Two Reasons Automotive Consultants Fail

The five reasons consultants can't and won't save you. Four reasons.

I think four is going to be good. There will be, there's sub reasons within the reasons too. Like this is a good list.

This is a good call. This is a fun conversation.

I can't wait. It's going to be great. No holds barred.

Number one, if they fixed you, they'd be out of work.

Whoopsies.

Right?

Talk about having a conflict of interest, right? So the better that they make the client do, the better their chance of unemployment. Mm, yeah, yeah, that's a problem.

So for, for us as a company, like we don't have contracts because that's what our competition would do. And people had, you know, an apprehension to getting help because they'd be like, well, what happens is I'm locked into this contract, there's no value and I can't get out of it. And so if they have a long term contract, if they're trying to tie you up for a year or two, they're probably not any good.

If we aren't earning your business, we don't want your business.

That's right.

We're not providing value. You could walk away.

I think that's a great reason. I would really hesitate trying to get into a consulting contract with someone that wanted anything other than that. My results speak for themselves.

Yeah, it's, it's.

It'S funny, but I worked for a consulting company really early on and that was their whole thing is they would spin plates. They called it spinning plates, but they would, they would try to spin as many plates as they could to always keep you feeling like you were never good enough or never, you know, never fixed, that you always needed more. And then they, they would also bring up these subjects that they would make a huge deal out of, like proficiency. Like I remember, like proficiency was like all they would talk about, which it never made any sense to me because it didn't help anybody. I was just like with the technicians, right. So I know in the, in the truck world proficiency means efficiency. So let's just define the difference between proficiency and efficiency. So efficiency is if there's eight hours in a day and the technician flags eight hours, he's 100% efficient. They would get into this whole thing about efficiency versus proficiency. And proficiency was how long the technician was clocked on in RO because that showed how long they were standing at parts, how long they were taking a break, how long it took them to pull a car in and out. But none of that really made sense. And I don't know how many times after I left that consulting company and I went back into their clients on my own and the shop would be like, I remember this once, I'm not joking, Christian. The place was losing money and the shop was 120 something percent proficient and it was 80% efficient.

Right.

Because the technicians were really good at managing.

There's a line at the clock.

Yeah. Because they were all bonused on it.

Right.

So they had a bonus for the text. They all made like so many dollars more if they were proficient. But they weren't efficient. And as soon as I switched it, you know, they were over 100% efficient. And they weren't managing the clocking on and off of an ro. They were managing the production and getting cars fixed.

Right. Even clocking on and off a job by definition is inefficient because they're not working.

We used to argue about that because I would tell them like that's not, that's not the best thing for the client. And they were like, yeah, but you know, it's a new thing. And they thought it was like a, you know, you know, there were a couple things like that. Like they would try to get rid of the back parts counter.

Which I thought was funny. Also something you and I were talking about earlier about putting a kiosk.

Yeah.

So they would, they would spend months like planning out putting a parts kiosk in the shop. So they would have a parts person in the shop.

And I did it three times. So in three different service departments I put a parts person in a kiosk. It's funny because the dealers would go to their 20 group and they'd be bragging to everybody like oh yeah, we got, we closed our back parts counter and we have a parts person actually in the shop.

I don't know why, but for me, like I always go to this weird place where I'm like, well I'm just curious like what's, what has happened to our efficiency? And the efficiency, every time I did it went down about 5%.

It's weird, right?

It's not weird though. It makes total sense because like I kind of looked into it. It's just like when those guys that started MPI less and all that, like his son called me and he's like, you know, I mean they had problems because I would tell them like every time we put your inspection software in, our hours per RO go down. And I figured out why and I told him, I go, if you want to pay me, I'll fix it. For you. But there's glitches in your system in the process. You don't understand really what's, you know, what's going on. But having a parts person in a kiosk, they don't have parts. And so when you have a back parts counter, a lot of times techs walk up, they can hand them the filter, the thing, the fast moving stuff when they have to type it in and then a parts runner goes and gets it. It isn't any quicker, it's not any quicker than the tech just ordering it from his stall. And most of the time what those parts guys would end up doing is just BSing with the text and talking. It doesn't, it doesn't really. Them walking a little bit further to a back parts counter doesn't help. And in every situation where they've eliminated the back parts counter, I've put in at least one. Even in big shops with 70 techs, they gotta have a place to ask a question or actually interact with the parts person.

So, you know, if you can get a shop to 80, 90% ordered through the computer, that's pretty good. But there is a 10 or 15% anomaly that you're hurting the efficiency in the shop if you don't have some sort of parts counter that they can go to.

I will say that I think that the technology is getting better in terms of what the techs can request from the parts department. So there is a little bit less face to face. It just isn't completely eliminated, I don't think. And I just think that there's a lot to the parts department supporting the shop productivity.

I just think the lesson in that is I was actually looking at the results and they were so caught up in this new thing that everybody, you know, consultants, like, we'll come in and we'll set up this thing and people are like, oh, it makes sense that if you had parts people in the shop then there would be better interaction between part and you make this weird connection like, oh, that would work. But nobody tests it out to see if it actually works. They're just paying consultants, just like they pay consultants to come out and do these quick lubes. Consultants come out. They, you know, we want two techs to a stall. These kids are going to do oil changes in 15 minutes. It's like, well, the, the cost doesn't outweigh the investment. Like you can do an oil change in 17 minutes or in, you know, 12 minutes with two, but it doesn't really add up.

Oh, that's something to Talk about for a long time.

Oh, people love it, but the numbers don't work. And it's not. It's not effective. And you have your least talented people touching the most cars.

Right. And two at a time.

Yeah.

So then there's an accountability issue within the actual car that's being worked on and who did what. Right. It's. It's a much bigger thing. But can consult away.

Okay. Number two is most of the time, consultants are between jobs. So I always have this joke, like, what's a consultant and somebody in between jobs? And they've never really accomplished anything professionally themselves.

Yeah. So. And we're in the process of growing. Right. So I'm doing a lot of interviews and stuff like that. And I would say that's the most common thing that I get for applicants. I don't interview those people. But the most common thing I see is people between jobs.

Oh, yeah. Like the team we have, like, everybody's a rock star.

Yeah. But it's hard to get on it.

But, yeah. No, they've accomplished amazing things. So they don't have the idealized version of things because I think when. When you have never accomplished something yourself, your. Your mode of communicating is to communicate an idealized version of something because you've never actually done it.

Yeah.

And you have a different respect for things when you've actually done it because it's harder than you think.

Yeah. And our coaches are.

It's not easy.

Yeah. Our coaches are looking for something different than a lot of consultants. Right. Like, they're. They're heavily vested in the results of the client, is what I would say.

Well, that one's.

I got ahead of myself. Sorry.

Coming up.

Yeah. But I would say that it's a big difference.

Thanks so much for watching this clip of Service Driver Revolution. We're uploading new stuff every day, so make sure you subscribe and click the bell icon so. 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 that's offers.chriscollinsInc.com I'm Chris Collins and I'll see you in the next video sa.