Front counter, center stage. Kent Bullard and coach Aldo Gomez break down why the service advisor is the shop’s heartbeat, fielding fires, translating tech talk, and guiding customers with clarity. Aldo shares how accountability, preparation, and smart communication turn “good” into “great,” plus the simple rituals that keep him sharp under pressure. They explore preventing burnout by knowing what to do and writing everything down so nothing slips. Expect practical tactics for aligning with technicians through respect and clear expectations. Newer advisors get a confidence roadmap for earning credibility without pretending to be the expert. The episode closes with how peer groups and roundtables build options, not excuses, so advisors can act with calm and consistency.

Host(s):

Kent Bullard, COO of The Institute

Guest(s):

Aldo Gomez, Coach at The Institute

Show Highlights:

[00:02:20] – Aldo describes the service advisor as the hub of information connecting customers, technicians, and owners.

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Episode Transcript Disclaimer

Episode Transcript:

Kent Bullard: Hello everybody. I'm Kent Bullard and I can't tell you how excited I am to host this week's leading edge. We've got quite a show today for you. We're gonna be covering why the service advisor is the most important role in the shop. That's the assertion from our very own Aldo Gomez. Today what we really wanna focus on is what the importance of the service advisor role really is.

Kent Bullard: Cover some of the real challenges that advisors face daily and how growth practice, peer learning can drive confidence, can improve performance. So I wanna start off with what's, think back or think to your team, think to your experience. What is one of the first words that comes to your mind when you think of either your experience as a service advisor and the pastor or your service advisor today?

Kent Bullard: As you guys answer that question, I'd love to introduce Aldo Gomez. He's based out of San Diego. He brings 12 years worth of real hands-on experience into the industry. Started as a shuttle driver, moving through parts and service advising, and eventually stepping into the leadership and coaching role.

Kent Bullard: What really stands out about Aldo is his grounded, practical approach. I mean, he's very pragmatic. I've loved working with him. He's lived life at the front counter and knows the daily challenges that our advisors face, and he can bring that real world understanding into every coaching conversation that he has.

Kent Bullard: He's also bilingual, which is awesome because he is fluent in both English and Spanish, which allows 'em to help even more shops, managers, and teams grow through better communication and connection. Aldo's focus areas include service advising operations, leadership and helping businesses scale. And I'm excited to dive into the, his perspective on this.

Kent Bullard: Why the service advisor truly is the most important role in the shop. So you've worked at. The front counter. You've lived it. What do you, what made you realize like how critical that advisor role really is to the shop success?

Aldo Gomez: Well, let me start by asking you, this is when something doesn't go correctly with the customer's experience at your shop, who's most likely the person that they're gonna turn to of what went wrong?

Kent Bullard: Well, that's the owner, right?

Aldo Gomez: Definitely not unless your owner is working the front counter every day.

Kent Bullard: Well, you know, we've seen it. A lot of owners tend to try to, you know, they work behind the front counter a lot of the times, but no. It's the service advisor that deals with most of these challenges face first, so to speak.

Kent Bullard: Then that's, you

Aldo Gomez: know, that's one of our question based selling methods right there, right? By asking a question about who would get who would be held responsible or accountable for that. And also by, if you take a step back from the service advisor position, you can see that the service advisors a natural hub of all information, whether parts are arriving for a job that they're waiting to get done, a technician wants clarification on what's the next step or what they do wanna move forward on the owner asking the service advisor or maybe congratulating the service advisor on a great profit margin that week.

Aldo Gomez: Or maybe a not so positive conversation of what happened to profit margin that week, or a customer's calling on the phone and that you just did repair work on their vehicle. They're experiencing some kind of issues with the recent repair and they want to talk to you.

Aldo Gomez: Right? So

Aldo Gomez: all of these things that are going on in the environment, you are a hub of information.

Kent Bullard: I like the idea of calling it the hub. Right. And you said a few very important things. One, just information on the customer, the vehicle what's being done on the vehicle. You talked about connection between the customer and the technician and the owner and management of the shop.

Kent Bullard: Communication between all of those crucial roles and also putting out the fires that can happen.

Aldo Gomez: Correct.

Kent Bullard: So. What do you believe in your experience? 'cause we've got really good advisors. We work with a lot of them. We also work with a lot of really great advisors. What do you think separates a good advisor from a great advisor?

Aldo Gomez: The a good from great would be how much action you take on your own, for your own satisfaction of knowing how well or how much better or efficient you wanna get at this position. So someone could be really good naturally, probably what brings you to a lot of good is that you have a really great people skills.

Aldo Gomez: You have a basic understanding of what you need to do. You're intelligent. However, sometimes that may be okay with you to just be good. To be good at it. However, if you wanna move on to great, then there's plenty of resources for you too. You just have you, that's what separates one from the other, is that one is good, is not good enough, great is what they want to be.

Kent Bullard: Can you think of maybe a time back in the day when you were kind of first in the trenches that, you know, was there an experience or situation that differentiated where you were like, Hey, and maybe you look back and go, actually, that was that defining moment where I went from being a good advisor to a great one.

Aldo Gomez: It was my eagerness to wanna be coached. I started at the, I started at the, when I was in the parts room, I really. They would, in the parts room, they would, these consultants would show up and then they would meet with each service advisor.

Aldo Gomez: And I

Aldo Gomez: remember getting a hold of their presentation of how they wanted us to answer the phone.

Aldo Gomez: Well, not me, because I was in the parts, but I saw what the service advisors got and they would leave them lying around and I would take them and I would practice the presentation myself. And I also I also really wanted to be coached by somebody. I saw them come in. I thought about how cool it was to get to learn something at work.

