8 May 2016

Some people may try to build themselves up by tearing you

down. If you know you’re delivering top-quality work for a fair

price, the haters won’t gain any traction with your customers.

Trade Secrets

Bob Cerullo

bcerullo@motor.com

In this election year, with all of the con-stant accusations and chest-beating, Ican’t help but wonder whatever hap-pened to those good old-fashionedprinciples my mom and dad tried sohard to drum into my head. I was

taught to always tell the truth, never take any-thing that did not belong to me and never sayanything mean about someone else. My moth-er’s admonishments came to mind a while agowhile I was visiting one of my former techswho now runs his own shop.

I’ll call this shop owner “Grande Bocca.” Iwas visiting him because one of our longtimeregular customers had confided in me thatGrande had a lot of negative things to sayabout our shop. Here’s the story.

We were closed for our annual two-weekvacation when my customer’s Jeep brokedown. He could not get his 2005 Wrangler out

of Park no matterhow hard hepushed and pulledon the automatictransmission gearshift lever. Hecouldn’t wait for usto return from va-cation because thatwas his only vehicleand he needed itto get to work.Grande’s shop wasnear his home andmy customer hadhis car towed there.

My customersaid that whenGrande spotted ourlube tag on thedoor post, he askedmy customer whyhe would ever takehis car to “thosebackyard mechan-

ics.” He went on to say that Grande spent a lotof time telling him how lucky he was to havecome to his shop and to have gotten awayfrom ours.

My customer said he was pleased whenGrande called later to tell him that it was not amajor problem; the white plastic linkage in theselector handle had broken. It was a relativelysimple job that was properly diagnosed andrepaired by Grande at what I thought laterwas a fair price.

My customer was grateful, but he did notlike Grande’s diatribe about me and my shopone bit. He told me that he would never goback to Grande’s because of the things he saidabout us. Grande told my customer that he of-ten had to redo work we had done poorly. Healso predicted that we would not be in busi-ness much longer because people were find-ing out that we were lousy technicians whomessed up a lot of customers’ vehicles.

Grande had worked for me for five yearsand was a good tech. I was happy to see himventure out on his own. In fact, I gave him ahalf-dozen jack stands and a battery chargerwe didn’t need any more as kind of a house-warming gift, repair shop edition.

But this was not the first time I had gottennegative feedback from customers who hadexperienced Grande’s bad-mouthing of meand my shop. On another occasion, he told acustomer that we liked to recommend workvehicles didn’t actually need. That really hurtat the time, but I ignored it. When Grandeshot off his mouth to the customer with theJeep, it was the straw that broke the camel’sback. I made it my business to pay him a visit.

I’m not a guy who communicates with hisfists. Besides, Grande is half my age and twicemy size. When I went to Grande’s shop I hadno intention other than to talk with him andtry to explain that his stories were getting backto me. So one Saturday morning bright andearly I stopped by Grande’s shop. Grande washis usual friendly self and greeted me like we

The shop replaced a broken Jeep Wrangler’s plasticshift lever link like this one with no problem. Butthe negative things the shop owner said about ourshop certainly was a big problem for me.

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were long lost relatives. After I askedhim how his business was doing, I gotright to the point. I told him that thecustomer with the Jeep shifter prob-lem mentioned Grande’s commentsabout our doing unnecessary work.Grande’s face dropped. At first hetried to deny his story-telling. When Imentioned the names of other carowners who told me about his nega-tive comments, he just stood thereand looked stupid, and not just a littlepale.

I told Grande that I had alwaysconsidered him a friend, but friendsdon’t slander each other. Surprisingly,Grande did not throw me out of hisshop or threaten me or even continueto lie. He just looked terribly embar-rassed and ashamed. I’m still not sureif he was sincere or just a good actor.Since I had taught Grande a lot ofwhat he knows about repairing cars, Ifelt like it was a good time to explainto him something about good busi-ness ethics. He listened respectfully.

I have always strived to never sayanything negative about another shopand the work they did. Most of thetime, intelligent customers can maketheir own judgments without myadding fuel to the fire. For example,if I find a cracked brake hose on a ve-hicle that just had a brake job at an-other shop, I make sure I put the caron a lift and show the customer thecracked brake hose. Then I suggestthat perhaps it was an oversight onthe part of the previous tech and thatthe customer should call and tell theother shop about it before I go aheadand replace it. Certainly, I would nev-er cover up a problem that I foundthat was something a customer need-ed to know about. Nor would I lie toprotect another shop. I would simplytell the customer about it with nocomments or conjecture about thecompetency of the other shop. That’sthe way I would like to be treatedwere the positions reversed.

In my experience, customers havemore respect for you when you don’tlower yourself to bad-mouthing an-other shop. Think about it. When wasthe last time you had a doctor tell youhow lucky you were to be seeing him

or her instead of the “quack” you vis-ited last?

It never seemed to fail: Whensomeone bad-mouthed my shop, itgenerally got back to me. While ithurt and I guess made me a little an-gry, I always tried to discipline myselfto let it go by reminding myself that Iknow what was being said wasn’t true;it was just talk.

Many years ago I was in a fury be-cause a reporter from The Wall StreetJournal repeated a negative storyabout my shop told to him by an un-happy neighbor. The story wasn’t trueand the reporter never asked meabout it. He printed it in the paperand I was angry and mortified. I wasfeeling really low when a former MO-TOR writer for whom I had great re-spect, Bob Lund, called from Detroitto tell me he had seen the story. Hecongratulated me and said I shouldbe honored to have my name in theWSJ for any reason. Lund told menot to worry about it because half thepeople I meet will not have read thestory, half the people who read itwon’t believe it and half of those willhave forgotten it soon after they readit. I felt a lot better after that. Slanderis a nasty business that’s better left tolawyers to sort out. The simple ruleis, don’t do it.

The Trade Secret is to realize thatno one is important enough to makeyou angry. That’s a line I borrowedfrom Thomas Carlyle, the Scottishphilosopher, essayist, historian andteacher. If you know in your heartthat you’re running a shop that’s pro-viding quality service at a fair price,then let the opinions of your detrac-tors be dammed. Chances are they’rejealous of your success. Resist thetemptation to tell negative storiesabout the competition. It makes youlook small in the eyes of your cus-tomers. Stay above the negative talk;reacting to it may come back to biteyou. Keep this old Eastern proverb inmind: “Of thy word unspoken thouart master; the spoken word is masterof thee.”

Your opinion matters; e-mail yourthoughts and comments to me atbcerullo@motor.com.

10 May 2016

Trade Secrets

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