Auto Service Advisor
FAMILY BACKGROUND AND CAREER INFLUENCE
FA was the middle child among three brothers. To support the family, FA’s father worked in various jobs at different times, including selling cars while playing music professionally at night and eventually managing a bar and restaurant. FA’s mother was an administrative assistant in a hospital.
The parents never made direct recommendations to their three sons regarding a specific career path, but FA experienced their indirect influence through observing his father and mother continuously working outside their home, in order to provide money to pay the family bills and offer the opportunity for the boys to play sports rather than having to work to earn money during school vacations.
EARLY CHILDHOOD THOUGHTS OF AN ADULT CAREER
Like many boys during their elementary and high school years, FA had dreams of being a professional athlete in baseball, lacrosse, or football. However, by late high school days, FA began to realize that he probably didn’t have the premium talent to succeed as a professional so he thought the best way to combine his outgoing personality and his love of sports, would be to work as a sports broadcaster, which would also likely be enjoyed by his grandparents, who were faithful followers of the local pro sports teams on radio and tv.
SCHOOL DAYS
Despite FA’s lack of fondness for math, his high school grades were sufficient to earn admission to the local campus within the state university system.
COLLEGE – BRIEFLY
Toward the end of his first year, having to spend (too) many hours inside classrooms for the required freshman variety of ‘liberal arts’ courses, while many of his friends from high school were working and earning money, FA asked himself why he was wasting time in school when he, too, could be working. So, to the consternation of his parents, FA withdrew from college and took the advice of a relative, to work in a dealership, selling cars.
FIRST CAREER NEVER A BINDING COMMITMENT
Selling cars seems an easy way to earn sales commissions without having to do manual labor or study boring books or solve math problems, right? Everyone loves driving new car so, quickly persuading buyers to accept a great (!) deal: low or no cash down, to drive their dream away, should not require much sales training or experience, right? And a fresh-faced, 20 year old, rookie salesperson, would be warmly welcomed into the dealer’s group of older salesmen, who would be willing to patiently teach him all their sales tricks, right?
Wrong, wrong and wrong!
CAREER CHALLENGE – COMPETITIVE, UNFRIENDLY CO-WORKERS
In some work settings, the experienced co-workers are glad to welcome a new hire, to provide extra help assisting customers. Then the senior employees take the new hires ‘under their wings’ to patiently provide inside information and supervision during the initial learning process. Such circumstances can be found in many businesses. But unfortunately, some new hires are viewed as inexperienced competitors.
Unknown to FA when he received apparently friendly greetings from the senior salespeople on his first day on the showroom floor, they had no intention of losing any potential customers and sales commissions to ‘the kid.’ Instead of taking turns greeting potential customers entering the showroom to admire the gleaming new cars, the older salesmen would quickly stalk their prey, as alpha dogs instinctively do. FA felt isolated and soon realized that working 6 days a week, 12 hours a day, in competition with his co-workers, would not be rewarding, either financially or as a learning experience. (Only later did FA learn that several of the senior salesmen had criminal records.) Assuming his employment situation would improve, FA ‘stuck it out’ for a few months but finally decided his work situation would forever remain unsatisfactory.
JOB CHANGE MAY BE NECESSARY FOR IMMEDIATE – NOT NECESSARILY LONG RANGE – SATISFACTION
Not every job change requires looking far down a potential career path. Sometimes it’s just necessary to exit a bad work situation and grab an opportunity to provide time to ‘re-group.’
Having left a long-hours, low pay, hostile work environment, FA considered what he thought were his best options: A. return to school or B. find a different job, even on a temporary basis without looking too far down a potential career path.
FA’s parents urged him to pursue option A but FA, having already experienced boring classrooms and minimal earnings, opted against returning to school, which would preclude the opportunity for any full-time earnings. A friend’s business needed a bartender to work 5 nights a week, earning a minimal salary plus cash tips. FA would not be ‘bossed’ by any senior bartenders and the work itself easily fit FA’s outgoing personality so a bartender, he would be, for which he was quickly earning ‘good’ money.
JOB CHANGE MAY LOOK TOWARD THE FUTURE WITHOUT A COMMITMENT
After a few months as a bartender, FA, still in his early 20s, decided to take a little longer look down the road toward a more stable career, working 5 days a week, 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. with good earning potential, in a (hopefully) friendly, environment. Where to look for such an opportunity? Perhaps within the auto dealership line of work, which involves a variety of jobs other than selling cars: service ‘technician’ (formerly called ‘mechanic’), parts department, autobody repair, service advisor, finance manager and general manager.
AUTO SERVICE TECHNICIAN
Then and now, automobile service technicians were in such high demand that many car dealerships offered training programs for new hires, including full pay while learning on the job, plus given a full set of all the necessary tools to keep. FA asked if his co-workers would be friendly (Editor’s note – no employer can make such a guarantee but it’s always worth asking, to at least let the employer know, politely, that a cooperative work environment is important). Upon receiving assurances about all the working conditions, FA thought that working as a service technician was a good way to re-enter the car business and after a few years, he might try to move into a different position within the dealership, while using that base of knowledge involving how the product could best perform.
