failure. As it should work as expected, as it, you know, as it came out of the showroom.

1:58That's what we're gonna get you back to, right? And with the commercial world, we aren't going to tell them, hey, this is how you make your living. Okay, your transmission failed. We don't start out going, hey Jason, your transmission failed, it's $8,000, hahaha, come here and bring me the money. Hey Jason, we're gonna go ahead, your transmission failed, we're gonna go ahead and get your truck working like it was before the transmission failed.

2:20However word track you wanna do depending on the customer. Yeah. Because My word tracks change with certain customers. Yeah. I don't know how yours do. Oh yeah, for sure. Different people are different. Different people, right? So how I do it is I talk about different things with the different customers, talk about, you know, how long has it been acting up when it comes in and stuff like that.

2:37And you can get the story. The number one thing in our business is, service advisors, hear me now, you don't close your mouth and open your ears and let the customers tell you exactly what happened. You assume you know what happened. And assume means, as outta you and me, Listen to what they have to say. Let 'em dictate. We, they talk into a microphone in my shop.

2:57Yep. So we get the full story. And I will tell you, when we don't get the full story, there's usually some kind of hiccup. We didn't get this, we didn't get that, or the, the, the number or the information fell from the front to the back and the mechanic lost time, money, whatever. Right. Well, and just quick example, the guy that transferred me, the question I had asked him is, okay, what's the process and how long does that typically take to repair?

3:21And he was like, oh, I don't know the answer to that. Let me get you over to the owner. And the fact of the matter is I just didn't know what question to ask. I'm not the expert. There was a pause in between. I said, hey, this is my problem I'm having. Do you guys fix that? Yep. And there was a pause.

3:36So I was like, okay, what do I do? Do I bring it in? How long does it take? That question wasn't important to me. I just didn't know what to ask. If he would've then ask me back a follow-up question, he would have got more details out of me. He didn't have to rush to transfer me because that question wasn't of importance.

3:52Well, here's one. So the one time I tell people that they're allowed to call people back is when they say, I don't know. Then I want them to add with this, I don't know, but I will get your number right now. I'm gonna go find out the answer. I'm gonna call you back. Yes. You just gained that you're professional, that you could follow through with a thought.

4:09I'm gonna call you back. That guy would have said, just Jason, what is your questions? Let me write these down. I'm gonna call, I'm gonna call you right back. I'm gonna give you all them answers. You would've had confidence in him because this is the other thing. Most people are not calling people back, uh, even though they say they're gonna call 'em back.

4:23And so when you do that, another subconscious thought of like, this person does what they say they're gonna do. Yep. You know, you're buying their trust. You're literally buying their trust. So you took a bad situation where you really didn't know and you bought some trust from 'em. Yeah. I'm gonna call you back. But listen to me guys, call 'em back. I talk about that in one podcast that we say, oh, we'll call back.

4:40We write their name and we cover it up. We don't never call them back till we wake up at 9 o'clock at night going, holy shit, I didn't call them back. Oh well, nothing I could do now. And you call them back next day, they're like, dude, you're supposed to call me back 18 hours ago. I already got the car back, done.

4:52It was an $1,800 bill, whatever, thank you. And you're like, fuck. I will say though, if like there's been times where I've like forgot that day and I'll like the first thing I'll call them up and say, oh my God, It just slipped my mind totally. And, and that can buy you grace. I would say still follow up with that call, whether you're gonna get told no or not, because at least you're following up and you're being human admitting, you know what, we got, we got that you fell off the plate.

5:15My apologies, but I wanted to make sure that you were taken care of. It buys you trust and confidence. No, I, I agree. So here's, here's, if a mother brings an SUV in, SUV in because her brakes are grinding, I use this example, or she isn't buying brakes. She's buying confidence that her family is going to get home safely. If a contractor brings in his truck because a transmission failed, he isn't buying a transmission.

5:37He's buying his livelihood back. That happens all the time, guys. But we don't stop to think about these people are human. We think, goddamn, here she comes again, wants this, wants that. These are the people that pay your bills, pay your paycheck as an employee. Like when my phone rings, I go, oh, there's your paycheck calling. Okay. Because you don't get these people in the door, It, you can't do your job as a service advisor if you can't get them in the door to feed the, the parts stores, the mechanics, the shop, to make the money to get paid to get it all done.

6:09That's the number one thing that people forget. They get irritated. They just get pissed off. They get salty, whatever you want to be. Okay. And they're not trained. So, you know, the dealerships, these guys have a really bad road to go because these guys get put into a high stress, commission sales game with lack of training. Like, how many times do you hear these people on social media when they're talking to us or commenting and stuff like that, that, man, all I've been doing is training for the last 3 weeks, I'm getting tired of training.

6:44I don't think these dealerships really train these people, but they expect them to hit the numbers, hit this, hit that. They don't even know. Sales is all about being trained. Absolutely. You could be a natural salesman. Yeah. But not many of them though. Not many. There's not very many of them. So you have to be trained, you know, then you got the software, then you get the high stress.

7:01You got the technicians coming out, you got the technicians. We hear them all the time. I don't do that for free. I'm not writing my— I don't understand the mindset of helping a salesman sell because he's going to sell for your benefit. Yeah. It's one team. It's one team, you know? So, you know, one of the things that we like doing, and I was telling, telling you before the podcast started, I might've already repeated, I'm just going to repeat it again.

