The First Step To Hire Mechanics ASAP

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Welcome everybody to your Friday drive by where we answer your questions. I'm Chris Collins, this is Christian Lafferty.

Hello Chris.

Joan. Can you say it like that? Christian Chrishone. Yeah, Christian, we have two questions today that we're excited about. So it's a two for one episode. Remember if we play your question on the air you get a cool swag bag with a bunch of cool stuff and we're always changing that swag bag. The number is 8333Ask SDR. 8333Ask SDR. Leave your question on there on that voicemail and we will get to them as soon as we possibly can.

You will become famous.

Hello, Bob from New England here. I have a kind of a unique situation. I run two stores and one of them currently only has two techs and then a kid in college. The other one has four technicians.

I have zero control for hiring in terms of access to any kind of platforms.

For hiring technicians. And the technicians that I have are not very, not very good and a lot of them have punctuality issues and such. So I find it very difficult to.

Discipline them and correct them when they make mistakes in fear of them quitting or I guess up to if I followed policy, some of the technicians probably would be terminated very quickly.

So kind of a strange situation and I feel like my back is up against a wall on how to improve these two stores. So I have no access to any hiring platforms. My company will run an ad and I'm lucky if I get one candidate when they run the ad and that's about it. And half the time it's not even anybody good. So any suggestions would highly appreciate it. Thanks, bye.

So Bob, I'm going to ignore the fact that you're saying that you have no control because that's a whole nother subject and to some degree you're calling us asking for help. So you're looking for some ideas. I'm going to give you some ideas. But the first idea would have is to stop thinking that you have no control. There's a, there's a million things you can do. And when you, it's like people will say to us you can't hire techs. And then what's the first thing we tell them?

You can't say that anymore.

Yeah, like it's a self professing prophecy. It's like.

Yeah, it makes no sense. So you do have, you have control. Like you haven't figured it out yet or what you've tried hasn't worked. But it's not going to be easy, I guess, from the, the picture you're painting, which we don't really have enough information because I don't know if you're running shops for pet boys or what it is. You're talking about this corporate entity like it's this untouchable thing. But I, I doubt that that's actually the case because even the most corporate environments want to get results. Right? So let's just go through some ideas and hopefully this might spark something. So first of all, is whoever corporate is, do some sort of analysis that they're spending this much money on ads and they're getting very low results. And, you know, if you need to hire technicians, we can help you with that. There's plenty of people they can help make that more efficient. But we see all the time that there's dealer groups or, or corporations that are spending 10,000, $15,000 a month on, indeed, in these, these hiring platforms and getting no results whatsoever. And they're doing it because HR thinks that's what you do, but nobody's talking about the actual outcome of the money they're spending. So when we say, listen, you spent 15,000. And then I look at the manager and I go, and how many texts did you hire off of those ads? And they will. None. And I'm like, so, you know, let's keep the 15 and let's, you know, let's try some other things, but point out that the ROI on what they're doing currently isn't there. They're. They're spending money and the intentions are good, but you're not getting the results. So could we try some other things now? Let's just talk about the fact that you back to. You have no control. To run an ad on Craigslist is like, depending on the market, 50 to 75 bucks.

So some even less.

I would pay 75 bucks on my own pocket not to feel trapped by some, some situation. I would probably spend more than that, but, you know, so you can run your own ads too. We, we do this all the time. Sometimes they, they would if they knew they wouldn't like it. But we run blind ads.

Yeah. And sometimes texts just show up and people don't question it very much.

Yeah, Christian's really good at running blind ads. And it's really odd to me because I've said to him, like, I don't think a technician will answer a blind ad because they want to know who and. But he's hired some good technicians off the blind ads. So once again, it's, you know, he's, he's trying something and it's, it's working, but it's working because he's just trying a lot of different things as best that he can. And you're going to get lucky sooner or later. But if you say that I don't have control or I can't and you're putting yourself in the position of the victim, then it's a self professing prophecy. So.

You have to fix the fact that you're not hiring. You have to be able to hire. And then, then I would think about your, your authority and your leadership skills in relation to who's there. Like, are you really getting to know those techs? Do you really understand their wants and needs? Are you, you know, are you setting a good example and showing up on time? Like, why is the culture that it's okay to not show up on time? Are you, are you, you know, what I would do in that situation is I would send my lowest performer home the next time they were late to say, send a message to everybody else. Like I would manufacture a mindset by, by what I did.

And so, and you know, I know you feel like you, you don't have any say in the hiring. I know you feel like you don't have any say or influence in the actual performance of who's there to some degree. But I would contend that you have a say in all of that. And the team that you allow to keep working for you is a reflection of you. Like if, if they're not very good, then you're not very good.

