A. Little Help
- Author: Art Little
- Subject Matter: Customer relations
- Issue: Brag on others, not yourself
I have been in the business for 25 years! I worked on the mayor’s car last week! I drive a race car! I can run faster and dive deeper!
- I, I, I.
- Me, me, me.
I hate managers who brag on themselves to the customer. Makes me want to puke. They are absolutely missing the point. They should be bragging on the owner of the shop and the technicians who work there. That is what the customer wants to hear.
If you watch a boxing match, you will see a video before the fight telling you about the boxer and his family and his struggles and who his opponents were and the results of his fights. His life. He is what we pay to see. So, we want to know about the fighter, not the announcer who is calling the fight or the referee or someone sitting in the box office selling tickets. Managers who tell customers stories about their owner and technicians understand what is important to the customer and what the customer wants to hear.
You have to sell yourself, but you have some other selling to do first. How about talking about the owner of the shop and how long he has been in business and how he sponsors the little league team in the area and gives back to community? How everything is not about making a profit to him. He wants us to be an honest shop that puts the customer first. That is the kind of stuff real managers talk about. Not themselves. Managers who talk about themselves are boring and customers hate them. Remember that the next time you get ready to go off on how great you are. Stop it. Maybe this time, just for once, you talk about someone other than yourself and you talk about your technicians and the guy who writes your check every week.
You can still talk. You can still brag. Tell your story. Just make it about your team. Not yourself. Just like the boxer. Let them know about your builder and how he has five kids and a wife who brings everybody cookies when we fix her car. How he is a third-generation transmission rebuilder who comes from a long line of great rebuilders. How the police bring all their personal cars to him to fix. Bragg on your installer who grew up in a poor family working on cars to help them out when he was in high school and went on to graduate at the top of his class. Brag on the how the customer’s vehicle is a great ride and how well the customer has taken care of it. Makes the customer want to fix it and keep it. That kind of stuff you know? It ain’t all about you.
Make the customer want your technicians and no one else to work on their vehicle. They can go down the street and maybe get a lower price, but they will not have your builder building it. They won’t have your diagnostician properly diagnosing their problem and an owner watching over things to make sure they are not getting charged for things they do not need. And what about that little league team – what is going to happen to them?
Take the advice of someone who has been around a lot of managers. Sell the customer on the people. The parts and labor are boring. People buy from people. Sure, you have to sell yourself to the customer, but you do it by bragging on the others in the shop, not yourself. It makes you look like a great guy instead of a moron. It makes you look like you care about your employees and the guy who pays your salary. That goes a long way with the customer.
Let me finish with this: Some managers talk about how great they are. Others just do it and let others talk about how great they are. Which one do you want to be?
Art Little is the founder of TransTeam. His popular website has served as the national employment headquarters for our industry since 1997. Recently he has made online center manager training available at the website. His background in the shops goes back close to 30 years. He is respected nationwide as an owner and manager who specializes in multiple-shop management. Today he is a software developer for the transmission industry. His cutting-edge apps make everyday tasks in a transmission shop easy by using today’s technology.
