Guest Bloggers Archives - Page 21 of 41

C Stephen Clegg, Debbie Frakes, Guest Bloggers

Upturn or Recession?

Guest writers Steve Clegg and Debbie Frakes are writing for us this week about the ways in which our accurate forecasts can help us plan for real growth in “Upturn or Recession?”

The equipment industry is cyclical and seasonal. Many dealerships react to events by looking backward at accounting financial statements, explaining why they are victims of current market conditions. But the most successful dealerships always look forward by forecasting and planning for the future. As a result, they can take advantage of both upturns and downturns.

There are effective Artificial Intelligence (AI) models that can be used to forecast and create a business plan, based on these forecasts. During an upturn, you can expect shortages of parts, equipment, and employees, as we have recently experienced. The best approach to maximizing profits is to focus on the customers and industries with the highest retention rates where the best service can be provided to generate a healthy gross margin and a high return on capital. This process builds cash and liquidity and strengthens the balance sheet in anticipation of opportunities during a downturn.

It is important not to chase the upturn, although OEMs and banks are often eager to encourage that approach to accelerate their own growth. A sustainable growth rate for your own facilities, employees, balance sheet, and customer retention, however, places limits on rapid growth. Most dealers cannot sustain a growth rate in customers and transactions greater than 10% to 15% per year, regardless of the opportunities. The requirements for new customers, employees, systems, facilities, training, and capital are beyond their internal capacity to grow and keep their existing customers happy. Using AI Analytics, you can see forecasts with >95% accuracy for the next 12 months for your business, by branch and department, providing the number of customers, transactions, and revenue that can be expected. With AI forecasts you can anticipate exactly what to expect for your customer retention, customer engagement, and even ROI on your sales and marketing programs. This approach allows better accuracy in planning the future and anticipating the best ways to identify opportunities.

During a downturn, successful dealers forecast, then use their strong balance sheets and cash flow to purchase parts and equipment at steep discounts from their suppliers and competition. They also hire the best employees, pick up additional equipment lines and territories, and acquire assets from competitors that have failed. With this approach they create the foundation for real growth during the next upturn. A 1% improvement in customer retention usually generates a 12% annual transaction growth rate. There is less vulnerability to economic downturns when customer retention is strong. Historically, there is only a 7% to 15% reduction in transactions over a 12-18 month period during a downturn, so the improved retention easily offsets this reduction.

There are five steps management you can take now to ensure your company can weather any type of economic cycle.

Create a forecast the next 12 months, based on your current performance, and continue to forecast by updating your results with the prior month’s revenue. With this approach your organization will have a clear picture of what will happen for the next 12 months, if you continue to operate as you have been.

A platform that is easy to use to produce accurate forecasts is Zintoro.com. Its AI Analytics program provides automated forecasts for customers and transactions, including the resulting gross margin and revenue, by company, branch, and department with a >95% confidence level.

Use the 12-month forecast to create a plan that will maximize revenue and profits

Actions for improvements are steps that you plan to begin during the next 12 months to assure you will meet or exceed the forecast, which is your benchmark.

An action plan for an upturn provides the steps to take to overcome hurdles that are typical during an upturn, such as available working capital, delayed parts and equipment deliveries, dissatisfied customers, increased costs, and accommodating increased order frequency for parts and service with a backup plan to prevent overwhelming your employees and facilities.

An action plan for a downturn provides the steps necessary to take advantage of the next downturn.

Identify the customers that are not profitable and take steps to reduce interactions with them.
Determine opportunities to automate wherever possible, from equipment and customer communications to operating systems.
Build cash and set up processes to generate a high return on capital employed.

A recession presents a set of severe financial hurdles that typically include: reduction in available capital, delayed customer payments, drop in equipment sales, decrease in rental utilization, and reduced frequency for parts and service orders.

Rank the ways to cut costs, using the improvement of employee support for your customers as the primary driver. This ranking should answer these questions:

What is essential to keep the doors open and assure that stable customers are engaged?
Where to invest to acquire and retain stable customers, by market and industry?
Where to invest to hire and retain the best employees?
Where to invest in equipment, technology, and facilities at favorable prices?
How to keep all other costs as lean as possible?
Where to automate and outsource?

Keep shareholders, lenders, suppliers, and employees informed.

Zintoro.com provides reports for actual results and forecasts to manage expectations and keep these groups focused on the key drivers for customer retention, customer engagement, and opportunities for improvement. Revenues and profits result from customer retention and engagement.

Maximize cash and profits.