Aldo Gomez: So you,

Aldo Gomez: what

Kent Bullard: kind of weird personality do you have? I can't tell you. It's, it is really refreshing. And it's not uncommon actually. You know, I was just at Euro train and we had a lot of people there. I gotta tell you, the crowd there, they loved learning. And it's, it was incredible to see the conversations that they were having during lunches and then even into the night.

Kent Bullard: It was all about what the training was in, involved in how they can apply it, how they and they were kind of like weighing the pros and cons of the training. And I haven't seen that depth of like understanding from like a holistic shop's perspective. What do you think got you to have that mindset of like, I always need to be learning and growing.

Aldo Gomez: That, that's the type of person I am. You know, like there, there's a lot of times when I talk to service advisors, there's a lot that's in our control. Like, for instance, how we present an estimate. Do we know all the information? Did I begin the conversation in the best way possible? Are all of the variables that aren't really variables that are within my control?

Aldo Gomez: Am I executing them? Executing them, and doing them properly? And there's things that are out of control. Like, for instance, when if the customer says no to you, it's possible that you're not gonna make every sale a hundred percent of the sales. What you can control though, is your part of it. And by you being aware that.

Aldo Gomez: Some people are just like that. That way you don't get discouraged when things don't go your way. Right. It's, it doesn't mean everybody's like that. I would hear a lot of service advisors say things like don't, you don't even bring it up. Don't even bother bringing it up to somebody because they never buy anything.

Aldo Gomez: That's a big one. They never buy anything. And I learned, well, they don't buy anything from you. That does not mean that they won't be motivated to be held by me.

Kent Bullard: That was a nice way of saying, you're just bad at this.

Aldo Gomez: Well, no. And maybe they'll buy from someone else. Yeah, exactly. It's, I don't know that, that part, I don't know, and I don't study that part.

Aldo Gomez: I just know that they, that when people say no to me, also as a sale, as a service advisor sales person, when people say no to me too, because it also happens I can't ever blame the customer for it. It's not their fault.

Kent Bullard: Well, I think that's such an interesting point. You know, I can't tell you how many times we've had conversations or, you know, we've been speaking with shops where the people run into this excuse engine of all of the reasons why they couldn't do it.

Kent Bullard: And I wrote this down a few times. You've mentioned it three or four times, just in this short period of like, one of the things that makes, or that differentiates a good advisor from a great one is somebody who takes accountability.

Aldo Gomez: Yes,

Kent Bullard: extreme ownership, right? It's my job. I always have a choice I can make of whether or not, you know, I do this or even how I receive the feedback or the mistakes that I make and how I move forward from those things.

Kent Bullard: Am I on Absolutely. Point there?

Aldo Gomez: Yes. Yes. And be clear that as long as you do your part as well as you possibly can. Then everything else will work its way out.

Kent Bullard: I'm interested to know, 'cause I asked the question in the very beginning here, those of you who are just tuning in we're kind of looking at what do you think is a critical characteristic that makes or separates a good advisor from a great one?

Kent Bullard: And do you have great advisors in your shop? Let us know in the comments, you know, what are the characteristics you guys find make great advisors. It's funny because as we go through this, I mean, we just had the a PG group meeting and I always love those conversations. We get an opportunity to kind of go through and explore some of those pain points that these advisors encounter.

Kent Bullard: And help them kind of bridge that gap between good to great. Most advisors I think, feel caught in the middle between like the customer and the technician. What do you think, or what do you see are some of the biggest challenges that they're facing on a day-to-day

Aldo Gomez: that the service advisors are facing?

Aldo Gomez: Regard with the, in their

Kent Bullard: communications with technicians? Yeah. Or between their communications with customers. The

Aldo Gomez: not being, not having clarity in communication because the service advisor is holding back.

Kent Bullard: Can you, I wanna. Dig on that. What do you mean by holding back?

Aldo Gomez: Meaning that most specifically, when you're a service advisor your position is to be being the linchpin between the customer and the shop.

Aldo Gomez: Right? And what has to happen. So if you're not clear on your expectations from the customer and you're not clear on your expectations with your technician, most of the time you have a gut feeling that tells you that something isn't quite right. However, you may have gotten yourself into a habit of allowing it to happen too often, and then later it shows itself in different complications that don't need to happen in the process of the vehicle being there.

Kent Bullard: Yeah, I think honestly what you're hitting on, and I think I mean the question more so. A bit more practical, but I think you're really hitting on something very important here because a lot of those practical obstacles, those tangible things that we run into those friction points are really kind of a symptom of whether communication has happened and whether that communication has been clear and understood by everyone involved.

Kent Bullard: That seems like a lot to handle as a service advisor.

Aldo Gomez: It is. It, so, it's a lot to

Kent Bullard: handle

Aldo Gomez: The way to get a good handle, if you will, no pun intended, right on it, is to no know what you're gonna do, what you're supposed to do. You know, I read a great book on boxing by a coach and all, everything that he teaches about boxing.

Aldo Gomez: You could just switch whatever with the word boxing. It could be bike riding, it could be service advising, it could be parachuting. In this case it's boxing. It says a boxer only ever gets tired because he doesn't know what to do. If the boxer knows what to do, then he doesn't get tired. And you could put a service advisor in there.

Aldo Gomez: A service advisor. And what tired looks like to a service advisor is exhausted. No longer, you know, 'cause you're as a service advisor, you're up front and you're at the front counter a lot and you're a big hub of communication. It takes a lot of mental energy. Your men your brain only weighs like, what, 10% of your weight or 2% or something, but it consumes a huge amount of energy.

