Shop Insight:Your success is totally logical ... isn't it?

As a regular columnist to aftermarket business, and a long time contributor to our sister publication Motor Age, Mitch has his pulse on service dealer issues. Write him a note with any comments or questions you might have. (For Mitch's Motor Age columns, click here.) I’ve always been fascinated by the way things work. I suppose that’s how I wound up in the automotive service industry in the first place. Even though I wasn’t much of a student when it came to the physical or “hard” sciences, I did have a passion for relationships: the way things interact, and an innate understanding of the logical, if-this-then-that nature of things. Both are critical skills when it comes to recognizing what makes a vehicle go down the road or, perhaps more important, what might be missing when it doesn’t. I turned this into an almost lifelong study of something I call “logical consequences,” those things most likely to occur after certain forces are put into motion.

If you combine air and fuel in the proper proportion in the proper environment, squeeze the molecules together under the right conditions, light them off at just the right moment in time with a spark hot enough to get them burning, and then push the inert gases that result from the explosion that is likely to follow out of the combustion area soon enough to get some more combustible gases back in there, your engine will run and you just might make some horsepower. You could say that an efficient running engine is the logical consequence of all of the above, just as you could say a misfire is the logical consequence of anything that wasn’t just right.

Each component plays a critical role, with no single element more important than any other. Too much air creates a lean misfire. Too much fuel can cause the engine to flood out and die. Improper timing can cause an engine to overheat, lose power, detonate or otherwise self-destruct.

Do you understand the critical role you can play in this intricate series of interactions and relationships? Do you recognize the logical consequences associated with playing that role perfectly? Do you realize the contribution you can make or the logical consequences of your failure to contribute? Have you ever experienced the result of failing to provide the right part at the right price at the right time firsthand? Have you seen what happens to service bay productivity or customer relations when a lift is tied up, a technician is left with nothing to do or a vehicle can’t be completed on time because something fell apart on your side of the parts counter?

Success in any business is often an example of logical consequences: the coming together of certain critical components, in perfect proportion, under the right conditions, at precisely the right moment. Take any single element out of range, however, and you are going to have a misfire and a business may ultimately stall and die.

It doesn’t matter if you’re a manufacturer, a WD, a store owner, counterman or driver, the logical consequence of failing to realize the critical role you can play in the success of service dealer customers is failure: yours or your customer’s!