Implement the following actions quickly to maximize cash on hand and focus on generating additional cash to build and maintain your cash cushion.

Monitor the cash flow weekly with a system to show actual receipts and disbursements tracked at least weekly and continually update the cash forecast for 12 months to anticipates any problem periods.

Obtain debt at favorable fixed rates and establish credit lines to ensure cash availability with reasonable lender covenants. Be aware of their liquidity options. Businesses that line up capital sources before they need funding often receive more favorable terms. Funding sources may include revolving credit lines, owner infusions, alternative financing, and private equity.

In a downturn, revenue and cash availability always fall faster than expenses. Sources of capital dry up and as inflation accelerates, costs climb faster than you can raise prices, reducing your available cash.

Put together a list of expenses you can reduce to minimize your cash burn rate and identify sources of additional cash and when they may be required. The longest recession in the past fifty years was 18 months; most recessions last less than 12 months. Your goal is to have enough cash, including capital reserves, available to make up the difference between the potential gap in cash flow, so that you can maintain operations for twelve to eighteen months and take advantage of the opportunities that will be presented during such times to build your business.

Manage your supply chain proactively by keeping your suppliers informed with your forecasts and requirements. Anticipate how your customers and suppliers will react when you are projecting your cash requirements.

In a recession, understanding the financial situation of your customers and suppliers is critical. It’s important to be realistic, not optimistic. Assess customers to identify which ones might slow down their payments or become unable to pay. These customers can double your working capital requirement during a downturn. Meet with your key customers and suppliers to review your forecasts and anticipate their problems by understanding their challenges, too. Negotiate payment plans with suppliers while offering incentives to customers for early payments or bulk orders.

Evaluate your parts and equipment inventory to reduce capital employed and increase turns.
Develop a program for recruiting and training employees. Plus, expand ways to retain your employees proactively.
Track all sales and marketing programs with a return on investment. Cut programs that are not generating a return that you can document.
Forecast and plan, don’t wait and react. Without planning you are put in a position of reacting by quickly cutting spending, firing employees, and putting your equipment inventory and assets out for auction at steep discounts. Reacting rather than plan can destroy your ability to recover during upturn that will follow at some point.
Track and invest in marketing programs with the highest ROI. Compare spend for customers who were exposed to a marketing activity versus those who were not. For example, if you have an email program in place to alert your customers of specials and services you offer, compare the spend for customers with an email to those who aren’t receiving your emails. Are you calling customers regularly? Compare the spend to those you’re calling to those you haven’t called. What about contacting customer for follow-up surveys? Are the ones you talk to spending more than the ones you haven’t contacted? Below are some comparisons for a dealer over a 12-month period, as an example.

Marketing Transactions Revenue Cost ROI times

Program /Customer /Customer /Customer Active Customers

Telephone

Called 24 $128,440 $28 1231X

Not called 37 $93,965 $0 –

Emails

Emailed 30 $134,270 $35 2378X

No email 4 $51,0443 $0 –

Surveys

Surveyed 16 $82,423 $35 966X

No survey 7 $48,616 $0 –

Next Steps

Zintoro.com has developed a forecasting program that is updated monthly with your results. Just download the last two years of your invoices, plus invoices from the current year to date, and send them to Zintoro to upload into their password protected portal. They will schedule a call to review where the forecast shows you are headed and what steps you can take to change those numbers. Contact Steve Clegg at csclegg@zintoro.com for additional information.

To get started with marketing programs that you can count on to increase sales and deliver an impressive ROI, contact Debbie Frakes at dfrakes@winsbyinc.com.

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Floyd Jerkins, Guest Bloggers

Coaches Corner v.11.10.2022

In Coaches Corner v.11.10.2022, guest writer Floyd Jerkins is writing about leading from the front line.

I often get calls from clients about various leadership-related scenarios they face. Sometimes they already know the answers but want to hear alternative ideas. One thing is for sure; there isn’t just one way to handle leadership questions on the front line.

Questions from the Front Line

Here is a sample of a client’s recent call and the highlights of the suggestions I provided: “Some of our senior managers struggle with the younger staff on our team. A few believe they want too much too quickly. Our managers don’t delegate to them very well, and as a result, we often stumble in delivering our services. I wish there were a way to help both of these groups. We need to be building this next layer of management in our organization. I also don’t want to lose any more young people to our competitors.”

Job Descriptions are Crucial

Make sure the individual job descriptions are in sync with the role and responsibilities. I’ve seen several issues arise when job descriptions aren’t current and relevant. This is needed to have accountability focused on certain job functions.