Yeah, the thing, and I was, I hope this comes out the right way, Bob, but you opened your call with I run two departments. And then everything after that was talking about how the departments run you. So what I would say is you have to kind of get control of that. I don't even know. Like, if you got really good at hiring techs, you'd have power over everything else, right? So when you think about employees that come in late, they come in late because they think they can't get fired. But if they know that you can hire five techs in 30 days, then all of a sudden they don't feel as safe and comfortable and they're going to, they're going to follow your lead and what you're requesting. And then, you know, the really thing is, is that if you run two departments, run it back, take the power back.

And Bob, let me ask you a question. What's the key to happiness?

I know the answer.

I was asking Bob. You think Bob's real name is Bob? I feel like it's not. I feel like he made up the name Bob. I feel like he's more of a Tim. I don't know. I got a sense that his real name isn't Bob. Tell Bob what the key to happiness is.

Low expectations. Bob.

Yeah. Get to work. Stop expecting things to be perfect for people to do their jobs, for people to be intuitive for you just got to get to work. Like you're going to drive yourself insane if you know, if you just assume that people are going to do what they're supposed to do and that ads are going to work and that people at corporate know, you're going to have to ring a bell. You're going to have to scream from the rooftop. You're going to have to work harder, be more creative. Just how it is. So enjoy it.

Well said.

Awesome. Next question.

Hello.

I just want to first say thank you very much for providing this service drive revolution.

My name is Evan. I'm from beautiful Calgary up in frosty Canada.

Just a question about parts in general. Clearly many service departments and service advisors and service managers have historically sucked and then you guys came along. Systems, procedures, books and the ensuing revolution began a hundred episodes later. My question is.

When will you have content, books and training for the parts department? Many episodes, including all of them that feature Jeremy trash the parts department.

But without consistent processes and a lack of tribal knowledge, how is the average manager to grow and gain and match the growth and revolution on the parts and service side combined? So what's the beef and what are the top five things that a parts department can do to join the service department and reach the stars? Thank you.

Evan, do me a favor really quick, will you? Hold.

Nobody gets my parts old yet.

I thought it was genius.

Thank you so much for the. For the revolution. You might have done that better than anybody.

Yeah, he definitely set a record for quality and most times said in one phone call.

Yeah. So we love parts. We do understand that there is a gap in the market for parts training. Kind of like with service where there. There isn't anybody teaching the whole. The whole scope. Right. And also on the. On the truck side we do have training that involves the parts manager and the service manager we call it between two fires. Two fires. And it. Yeah, we understand. We understand that, Evan. We just haven't found anybody that fits in with our team that can be a parts personality that we can create content with that thinks the way we think. So we're looking so you know, maybe that's something that you. You would be interested in or if anybody knows somebody in parts that's really, you know, effective with parts and, you know, can be a personality, has a, you know, general positive disposition on things and likes to help people. Like, has a real passion to help the industry and. And. And help managers. We would be interested in talking, like, Christian and I, when we're looking at resumes and we're hiring coaches. I'm always looking for parts experience a couple times even close, where we're like, you know, maybe we could turn this person into somebody. And also we've attempted parts training, and there's a lot of it sitting on the shelf that isn't finished because we haven't had the right person. But we have spent time on it.

Lots and lots of time developing content, everything like that.

There's. There's some unreleased part stuff that I'll never see the light of day. But it wasn't because we didn't try. Believe it or not, making or creating training is harder than everybody thinks, especially if, you know, for it to be good.

Yeah, we did learn a lot of lessons. But I mean, honestly, like, going from. From being a parts manager to doing something like this, it's a career change, right? So, like, for me, I was thinking about this the other day. I'm trying to support local businesses, and so I went to this diner and I applied for a job and I said, hey, I bring a lot to the table.

Great, let's segue. This is the best. Because you just. I don't know. I don't. I don't understand that it's a joke until too late, I think. So Funny. I love your segues.

I would contend that there's somebody out there that really has a passion for parts that also is at a point in their career where they've kind of hit the ceiling and they want to help others. Right. Like, that happens a lot with our coaches is they've mastered what they're doing and now they want to help more and influence more. And you kind of want to send the ladder back down and be a mentor and a teacher. And I know that there's people out there on the parts side that are dying to.

Mentor young people coming up in our industry because parts is just like everything else is changing, and you have to have a basic understanding of the business model and how to be effective inside of that business model. So I would contend that somebody's out there. So, Evan, if you know somebody, have them reach out. My home phone number is.

But yeah, email us infohriscollinsinc.com thanks so much for the question. I hope everybody has a great weekend, and we'll see you next time on Service Drive Revolution. Thanks for watching this week's Drive By. I hope we gave you something to think about over the weekend. We're uploading new stuff every, every day, so make sure you subscribe and click the bell icon so you don't miss out. If you have a question you'd like us to answer on the show, call 8333 Ask SDR and we'll answer your question on the show. That's 8333 Ask SDR. For special deals on our books and training, head over to offers.chriscollinsinc.com now it's offers.chris collins, inc.com. i'm chris collins, and I'll see you in the next video.