7:25It's like, I like to analogy of we're going to put these tires on your motorhome and this thing's going to handle— you're going up north, it's going to handle beautifully on the road and all them S-curves and stuff like that. You're painting a picture. So now you're also— you're selling them tires, but you're painting the picture. You're like, no more white-knuckling, you know, it's going to be smooth.

7:44So there's, you know, painting a picture, selling stuff is a really good thing. They say the best salesmen paint pictures and tell stories. Yeah. I mean, he talks about— um, Zig Ziglar talks about it. I know Grant Cardone talked about it, and I know Dale Carnegie talks about it. Yep. Here's another thing. Get to know your customers. If you get to know your customers on a personal level, that builds trust.

8:05You have a relationship. They're going to trust what you sell them. You don't rip them off, but it's a lot easier to sell somebody something. For instance, we'll see an example, uh, in one of the Dale Carnegie books a long time ago, uh, to win— How to Influence People and Win Friends and Influence People. He talks about going to people's offices to sell them stuff.

8:23He said he had a book. And he said he goes into so-and-so's office. There's his daughter over there. She's got soccer. Oh, hey, your granddaughter plays soccer? Oh, yes, she does. Oh, my kids played soccer. We spent lots of time. Now you made the personal connection, right? Now he talks about it, then he gets on to the sales, right? And then he writes it in his book.

8:45So, the next time he calls on that guy, how was soccer season? Because what the most— here's the thing, guys. You have to make a good impression the first time so that customer remembers you. As a salesman, 9 times out of 10, you think they know who you are when they walk back in. How many times they walk back in, they have no fucking clue who you are.

9:03They don't even know, like, hey, Phil. No, I'm Kevin. Yeah. Think about that. Yep. So you get that personal relationship going with these people. They get to build trust with you and you don't lie and you tell them the truth. Some of the best sales tactics are telling people the 100% truth. Absolutely. Hey, we found this on your car. It's not an emergency right now.

9:23We want to keep in mind, but you don't need it right now. Let's not waste the money right now. Versus the other guys that are doing the hard sell at the dealerships or the shops that their boss goes, solve every flush, solve everything you find, do a rack attack on it, whatever they call it, whatever the freaking beautiful word of the day is on social media, but sell everything you can.

9:44Skin them. Skin them. And I always say the same thing. You could, you could skin a sheep once, but you could shear them many times, right? So go ahead, put some stuff in there, build trust. Hey, your brakes are— your— here's an example. I told you this before. We had a guy that came in and needed front and rear brakes. The front brakes are like 10%.

10:02The rear brakes are a little bit over 20%, I would say. Right. Well, I'm just pulling that out. I'm just using these numbers. Yeah, but there's a differential, right? Yep. I call him up and I'm like, hey, I sent you the picture of your brakes, your pictures, blah, blah. Yeah, I can't do it. What do you mean? I mean, you're, you're going on a trip.

10:18I said, uh, well, I don't have, I don't have all the money. I said, listen, I don't think you really need the rear brakes right this minute. How far is the trip? I don't know. It's up north. It's going to be 800 miles. Listen, the brakes, rear brakes are going to be just fine, but the front brakes we need to worry about because I don't know where you're going.

10:35I'm going blah, blah, blah, blah. That's hilly and stuff like that. 70% of your braking happens in the front end. At least it was when I was in college, guys. I'm sure everybody else is going to tell me I'm wrong. It's 50/50 'cause it's discs. It might be, I don't know, I don't care. I'm just using an example, right? So I said, let's do the front brakes.

10:51I'll put you on the schedule here to call you in a couple months. Next time you get 'em in for an oil change, we'll take a peek at the rears. So take that out, decline the back, approve the front. Do you have that? Yeah, I have that. I said, let's get that handled. At least you're safe. I go, we don't have to worry about the front brakes starting grinding somewhere up north, and then it's a weekend, you're trying to do this, and you're trying to do that, and you grind through the backing plate.

11:12Or the back, the inner shoe, and then pistons come out of the caliper and you lose all your brake fluid. Then you're stuck up north till Monday or Tuesday to get a shop in. It's not worth it. Yeah, that's great. All right. Okay, we'll go ahead and take care of that. Number one, I built trust, but I also told him what could happen.

11:28I was not lying. I was not trying to scare him. I just told him what could happen. It's the truth. Okay. I didn't say you will die, it'll burst into flames, right? I kind of pivoted on my heel. His budget wasn't allowing him to do 4. So I said, let's just do 2. Do you have that? Absolutely. I took care of a problem with him on a personal level.

11:47I said, hey, let's not do that right now. We'll catch you on the next oil change. We'll take a look at it. Maybe they'll be still good. We can go another oil change or 2. Yeah. Right? Yep. And I built trust. Now he's confident his family's safe going on the trip. It's no different than wheel bearings on these travel trailers, these guys.

12:06Wheel bearings are the number one failure on these travel trailers and these boat trailers and everything. They're going up north because wheel bearings get away from you every year. It's just easier to bring them in and get them repacked every 12,000 miles. Not guys put 12,000 miles, but the boat's going in and out of the water. So we always tell them, hey, you should repack your wheel bearings every year.

12:21Every spring when you pull it out, bring it to us, we'll clean the grease, make sure it's not rusty because water does get in them, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Peace of mind. It's the same thing you do that you talked before about, like doing the DOT inspection and being able to be like, hey, you know, this is what you need to get done in order to come up to inspection.