The description should contain examples of specific behaviors that highlight success in the role. You want to talk about these to highlight the expectations and address any questions. You want confirmation and understanding. The description should also evolve because someone in a starting role should perform differently than someone in the position for five years. Also, show a career path in this description.

A personal development program is needed to outline the learning path clearly, so the individual keeps pace with social and organizational needs. By illustrating the core skill sets needed to be successful, you are laying the foundation for performance.

Real Life Performance Evaluations

I could write for hours about the do’s and don’ts of conducting performance reviews. Teaching senior staff to become coaches isn’t always the easiest thing to do. Evaluating senior managers and your young talent using formal and informal methods is an essential part of growing people in the organization. Consistent coaching and counseling are necessary to speed up the learning curves.

Senior managers can be teachers and mentors but frequently are still doing the work themselves. You have to remove the “threat” that they will be put out to pasture when teaching others their job functions.

Don’t be fooled by the term. A senior person could be 24, 41 or 77 years old. It is more about the individual’s knowledge level vs. how long you’ve been with the company.

Young people with talent also need to be taught that certain behaviors are necessary to succeed. Explain what it means to succeed and to underperform. Formal and informal reviews need to be frequent if the behaviors do not align with the goals and objectives.

Rationale & Solutions That Work

Senior managers can create unnecessary risks when challenged by young people with different energy and talent. If they are close-minded to new ideas or feel threatened, this isn’t healthy for growing talent in a company. Changes need to be made to how they view their roles and how performance is measured.

Make sure senior staff know it’s their responsibility to grow the younger talent while also showing them their path to more success in the company. When they share and grow this talent, they need rewarded and recognized. You don’t want to hold a young talented person back from being more successful. You can help them achieve their goals by teaching them certain methods and subjects.

Implementing solutions requires an understanding of your company culture and how your staff perceives they are treated. Yes, their perception is their reality. Check out these other articles on these and other subjects that should help you along. There are also several others on my website that are great resources.

There are ways to help these managers become teachers and mentors to another generation of leaders. There are also ways for the younger generation to learn from senior people. Give me a call, and let’s explore your options.

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Guest Bloggers, Mets Kramer

Show Me Your Spreadsheets

Tonight, guest writer Mets Kramer resumes his blog posts on digitizing your dealership with “Show Me Your Spreadsheets.”

Show Me Your Spreadsheets

Over the past couple of years, I’ve spoken often about the Digital Dealership, a dealership with equal digital presence to the it’s physical (bricks and mortar) presence. The idea of the Digital Dealership is not to remove the need or option for a physical interaction with customers, but to support the growing demand for a more digital interaction.

While the transition to or addition of more digital customer facing channels is growing, many dealers still struggle to digitize their internal operations. Working more digital or electronic is a natural desire for many dealers and their team members. Most of us spend our whole day staring at a computer screen, or 2, to transact the business in an efficient way.

The most common digitization of the dealership starts with their accounting. This standard activity for all companies seems the easiest and, often, most justified area to bring in software to support the business. Yet, after this common function most dealers struggle to take the next step. I believe many dealers struggle with this step because the right approach and the value and importance of the transition to a digital dealership platform is not clear.

Going forward I’m going to use the word “platform” to refer to all the information systems, software tools, data and IT infrastructure used by a dealer to execute the daily transaction of the dealership. A platform doesn’t have to be a specific or singular software tool.

There are a few main aspects to a dealership platform that I’d like to layout in this blog to help dealers determine an approach to improving the digital landscape in their dealership. These aspects include the obvious, software, but also include Information in general, identity management and finally integration.

First, let’s take a step back and think about what happens naturally in a dealership. It’s important to recognize that everyone in your team is trying to get their portion of the work done. Given just a PC/laptop they tend to find methods to accomplish their tasks. The most common answer is Excel. I love and hate excel personally, it’s a great program, intuitive and useful for lots of things. When I work with new dealers, my first question is often, “Show me your Excel sheets”.

Excel, despite the fact it shouldn’t be used as a business system, highlights one really important aspect of the business, INFORMATION. People use Excel to save, store, look up and update information. We all know how much chaos is caused when an excel sheet gets deleted. All that information is LOST. This proves that INFORMATION is the foundation and the most important aspect of your dealership platform. It supports all your transactions, information typically needs to flow from one area of the dealership to another and, intrinsically, everyone knows it’s the one thing they don’t want to lose.

