How to Succeed at Overcoming Your Staff’s Objections & Getting Their Buy-In

“Why won’t they do this??”
“How are they still not marking up the pictures taken??”
“Why are inspections still not being done or sent???”
“Why does this still happen?!”

Episode Transcript

*This transcript was generated using Artificial Intelligence. Errors may occur. If you notice an error, please contact [email protected].

Tom Dorsey (00:00):
Good morning and good afternoon. Welcome to this week’s edition of The Digital Shop Talk Radio. My name’s Tom Dorsey, I’ll be the host today. And this is episode 18, June 5th, 2019. And I probably say this every week, but that’s because it’s true because I bring the fire. Got a great show lined up for you. Today. We’re going to be talking about how do you implement process change in your shop, how do you get buy-in from your technicians? And this will really apply to pretty much anything you’re doing. Yeah, it’s going to apply to implementing the digital shop and digital inspections into your shop, but it also, it’s going to work for any process change that you need to make in your operation, whether it’s adopting a new tool or a new process for services that you provide. And I’ve got two great guests. I couldn’t think of anybody better to come on and talk about this topic and I got to do a little bit of butt kissing, if you will. But I’ve heard both of these guys speak numerous times through the years. And I’ll tell you what, I really look up to them and really look to try to emulate these guys in what we’re doing because not only are they brilliant, but very eloquent and you’ll get a whiff of it here today. So I’d like to introduce Eric Twigs. Eric is a coach with ATI. If you could Eric, say hi and introduce yourself.
Eric M. Twiggs (01:33):
Well thanks Tom. Yeah, I’m Eric Twigs. I’m coached with ATI, I’ve been with ATI for 10 years. In addition to doing the coaching, I also update the weekly blog for ATI that can be found at autoshopcoaching.blogspot.com.
Tom Dorsey (01:51):
Awesome. And it’s full of gold, so make sure you write that down and maybe we get Eric put that link in the chat or something for you too so that you can copy that down. If you got any questions as we’re going through the show, hit ’em up in the Facebook form, ask questions, we’ll answer ’em live. And then also you can always email that information into us and we’ll do follow up. And also without further ado, regular guest host, no stranger to the show, Frank Scandura from Frank’s European in Las Vegas, Nevada. Hey Frank, how are you doing? How’s, how’s things out in Vegas?
Frank Scandura (02:29):
Beautiful. We finally broke through the cold freezing weather. It was like 60 degrees, so we’re back to our normal 90 and loving it. So back to normal. Thank you for the kind words and the kind introduction before we got on the air. I made a comment that I’m just trying to be the guy. Everybody thinks I am, so I appreciate all the confidence everybody places in me. Thank you very much.
Tom Dorsey (02:52):
Yeah, no, it is fantastic. And we’ve had this discussion without it making it really a main topic several times on the show and just in general in the past because Frank, you run a very high volume and very process driven operation. And the reason I wanted to get you in here is because I wanted to give it from a perspective that very straightforward, you always tend to approach it very pragmatically to say, Hey, this is the way that you implement. And so give us a little bit of background on how when you first implemented the digital shop, digital inspections, pretty big. Process change probably takes a little bit of time to get it comfortable in the crew. How did you go about that?
Frank Scandura (03:37):
Well, I did it completely wrong when we first implemented it. When I see something and I get excited about it and I think it’s a great idea, I don’t understand why everybody else doesn’t see what I see and understand what I understand. So it takes me time to break through that barrier. So when we first started, I handed everybody a tablet and I said, look at this beautiful tablet. We’re going to do digital inspections. And I walked away, howdy, didn’t throw ’em at me, I don’t know. And it was very confusing and very mixed results. I says, okay, we’re not getting enough pictures guys. Let’s try to take eight pictures of every car. Okay boss, we got your back. And one guy literally took pictures of four tires and four shocks. I got eight pictures of the car. So then I’ve realized that okay, I have to get it out of my head non paper and very first step bus, take a picture of this, the license plate, take a picture of the profile, take a picture of the VIN sticker, take a picture of the tire pressure monitor, take a picture of everything that needs to be done.
(04:38):
And every car gets a fan bill picture. Every car gets a battery picture when the battery’s accessible. So then now it’s in writing. Nobody has to worry about trying to remember trying to do it right. They just have to glance over and then it becomes a habit. So for me it was, okay, what’s the problem? Come into my little cubby hole, four or five bullet points of what I think we need to do to solve the problem and then review it. How does this look? Well this work? Am I missing something that I forget something? Because oftentimes if you’re a shop owner and you’re doing certain jobs in a shop, maybe you’re writing service or maybe you’re helping out in the shop, you’re going to miss a step that somebody else needs to do. If you’re not writing service every day, you’re not going to be able to understand every single step.