12:41Yeah. This isn't me. This is the FMSCA. Yeah. This is federal law. Yep. I'm not trying to upsell you. I think it's bullshit that you have a little chip in your windshield over the thing. It's not in the driver's vision so we can get away with it. Blah, blah, blah, blah. Or, you know, one of the things I always had a problem with on DOT inspections or DOT morning inspections, these guys are expected to go around their truck and check all the lights, right?

13:02So, they check all the lights. And then in the afternoon, this doesn't happen as much anymore because of LEDs, but they go in the afternoon, they get pulled over and the guy's like, turn on your lights. He's got a light out. It wasn't out this morning. Here's my pre-trip. Yeah, you lied on your pre-trip. You're damned if you do and damned if you don't.

13:22But back to sales, you know what I mean? It's just like, come on. Here's my thing. God gave you 2 ears and 1 mouth. This is a part of this I really like, the great unsell. Steve Garrett used to unsell people all the time. He would sell 'em on it. They'd be shaking their head and he would keep talking. They already agreed.

13:45They already are bringing it in. He would just keep talking. After a while, they'd be like backing up. You're like, okay, now you've unsold 'em. Now they're never coming back. We've pissed them off, whatever. We've rubbed them wrong 'cause we just kept talking. It's the same. It's the reverse of when you talk about how when you start asking the customer questions and then they give you their Freudian slip, it's the same thing that happens as the owner.

14:05You're nervous and you keep talking and then you say something that makes their— it shakes their confidence. Yeah. Their spidey senses. Their spidey senses. They're like, maybe this guy doesn't have it all together like I thought he did. Yeah. And that's the big thing. And then, and then you're asking all them questions. You know what? Yeah. Start asking 'em the questions and they tell you all this stuff.

14:23And then you pretty much got them sold. You're dropping it off and you just keep talking, keep talking, keep talking, and then you offend them. I've done that before. I did it. I've done it. Yep. Yeah, I'm not gonna lie. Yeah. Oh yeah, you start talking, you say something, all of a sudden you realize they're from Ann Arbor. You're like, oh man, this is a whole other world.

14:44Here's the other thing, guys. Nothing screams I'm hard up like when they start you start losing them as a sales pitch and you go, hey, uh, how about I give you 10% off? Why don't you just pull out the freaking thing? We'll work for fucking free and put a cup there. Okay, don't discount yourself out of business. How many times have you seen these sales guys that can't get it, so they start the— it's their first line of defense.

15:10It's the first line of defense in sales, period, is like, we'll drop the price. Yeah. You don't have to shop the price if you do it the right way. And you know, I was in the other day and I talked about this, I believe last week I told Lincoln about it. Uh, there was, uh, spray bottles at Home Depot and we'll just say they're $4.99 and underneath it, it said freaking great price or fucking lines.

15:34Subconsciously they're telling you it's a great price. Yep. How do we even know it's a great price? But that's a great sales tactic. Yep. You know, but you know, the, the big unsell of discounts, you're talking too much. And you know, if you can't sell somebody, do you think it really matters that you're going to knock off $100? Like they were talking about in one of the books I was listening to or listened to a few months ago.

15:56They were talking about it. Like you tell the guy, you know, hey, uh, you know, this is $5,000. Can you afford— I can't afford $5,000. Can you afford $3,000? Yeah, I could afford $3,000. Now he agreed to spend the money. Now your job is to get him to spend the money. They were talking about stocks. Yeah. But you know, a lot of the guys though, they're talking about, here's another thing.

16:17This doesn't pertain to our business, but sales. They say most decisions in a household are not made in the dining room. Most decisions are made at the kitchen table, financial decisions. So if you're a salesman, you take the wife and the husband to the kitchen table to make decisions. It's out of place. To do that. Here's another weird-ass thing. People do not like people standing on their right side.

16:41Inherently, there was a sword arm. That's so from back years and years ago. They say psychologically still into us. They don't like people be on the right side. That's so crazy. Isn't that weird? That's so weird. Yeah, but they talk about stuff like that, and it's all stuff I love. That psychology stuff, parts and parcel with sales. Yeah, you know, I love that psychology stuff.

16:58And like I've been telling people, it's like no matter what business you're in, at the end of the day, you're dealing with people. And people haven't changed really. We have more technology and more resources and all these different kinds of things, but people really haven't changed ever. No. And here's the thing that I find much easier today than we used to have to deal when I was selling stuff.

17:16I was painting a picture over the phone. Think about it. I, there wasn't digital cameras. Yeah. The technology wasn't there. Yep. So I was calling you and going, hey Jason, your right front brake caliper locked up. It's grinding. Your rotor's blue. It melted the boots out of it. And you're like, what the fuck is a rotor? What is a caliper? I don't know.

17:35Yeah. And that's one of the things these service advisors try to talk above these people, and that puts uncertainty in them. Is this guy telling me, giving me all this information, and I don't understand what he's really saying, so I'm really not going to agree to this. I have to go ahead and Google it. Now it's ChatGPT. I'm going to call my brother-in-law who's a mechanic, and I'm going to talk to him about it.

17:55And then all of a sudden They get 3 more, 4 more estimates. You're maybe a little bit more expensive because you're using better parts. Maybe the other guy's using cheaper parts, whatever. And all of a sudden you were ripping them off. This guy gave me a line of shit about I needed all this stuff. And estimates are opinion. Meaning if I say, okay, we've used this analogy before, your right caliper seized up.

