Cover Story: Unfair Advantage

John Cochrane, Cochrane Automotive 2003 Jobber of the Year

John Cochrane is an unusual guy. Ask him about the technician’s challenges, and he’ll talk about tools. Ask him about profitability, he’ll talk about the attitude of the service provider. Muse about the aftermarket industry’s seeming inability to move forward, and he’ll tell you about his training centre and his staff.

There is a very good reason he identifies so strongly with Cochrane Automotive’s trade customers and the technicians who work for them: he is a technician, both at heart and in fact.

“I started out as an apprentice mechanic at Addison on Bay [in Toronto] in 1965,”–where his father Frank was service manager–“and I worked there until 1968 when I got my mechanic’s license.” It would be the only time in our conversation that he would use the word mechanic, eschewing it for technician, and only once did he use the word “installer,” easily slipping into the “service provider” parlance gaining favour.

With ticket in hand, he went to work for Addison Auto Electric, where he got a taste for both the parts business and test equipment. A short stint at General Motors’ truck centre followed, convincing him that he needed to own his own business and so, after a couple of years of pulling plans together, he opened a Texaco service centre alongside his father and brother.

It turned out to be just a short-lived segue to the birth of Cochrane Automotive in 1976, but there were lessons he learned there that he has never forgotten.

E.K. Williams training, which gave him the only business training he had up till then, was mandatory for Texaco franchisees. Another lesson was that there was an art to pumping gas. “Do I ask you how much gas you would like, or do I ask ‘Can I fill it up for you today?’” That subtle distinction boosts fuel sales 25%, he says, but the principle that small details can have large benefits is still as valuable today as when he opened the doors on the jobbing business in Toronto’s west end in 1976.

“That was when we took the ACDelco franchise and started selling auto parts. It was pretty interesting to start a business in a market with well-established businesses,” he says with understated sarcasm.

Growth continued, with a few acquisitions on the way; another milestone coming in 1986, when Leah Cochrane, John’s wife, joined the business and brought her retail marketing experience.

Her experience has been put largely to use in marketing the on-going repair business, which also serves as a laboratory of sorts for Cochrane Automotive’s service provider customers.

“One of the things that I really enjoy about the service repair part of the business is that it shows me what has to be done for the service provider. It gives me a window on that marketplace: on what works in the marketplace, and what doesn’t work in the marketplace.”

Cochrane admits that he sometimes takes heat from uninformed competitors for operating the service business, but he points out that his door rate, at $89 an hour, is higher than 100% of his customers. And, rather than competition, he offers the facility as a resource that customers and the industry can benefit from.

In this way Cochrane is if not unique, at least a rare individual. He gives freely of his time and experience for both customers and the industry. He is the co-chair of the Jobber/WD Council of the Automotive Industries Association of Canada (AIA), and is the AIA representative on the Canadian National Accreditation Board. He is also a member of the Drive Clean Advisory Committee, which consults with the Ontario government on the mandatory emissions program.

Further to Drive Clean, when the program expanded to a new region of the province, he invited a number of jobbers of various affiliations to come down with some key customers and get an in-depth briefing on emissions repairs, as well as business issues surrounding the Drive Clean program. Cochrane has also made several presentations on the economics of emissions testing and repair.

And recently, when a customer was faced with closing for a time for environmental remediation after a fuel tank was found to be leaking, he offered a couple of bays at his own shop to help tide him over. And, on a continuing basis, he invests in expensive tools–like the Tech II scanner which costs $10,000, plus regular updates–and loans them out to his key customers so they can continue to work on profitable, late-model vehicles.

While he sets the tone for the operation, he relies heavily on an experienced staff to keep things running smoothly. He particularly and laments the fact that the role of the counterperson is not recognized as often as it should be.

“I think that a lot of people thought that the electronic catalogue would replace the parts counterperson, that you’d just need somebody to punch keys. But the parts counterperson is a highly skilled, very knowledgeable person, and not just in looking up the parts, but in getting the parts sourced at the right price at the right time, so the service provider can do his job. We’ve got really excellent counterpeople.