Aldo Gomez: So as a service advisor, you're taking on all these this information hub, and then if you don't know what you do to add to your frustration that you get more tired.

Kent Bullard: Can you explain tired or you just mean exhausted, or do you mean more of like a burnt out? Yeah, exhausted,

Aldo Gomez: burnt out. You know, I have a funny story of a service advisor that I coached, and when I first started coaching him, he said that sometimes his wife would say his wife would say, man, do you, and I thought it was a little bit rude, she would say, do you ever shut up?

Aldo Gomez: She said, do you ever shut up? And then it, and I thought to myself, well, brother you're, I don't think you're gonna be talking a whole lot anymore once you really learn to be a service advisor. Although

Kent Bullard: I told you that story in confidence.

Aldo Gomez: Okay. Sorry. It wasn't, but I didn't say any names, Kent.

Aldo Gomez: I didn't say any names. Oh, shoot. Right. Yeah. So we trained them, or I trained them and. Would you know it, he began talking a lot more to customers. And then about nine months later, he told me, he said, although my wife asked me if I'll ever talk again, if I'm ever gonna talk again.

Aldo Gomez: Right? Because he would service advise all day when you get home, because you're an actor. When you're a service advisor, it takes energy. You got, so not knowing what to do is not knowing how to handle difficult calls, not knowing how to handle the stress that comes with being a service advisor and having to order parts.

Aldo Gomez: And in with a technician, when you don't know how to do those things, they can really take the wind out of you because you don't have a you don't have a good method yet.

Kent Bullard: I, I love what Jared added here, by the way. Welcome, Jared. Welcome Andrew. Anybody out there, if you have questions or comments we'd love to hear, please join the conversation because you know, I personally believe that you'll get a lot more out of it if you communicate. But the the passion I think comes in.

Kent Bullard: But there's moments where, you know, passion, I feel motivation can be really fleeting. And you just talked about having some kind of a methodology for moving through that. What's a method that you've used or exercise often?

Aldo Gomez: Well, in my service advising days, I had a ritual about everything that I did, right?

Aldo Gomez: Meaning from cleaning my desk, organizing my things, I had one pen. I would never lose that one pen I had. Yeah, exactly. I used a one pen Anyways, so one of the, one of the things I would do is I would put tasks on a tearaway sheet of notepad, and my tasks were written down every day that I had to get done that day.

Aldo Gomez: And then I had a spiral bound notebook, and that's where I kept vin numbers, mileages color codes, all information that I may need to access later. However, between the two of those, that was my method of checking in on my list every morning to see what I had to do that day. And and then the spiral bound notebook where I could refer to it when I needed to refer to my notes.

Kent Bullard: You. I love that you had a comment that you made during our last service advisor training. I was trying to find what that is, and it had to do with I don't know. I'll find it. I just lost it. But it was, it had to do with preparation.

Kent Bullard: Right. And I think what we're talking about here is a lot of this stuff, communication the anxiety here.

Kent Bullard: The passion is all about preparation. I mean, exactly what you said is just being prepared for what's gonna happen, what we're doing, right. So that's one way. How important is preparation and what are some of the things that you should be preparing on a daily basis?

Aldo Gomez: Well, preparation could be something as basic as looking at tomorrow's schedule the day before.

Aldo Gomez: When you leave that day, or it could be something as consistent as every Tuesday at 2:00 PM review LA the last three days or the last week.

Aldo Gomez: Right. So

Aldo Gomez: even though you're reviewing, you're still preparing because if you're reviewing what has happened, you're gonna put notes in there that you need to do in the next week or not.

Aldo Gomez: There'll be notes in there from your customers that said something as they were leaving. Right. Sometimes they'll say, can you make me an appointment for next week or in two weeks as they're leaving, they may say, can you make an appointment for my daughter's car in two weeks? I'll write it down. I can review my notes.

Aldo Gomez: So preparing by reviewing your notes. 'cause they usually have information that you're gonna need to do. 'cause we all forget things.

Kent Bullard: Yeah. That's something that. I've I have a son who's severely A DHD, and I myself am and that's one of those things where it's like I if I'm not taking that extra step to either put it in my calendar or to make a note and add it to my to-do list or actionize list, then it's like it will get lost somewhere.

Kent Bullard: And so I've made it a habit to put any kind of a task or a note or any follow up just in my system. And then it's not on the burden on me to actually have that willpower and energy to remember it. I know that it's in my system that I've created, you know? I wanna go back to communication for a second here.

Kent Bullard: How can advisors improve communication between the front counter and the back of the shop? What are some strategies they can deploy?

Aldo Gomez: I, well, I'm a firm believer, and if it didn't if it's not written down, it didn't happen. That's the first thing I would say is if you didn't write it down, it didn't happen.

Aldo Gomez: I can't remember everything. And I don't expect you to remember most things that I tell you unless I write it down. And when you write it down to receive acknowledgement that whoever has received that information from you has received it from you, because sometimes it's not enough simply to write it down.

Aldo Gomez: And just leave it for somebody. You gotta make sure that that they received it. Or if you were working at a shop where you have, and I'm gonna be a little bit outdated at this point 'cause I still talk about paperwork orders and such, right? So the paperwork order is if you were to write it down on a file folder that hangs out from the wall, you would wanna monitor that paperwork that you left in there and make sure that it's moving, that it has moved.

Aldo Gomez: So

Aldo Gomez: simply write it. If you didn't write it down, it didn't happen and you must make eye contact. I think the best analogy I could use is when I was teaching my son across the street after we were bike riding, when he learned how to approach a crosswalk,

Aldo Gomez: I

Aldo Gomez: said, it doesn't mean anything unless you make eye contact, son until you make eye contact with the driver's.

