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Equipment Data and the Digital Dealership

Equipment Data and the Digital Dealership

Tonight, to accompany the podcast released on this subject today, guest blogger Mets Kramer continues to educate us on all the digital aspects of our business with a look at equipment data and the Digital Dealership.

When I started Strategic Evolutions in 2017, it was based on two things.   First, I wanted to help smaller dealers do a better job and grow their business. Second, I wanted to show people how to use information to do exactly that.   One of my first engagements was to speak at the Associated Equipment Distributors on the topic “A Granular, Data Driven Approach to Strategic Sales”.  The focus of my presentation was the value and importance of using information, specifically customer equipment data, to drive dealership activities.

Customers work with you, the dealer, for one reason: they own equipment. (And let’s not forget, it’s also because you’re great people!)

Numerous people in the industry have pointed out the value of customer equipment information.   Most frequently, and in the topic of my presentations, the customer equipment information provides a clear indication of future sales opportunities.   Our industry is focused on equipment with a predictable life cycle.  If you’re a dealer representing any OEM, you should be using this information by now, to drive potential sales opportunities and providing your sales reps with new leads.  Furthermore, by analyzing and predicting the replacement time of a machine, it’s the easiest way to make sure low volume customer aren’t lost to competitors.  Think about the customer with only a few machines, who doesn’t engage with the dealership frequently. These types of customers are often lost because they didn’t connect on time. However, if they had used a CRM system to notify the sales rep to reach out at the right time, we could have prevented this loss.  How do you get this information?  Either through the sales team or by digitally engaging with the customer.

Equipment information is just as valuable in aftersales at the dealership. We all know having this information makes parts and service support easier.  For example, customers call with unit numbers because they don’t use serial numbers to reference their equipment.  With a CRM, your team can quickly find the serial number of the customer’s unit from the database.

From a marketing perspective, equipment data can help you measure the potential size of the aftersales market.  If you’re selling maintenance contracts, you already know how many dollars per hour of parts and labor each machine should produce.   With a complete fleet list, you can estimate total potential revenue and market share.    Now, you have a sales lead for your aftersales PSSR reps.

In the Digital Dealership, aftersales should also be utilizing equipment data.   By integrating the equipment data with your Digital Dealership, you can present equipment information in the online parts store, but more importantly, all over your Digital Dealership.  You can promote Parts Kits, PM kits or Maintenance programs to the customer when they visit.  As a comparison, the digital world’s success started when websites stopped being static and started to tune the content to each visitor.  It’s no different with your Facebook, Amazon and countless other social sites.  These businesses present you relevant information based on what they know about you.

To make this all work, it is as simple now as it was 20 years ago.  To build an information driven dealership, your systems need to be up to the task.  An ERP, DMS or CRM that can store customer fleet data is critical and should be a key item to consider when switching to a new Dealer Management System.  If your current system can’t handle customer fleet data, and you’re not switching, get an integrated CRM. Next, make sure you have your sales and aftersales teams think about collecting this data.  If it becomes a normal part of your conversations throughout the dealership, and a focus of your customer service, gathering the data gets easy.

Finally, invest in a partner or team member who’s full or part time job it is to analyze the data and implement programs using the data, with the business unit owners.  Your sales manager or product support manager needs support.  Most of the dealers I know have limited resources in house, so it might mean a new person or finding a vendor to help you.

One thing is for sure, and you see it all around you, the most successful businesses today, have a strong digital presence and use the information they have to their advantage and their customer’s benefit.

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A Watchkeeper or a Beekeeper?

A Watchkeeper or a Beekeeper?

In “A Watchmaker or a Beekeeper,” guest blogger Bruce Baker walks you through the main personality types in leadership roles, and how they can impact your business.

Low morale, low profits, lack of employee engagement, high turnover and rampant gossip can be attributed to a company being led by either a Watchmaker or a Beekeeper – care to guess which one is the culprit?

If you guessed Watchmaker, you’re right!