18:18So we're going to put 2 calipers on it. Okay. We're gonna put 2 calipers on it. We're going to put brakes on it. We're gonna— or pads on it, rotors. We're gonna go ahead and bleed the system so it's gonna work as it was designed to work. It's gonna be back to, back to, you know, manufacturer specifications. We're a professional shop. That's gonna be $1,000.

18:38This is why the Morse valve was bad. You know, the caliper, uh, it's a Chevy, so the caliper bracket had rust in it, pinched your hose off, so you had a brake pull and your other caliper overloaded, blah blah. The guy's like, what? So he takes it over to a guy, who his brother-in-law goes and has and recommends. The guy's like, yeah, bro, we can put one caliper on it.

18:57I took a screwdriver and opened that clamp up. That's all working good. Yeah, give me $150. Yeah. Okay. You automatically fucked him. Did he get the same job? Absolutely not. Instead of sitting there telling the customer, listen, this is what happened. You know how you have your brake pedal, your brakes stop your car, your right one, was over-stopping. It turned blue because the left one was not doing its job because the caliper hose was pinched off.

19:24It's as simple— it happens all the time in these shows. We deal with it all the time. We can get you back together. It's not the end of the world. Don't worry about it. Okay? And you talk to them on their level. You didn't start talking a bunch of freaking whole mechanical freaking array of bullshit. You know what I mean? Then they're just like overloaded with information.

19:42It made me just think of this example of like, and we talk about doctors all the time, but if you like go to the doctor and, and He like looks at your test and it's like, you know, all of a sudden you don't have any confidence. Like you are worried about what he's about to say. And it's the same thing. Like if you're going through this process and they're like, ah, you know, I have, I haven't dealt with something like that before.

20:01Oh, we haven't seen that before. No, people wanna know that you've dealt with this over and over again. This is something common that you've seen it, that you, you are gonna get them taken care of and get them back on the road. I got one for you. Marilyn brought this up to me. She's like, you need to tell this story cuz we were talking about doctors.

20:14He's retired now. So I go to my doctor who I've gone to for 20 years. Yeah. And I was having a problem. I wake up in the middle of the night and pee a lot. Apparently that's a middle-aged thing. Imagine that. So I go in there and I'm sitting there. He comes in, he goes, uh, you're gonna— we're gonna need to get you to the hospital right away.

20:36I'm like, why? He's like, uh, we need to get you for an ultrasound right away. We— you I don't want to really say cancer, but you have a big problem. And I'm like, ready to throw up. I'm like, holy fuck, I came in for— holy fuck, right? Yeah. He's like, so we're gonna go ahead and get your referral right now. Hey, Virginia, get the gold.

20:53And Virginia looks at it, she goes, this is the wrong Kevin Brown. The other Kevin Brown's in the room next to you. No way. Oh my God. You know what I said to him? You need to get your shit together, you fucking asshole. You scared the shit out of me. He got pissed. He went out, slammed the door. Motherfucker, you just told me I had cancer.

21:13You're still picking your stomach out of your balls. Like, whatever. You're like, I don't really want to say the C-word, wink wink, but you just said it, right? So I get in the car, I'm like still ready to throw up. Yeah, because the freaking adrenaline dump and everything. I call my wife, I tell her what happened. She's like, only to you? I go, yeah.

21:32And I kind of slipped and told him he's a fucking asshole. I didn't go back to him after that. And he retired. But oh my God, wow. You're like, you stopped by the other Kevin's, like, I'm sorry, bro, cancer treating, you're fucked. But I was just like, can you believe that? Uh, so doctors do make mistakes. Absolutely. Can you imagine if Virginia wouldn't have been in there?

21:54They would have freaking sent me— think about this, think about the freaking how bad that is. He would have sent me over with a global referral to get a bunch of tests and cost me a bunch of money on his mistake. Do you think he would have refunded it? Not at all. There's no remorse. They don't give a fuck. My mom— this was 3 years ago— my mom called me up crying that she went to her doctor and the doctor told her that he thinks she has a brain tumor.

22:18Like, saw that they did a scan, has this tumor, that this shadow on her brain doesn't want to say the word cancer, but we're pretty sure, like, you're going to have to have brain surgery. And it was a process. She had to go see a few specialists and it was about a 6-month process. I ended up going with her to the hospital and she was getting these scans done.

22:35And the guy doing her scan was asking her questions about vertigo. And she was answering, like, yeah, I've had vertigo for a while. And why? And she's like, I'm really more concerned about the brain tumor. And he's like, who told you you had a brain tumor? And she's like, my doctor did. And that's why we're here. And he's like, oh, you don't have a brain tumor.

22:51No, you have vertigo. And he's like, I can fix it right now. I'm going to do these things. We're going to fix it right now. And literally fixed her problem that she'd been stressed about for 6 months thinking she had a brain tumor. Like she was writing her will out. Like she's doing this stuff like she thought she's gonna die. So listen to that.

23:10That guy sat there and listened and said, what? What? Why are you here? Yeah. And she freaking told him and he sat there and listened. Yep. Wait a second. Nope, I'm confident, right? So let me ask you, how did your mom feel about that guy versus her doctor? Love that guy. Love that guy. And for the first time in 6 months, she felt heard.

23:28She felt taken care of. She was like, oh my God, if I would have just seen you for the first time And we're talking about doctors, but guys, this is your shop. This is your shop. Like you, you, you made it really hard. You sound like it was going to be, oh my God, that could be the— you're going to make it sound like it's gonna be difficult.