Aldo Gomez: Coming towards you, hitting the sign, hitting the button and seeing the walk sign is not enough. You must make eye contact. So same thing with the work order. If you write it down, you must get acknowledgement that they received it.

Kent Bullard: I would say that's not necessarily just a paper thing. I mean, you know, there's countless of countless shops out there that are using digital systems and it's really, you know, we have a process in place.

Kent Bullard: How well are we using the process? Because a lot of that communication, the stages, the dispatch, all that can be found in like your digital system. It should be there. But whether or not somebody's actually looking there and you see that receipt or acknowledgement from the other member the technician or what it's hard to just make that assumption.

Kent Bullard: We don't wanna make assumptions because assumptions aren't clear communication. Right. I actually like what Rod had said rod Batar down there. He said, most advisors talk too much and that's counterproductive. And I think, yeah, it's the same thing with, we can over communicate sometimes. We often see service advisors, we'll talk themself out of a sale, you know, so it's not just communicating enough, but it's also, you know, communicating what's important, not just everything.

Kent Bullard: Right.

Aldo Gomez: That's correct. Yeah. The, and talking too much is typically a. A condition that is based off of the person talking isn't confident about what they're saying. So I have a, there's a great motivator. My mentor motivator of my choice is a man named Jim Rohn from the eighties, and he was an amazing speaker and he he talked about when your level of confidence in your communication, whatever you are saying, should be just the tip of the iceberg of how much you know.

Kent Bullard: I like that. How much you know, because what it's making a reference to is what you communicate is based in what you know.

Aldo Gomez: Well, what he's saying is that when you're confident, you really know a lot about whatever subject that is. Whether you're a scientist or a service advisor or a doctor or a street sweeper for that matter,

Aldo Gomez: that

Aldo Gomez: when you communicate to somebody and you're talking about what the issue is or what needs to be done, what you're communicating is just the tip of the iceberg of what you know.

Aldo Gomez: So it comes to a confidence problem. So if you have a confidence issue when you're explaining things, that's what usually causes you to talk too much because you're trying to justify something that you don't believe because you don't have confidence in it.

Kent Bullard: So. One of the things that I really like about having those kind of group sessions with the advisors is they get to be a little more vocal on some of these things that they're dealing with.

Kent Bullard: Sure. And

Kent Bullard: I, it was really funny because we had one of the members they stood up, they were bringing their agenda topic, and they asked, how do I get my advice or my technicians to do what I need them to do?

Kent Bullard: And this goes back to some of those same challenges that we face and as we're kind of itemizing this, right. Accountability, confidence, communication now we have to deal with collaboration. Right? So how do you get a technician to do what you need them to do?

Aldo Gomez: My method that I think is. Is easy enough and it's has really great results, is I would start by learning how to really appreciate what the technicians do to really respect what their job is, what they've learned to do, what they've invested in tools to do.

Aldo Gomez: Because when you can learn to appreciate what they do at the level that they do it, you know, they technicians are on their feet all day long and they're touching hot cars and dirty cars, especially when it's raining, they're wet. Right when they're wet, when they're pulling 'em into the shop, they have to know how to use all these tools.

Aldo Gomez: All these computers work all day. So sometimes when you need someone to do what you're asking them to do, you can start by appreciating what they do.

Aldo Gomez: Because needing to do is we're all here as an organization working together to get vehicles repaired and keep our customers happy. So we're all doing what we need to do. But getting people to want to do things for you is a whole different experience.

Kent Bullard: Yeah. I think, you know when we had that conversation, that discussion it, first off, I love the acknowledgement and the appreciation.

Kent Bullard: One thing we don't do enough is like, look, we don't realize we're all on the same team. If the technician isn't able to do what I need them to do, then I can't do my job and we all suffer. And it's the same thing. And we mention this, it's like, look, you have to sell. And I hate the word sell 'cause it's not really a sale.

Kent Bullard: But the way that you communicate and you present to the customers the same way that you should be communicating with the technician, here's what's needed and here's how it benefits you. How often have you taken the time to say you know, Mr. Technician, if you are giving me these, this DBI and you're giving me a better story, I can sell more of this work for you.

Kent Bullard: So you only have to you might be able to work on less vehicles, but you're now doing more work and you're gonna get paid more. And I wanna line that up for you. And at the same time, you're also kind of in a position to protect the experience that they have invested in. You know, back at the conference this last weekend, it's like, these technicians have been coming to training for 10, 15, 20 years, and they're just continually investing in knowing the new softwares, the new systems, the new vehicles, the new tools.

Kent Bullard: It's like, it's exceptionally valuable. And part of your job as a service advisor is to kind of protect that value and make sure that it's that experience is paid for by the customer through their experience. Right?

Aldo Gomez: Yes. Let me,

Aldo Gomez: let me add to that and add that if with whatever technician I was working with, I was happy with whatever level of commitment or communication they gave to me, as long as they were the facts.

Aldo Gomez: If you don't wanna write an entire story, then just gimme the facts. I can write the story. I'm not concerned about me having to take, not even an extra step, but make that step for the technician. I'm okay with it.

Aldo Gomez: So

Aldo Gomez: you can get people also to do what you are asking them to do by just getting the bare, if they're just getting a clear idea of what their bare minimum is to you.

Aldo Gomez: And if that's the bare minimum, then I can take it from there.

Kent Bullard: I think we want to kind of open that door for them, you know, and. At the same time, it's like I go back, we had a a client of mine that we worked with and they talked about this technician that was the really experienced guy can really turn out work.