In James Fischer’s book, Navigating the Growth Curve, a Watchkeeper is a person who needs most business components to be predictable – something they can control at all times. They believe that to be effective, the “business machine” must be controlled by its operators. This is their overarching purpose of management – to control the business. They further believe that the machine exists for its builders’ primary purpose: to generate as much money as possible for its owners/stakeholders.

There is absolutely nothing wrong with making as much money as possible. Still, it is essential that building an intentional business must be done sustainably over the long term. This includes not profiting at the expense of the company’s employees and stakeholders. The better approach is as you might have guessed by this stage, is being a Beekeeper.

Beekeepers are always mindful and have hindsight and foresight when managing and growing their business. Instead of rejecting or resisting the complexity and chaos that certainty comes with business growth, Beekeepers embrace complexity and, at times, chaos by allowing their teams’ or hive’s intelligence to be the operator instead of themselves exclusively. They appreciate and understand that their business is a living and intelligent organism, and if allowed, will generate far more innovative ideas and sustainable solutions. As a result, the Beekeeper’s business will continually self-organize around its problems and challenges.

When reading the fable in Navigating the Growth Curve, Horace’s recommendation is for Peter to become more like a Beekeeper to capitalize upon his team’s collective intelligence. Peter initially tried very much to control every aspect of his team, causing anger, hostility, and disengagement, leading to a downward spiral that could have been prevented by merely asking for their input.

This is a hard lesson that business owners/leaders can’t seem to learn often enough. Unfortunately, we regularly find far more Watchmakers than Beekeepers primarily due to individuals insisting that they should have all the answers and asking for their employees’ input may put them in a negative light. This is far from the truth! The opposite is true.

There is a Beekeeper in all of us. Still, during our day-to-day challenges as business leaders intending to do the right thing, our Watchmaker tendencies take over more than often without us even realizing it.

The 7-Stages of Growth concepts and programs offered by Workplaces are designed to help leaders predict how complexity will affect them, focus their efforts and resources on the right things at the right time and adapt to their company’s needs as their business grows.

I want to share the first steps in the journey of becoming a Beekeeper referencing the 7 Stages of Growth Model and the Business X-Ray we take our clients through. We emphasize that the only complexity in any business is its people, starting with the business owner during this exercise. The business owner and the leadership team’s ability to embrace this complexity and leverage its power will take the company and team to the next level.

Let me share the initial 4-steps we start within the Business X-ray session that will set you on the course of business growth success.

  1. Recognize the intelligence of the team by asking its opinion.

As scary as this can be, once you have it behind you, you will be amazed at the results and the amount of ‘anxiety’ it can take off your plate. Most leaders we work with hesitate to ask for their team’s input/feedback. Many reasons come to mind, but the following are the regular reasons we come across:

  • How can they possibly know enough about the company to give me advice?
  • They’ll use it as a ‘bitch’ session, and I’ve heard enough of that.
  • I don’t have time to take their suggestions – I have my issues to deal with.
  • If I ask them for their opinion, they’ll expect me to do something with it, and I have enough to do right now.

Leading is all about learning how your company and the team think and feel can only be brought about by asking and engaging.

  1. Filter out the noise

Noise is only too common in the business world today. Too many things are important, leaving nothing that is truly “important.”  There are too many agendas that are not leveraged into concise plans of action, leading to low levels of focus and execution.  Once the team’s power is recognized and leveraged (i.e., all voices and their opinions are encouraged), critical issues are brought to the surface and problems are solved.  During the Business X-Ray session, key initiatives are identified with detailed action plans ensuring results are achieved.

  1. Unify the team around the plan

Once the key initiatives from the X-Ray are identified, the work begins. Communicate this information to the rest of the company either through group and individual meetings or the entire company at one time.  Ensure that each initiative has a ‘champion’ – someone willing to be the ‘team lead’ on getting to the end goal. A lot of work? You bet, but the rewards are well worth it!

  1. Implement organic and self-organizing systems reinforcing change

Organic and self-organizing systems include people engaging and achieving results together. This essentially allows the team to put their handprint on solutions and subsequent systems and processes that produce results. Leaders are working less hard and far smarter with less direct supervision, control, and micro-management.  Allowing this to happen brings about a path of least resistance which anyone in chaotic environments would strive for.