23:42And then they call up somebody else and they made it sound, we take care of this all the time. That's who you're losing to. Yeah. And you know, the thing is about it, confidence sells. I said earlier, confidence in sales, self-esteem, confidence, self-esteem comes as you're selling the stuff, right? The confidence comes as you're selling this stuff, right? The way self-esteem is the way you look at yourself.

24:02The confidence is like, I'll do this shit, right? And some people are overbearing. I'm like, I'm the most confident motherfucker, but if I don't know something, I'll look at it and go, ah, I don't know. There's certain things like with the benefits, I call Marilyn and go, hey, uh, so-and-so asked me this question. That's not what I do. That's not my job.

24:16And I'm okay with that. Yeah. A lot of guys aren't. Yeah. So if you listen to these people, like I did some examples, I said, give me some examples, you know, don't interrupt, be quiet and listen. Don't talk over them. A lot of guys want to talk, oh, you're wrong. You're wrong. Oh, it's a fuel pump. I seen this last week. Then you all of a sudden paint a picture.

24:33It's a fuel pump. It's not the fuel pump. Hey, we got a problem with the wiring from all the way from the fuse panel, the relay up in the, under the hood on your F-350. So we don't have power all the way to the back. So we have to, you know, spend $900 on diag for electrical. Wait a second. You said it was a fuel pump.

24:50I was wrong. Oh, so you don't know what you're talking about. Shut your mouth and listen and say, okay, we'll have a trained professional check it out. We'll get back to you. Don't put freaking things in their head. That's why you don't put prices in their head. Because if you say $400, it ends up being $800, you fucking ripped them off to get them in the door.

25:08We talk about that. And that's sales. You know, if you listen long enough, I can't explain this enough to you guys. If you listen long enough, they'll tell you everything you need to know about the situation. Maybe they're leaving for vacation Friday. Maybe their daughter's taking the car to college. Maybe they're hauling horses this weekend. Maybe they're starting a new job Monday.

25:24Money's tight. Okay, you can't afford all, all 4 brakes. I just told that story. Let's talk about the front. That way we didn't close the whole job out and get nothing. Yep. Right? They're telling you what's important. Now your problem solving has to start. You know, don't overwhelm the customer. The only time I overwhelm the customer with information, if it's a girl's boyfriend that's going to go ahead and save her from the big bad mechanic, and he's a mechanic himself, so he wants to talk mechanical.

25:52So usually if me or Jason get on the phone, we over-freaking-educate them just to be an asshole to them, because some guys are nothing but a problem. Yo, baby girl, he's trying to rip you off. He's trying to get $199 for brakes. I do that shit in the driveway for $49. I love you. You know what I mean? Right after I get out of my work at my job at AutoZone.

26:09Yeah, exactly. So, you know, and here's another mistake, you know, hey, you need brakes, they're X amount of dollars, and by the way, you need these other 15 things. You rattle them all off, the guy's like, yeah, Here we go. Here we go. Get the old parts cannon out and the flush cannon. Boom. We're going to hit a home run. We're gonna go ahead and make our house payment on this poor guy.

26:28That's not the way you sell stuff, guys. You know? So educate before you estimate, you know, you know, you start out, hey Jason, your car's, your car's, uh, needs brakes. It's $3,500. How do you want to pay that? Cash or charge? You're like, whoa, whoa, what, what, what, what? Okay. You haven't even earned the right to talk about price yet. The best salesmen paint this whole picture about what's going on, and they talk about it, they educate, they show pictures, they show diagrams, whatever your sales tool of the day is, right?

26:58A lot of times we say, hey, we took pictures, we sent you pictures, we're calling you on the phone to explain to you because you don't even know what you're looking at. I'm not saying you are an idiot or whatever, but that's not what you do. What do you do for a living? Well, I'm an accountant. Well, I guarantee if you show me some of your reports, I wouldn't know what I'm looking at.

27:12So I'm here to tell you What you're looking at. You see the circle right there on picture, you know, 545? Yes, that's your brake caliper. You see the— oh, it's all leaking and stuff like that. Yes, that's your problem. And you educate them, right? You don't say, well, you know this and all these big huge words like the, you know, the CAN data bus and all that.

27:30They don't give a shit. Look at this picture. This is what's going on. But don't worry, we deal with this all the time. We can handle it. We give them confidence. Let's get— we'll get you taken care of. Just go ahead and approve it if you want to go forward with it. Yep, I want to get— oh, blah, blah, blah, blah. You talk to them.

27:44All right. Give them an expectation of when you think it'll be done. If everything goes as planned, we should have your car back to you sometime tomorrow. I will give you a call the minute it's done. Oof. Well, the problem is I can't get a ride up there during the day because I'm working. That's not a problem. We have a drop box.

27:59We can send you a link. You can make the payment. The car will be ready to go, cleaned, backed into a parking spot. We'll put it in parking spot number 3 at the front of our lot. You'll be in box number 3. We can text you all that. Don't worry, we got you covered. Now all of a sudden she had another problem of how she's going to get the car she's stressing out.

28:13Don't worry, we got it. We do this, this, and this, you'll be good to go. Yep. Okay, we made it what? Easy. How many times— right now we're trying to look for a cement slab next to— to put next to the house where the dog kennel is at the new house. I called the guy and it was a cement company in Wixom.

28:32He answered after the 4th ring. Like, I don't even know what the fuck he said. Is this concrete? Hey, you know I'm thinking about getting you know a quote on cement. All right, what you need to do is email blah blah blah blah blah blah eighty seven at gmail dot com, and somebody will get back to you. Everybody's in the field. Well, I'm driving.