(05:24):
So get it down on paper and get the input. And that’s really been the big thing. Getting input gets buy-in because it’s really easy to say, do this, walk away and then get mad because it’s not done. What happens is people are afraid to ask questions or they don’t understand something or they say, okay, I’ll do that. Then they go to do it and it doesn’t work and they don’t know how to talk to anybody. They don’t know how to give feedback when it doesn’t work. So if it doesn’t work, it must be broken. We shouldn’t do it anymore because I don’t like doing broken stuff
Tom Dorsey (05:57):
Customer,
Frank Scandura (05:58):
I didn’t get in trouble when I did it the old way. I’m not doing it the new way, so I’m going to go back to the old way so I don’t get in trouble.
Tom Dorsey (06:04):
Exactly right.
Frank Scandura (06:05):
And so it’s just a matter of, okay, this is what I want, how do we get there? And
Tom Dorsey (06:14):
So Frank, a couple weeks back I had Russ Crosby on and he said something very similar. He said that his first step was to share the big vision with the crew. Here’s where we’re trying to get to and here’s why. And then work backwards into kind of how does that apply to your role, Eric, from, I mean your job is to go into shops and get ’em to change their process. I mean, that’s heavy lifting. So what’s your opinion on that? How do you align with that? Do you come in with the big picture to begin with and then just break it down into manageable bites with those shops to get ’em on board? And then also secondly, not to throw too much on you, but once you get them to say, okay, yeah, I get it, I need to do this thing. How do you make sure that they do it? What’s the follow up and the reinforcement look like to make sure they follow through?
Eric M. Twiggs (07:08):
So one of the things that I’ve noticed over my career, so my background, I’ve had as many as 17 locations. I managed with 500 employees. But one thing I’ve noticed is that people won’t do what they don’t understand. And that’s what Frank was alluding to. So I assume they understand because I draw it up, I put it on a big whiteboard and everybody says, we got it, boss. But a lot of times they don’t really understand and they don’t know where to start. So you have to have training in place that allows them to demonstrate that they understand. So if it’s a service advisor, it’s role playing, if it’s a technician, them actually demonstrating that they can do it and then going from there. So that’s the first part of it. And then the big place that I see that these initiatives fall short is that we don’t have follow up plan. We just figure, Hey, I sent out this great message. I told ’em how to do it. They all gave me the bobblehead and said they knew how to do it. That means I can just kind of check this off my list. I don’t have to do anything else. But the key is really follow up. And the real question is what do you do when that technician isn’t following the process that you just outlined? That’s really where the rubber meets the road.
Tom Dorsey (08:31):
And
Eric M. Twiggs (08:31):
If you don’t do anything, that one hour meeting you just had was for nothing.
Tom Dorsey (08:36):
Right? And a lot of times it’s like you said, well, everybody nodded their head, nobody asked any questions, and so they must get it and oops, why aren’t they doing this? They’re not doing their jobs or it’s some fault on them. How do we create an environment where we say, Hey, ask, there is no dumb question. Ask all the questions you need to ask so that I understand you completely know what we’re going to do next. And then also that was a great point about being able to say, because it is like a role play for the tech, right? The tech’s doing a role play through the tablet, through the digital inspection process in this topic or in any process change. You got to get ’em to do and then grade ’em on that, give ’em the feedback, and then how do we get them again over that hump to say, now I’ve built a habit and I can kind of just lean back and monitor it through the metrics?
Eric M. Twiggs (09:32):
Well, I think the key is you have to always find different ways to repeat the same message. And one of the best ways to do that is through morning huddle meetings. It’d be five to seven minutes where you get everybody together first thing in the morning and you can recap how the process is going. And the key too is to recognize progress and not just beat ’em over the head until they get to the number. So if the standard is we need to send out 80% at a minimum as far as the images, if they were at 30% and they jumped to 45%, sure they’re not at 80% yet, but hey, nice job getting to 45%. We still have a ways to go and just constantly keeping the message. Here’s another reason that these types of initiatives fail because some people think that it’s just the flavor of the month. If you have people that have been with an organization for a while, they’ve seen initiatives come and go, and they feel like, you know what? If I just wait this thing out, it’s going to go away. But you need to understand, hey, I used to tell my employees all the time, this is not going away. This is not the flavor of the month. This is what we’re going to do. This is the expectation. And that consistency and that follow up, that’s really what gets the actual compliance.