Practice being a Beekeeper and minimize the amount of time you spend as a Watchmaker. The results will be empowering for not just your team but for you as well.

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Making Our Teams and Ourselves More Successful

Making Our Teams and Ourselves More Successful

This week, guest writer Sonya Law walks us through the people skills we need as we work towards making our teams, and ourselves, more successful.

We achieve more as a team when we operate from a place of openness rather than fear – when we chose to thrive not just survive, we achieve more. On the road to getting there you will no doubt come across fear which is the greatest roadblock and inhibitor of growth and missed opportunities.

Recently I was asked to chair the Human Resources Summit for 2021 and immediately I went to FEAR, I said to them I think you have the wrong person.  They said no we don’t you are perfect for this; I remember then asking them what makes you think that?

The number one inhibitor of growth is fear. Rather than see the opportunity we sometimes succumb to FEAR.

WHY is that?

Usually it’s our own self-limiting beliefs, the story we tell ourselves that holds us back, the narrative.  We believe that we can only do something if we have done it before and we look for evidence that proves or disproves our fear.  When we operate in this way it is from what is called a fixed mindset.  Whereas a growth mindset is directed toward, I like to try new things.  The top three thought leaders and books that explore this in more detail are:

  1. Mindset, author Dr. Carol Dweck.
  2. Atomic Habits …author James Clear.
  3. What got you here won’t get you there …author Marshall Goldsmith.

As Albert Einstein said “We can’t use an old map to explore a new world”.

So, what’s holding you back?

It all flows from your mindset, through the lens of The Biology of Belief by Dr Bruce Lipton PHD says:

Your beliefs become your thoughts.

Your thoughts become words.

Your words become actions.

Your actions become habits.

Your habits become values.

Your values become your destiny.

To put it in a business context, our mindset, habits and values will guide your decision making, willingness to change and appetite for risk, innovation and growth.

So how do we overcome this?

  1. Self – Awareness, what is our narrative the story we tell ourselves?
  2. Become a lifelong learner, what matters is what we learn today and even more important what we will learn tomorrow.
  3. Cultivate a Growth Mindset, be open to feedback and willingness to

A great book that explores this further is The Journey BEYOND Fear, leverage the three pillars of POSITIVITY to build your success, by John Hagel.

Still the journey beyond fear is still a primal one and still many set themselves up for failure because they are not aware and not invested in changing their mindset or habits to orientate themselves toward success.  People still diet, even though they know they should exercise and eat a balanced diet and get enough sleep, we can be our own worst enemy by not engaging in healthy HABITS.

It’s the same with FEAR, if fear is a false expectation appearing real, why do we feed ourselves negative narratives about what we are capable of, thus limiting our potential?

How do we explore this further and adopt a practice of self-enquiry to gain insight into why we act the way we do?

Three very important questions to ask yourself:

  1. What is the story I tell myself?

The Narrative is it consistent with me moving towards achieving my goals.

  1. Positive: is it enabling?
  2. Negative: is it Disabling?
  1. What am I passionate about?
    1. Positive: Do I focus on what I am passionate about what brings my life meaning, purpose and joy, does it align with my values?
    2. Negative: Or am I easily distracted and reactive?
  2. How am I choosing to respond and show up, what energy do I bring into the space? Do I explore opportunities?
    1. Negative: Do I practice avoidance and blame others.
    2. Positive: Or do I take responsibility and stay curious.

What are the benefits to a Team of operating from a place of openness rather than fear?

  • Openness to explore new ways of solving problems, collaboration,
  • Leads to Innovation,
  • Which facilitates Growth.

A good leader has vision and can frame the opportunity to be explored by the team.  Which allows the team to thrive not just survive, to innovate and grow both professionally and personally with passion.

If you are interested in a presentation on Growth Mindset, please contact Sonya Law from www.slhrconsulting.com.au.

Did you enjoy this blog? Read more great blog posts here.
For our course lists, please click here.