Kent Bullard: But he was difficult in team meetings was, it was very abrasive with everybody. And this is where I think the value or the virtue of co of contribution is so important because I challenged them. I said, look, you've got a team meeting coming up. Go to that technician and say, Hey, you have tons of experience.

Kent Bullard: And I think that it would be really valuable for the rest of the team to hear some of that experience. I know that you guys have been struggling with such and such with these vehicles. Do you think you could bring a small presentation on your method for that and present it at the team meeting? Right.

Kent Bullard: And just, that's just a bid for connection, right? They say often, you know, in, in couples therapy and all that, what we're really looking for is to not deny bids of connection. Provide as many of those as possible. So I got a call later that day after their team meeting, and it was two of my employees came up afterwards and made the comment, I've never seen him smile.

Aldo Gomez: Ah. And

Kent Bullard: it's like, it's such a powerful thing to be like, look, if you want technicians to do what you need them to do, they need to understand how it benefits them. And they need to know that they're contributing to something greater than, you know, that, that idea of, oh, I just have to deal with this POS today.

Kent Bullard: More than that. And if we don't talk about what's more than that, then it's hard for them to buy in and to do the things that are, they would perceive as, you know, counterproductive. Right. Don't have me do this 'cause I just wanna work on the car.

Kent Bullard: With that, what do you think are, you know, we've talked about confidence, communication, contribution, accountability.

Kent Bullard: What are some of the small habits or disciplines that. Make the lasting difference for advisors.

Aldo Gomez: The my answer to that would be small things that you think are insignificant, like being thorough. Do you put all the information into the data system? It has a space for it. Do you use it? The, your your attention to things like greeting people? Are you good at it? Do you practice saying good morning or good afternoon?

Aldo Gomez: Do you practice looking jovial at the front counter? And are you really, are you representing yourself in the best way possible for yourself?

Kent Bullard: Did you have any little rituals that you would do that you would prepare for the day or, you know, you did every single day that just were, seemed innocuous to others, but to you was pivotal to kind of how you were able to show up every day?

Aldo Gomez: Sure. Well, I mean, I exercised every morning before work, right? So I always exercised and had lunch. I would bring lunch. I would never go get lunch. I would always bring lunch and I would sit at a, we had pretty good weather where I lived, so I would usually walk to the nearest park and I would enjoy my lunch, and I would read for a little bit.

Aldo Gomez: So just those two things would be our things I did every day. That I think made a huge difference.

Kent Bullard: My life. So getting a little perspective, getting some distance. But you also you must have had to prepare for that because I know a lot of advisors who go, well, I usually work through lunch.

Kent Bullard: Right. But you were able to take that time to go, Hey, I'm gonna go to the, to, to the close, the park nearby and I'm gonna have my lunch there.

Aldo Gomez: Lunch. Sure.

Kent Bullard: And this is something I think a greater conversation. 'cause I mean, we've talked, there's a reason we have the performance groups as like a regular monthly deal is that there's that consistent consistency to accountability and action.

Kent Bullard: 'cause we used to see, we do like this five day five day bootcamp. And it didn't have much follow up. This is a couple years ago, and we'd see like a big boost in performance for the advisors, but it would slowly taper off and then the owner would call us and say, well, we gotta get them back in some at some point.

Kent Bullard: And so what I'm trying to get to is like, what do you think. That, you know, so many advisors struggle to maintain some of this consistency. How can we address that? How do we fix that? How do we help that?

Aldo Gomez: Well, I think the only thing that you can do is offer help and let them know that help is available if they want to change, because you need to want to change for things to change. You have to say, like Jim Rhodes said, three magic words is, I've had enough. I've had enough. And possibly if where you're at is not where you'd like to be, then that's the most important thing that happens, that you decide to wanna make a change.

Kent Bullard: So let's go into some of the things that. Either the mindset or, so I've decided I need to change at this point because I want to be a service advisor like Aldo. I wanna be great. I'm not happy with, if I'm a service advisor, I'm not happy with the stress of the day. I'm not happy with all the fires I have to put out.

Kent Bullard: I'm not happy with the relationships and I wanna start making change. And we've started to take that first step. But what are the things that I need to start doing on either a weekly or a daily basis to start moving that needle?

Aldo Gomez: The first thing is, I would say congratulate yourself. 'cause you're halfway there already by simply being aware enough to say, I wanna change.

Aldo Gomez: You're already halfway there because you're aware of it. So you've taken a huge step in just whether it's internal or to a friend is is the the awareness. And the second thing is in the next coming days, weeks, months, is be aware of, try to take a attempt to take a third person view of yourself as if you are watching a movie.

Aldo Gomez: And you can begin to see what are the areas that you don't like about the movie that you're watching.

Kent Bullard: I like that. So what you're doing is, Hey, awesome. So happy I made the decision to, to improve. And next we want to take the time to identify and determine the areas that we can address.

Aldo Gomez: Yes.

Kent Bullard: Then from there, we look for resources.

Kent Bullard: We look for.

Aldo Gomez: Yeah. Well, the human beings are amazing. Once you want this, everything begins to show up. Right? Once you, because this might be your moment right now that you're watching the institute podcast, and at the very moment, whatever you thought of a couple of moments ago or days ago, or this is your moment of your next step, I don't know.

Aldo Gomez: I just know that for you wanting to change, that everything will come to reality for you. So it would be picking up the phone.

Kent Bullard: It's the right, it's the right mindset to have. Right? Because if you're looking for those opportunities, you are. Growth oriented, then the beliefs you have will inform those decisions and actions that align with that mindset, which are more likely to produce the results you're looking for.

Aldo Gomez: A hundred percent.