“When you talk about the Jobber of the Year award, it is not necessarily me. It is our whole company, because we were all selected and because we’re trying to change things. Look at what Leah is doing to improve communications and raise the bar in terms of sales and marketing. Look at Raye Brown, our parts manager, who has worked diligently to get inventory turns up plus have a good selection of parts. Larry Gass, our senior counterperson and assistant manager, has been with us 25 years. Rob Zganec and John Bryck and Kim Hartwick are all really solid people and do a great job.” He rings off a host of other names, and their contributions adding that everyone is pulling in the same direction, which is what makes it work.

It is, he says, all part of being as in tune as possible with the independent service provider.

Focusing on the six “Questions of Capability”–attitude, personnel, inventory, equipment, facility, and financing–Cochrane says that too many service providers forget about issues outside their technical proficiency.

“When you look at facilities, walk into a car dealer environment or a Speedy or Midas facility. Are they clean, well appointed, and well lit? They are. Go into a traditional service repair facility. How many leave a striking image in your mind that it is a nice place to be?

“The quality of customer contact right off the bat is critical. In service training programs, we continually talk about eye contact. If you don’t look your customer in the eye, you’ve lost the trust factor.

“This is where I really go for [trainer] Bob Greenwood. He’s trying to get people to think basic business,” he says. “The consumer’s wallet is portable. They don’t have to understand this business. The consumer is going to go to a place where the he feels his business is wanted and valued.”

Lest people believe that Cochrane is the perfect businessman, he asserts that this is far from the case. “I don’t do everything right, but I do know what I need to keep working away at.”

Too many service providers don’t know where to start to change. What he has striven to do is create a jobbing business that can reverse this trend. Yes, he believes in having the right parts and getting them to the customer in a timely manner. Yes, he knows that Toronto is a hyper-competitive market, but does not believe one has to get into a “race to the bottom.”

“If we can get business coming into the service provider,” offers Leah, “the service providers can buy the parts from us to put on the car. We try to help the shops by getting them to use a database, and trying to get them to tag along with our flyers.” It’s not always easy, she adds, and there is still a way to go to get service providers to be comfortable with computers. So Cochrane offers training, for both so-called soft skills that focus on business as well as technical training.

Their “Gold Club” meets regularly and has done so for more than a decade. These days, they gather regularly to navigate the Automotive
Aftermarket E-Learning Centre business management course. Rather than just push the course, Cochrane gets everyone together in one room to work on it together.

“Everybody is keen on computer training. We want everyone to become Internet savvy and e-mail savvy, and be able to access all of the most current websites and service information that is available. A lot of them can’t do it,” he says.

He knows that some issues will only be solved in the dealer environment, but not nearly as often as many in the aftermarket think.

“We need to do everything we can to make them more profitable.” Profit is, naturally, important to him and he has worked to streamline business systems within the jobber operation.

“From the jobbing perspective, we made a decision to have two key suppliers: ACDelco and Uni-Select.” His history with ACDelco goes back to when Cochrane Automotive first opened its doors. Uni-Select has been on-board since 1984, making it one of the distribution organization’s first Ontario members.

“We used to have all kinds of suppliers. When we ended up with two suppliers, our paperwork was reduced tremendously.” It’s hard not to observe that this is a strategy being preached to service providers, too.

It’s all about prosperity and profit, says Cochrane. The perceived lack of prosperity in the aftermarket affects many issues: the ability of businesses to get loans, the availability and variety of business tools from computer and software suppliers, the perceived value of training, and the ability of the aftermarket to recruit new blood.

Cochrane says it is important for more players to work together to change these factors.

“Everybody is having a more difficult time than they have in the past,” he says, “but other jobbers need to grow the business and need to be more involved in training service providers.

“When you see the frustration they have trying to fix a car . . .” he laments, shaking his head. “We have the tools to fix it,” he says. He is talking about scan tools, but he could just as easily be referring to business tools.

“The business is changing all the time. Is change good? If you’re not changing, you’re falling behind.

“It is the most exciting business I can think of. I wish I was about 10 years younger just to experience the next 15 years, which is just going to be mind-boggling.”

An unusual attitude perhaps, but it doesn’t have to be.