28:54Can you take my on and? Oh my God! All right, thanks. Thanks. Lost business. Lost business. Don't answer the fucking phone if you're gonna blow it. Let the answering machine handle it. Yep. The answering machine can't piss people off. No. Okay. And when you answer them, listen to the answering machine, call them back. At that point, hey, this is Kevin Brown. I'm looking for an estimate on concrete.

29:16Hey, Mr. Brown, we got your message. Sorry, we were out in the field working. We're booked this time of year. We're getting ready to close down for the season here in a couple of months. We're trying to cram everybody in. What can I do for you? Well, I need a— I need concrete done. I have Tuesday at 5:30. Would you like it then?

29:32I can't do it Tuesday at 5:30. No problem. I got Wednesday. I can't do Wednesday. How about Thursday? I never let them tell me. Yeah, I set it up. I tell them this time I'm going to text you when I'm on my way there to verify that you're still good. When I go to leave, I will text you. You text them, yep, we're good to go.

29:48If they don't answer me— if you don't answer me, Jason, I'm not going to drive an hour to give you an estimate if you're not going to answer me. This has to go both ways. Guys will like that. Guys like me would like that. Hell yeah, I love that. Yep, right. I don't even know who. I finally called one of the guys I built Trail 70s for who did my other cement.

30:06I go, hey. He goes, measure it and give me pictures and I'll give you a quote. I don't need to drive out there, I know you. Ta-da! I have confidence. He already did a job for me. He already has my trust. If he tells me he's going to show up this day and do this, he will. Yep. Is he the cheapest guy?

30:23Abso-fucking-lutely not. But he's the guy that's going to get the shit done. There's so much gold in there. And even going down to that end in, uh, I, I love that aspect of setting the expectation of explaining what happens if you don't just show up or don't call. Because I find when people call because they just can't make it and they, they got to reschedule, that if they call and let you know, they've bought into you, they respect you, they respect your time, and they're going to do business with you.

30:49Yeah, that's what I find. Yeah, it's like the people who do my pool. When they scheduled it Wednesday for the Thursday visit, they say, hey, Daniel so-and-so is scheduled tomorrow at 1:30. Yeah. Then I'm at work and I get a ding. Daniel's on his way to your house. Daniel gets all done. Hey, I did this, this, and this, sir. Boom, I get a text.

31:07I'm cool with that. That's great. Absolutely. Communication is great. Communication is so lacking in a world where everything's communication, but people can't do it. They're always like, I was too busy to call you back. Bitch, you were on Facebook. You know? So, you know, here's the other thing. When we get them sold, this goes part and parcel of what I said. When you stop talking, stop overselling.

31:29When the signals start, the buying signals start, they've already made up their minds they're going to buy it from you. Yeah. How long is this going to take? What's the warranty? Yeah. You know, are the parts available? Can I still drive it? Is it dangerous to drive? Okay. These are— these aren't objections. These are signals that they're already bought into you. So that's when you just stop your sales and you say, yes, you could drive it, it's not dangerous.

31:55What we could do, 'cause your car's very important to you or your truck's very important to you, give us the half down, we'll order all the parts and we'll schedule you back when the parts are here, we'll get you done. It'll have minimal downtime. Guess what you just did? You took another problem off of them. You made it easy for them. How many times do people make it so hard to buy from them?

32:14That guy that just did, go, bro, email it. And he rattles off a freaking email when I'm driving. Yeah, he made it hard for me to buy from him. We had, we had one guy that I called that, uh, that offered, uh, he, he was gonna give me free diagnostics, but I— he was sending me a form and I had to take my own pictures and fill it in.

32:32That was, that's their process. And I'm like, I'm not gonna do that. Like, even if it's free, I'm not going out and taking pictures and putting the— giving the work to me. Yeah, like I don't even know what I'm taking pictures of. Yeah, yeah, I got— I don't— yeah, confidence sells. Here's something I've learned over the years: price usually isn't the objection, it's the lack of trust.

32:50And that goes from the customers trust you, price becomes one factor. If they don't trust you, price becomes the only factor, right? Confidence sounds like this: here's what I found, here's why it's failed, here's how we're going to fix it. I had control of all that conversation. Yep. Okay, here's what you expect— can expect when it's finished. Desperation sounds like— we talked about this earlier— we'll knock 10% off.

33:18What does that say about you? Okay, when you— do you remember Empire Carpet? Yeah, they would start out here. Yeah, and they would end up here. It conditions your clients to bargain with you. Oh, hell yeah. Yeah. And for some reason or another, people think in our business that, hey, can you cut me a break? Can you do this? No, I can't.

33:39Do you do that at Walmart? No. You fucking look at the lady at Walmart, hey, can you give me— she's like, what? Like, doesn't happen. Yeah. So why do you feel compelled to answer me? Because somewhere out there, somebody has discredited what we do. The Auto Zones, the O'Reillys, the NAPA's, we'll do a free scan. They don't give a shit about you.

33:57They just want your money. Yeah, they're going to sell you the O2 sensor you don't need that's actually doing its job, right? We'll beat anybody's price. What does that say? Okay, that says you have no control of your numbers. Yes. If you buy a tire, we'll just say this. If you buy a tire for $50, you mark it up to $70 and some guy down the street comes in and goes, I can buy these tires for $40 and you sell him the tires for $40, you're losing money.