Tom Dorsey (10:55):
And that’s where sharing that big vision because hey, in the big vision, it’s in there and it ain’t going away. Frank, so I know you guys do regular team meetings in the shop. And so when you were implementing that, so you went in and you wrote it all down on paper and you went out and you told it to ’em. Did you get the feedback? Were you getting the questions so that you could address that and know you had buy-in? Was it a process over time? And how did you implement Eric’s recommendation as far as follow up and feedback to your individual team members?
Frank Scandura (11:33):
Yeah, so Eric nailed it, right? Those morning meetings, short, brief, precise. And I’ve always said that shops who have staff meetings when they need to have them, don’t have staff meetings. They have staff meetings.
(11:49):
So if you wait until you’re frustrated and we’re going to fix this, then everybody’s going to get knocked around around. It’s very unproductive. We’ve started actually tossing little candy bars out to everybody who gives feedback during the meetings now. So you’d be surprised so many people would like to have a piece of candy. So now we’re getting more feedback. People who would never speak up speaking up, some people are absolutely terrified to speak in the meeting environment. You have to identify those people because if they’re not talking at all, doesn’t mean everything’s okay. It means their frustrations are high and they don’t know how to communicate. They’re terrified. They either are extremely uncomfortable doing it or they’re afraid somebody’s going to get mad at ’em, or they’re afraid of getting in trouble or they don’t want to get somebody else in trouble. Well, I don’t want him to get fired because of something I said, well, so you have to zero in on those people individually.
(12:40):
So we’ve got our weekly meetings, shops closed, the phone’s forwarded mandatory, we have the advisors meeting with their techs every morning going through, here’s the cars coming in, here’s what we got, here’s what needs to go first. And then we meet with each of these service advisors every morning with their list of cars, okay, tell me what’s going on, what’s going on, what’s going on? And because inevitable, there’s almost always something that they don’t understand, don’t know what to do, but they never bring it to us. And then when we hear about it, when the customer’s on the phone saying, look, you’ve had my car week. What’s going on? And then you find out, well, I thought and I was thinking and I was hoping, and I was kind of praying. I thought maybe if I just kept quiet would go away, kind of like what Eric says, the flavor the week would just kind of simmer away. So by having its communication, so now we’re communicating, having an open dialogue, and it’s just a matter of someone else is in the room saying, what did you think about this? Or did you do that?
(13:39):
My favorite thing in the world is I feel like every Monday’s a new day for everybody. And what I mean by that is we have to go over the expectations again every Monday as if something happened on a weekend and their brains were replaced. So it’s like 51st days.
Tom Dorsey (13:55):
And that’s key. It is reinforcement. And really it’s one of the things is it was great actually at super conference because they had that keynote speaker and he talked about, put the chair by your bed and it takes 20 days. Get up and read a book as soon as the alarm gets off, get in that chair, read for 15 minutes and do it for, I think it was 20 days, 21 days. But what he said, and this is science, right? It’s science, it’s proven, is that it takes that much time to develop a habit, but then it was like 60 days or however many more days to actually get that habit to stick. And so it was a great process or it’s a great idea. Matter of fact, Russ was telling us that he even implemented a book club in his shop because what I want to get to at is that it becomes cultural.
(14:51):
All the rest of the guys are reading the book. And at first maybe it sounds silly, but then we’re going to have a meeting every Friday to discuss that book. Now I know I have to be prepared because I don’t want to look like a bozo in front of the rest of the team. Same in football, right? Yeah. The coach would yell at you for missing the block, but it was what those guys said to you in the huddle that really hit you. I was in the military bootcamp and it was nothing worse, man. I didn’t make my bed and everybody in the company has to do pushups. Woo. Boy, my bed was squared away the next day because I wasn’t about to. You get so much peer pressure from that. And so how do we create a culture where, because what Eric said is, Hey, this is going to blow over. And if that’s the culture in your shop, especially the new guys, man, is that toxic? And so how do we create a culture to where we get the buy-in from these guys and then that ancillary peer pressure says, Hey man, this is the way we do it here. Get with it. Eric, how do you do that when you’re discussing process change with your shop owners? And then also, how do we incentivize that once we get the momentum going?
