We got an exciting show for you today. Often we get asked about the best recruiting practices to hire the right people and it looks like this, 

How do you hire such great coaches? 

What do I look out for when hiring a service manager? 

Why is it important to find the right Service Advisors and Technicians? 

I’ll be going to talk about and break down the top five things that we look for in a coach, and it’s going to be relevant to whoever you’re hiring, whether that’s a Service Advisor or a Technician, because a lot of these philosophies carry over.  Also, I’ll be covering some trouble that Christian got into using Chase Hughes’ tools. Skills in different areas will help you achieve the best recruiting practices out there. 

If you’re a vendor or a consultant and you come to Top Dog, we’re going to kick you out. 

We’re going to embarrass you, but you’re not allowed. This event is about the people on the front lines, actually doing the work, that’s who we’re here to serve. We’re not trying to sell anybody, anything. It’s not that kind of an event, we want to be here for the people.  

Let’s just really quickly talk about who’s there. So we have Jon Taffer from bar rescue. We are trying to figure out how we can get Jon Taffer to yell at Christian.  Then we have the great Robert Cialdini author of Influence and Pre-Suasion, you don’t see him speaking at too many events.

I was in a Mastermind class with him and we became friends a little bit. We’re really excited to see him speak, everytime I get the opportunity to hear him speak, I’m always blown away. 

We also have Matt Baiamonte, who’s a trainer to the stars. He trains people like Matt Damon, LeBron James, the list is huge of who he is trained, but he’s going to be talking about personal performance and stories that he has. He also worked in the gym that Muhammad Ali trained in and tons of boxers came out of and he was mentored by Angelo Dundee, the hall of fame trainer. We love to talk about best recruiting practices for people in our industry. 

A lot of training for athletes at that level is psychology, so it’s going to be a lot of what he is going to talk about is his connection of psychology and performance.  Then we have the guests that I’m the most excited about, but nobody really knows.  Chase Hughes is exactly the opposite of what you envision him to be. He puts it all in the book.  You don’t have to hire him in a sense, but we hired him for you and he’s coming to Top Dog. He’s going to speak and his tactics really work. I’m really excited to share it with everybody.  

One thing we should say is most of Chase’s stuff is on how to influence people in a way you want them influenced.

Chase Hughes is very much about persuasion and influence, with a military background and spy craft where it’s constantly about life or death. There’s an edge to it and definitely highly effective. He is very open minded when it comes to talking about best recruiting practices. 

Christian thinks that the big thing that he’s gotten out of researching Chase’s information is that if you’re paying really close attention, it rewires you without you even knowing it. That’s the crazy thing to me in the  subconscious. Christian believes that that’s probably what’s happening to him right now as evidenced by his most recent trip… on an airplane.  Christian tells us, 

Personally, I understood Christian’s perspective and I told him how with the Chase Hughes tactic. I’m weaponized in a lot of ways.

I think the most useful part of it is that I don’t get fooled by people when I’m interviewing them.

It always fascinates me when Service Advisors that I’m coaching divert their answers away from my questions. It happens all too often and the thing is that I’m very direct in my question. I’m asking a question about the end results and when a Service Manager starts talking about their house and family, I look at them and tell them, “That wasn’t my question…”

Another thing I believe is a huge advantage of this whole asking questions with intentions is how much better of interviewers we are because of the Chase Hughes secret? It’s not even fair.  

Here’s the Top 5 Things we look for in a coach and spoiler alert, there’s more than five. We’ve started with five and I met 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11.

Before I start going through the list of Hiring the best employees and how you can hire the right Service Advisors for your dealership, do you think it’s my intimidation that brings the truth out on them? Or is it that I could get somebody to say something or that I could figure out something that nobody else had interviewed them before?

Christian responded to the questions about my concerns by telling me that my line of questioning is really direct and psychologically deeper than usual. Whereas Christian is on the surface, he’s just trying to find out some of the things that we are going to talk about in the Top 5. But the thing that Christian would say is when I’m interviewing somebody it’s like I’m peeling their lungs open and looking into their soul, which is pretty accurate of what I do best.  Are you ready to learn my best recruiting practices? 

Watch this to learn How to Work With Technicians

Number 1 of the TOP things we look for in a coach is Internal Locus of Control.

To learn more about Internal Locus of Control, visit our OnDemand.

Number 2 is Past Performance

If they can’t go into a situation and make that situation better, just because they’re there, they’re not going to be a candidate for what we do. There’s no way because we go into pretty impossible situations as Service Advisors and Managers. This one is number two for a reason, but it’s almost as important as number one.

Number 3 is having Natural Authority

I don’t think it’s a coincidence that people coming in from the outside will observe that our team seems like we’re pretty tight.  I would attribute that to the fact that I wouldn’t hire anybody that I didn’t like, so if they don’t have some sort of likability, charisma or, natural authority, where it’s somebody you want to talk to, it’s somebody that is just interesting. For some reason it isn’t always the same thing, but they have a point of view..  They’re interesting and they’re fun to talk to.  However, if I don’t like talking to them, the clients aren’t gonna like it and I don’t want them around.

Number 4 is if they Think and Talk in Systems

They think in the process, not in the emotions or the theory or the conspiracy of it.

I’ll give you guys an example: let’s say, you went into a Ford dealership and you did this and this. And you know, you doubled the sales and tripled, the net or whatever, and their CSI was low and now they’re best in the market. How did you manufacture that outcome? Now, if they say something to the effect of just finding the right people. You’re never going to hire your way into fixing anything. What the right person will talk about and it is true when you’re interviewing advisors, I’ll ask a Service Advisor when I’m interviewing them, “so when you’re walking up to customers in the car, what are you thinking? And I want to hear something like, “I’m going to make friends.”  