34:24What point are you proving? Well, a lot of guys will say, well, I'm going to get that business next time. No, you're not, because that guy's already price shopping. He's going to price shop your jobs the next time you offer him a break job or whatever, and you're the most expensive guy. You're not getting them back. So you just gave him $40 of your time and gave him your tech's time.

34:40Yep. That's just the bottom line. You know, those are 2 completely different businesses. You know what I mean? Like, I consider the guys that want to say, hey, I'll do this. This job is $800 and you start squawking. They're like $600. You're squawking. They're like $400. I'm selling to you below my cost. That's what Empire would say. The guy actually got mad and left my house on Carroll Lake Road when I was younger because we didn't have a lot of money.

35:04Yeah, he comes here to do the whole carpet thing, and by the time I was beating him up on the price, he's like, I'm selling you this below my cost. I go, so let me get this straight. I just got done with management. So let me get this straight. You pay $500 for this carpet and you're selling to me for $400? How the fuck does that even work?

35:21How does that even work? I said, you're lying. Don't you call me a liar. Yeah, let me go outside and call my manager. That was the other thing. They go outside, call their wife. Yeah, I got this asshole on the freaking thing. Like, doesn't that— I don't— yeah, that's carpet, I guess, you know. It's not auto repair, but you understand what I'm saying.

35:38Oh yeah, the way these people are. Yep. If somebody's automatically going, can you price shop me, that's a signal to you that that's not your customer. Unless you're a broke-ass shop who needs to work and you'll do whatever you can to to get work in. Once you become successful and have money in your bank accounts and stuff like that, you don't wanna deal with people like that.

35:52As Mike Lee used to say, look for the professional buyer and blow off the knucklehead. Okay, that's no different than giving free oil change and trying to sell people tie rods. They're there for their free oil change 'cause they're a certain type of clientele. We did that early on and it was nothing but a headache for us. I told that story about the Windstar with the fricking tie rod falling off.

36:13I mean, that's kind of where we're at with this thing. This is an hour and a half long. I figured it was gonna be like almost 2 parts even. Yeah. So I mean, back to, you know, what we were talking about, like the sales, it's just like I've learned so much when we started selling, calling these shops. It's been really eye-opening. And, you know, like I said, I could imagine that people aren't getting training for their people, but you're losing money.

36:40And every single day. And I, I, if, if this is something where you're like, you're wondering about what's going on in your shop, drop us a message because we will, we will do an audit. We'll drop you an audit. We'll give you a free audit and send you exactly what's going on. Let's just do 10 more spots again. Sounds good. 10 more spots was good.

36:58Send me— listen to me, okay? You guys are not very good listeners, so close your mouths and open your ears right now. Send us your shop name, your phone number and your shop address so we kind of know where it is for the time zone. Yep. Anything else? Um, if you— if there's multiple service advisors, let me know because I'll call each one.

37:18I'll call up each, uh, one and get each one so you get the feedback from each one. So just let me know if there's multiple services. Yeah, let us know what kind of work you do. Any kind of work. Yeah, we don't want to call you about a Volkswagen when you do diesel trucks only. We'll look like ass wipes. Exactly. So not that you'll know it's us because there's secret shopping But you know, it's very eye-opening.

37:35You know, so we got 10 spots. Listen to this clip again, you know, and you know, send us a message. It's pretty interesting. And the problem is honestly what I think some of these guys are so egotistical, they don't send us the freaking message because their shop is so sweet. Good, let them be so sweet. Yeah, because we need people that we take business from, you know.

37:56So yeah, it's, it's quite interesting. We're going to start just calling shops around here and, and They blow it. I was shocked. I can't say enough. I'm like, just like, my God, I can't believe they sound like this. The average score is a D minus. Yeah. Yeah. We had 2 higher scores. One was a B plus and the other one was Lincoln.

38:14I don't even remember what he was. Yeah, it was a B. Yeah, it was a B. Yep. Okay. My 19-year-old son outsold service advisor been doing for years. Okay. We call the dealership and that lady unsold you. Absolutely. A lady at a Michigan dealership, hear me now, unsold us on getting our car fixed there. So you have somebody that everybody's paycheck depends on and she's on the phone unselling work all day.

38:39Absolutely. Yep. Yep. Pointing out other shops to go to. Like, what the hell? So she was nice. I'm sure if her boss hears her talking, she was very friendly. They usually are. Yeah. You know, they send 'em over to the competition. It's just like, oh my God. Like, it's a good thing if you have service advisors that wanna help people, but you need to train them and arm them so that they can they can, they can win.

39:04They're on offense. And, and I'm telling you, most of the time your clients are controlling the conversation. And if they have your people backpedaling, if they're asking the, the questions and they're leading the conversation, they're not the expert. So they're leading you to nothing. No, in our shops that doesn't usually happen. We, we, we push back, we control shit because we have to.

39:23Yeah. And if you guys, if you're letting your customers run your shop, your customers are running your business. No different than the insurance company running your business. Okay, the insurance company's dictating to you what your prices should be. You're a dumbass. Let me hear you— let me say this again. You're stupid if you take exactly what the insurance company tells you you're going to do, because that's all you're going to get.

39:42Get some training. Yep. Okay, I'm not saying I'm the end-all be-all, but I'm getting pretty goddamn good at this. You know, we have a good track record with these insurance companies. Yeah. Okay, and we're getting paid. Okay, and I'm surprised at the money these guys in the collision world are not making. There's guys that I'm sure they're making a killing, but 'Cause I'm the guys that know how to do it and they're not on social media.