Kent Bullard: I, I I love that you mentioned that you worked out of the morning and all this, I'm trying to get back into shape as well, but even Jared was saying, you know, really feel like the next big addition to automotive culture is assisting with physical health. I actually know of a few shops who have you know, workout groups where they all get together and they exercise and they keep each other on track for good health, good diet, I think especially with a service advisor role, I think both service advisors and technicians, we have a very stressful job, a lot of complex diagnostics, a lot of people who are really upset because now they have to invest in their vehicle and it's never good news when the vehicle breaks down. And that's very stressful to balance the nuance between the technical skills and then the people skills.

Kent Bullard: Right. So you talked about your physical health. You talked about you read, so is that, and I know you're a big reader, talk to me about the practice of reading.

Aldo Gomez: Oh that this is, you know, you could say there's two types of people in the world. The person that looks up the word and the person that doesn't look up what the word means.

Aldo Gomez: So there's two different types of people. And what, when it comes to reading books, is it, I'm the type of person that likes to look up words.

Aldo Gomez: So I,

Aldo Gomez: If anything, there's so much happening when you're reading because you are reading, you're taking in the information that you need. Your mind is working to make all of this, to put all this together for you.

Aldo Gomez: You know, a lot of great books. You can visualize what's happening. And then you build vocabulary through the book. Because if you begin to look up what every mean, whatever word means, then you're becoming articulate and you're able to use less words. And when it comes to service advising, less is more.

Aldo Gomez: We just I always teach basic concepts, right? Just what the part does for the car, what happens if you don't replace it. And not being too complicated about it. Well, you need a good handle on vocabulary in order to make that more possible.

Kent Bullard: I think that's, I think that's massively important because we talked about reframes and retributions at the last meeting, and that looks like, you know, unfortunately it's gonna take us two days or three days.

Kent Bullard: And just shifting that perspective in, in your context, in your framing, in your words and saying, fortunately we can get this done in just about three days. Yeah. And it's the good thing about, it's positives a great thing about thing. Now the person on the other side is going, man, it could have taken longer than three days.

Kent Bullard: I'm so happy they're gonna get done so quickly. And being able to have that acuity or that, you know, dynamism to navigate those situations, to be able to reframe. And re attribute.

Aldo Gomez: What I was gonna say is a couple of moments ago, and part of being a service advisor is you hear everything, right? So a couple of moments ago you said maybe customers are unhappy with the news they're receiving from the shop.

Aldo Gomez: And I

Kent Bullard: even, I'm already putting it in a negative context. Context.

Aldo Gomez: Well, here here is what I'm getting at is that if you can learn to be a really great service advisor and be. Be interested in your customer and also know that there's a separation between the repair and the customer. You really learn how to make great relationships with the people and not with their cars.

Aldo Gomez: And when you have a good relationship with the person and they know that they can trust you and that you're a professional at what you do and the information you have is correct, they really don't get angry with you. They understand that this is a process the same. If you think about it, when you go somewhere and you get charged amount of money, usually if that person treats you well and you have a good experience with them, you typically don't complain about how much it costs, whatever it may be.

Aldo Gomez: And if you have a negative experience with that person, whether they're rude to you or they're rushing you, or whatever that reason may be, you will blame the price on that emotion. Of you being unhappy about it.

Kent Bullard: Yeah. It speaks to the same thing when you're talking about what's the difference between price and value.

Kent Bullard: Another one of those great conversations just to go, okay, your job is, first off, we identify what the price is. We know, you know, what we charge for our technician's time because we wanna maintain its value. Make sure that we have the proper margin on it. And we know what goes into to make margin on the parts that we sell.

Kent Bullard: 'cause ultimately we do sell parts and labor.

Kent Bullard: And so the price is the price because that's what we know we need to hit. And then it's our job as service advisors to kind of build up the value until it overcomes that price for the customer. And having that, I love that one. I think the physical health leads into mental health, right?

Kent Bullard: If your body is functioning properly, that means that you've probably got more clarity up here, or Headspace, a hundred

Aldo Gomez: percent

Kent Bullard: no stress. 'cause your joints hurt or you get easily winded when you go upstairs. Or brush your teeth, not talk about somebody else, not from personal experience. Yeah.

Kent Bullard: But all those kind of things take away from your mental acuity when you're dealing with complex situations like this. Yeah. So how do I shift the context? You know, I teach a lot about, you know, process and motivation with the team and leadership communication with the team. And it really does boil down to context.

Kent Bullard: So if you can shift the context for this, for the customer into a positive experience of Yeah, there's a problem that happened, but we are both on the same side here and we know how we can get this fixed with easily, quickly, and with as little stress as possible.

Aldo Gomez: Right? Yes, a hundred percent. Yeah.

Kent Bullard: And good news, fortunately, we can get it done in three days.

Aldo Gomez: Yeah.

Kent Bullard: The great news is, the great news is dot. I love that. Yeah. I love Rod. You're saying, you know, what would happen to cars if they weren't fixed? Good news. We have, you know, experienced technicians who can get you back on the road. And we do that. That's right. Let's take another step here.

Kent Bullard: You're one of the coaches for our advisory performance group program. What's the biggest difference that you have seen difference from advisors who just started to, advisors who've been in the program for a while?

Aldo Gomez: The advisors knew, found confidence and trust in themselves to execute on an idea or a plan in the say, in the process of helping a customer out or providing them with repairs and services.

Kent Bullard: I, this links back to earlier you'd stated, you know, most advisors are tired because, or boxers are tired because they just don't know what to do.