I want them to talk about the system and the process of what’s going to happen.

What are the steps? For example, the first step is getting ‘X’ to like you and you’re gonna make friends. The next thing is walking around the car. I want them to think in systems because people that think in systems are easier to manage because you can just help them with their system. People that think in theory or emotions are really hard to bring that back down to earth and move the steps around in their process.

Number 5 is that they’re Addicted to Fixing Things 

Once something is fixed, they’re bored. I’ve seen a correlation between people that are really good at fixing businesses, fixing systems, people that can come in and organize a process, or organize an event. People that are good at that usually are way more effective than people that are just trying to create a system where they don’t have to do anything, they’re just trying to maintain and they just want consistency. People that are seeking just straight consistency for comfort sake, usually they aren’t very good leaders or managers. It’s the ones that want something that’s broken and they fix it.

Now for the extra credit in addition to our Top Five!

Number 6 is that they don’t have 30 years of experience working against them 

I say this all the time on strategy sessions or calls with Service Managers, dealerships where they give me a shop foreman, and the top performing Service Advisor. Oftentimes it’s easy to turn them into a really effective leader over the guy with 30 years experience and you can just tell the way they ask questions.  They’re asking, “what are you doing?” and why doesn’t this work?”

People with 30 years of experience inside the Automotive Industry are just looking for a million reasons to negate the fact that they’re underperforming and they need to change because they just don’t want to change. But I would say if you gave me a choice, I’d probably take the younger person with no experience because the actual ramp up is way faster.

If you’re having a hard time hiring Technicians, then you need to do something completely different than what you’re doing.

If your numbers aren’t what they should be, your Service Advisors are slacking, then you need to do something completely different than what you’re doing. But somehow we live in a society where Advisors think that they are just going to get lucky. No, you have to change your actions to change the outcome and that’s the, the thing that always surprises me is a lot of the older Service Managers that are having a hard time will tell you they hate the result.  They do everything they can to sabotage change. It’s always a fascinating study in human psychology and behavior that it’s clear as day what you’re doing isn’t working, but people still don’t want to change. 

Number 7 is Wife or Spouse

We will not hire anybody at this upper level of management or coach, which is a coach really equal to a manager. It’s a leadership position in our company and without meeting and spending time with the spouse, especially because they travel so much we need there to be a support system in place for it to work out.  If a relationship’s in trouble, traveling three out of four weeks a month does not make that better. It helps if the spouse understands us and we have chemistry, they like us as a company because they are a very important part of the success of our company, just their influence and their view of things.  

Number 8 is that they are Students and are not absolute about anything

We can’t be absolute about anything, when you’re going in to fix a business, you cannot be absolute about who the best people are or what is causing the problems. You have to ask questions and you have to measure twice and cut once.  Observe yourself if you’re judgmental and absolute in your opinions about your immediate surroundings and environment and see how you can change your frame of mind. You can ask a lot of questions and you can have common sense, but you don’t want somebody that’s going in to fix things to be judgmental or absolute in any way, because it doesn’t serve you. You just have to ask questions and try to connect dots and connecting the dots is way more effective than judging three.

Number 9 is what Books and Podcasts are they tuning into

Asking this at any level, you’d be surprised you get kids that come in as porters and they’re  reading Rich Dad, Poor Dad.  I read this book and anybody like that is going to be somebody that you’re going to at least be able to share ideas with because they’re committed to the idea of getting better.

Number 10 is Financial Acumen

It surprises me to this day and I think that this as a failure of our Automotive Industry in a big way, but you will try to test out their financial acumen and figure out if they understand things like, net to gross, effective labor rate, and those sorts of things, but the most common one that happens is Service Advisors confusing Effective Labor Rate with Gross Profit. I believe that this ties into knowing your results because Service Advisors have to know, to understand if they were profitable and knowing the numbers play a big role into the skill sets that a Service Advisor or Manager has.  

Last one, Number 11 is having References

I think references apply to anybody you’re hiring, but it applies also to anybody you’re gonna do business with, if somebody comes to me and they have some software they can do some marketing thing online or they know social media. I always say, “give me two or three clients that will rave about you” and if they can’t produce two or three people that will rave about them, then I’m not your Guinea pig.

Bonus tip for best recruiting practices. 

They have to have an iPhone. It’s so funny to me how we have daily texts that go out the people that should see that text with the results and they aren’t even on it because they don’t have an iPhone.

Here’s the thing I would like to close with when thinking about best recruiting practices.  

I am really appreciative and I can’t say this enough to you, the people that have reached out and asked me if I’m okay and if I’m going to make it Top Dog is something that I will always be appreciative of.  

This was fun and I think that this is the perfect roadmap for you to think about your hiring processes, whether you’re looking for Technicians or Service Advisors. I think the culture we have here in the team is pretty good, not perfect, but definitely in the right direction and intention. We have a unique group of people, not by accident, it’s curated specifically with people who align with our views.  

Don’t forget to subscribe and call us at (833) 3-ASK-SDR if you have a question. 

For special deals on our books and training, head over to HERE and I’ll see you next time on Service Drive Revolution!

Related Blogs/Podcasts: 

The Business of Influence with Chase Hughes

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5 Unexpected Ways to Boost ROI in the Service Department

Secrets of Recruiting Top Performing Automotive Technicians

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