40:03Okay. And everybody's like, well, you know, you're on there running your mouth. You don't even have shops. Nope. I just woke up this morning, decided I'm gonna open repair shop Reckoning with a little dollar sign. We're going to talk about shops all day. We're going to talk about shops all day. 'Cause we just don't know what we're talking about. A lot of guys don't think we know what we're talking about, but like I told my wife, I said, she's like, 'cause she's on our page.

40:26Yeah. She's like, how do you deal with this? I'm like, well, how do I deal with what? She's like, some of these comments. I go, usually when I sit there at night, you guys hear me commenting back to them. I don't give a shit what they have to say, number one. And number two, I told you the other day when we were driving in the car, I came up with this all on my own.

40:39Did not read this in a book. Did not read this. I say, would I want their life or would they want my life? If they could switch spots with me, would they switch spots with me or would I switch spots with them? Yep. Yep. You know what I mean? These, these guys have an opinion, but they've done nothing in their life. They're a failed technician or failed body man or failed shop owner.

41:01Here's a good one. I was like this. We start training somebody, they go, you do realize I have a lot of experience. You're like, okay, yeah, I owned my own shop for, for 10 years. What happened? What happened? What— why are you working for somebody else now? Because obviously you sucked at something, or you sold to a private equity group and they sold and you spent all the money.

41:20So which is it? Well, it was just too hard. It was just too much work. It's just, you know, I got out of this business. And these guys are on here now going, yeah, I got out of the body shop business because you can't make any money. No, let me go ahead and back that up. You couldn't make any money. It's no different than our girlfriend early on in our life goes, I don't want you as a boyfriend.

41:37Let me go ahead and decode that for you. I don't want you as a boyfriend because 2 weeks later she's with some other dude. Do you remember that? Absolutely. Our hearts get broken. I don't want you as a boyfriend. I want to be friends. Oh really? Yeah, I want to be single. 2 days later, she's with homeboy over there. So I think honestly everybody needs training.

41:57I listen to books nonstop. I— when I say I listen, because when I'm in my car they play constantly, and sometimes I listen to these books 3 or 4 times. Have you listened to that Dale Carnegie? Oh yeah, man, I loved— I love it. Yeah, yeah, it's good. Is that all the stories? I, I love the— and that's what I love about Dale Carnegie is he tells the stories, and I love history.

42:14And so he's writing it from like 1919 or whenever he— whenever he wrote this But it still— all of it still applies to today. But again, the stories help you really understand and lock in. Talks about JP Morgan, talks about freaking Ford, talks about all these guys had the same type of problems we had. Yeah. But you know the one thing I noticed?

42:32They all have the same type of personality, my type of personality. The in-your-face, I don't care, I'm going to do it. Like the guy who did NLB Corporation, started in his garage. Uh, Henry Ford, you know, the Dodge brothers. Like all these guys who made history They were guys that like pissed everybody off. Yeah. Yep. They were not the quiet guys. Yeah.

42:52If you really stop and think about it, it's, it's insane. And, and this is a really good, uh, quote by Henry Ford that I love. He's, he has a few of them, but he said, if I would have did what my people, what people wanted me to do, I would have found a way to build faster horses. Yeah. They didn't know an automobile was possible.

43:07Right. Think of the vision and think about this. When we talk about AI, think about the problems that comes along with new tech and technology. Like, okay, I'm pretty sure that the very first few Model As, Ts, whatever, didn't have VIN numbers. Yeah. Right? But then all of a sudden we're starting to do a bunch of black cars. How do we know who's whose?

43:27Then they have to start putting license plates on them and VIN numbers. Then the government figures out we can start charging for license plates to do the roads. Then we have to start doing different colors. So it's kind of like the AI, like I talked about in the one interview. It's like, okay, we haven't even got to the point point in Michigan at least where there's laws about drinking and driving.

43:45You have a full self-driving car like the CyberTaxi in Texas, oh, and you're half fucked up and you get into a CyberTaxi and you're drunk and it takes you home and it gets in an accident, are you responsible? Think about that. My Tesla— if my Tesla becomes full self-driving in Michigan, yeah, and I go to the bar and I get in my car and I'm drunk and I'm behind the wheel but the car is driving.

44:11What kind of legislation is that going to be for that? Yeah, like we're in a whole thing where there's so much uncertainty, so much stuff happening so fast. It's a great time to be alive. It's a great time to be alive. I mean, AI is evolving so fast. Yep. I mean, we're talking about— Elon's talking about putting data centers in space, and he's talking about the solar panels because of the climate, the cycles.

44:31There's no season cycle, so the solar panels will will last so much longer and they could feed that. I'm like, oh my God, this shit's insane. It's insane. But you know, I think this is all pretty cool, like I said. And, uh, guys, train your people. If you need somebody to do it, we can do it, or call somebody else. I don't care.

44:48Yeah, but you know what, when I say I'm here to help make the industry better, I really do. Uh, we have a track record with all the shops. All the shops I've started working with, we've started working with, are better. Yeah, we can increase your sales. I don't, I'm not even gonna throw a number out there, but we can increase your sales.

45:05And I have a proven method of doing it. We have a proven method of getting people in the door on your phone. Okay. Give us a call. We just opened 10 spots up. We can audit your shop and let's, let's hit, let's see how it goes. Yeah. I'm excited for the next wave.