Eric M. Twiggs (16:01):
Well, I think consistency is the key, constantly talking about it, everybody being on the same page. So one of the things that I do with my shops and my shops are starting to do with their teams is we start all coaching sessions and meetings by talking about the wins. Because Frank alluded to it earlier when you say, Hey, we’re having a meeting, you’re like, oh,
(16:25):
What did I do wrong? What am I getting chewed out for? The beatings will continue to, morale improves. Oh my goodness. So I have my guys, we talk about the wins. So I’ll start off a coaching call. So tell me about your wins from the previous week. And they know that every time we talk, that’s the first thing I’m going to ask them. So now they’re starting to look for the positive things and they’re having those same conversations within the shop. So now when we start the shop meeting with the wins, we start the one-on-ones with the wins. What are the positives? So they know this isn’t just a beat up session. The goal is that we continue to get better. And then making sure you’ve got recognition in place too. So you are recognizing people that are making the most improvement. We recognize the people that are just hitting the cover off the ball. So everybody wants to be that particular individual. So now it’s not just a negative punishment thing, but it’s positive and that they need to understand. The other thing is they need to understand why is it good for the car? Why is it good for the company and why is it good for the customer? Have them articulate that.
Tom Dorsey (17:32):
I mean, that is brilliant, right? Simple and brilliant. Frank, follow up.
Frank Scandura (17:38):
I do. So that’s part of what’s the vision for the company. Part of our vision is providing the best possible, most reliable transportation we can for our customers. That means thorough. That means estimating everything we discover. That means presenting everything. We discovered the guy who says, well, I don’t want the customer to get mad at me, or I don’t want him to think I’m just looking to sell him something, so I’m just going to do what he came in for the first couple of times and then I’ll show him what’s going on with the car. Big mistake, right? Got established that trust right out of the gate. So if that’s part of my vision, do you agree with and want to be part of that as a team member? Because if you have the attitude, if a service advisor has the attitude, well, he’s probably not going to buy anything, so I’m just going to tell him what I think he’ll buy.
(18:25):
You can’t work here, period. If you’re a technician and you say, well, that car is not in good condition, so I’m not going to recommend everything, just the stuff’s about to fall off, you can’t work here. You don’t know what’s going on in someone’s life. You have no clue what they’re going to do with the car. Maybe they’ve just decided, I’m not buying any more new cars. I’m going to fix this car up. Or maybe they decided, look, I’ve got 40 bucks to fix the brakes. What can you do? And we need to know and tell them everything that needs to go on. I put a link in there too, a book called Atomic Habits to I’m going back to Habit book, man, amazing. Somebody gift. So I figured I probably ought to read it. And it’s very good. And it helps you learn how to, you can’t change your habits. You have to replace them sleeping late. You have to replace it with a habit of getting you habit, not reading. You have to replace it with a habit of reading. If you have a habit of eating too much, you have to replace it with a habit of not eating too much. It’s a really, really good, highly recommend it.
Eric M. Twiggs (19:27):
James Clear is the author, and that’s actually one of my quotes, like our theme with my shops is this is the year of better. And James Clear, that author, he talks about just getting 1% better every day. By this time next year, you’ll be exponentially better. You’ll be much better just by that 1% improvement that you make.
Frank Scandura (19:51):
And that goes back to celebrating the wins. If your sales goals, I want to do 5 million, that’s my ultimate goal, but I have to reward the incremental improvements between here and there because if we don’t, then everybody’s going to think we’ll never get there. What’s the point, right? So last year we beat the 17 by 20% and 18, okay, well, 20% more this year won’t get us to that 5 million, but it’s going to be a heck of a lot better than not. Trying to celebrate those wins. And it’s hard. It’s extremely hard. The hardest thing for me to do is to tell you what a great job you’re doing. This is wonderful. My attitude’s always been, you’re lucky you got a job, just get back in. And that’s not today’s world anymore. So that’s very, very hard for me to do. So there it’s, it’s
Eric M. Twiggs (20:41):
Tough. So the challenge there for me, because Frank, I can agree because I don’t need you to pat me on the back. There’s certain things I’m going to do, whether you recognize it or not, but it’s taking me years to realize that not everybody’s like me. And I think a lot of our shop owners go into their business thinking that people are going to have the same level of care as they do, and then they’re sadly disappointed. So you just have to understand that people are coming from completely different perspectives
Frank Scandura (21:12):
And then they use that disappointment to burn through people. Yes, he don’t care. He can’t work here. He don’t care. He can’t work here, he don’t care. He can’t work there. Why won’t anybody come work for me? Because we’ll talk to each other.
Tom Dorsey (21:23):
Exactly. Yeah. Because part of it is we have to shape ’em, right? I mean, we have to teach ’em the skills and the habits that make them successful and make them fit the role that you need in your business. And the way that you do that is transparency. Just like Eric said in the beginning, if I understand what I’m supposed to do here, then I can go do it. And then from there, it’s just monitoring how well they do something and giving feedback, very specific feedback to them on how to improve. And then you easily weed out the ones who don’t care. But what happens when you get the guy, he cares, he’s on board. I mean, this guy’s integral to your business, but you’re going, guy, why aren’t you editing the pictures and Yeah, I know boss, I got to do it, but man, I’m busy and this and the phone. How do we get them to that level to really replace the habit, but just break it down into such an incremental activity that we can do it each and every single time. How do we do that?