Kent Bullard: And I think when you've got a group of other advisors who have gone through some of these pain points and they're able to share from their experiences what I did, it gives you a lot more answers on I could do this, I could do, well, maybe answers is the wrong word. Options.

Aldo Gomez: That's right.

Kent Bullard: Having options.

Aldo Gomez: Well, think about this, is that if we wanna make a car correlation, which we, which is easy to do, is I'm 44 years old, so I'm no, no longer on the younger side. However, we have some technicians that are still older than 44 and they're so experienced that they can get through a lot more cars than maybe a technician that doesn't have all the experience yet.

Aldo Gomez: Although you would think that because someone has less ears on their body, they can move faster. But the experience is what allows you to move through more cars and not be so tired doing it. When I worked in construction many moons ago, if you were digging and you didn't know how to dig, you get way more tired than the guy that's been digging for the past 10 years.

Aldo Gomez: 'cause he knows how to, he knows how to dig properly so he doesn't get tired. And he covers more ground than you do

Kent Bullard: sharpening the ax.

Aldo Gomez: Yeah. You're just getting better at it and then you're not getting tired.

Kent Bullard: You know, it, it reminds me of Maslow's hierarchy. So we use Maslow's a lot in more of a management capacity.

Kent Bullard: But it's, you can even do some self-reflection and go, okay, am I in the safety and security part of this pyramid? And if I'm in that safety and security part, I need to speak to whatever the, that immediate next level, which is connection and community. Do I have a team around me so I don't feel alone?

Kent Bullard: And then you look to, once I'm in that community, now you're comparing, how can I contribute to that community? And so now the importance becomes how do I make myself valuable, or how do I contribute more? And that's kind of self-fulfilling. And like, I need to develop myself. And I think oftentimes we try to shoot for, especially as owners, shoot for, yeah, I wanna self-actualize you.

Kent Bullard: I want you to think about how to be the best possible version of you. You can be. But if I'm here in survival, either I'm not, you know, earning enough because I'm not doing the right things. I'm constantly dealing with emergency after emergency. So I'm being forced to live in the present. I can't. Plan for the future and adjust for the future.

Kent Bullard: It's very hard for me to go, I wanna be the best possible version 'cause I can't see what tomorrow's gonna bring. And I think what happens is when you get some of these, and it doesn't have to be in our program, it could be at some of these events or some of these conferences that you go to and just, or even online in some of the groups that we have here, just connecting with other people that are going through the same problems that you're going through can help you kind of move out of that, that just survival stage and look at how do I build success in what I'm doing?

Kent Bullard: You know? I think that bid for connection is so important. As a service advisor, even as a technician or in your team, what do you think?

Aldo Gomez: Most definitely. That all of those, that the process be in place and people be helping out with their parts. So you become a an asset, not a liability to your organization.

Kent Bullard: The this is a great, so how do I become an asset, not a liability. I think this speaks exactly to what John Beasley is saying right here, and we'll posit the question here, right? As a young service advisor, what strategies build authority and credibility with customers? So I'm seen as a trusted professional and not just the new kid at the counter.

Aldo Gomez: So, John, the great question, let me start by sometimes, or not sometimes, but the first thing is we need to establish is that as a younger service advisor, it comes with the territory. That people will give you less credibility. It does not mean it's fair. Life is sometimes fair and sometimes it's more than fair with us.

Aldo Gomez: Sometimes it's unfair. Sometimes it, when you think it's more unfair than it used to be. So as the new at the, as the new service advisor, you got a couple things working for you is that you don't have bad habits yet, right? So you don't have bad habits. You can form all the good habits and the, and to be seen with authority and credibility is what I would say to any age service advisor is be knowledge, not, you don't have to be so knowledgeable about the car part itself, however, have all the information that you need so that you can have a important conversation with your customer, with all the important information and you do understand the information such as.

Aldo Gomez: If, for instance, you were selling a alternator, you don't really need to know how an alternator spins and how it has magnets and copper that create electricity. But you may need to know that there's a reading that the technician noted that said it should be charging at 14 volts and this one's charging at 12.8.

Aldo Gomez: That you do need to know. And with that kind of basic information that gets the point across, you'll get credibility. However, again having less credibility just comes with the territory of being a younger person. You can be okay with that because that's okay, and just do the best job that you can. And remember that the person on the other side of the counter is a human being just like you.

Aldo Gomez: And they were also younger ex at whatever they were. And nobody appreciate something that you can really lean on because you're a younger technician or service advisor, sorry, is you can really lean on your eagerness. Your want to help people, they'll let you, they'll forgive you for a lot of things as long as you are really eager and wanting to be, do the best that you can.

Kent Bullard: This is one of those things we talked about, you know, over dinner and double fried mozzarella sticks was you know, one of the advisors she had said that she felt really anxious being on the spot, a little newer didn't know quite the technical aspect of it, and we kind of landed on it really isn't, it's almost freeing to get to the point of understanding where it's like, look, it's not about me.

Kent Bullard: It's not about you as a service advisor. And that is so freeing in the context that you don't have to be the expert. You have experts behind you in those bays working on those cars, and your job really is to facilitate the solution for the customer. It's not about you as a service advisor, it's about the person in front of you.

Kent Bullard: Being able to hear them, being able to listen to them, being able to facilitate the solution for them and communicate those expectations ahead of time. It has nothing to do with you. And so you can kind of take that pressure off yourself as a new service advisor. Just don't think about it 'cause you've got the ex expertise.

Kent Bullard: I mean that's how I've done a lot of this. I'm very young, but I get to lean on the expertise of all of the experienced coaches who've got, you know, 20 years on me. Right. I don't necessarily have to know all the answers. I can always go find the right answers. 'cause I know how to do that and I can facilitate the solution for you.

