Smart Service & Parts Training-Coaching-Consulting

"Training is the Key to Knowledge and Skill,
Desire is the Key to Success"

Guy Salkeld

About Guy Salkeld-President

Born and raised in South Florida, Guy now resides in Ft. Lauderdale FL where he enjoys scuba diving, boating, fishing, and a round of golf now and then. Guy has worked with the largest automotive retailer in the country as a fixed operations trainer, has owned two automotive repair shops, and has worked every position in a franchised automotive dealership including ASE master certified technician. Guy has authored many fixed operations training programs and has had video appearances on the A.I.N.Network for Dealer Digest Daily and performed training seminars with NADA 20-Groups.

Guy’s tremendous experience and passion for the automotive business is rare and is evident in every project he has participated. The services and products available were developed from his failures as well as his success and will help you achieve “Highly Predictable Results"
DavePiecuch-ACG

About Dave Piecuch 
Vice-President

Dave has been a Fixed Operations Expert for over 30 years. He is a graduate of the General Motors Institute of Technology at the University of Delaware in 1986 and Volvo University in Rutherford, N.J. in 1993. He has also attained certifications in computer training with various automotive computer systems, including Reynolds & Reynolds, CDK, Dealertrack, Adams, AutoMate, AutoSoft, Dealerbuilt, PBS, Dominion/VUE, Tekion and Quorum Dealer Management Systems as well as many other software programs. Dave has also been Fixed Operations Consultant with Reynolds & Reynolds, Wheeler Management Group. He has held positions such as Regional Sales Manager and National Director or Parts form various Fixed Operations consulting companies. Along with Guy, they have trained and consulted in over 400 Dealerships across the United States and Canada.

Dave currently writes monthly “Smart Parts” E-Newsletters and blogs and has written articles for Fixed Ops Business as well as for Fixed Ops Magazine. He has also made video appearances on the A.I.N. Network for Dealer Digest Daily. He is an approved vendor for NADA Parts University and has performed many industry training seminars for NADA and NCM 20 Groups’ Fixed Operations Meetings across the country. He has a history of success throughout his career with many achievements and awards areas of Customer Satisfaction, Sales Excellence as well as being awarded one of NADA’s Top Benchmark Dual Franchise Dealers in fixed operations from 1993-1997. Dave is New Hampshire native, but now resides in New Hampshire with his wife, Alison in the summer and Pensacola, FL in the winter. He enjoys all sports, especially golf, swimming, boating and rollerblading.

Follow Dave’s Blog @ http://smartpartstraining.blogspot.com/

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Eight Habits of Highly Successful Service Advisors

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ACG has an exclusive Service Advisor Training Program that gets "tried and true" proven results. I will go into detail on how we achieve higher sales per Repair Order AND Customer Retention.

To achieve these "predictable" results, it takes two key fundamentals to get started and they are "People and Process".
As you may have noted, I did not include "technology" as I know from experience that technology is not a factor in building a High-Performance Service Operation. In fact, it usually stops you from growing and often, gives you a lot of added expense and excuses.

I’ve always said that if you can't get them to fill out and use a written "Multi-Point Inspection Form", how do you expect them to fill out and use an electronic version of this same form.

Let's go one step further, the same would hold true for menu programs...Electronic Menus versus "Hand Out" Menus. It doesn't make sense to spend money on new technology, when the priority should be coaching, leading and managing our people on the service process FIRST!

I believe the "People Process" should come first and foremost. We must consider the "human element" of our business by identifying the behavior tendencies of our employees to better understand our customers.

I prefer to use the D.I.S.C. Profiling Process to identify who my service advisor is and to get a sense of who I'm working with. I want to know if this person is "Direct" or "Indirect”, as this may impact the overall customer perception and experience.

Once an advisor knows what his or her behavior style is, the training has started. I train each advisor to not only identify their own behavior tendencies, they will also better understand the tendencies of fellow employees and most importantly...they will better understand the customer.

Four dimensions

There are four basic dimensions which everyone falls into. The intensity level is different for everyone which allows us to determine your specific behavior style. The next illustration is what we use with each advisor to determine the "intensity" of each dimension within 30 seconds after greeting the customer.

Here are a few "How to Read You’re Customer" questions

• Does this customer prefer to shoot the breeze? (Influence)
• Does this customer want to get right down to business? (Direct)
• Does this customer want to deal in facts and figures? (Cautious)
• Is this customer easy going and unconcerned (Steady)?

Here are a few "How to Read You’re Customer" questions

As you can clearly see, this is an important step in training our service advisors to identify who I'm dealing with so I can build a strong relationship with total trust.
The second part of the "People Process" is hiring the right people, making sure I have the right people currently on board before you start to install a "High Performance Service Operation".
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