Frank Scandura (22:24):
You have to explain what the non-negotiables are, right? This is a non-negotiable,
Tom Dorsey (22:31):
Okay, you push that button.
Frank Scandura (22:34):
So I just, you have to do that and then go into the why, right? And the why is the big question here. Technician recommends something. Why? Because the customer needs to know why. You tell me we need something. I’m going to say why. I need to know the why. So if you’re sending a picture to a customer, if something needs to replace, why? Because the arrow’s pointing to that crack or that part that’s broken and obviously hanging off or we’re taking a video, you have to be able to answer the why. And that is a non-negotiable. And they know I’m serious when I say non-negotiable. And as a shop owner, if you have a problem holding yourself accountable, you’re not ever going to be able to hold your team accountable. So it starts with you.
Tom Dorsey (23:20):
Yeah, you’re right. It starts right there at the top.
Eric M. Twiggs (23:23):
And then I would say the expectation is if you want to work for Eric’s Automotive, this is what you do. This is the expectation. And then something else that I found that helps is when I’m coaching someone, they need to understand what the why is. But when I’m asking them a coaching question, I don’t ask them a question that starts with why. Because when I say, Tom, why didn’t you send the image out? It automatically puts the person in excuse mode, oh, I was so busy. Oh my gosh. They feel like they have to defend themselves. So I found it helps to ask the person a question. It starts with what, how, when? Because it doesn’t put them on the defensive, but at the same time, it gets to the heart of the issue. So if you say, what happened with the images or how did you do it? Sending those images yesterday, Tom. Oh, not too good, Eric. Oh, and the message still comes across without them feeling like they have to defend themselves
Frank Scandura (24:23):
And measure, measure, measure. You can’t manage what you don’t measure. Because when I asked my guys, are you sending inspections? Yeah, boss we’re sending report 23%,
Eric M. Twiggs (24:35):
Two of them.
Tom Dorsey (24:36):
I said,
Frank Scandura (24:36):
Two, we got a problem there. Oh, okay, I’m going to send them all now. And then the next report,
Tom Dorsey (24:41):
They
Frank Scandura (24:42):
Report 60 and then it’s 98, 90 9%, then it’s compliance, right? They think they’re doing it because they’re sending some and they don’t realize what they’re not doing. So you’ve got to measure to be able to manage. And that’s, yeah,
Tom Dorsey (24:56):
No, I mean that is words of wisdom. I hope you wrote it down because that’s really it in a nutshell, is that you got to get them bought into the big picture if they understand the why they’re going to perform it. And Eric couldn’t, couldn’t be more spot on that. When you say the why, the walls go up. When you say the how, we’re now partners. We’re a team solving a problem. How do we get more pictures edited? How do we capture more text, opt-in at drop off? Oh gosh, boss wall. I was thinking about doing something like this. Well, that’s a great idea. Hey, let’s go ahead and implement your great idea and let’s what measure it to see if it’s working right. Maybe it’s shop counter material that just helps him to send that message out or triggers him to remember to ask the question, but you see an improvement and then it’s done. And then if we follow the hey, 23 days to develop the habit in 60 whatever to get it to stick, pretty soon you can take the sign away and guess what? We’re doing it because it’s now become a habit and we’re consistent across the table and that rising tide floats all boats.
Frank Scandura (26:11):
Yep. Good.
Eric M. Twiggs (26:14):
Great points. Got it.
Tom Dorsey (26:16):
So guys, I know you got a hard break. We got about four minutes. Do we have any questions? Take the questions onto the Facebook forum. We’d love to start the discussion there. We’ll be monitoring, answering in, remember tomorrow webinar, we’re going to be talking about how to set these smart goals and how to take some of these things that we discussed today and actually put ’em into implementation and how to start building those habits, those good habits into your shop and into your operation. So that’ll be tomorrow, Thursday at 10:00 AM Pacific time, 1:00 PM Eastern Time, and of course, catch us again next Wednesday, same time, same place, digital shop, talk radio, and we’ll have a couple more great shops on talking about ways to win. Again, guys, I can’t thank you enough, man for coming in and spending some time with me today. I know you guys are extremely busy out there, making process changes and changes, behaviors and minds. Thank you again. Thank you for having me on, Tom, anytime. I really appreciate it, guys. Okay, thanks a lot. Get out there and make some money and we’ll talk to you next week. Have a great day. Thank you.