Kent Bullard: Yes,

Aldo Gomez: absolutely.

Kent Bullard: We're getting up at that that time. If anybody out there who's listening has any questions for us. Obviously we're gonna repost this. You can ask those questions down in the comments below and we'll keep track of that and keep answering questions for you. I urge you right now if you have questions, go ahead and post 'em now so we can answer 'em while we're live.

Kent Bullard: But I wanna kind of wrap with a few things. So we're starting our advisor roundtables for the performance group program, so that'll be an online round table for service advisors. Aldo, why is that so important to kinda have those touch bases?

Aldo Gomez: The more that you get, the more practice that you get and the more information that you receive only makes you, it only will help you in your journey to getting to wherever it is that you're going see if you, some people will go to enough events where they're okay with it, and that's as many events as they need to go to.

Aldo Gomez: There's other people that go to all the events that they can for the rest of their life because that's where they're going. And I would say if you're anywhere wanting to feel more comfortable or more confident, or answer weird or strange questions that you're not used to or get a better way to encounter with your customers when there's a disagreement or the best way to sell or provide the help the customers see the value in what you're proposing, then this is the class for you.

Aldo Gomez: Or the round table. The round

Kent Bullard: table, yeah. But speaking of classes, you know, we actually do have our service advisor intensive. It's three days of advisor training coming up December 11th through the 13th here in Ogden, Utah. And just a quick aside here, this really is we pinpointed the eight main modules that a service advisor needs to know in order to do things like improve their confidence, to gain more of your best customers, to increase your profitability, to convert more work, to complete more work.

Kent Bullard: I mean, we cover all of the position of a service advisor in that workshop or that intensive. And if you are looking for more information and how to do that, I'd love to recommend that. You can check it out at we are the institute.com/uh, service advisor intensive. And we'll probably Elena will post the link here.

Kent Bullard: But I wanna ask you this Aldo to kind of finish us out because we do have a lot of advisors that reach out and I wanna say, you know, what do you wish? Because ultimately as leaders, 'cause I'm a business owner what do you wish more shop owners or leadership understood about supporting their front counter?

Aldo Gomez: That that the, what it does is so much bigger than what you seem to be doing at that moment. That the support may come in a small way or a what you think is not even worth doing because it's insignificant. It's like dropping a pebble in a pond. You don't know how far out it's gonna go.

Kent Bullard: I love that, that one of our, one of our advisors actually mentioned that raindrops make oceans

Aldo Gomez: correct.

Kent Bullard: I think that totally leans into that.

Aldo Gomez: We have a question. Can we answer it?

Kent Bullard: We do. Hi, we've got a Mercedes spinner nerds, the demand technical questions. How would you advise to speak that lingo with them as an advisor?

Kent Bullard: Thanks. Thank you. John Iverson.

Aldo Gomez: Oh, it, it says it's Timothy, right? So, oh, Timothy. Timothy. Timothy. Thank you, Tim. Thank you, Timothy. So the. The first thing I would do is I would learn how to let the customer know that he knows more about the sprinter than you do. That's the first thing I would do. I would do that with most every car expert that I met.

Aldo Gomez: Outside of the repair world, I really like stock cars just stock the way they rolled off the factory line because I like how they look and I think that's how they were designed and built. So that's how they should stay. With that being said I didn't really get into the car world as far as car performance and such, and when I would work with customers that were performance type people, they knew much more about their cars than I did a lot more and generally a lot more.

Aldo Gomez: So normally what I would say is I would say, you know, Ken, it seems that you know more about the car than I do, and they're gonna quickly say, yes, I do. I've read everything on it. Now we've established that and now I can move on with proposing whatever the car needs.

Aldo Gomez: So

Aldo Gomez: normally when I get the first technical question I let them know that they know more about the vehicles than I do.

Aldo Gomez: So there's no need to challenge me on it because I probably won't know what you're talking about. And at that point I can go and talk to a technician or whatnot, but

Kent Bullard: you're facilitating the solution. Hey, I've got people I can trust and if you have specific questions, I can go get those from them and make sure that I get you the right answer.

Kent Bullard: 'cause again, it's not necessarily about, you know, are you the expert? You're not a technician, you're not a master. Yes,

Aldo Gomez: exactly. Yeah. You're facilitating

Kent Bullard: the

Aldo Gomez: solution, but that, but your ability to just simply shrug it off and say, it seems that you know more about the car than I do, works wonders. That's the, that's, if you learn to say that correctly, you can get that outta the way and they will forgive you and they know that you don't have the high IQ about their vehicle that you do, and then they let the rest of it just go smoothly.

Kent Bullard: I love this. I mean, this has been really fun for me. I don't know about you Alda, or the audience out there. We've learned a lot. We've learned that we should read more because language is far more important in our role than we, we truly believe that context is king, that we need to look at how we're exhibiting our confidence building communication how we're allowing our team to contribute and showing them the benefit of working together collaboratively that raindrops make oceans.

Kent Bullard: And one thing I did kind of write down on the end here is that information is not useful until it gets used. And that's one thing if you guys have learned anything from our time together today, is that, you know, any of this isn't gonna be useful to you until you go and implement and see the results of whether you know, of how you wanna execute this.

Kent Bullard: So I urge you if there is something you're excited about from our content today. Go implement it, right? And if you do have any other questions for me or for Aldo, you can reach out to us. Comments down below, we're gonna have that post available later. And if you wanna know more about what the institute does in helping you build your legacy, you can reach us at We are the institute.com.

Kent Bullard: Thank you all very much and we'll see you guys in the next one.

Aldo Gomez: See you.