Building a Gold Standard Service Advisor

The Evolution of Automotive Service

By: Alana Valiño Solis

Narrated by: Molly Secours

Anyone that has been a service manager knows the job is incredibly stressful. Several managers I have worked for used to joke about how they had a full head of hair before they started in service management. As I made my way through the automotive industry, starting at the gas pump and eventually to regional fixed operations management, I discovered that I could manage my stress level and generate amazing net profit by always keeping a finger on the pulse of the drive-through.

This initiative-taking approach helped me quickly grow my bottom line and simultaneously keep most of my employees happy. I kept everyone focused on the needs of the customer first and always looked for ways to make it easy for everyone to earn money based on performance.

If you are a service manager, you know that the first order of business is the profitability of the department–how you are spending the gross profit and how much you have left over at the end of the month in terms of net profit. You cannot manage the bottom line when you are putting out fires created by a lack of communication, overselling, and indifference in your drive-through.

Your attention needs to be focused on process, expenses, and customer retention. Keeping a watchful eye on how the customers are treated and being proactive when you see advisors inadvertently planting land mines for you to find daily, will save you time and brain damage in the future.

If you can become an expert at identifying underlying issues before they turn into major life-altering events, create a supportive atmosphere for your advisors, and be firm with rules, guidelines, and selling tactics, you will succeed at this job. There are several keys to running a stellar service department. In this book, we will focus on the advisors and the drive-through. We will explore how advisors directly impact both the service department daily, and what impacts they can have on the amount of hair you have left over at the end of it all.

In this book, I will “brake” down the things that identify and help create “Gold Standard Service Advisors”. Service managers will find that the core training of each of their advisors is vital and requires constant follow-up and consistent reinforcement on their part. This may be something that you, the manager, do not have time for. So, this book is also about how I can help you.

Coupled with my firsthand experiences and examples of how to apply the techniques I teach, a service manager could take the information in this book and build an outstanding team of lean, mean, relationship-building, and labor-selling machines. Or, if you are a service advisor who has finally committed to providing service excellence, the blueprint for you to succeed can be found within this audiobook.

My mission is to identify, train, and empower service managers and service advisors with the knowledge and skills required to build customer relationships that encourage loyalty and that drive long-term profits in the fixed operations of your dealership while streamlining processes throughout the dealership to encourage an efficient and smooth-running environment for the customer to do business in.

You CAN turn your service lane into a profitable, minimally stressful environment you can be proud of, and Gold Standard Service Advisors are the key to it all.

©2022 Alana Valino Solis (P)2022 Alana Valino Solis