An auto repair / service technician inspects, maintains, and repairs gas, electric, hybrid and alternative fuel vehicles. In smaller businesses, their duties may include a full range of repair and maintenance services. In larger businesses, they may specialize in certain areas, such as brakes, transmissions, or air conditioning systems. Identifying mechanical problems often requires the use of computerized, diagnostic equipment. Checklists must be followed to ensure that all critical parts are examined. Basic car maintenance includes oil changes, tune-ups, tire rotations, repairing or replacing worn parts such as brake pads and wheel bearings and explaining to customers (or to the service advisors in larger dealerships) the specific automotive problems diagnosed, and the repairs done or needed.
Tools to be used may include pneumatic wrenches, lathes, welding torches, jacks, and hoists as well as hand tools such as pliers, wrenches, and screwdrivers. Employers supply the larger, more sophisticated equipment while the technician may be required to personally own certain tools.
FA appreciated the opportunity to learn the ‘hands-on’ aspect of the car business but following his training period and a few months without supervision, he decided that while he enjoyed physical activity as a general concept, he didn’t want to work ‘dirty’ for the rest of his life. So, FA was interested to learn about an opportunity to work as a service advisor within a different car dealership.
AUTO SERVICE ADVISOR
An automobile service advisor is responsible for communicating with customers about their vehicle repair needs and relaying information to the service technicians. The Advisor greets customers and helps them to determine repairs and related costs, maintaining up to date knowledge about the range of services available, warranty coverage and following the customer’s authorization to proceed with specific work by the technicians, to keep the customer advised of progress and especially if unanticipated work is necessary and involving additional payment by the customer.
Virtually every service advisor is a former service technician who has transitioned from working on cars to advising customers, following either (A) the normal aging process which restricts ability to perform certain physical tasks or (B) an injury – at any age – which restricts or totally prohibits carrying out all the physical tasks required of service technicians.
Fortunately for FA, an experienced service manager was a patient, caring teacher. But after a few years, FA looked further down his potential career path within car dealerships and thought he would someday like to be a dealership’s general manager. How could he put himself in a better position to be a general manager? One dealership job which FA had not yet experienced could be a valuable addition to his base of auto dealership knowledge and experience: auto finance.
AUTO FINANCE MANAGER
The formal job description for an Auto Finance Manager is to present car buyers with various financing options, alternative lenders, interest rates and maintenance plan options. A finance director / manager generally serves as the intermediary between finance companies and the car dealership during the car sales process.
FA’s actual, on-the-job experience as an auto finance manager, involved the following daily activities for each customer to whom he was introduced by a salesperson (who was hopeful the finance manager could ‘close the deal’ by presenting persuasive, long-term, financing options (since almost no one pays cash for a car): greet the prospective customer to gather their confidential financial background (credit score and down payment ability) plus the customer’s estimate for how long they intended to keep the car, either through a purchase or lease / purchase option. Then the finance manager presents the customer, hopefully by then dazzled with the polished car’s exterior and fresh smelling interior leather (or equivalent), with an interest rate (marked up to the legal maximum rate, creating confidential profit to the dealer and a commission to the finance manager) plus other maintenance plans for which the finance manager also earns confidential commissions when the final deal is confirmed by the customer’s signature.
One important mantra for a successful auto finance manager to practice daily: ‘Don’t Take ‘No” (from a customer) For An Answer!’ If you do, too easily or too often, both the salesman and the general manager will be unhappy with your performance since their income depends in large part on your ability to ‘close the deal.’
While earning commissions would seem like a fun and easy way to earn money, the actual life of an auto finance manager is never fully easy, as it involves spending many hours with unpersuadable customers, sometimes long into the night while they ‘hem and haw’ with you or with the salesperson or among themselves. Thus, FA was often unable to close his office door and head home until (very) late at night since the salesperson and the general manager thought their best chance to persuade the customer was to not let that customer depart the dealership without a signed agreement.
After a year of working as an auto finance manager, FA, now a husband and father, wanted to bring some working hours stability back into his life. He called the dealership where he had enjoyed his experience as a service advisor, to inquire about any current job openings and was very glad to learn that he would be welcomed to return as a service advisor.
CAREER SATISFACTION
By now, having worked in various capacities (sales, technician, advisor and finance) within different automobile dealerships, FA appreciates the many aspects of his career opportunities:
- earn sufficient compensation to take care of his family (his wife is also full-time employed outside their home) for current living expenses plus modest savings toward future expenses such as a college education for his child and his retirement
- use of a company car (as a ‘loaner’) to be turned in whenever the dealer needs to sell that specific car to a customer, which car is then replaced by another ‘loaner’
- discounted parts and service costs for any vehicle which he personally owns
- working hours: 5 days a week, 7:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. plus 1 Saturday a month and occasionally having to remain on duty until 6 p.m. to accommodate some customers
- ability to understand car maintenance and repair issues and serve as the ‘go-between’ the customer and the technician
- receive management’s appreciation for his generally positive customer relationships which management acknowledges is important for the business’ good will
- all the while, preserving FA’s ability to someday, if the right circumstances present themselves, to become a general manager of an auto dealership