With the idea of INFORMATION’s importance in mind, let’s look at the most common focus of the digitization of the dealership, SOFTWARE TOOLS. I call software products “tools” because I want to distinguish the tool portion of the software from the Data or INFORMATION that’s stored in the Software.

The most common approach to going digital in a dealership is to go looking for a SOFTWARE TOOLS. It’s like we’re all technicians when the Snap-On truck shows up. We admire the software interface (UI), we listen to the promises of problems solved and we see the SOFTWARE TOOL as the solution and often don’t know what questions to ask during a demo.

SOFTWARE TOOLS are just that, they are a tool for interacting with your INFORMATION. Throughout the time you use a tool, you are creating that component we agreed is the most important, INFORMATION. As time goes on what we want to do with the INFORMATION may change and this is where the Software Tool often fails. For Dealers looking to improve their internal digitization it’s important to approach Software evaluation by separating the software tool from the information. Just like we don’t hire technicians based on the size of their toolbox, we should keep a similar approach in mind to Software. A Software Tool is disposable. Yes, you heard right, the tool should be considered disposable. It will serve its purpose for a while, but then will need to be replaced. Many dealers have experienced this, but hit a major problem caused because the tool contains the thing they value, INFORMATION. If your information can’t be transferred you might find yourself locked in, this can be especially pronounced when that tool is a Dealer Management System.

So, what should dealers do when faced with a need in the business to improve efficiency of process and visibility to information? Ask the following types of questions

Ask Questions during the demo about YOUR process needs and how the SOFTWARE will handle these situations. Ask the person giving the Demo to illustrate.
Ask how and where the data is stored and how it can be accessed aside from using the tool
Ask how the INFORMATION can be extracted/exported/dumped from the Software
Ask questions about the Next thing you’ll want the software to do after you solve the first problem.

So, in summary, INFORMATION is the most valuable part of your dealership platform. SOFTWARE TOOLS help you create, view and interact with the INFORMATION. This brings up the next aspect that is often not understood by dealers without dedicated Information Systems people; INTEGRATION.

INTEGRATION allows one tool to talk to another tool and access the data. It can either query the data and use it, or it can even update and add data. This can be done in the following ways

Direct Database access – if your software tool stores data in a common, accessible database like SQL, MySQL or similar then other tools can read the data.
APIs – Application Program Interfaces – These are basically hidden pages or screens in your Software that allow other programs to mimic the actions people make.

If you’re looking at a platform solution that doesn’t have methods for direct access to your INFORMATION, an API or some way to move data to your own database you’ll likely end up finding this a roadblock or hurdle to INTEGRATION of other platform components. It will in time cause you to be locked in potentially or lose valuable data when you switch. The truth is, all of these options are possible in modern digital platforms.

In my next blog I’ll continue to look at important things to consider when looking at SOFTWARE TOOLS, how good choices enable removing silos and duplication. I’ll also introduce the final piece IDENTITY Management and how this can simplify and improve the flow of your Digital Dealership Platform.

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Guest Bloggers, Isaac Rollor

Are You Unleashed?

Learning Without Scars is pleased to introduce our new guest writer, Isaac Rollor. For his first post, he is asking, “are you unleashed?”

Isaac Rollor is a lifelong gearhead, mechanic, and training content creator/instructor. Isaac got started in the heavy equipment business as a mechanic maintaining and repairing his father’s equipment fleet and eventually received formal training in the Diesel Equipment Technology Program at Chattahoochee Technical College in Acworth Georgia. Isaac’s enthusiasm for lifelong learning led him to complete his MBA at Reinhardt University in Waleska Georgia.

Isaac has enjoyed many technical roles over the course of his career, most notably as the Automotive Program Technical Instructor at Chattahoochee Technical College, Corporate Technical Trainer with Fiat Chrysler Automobiles, and Technical Instructor/Developer (Dozers) while working with Komatsu America.

Isaac also has extensive experience in sales, holding the title of Sales Instructor/Developer, District Manager and National Account Manager with Komatsu America. Today Isaac works with Forrest Performance Group and specializes in sales training and sales recruiting.

Isaac enjoys writing articles, developing training course content, and appearing at public speaking events. Isaac is actively involved in educating and recruiting high school and college age students to pursue careers with OEM’s and heavy equipment dealers.

You can contact Isaac directly by connecting with him on Linked In: https://www.linkedin.com/in/isaac-rollor-335b6876/

If you would like to learn more about sales training and sales recruiting, please visit: https://www.fpg.com/

Early in my career I realized that some inexperienced salespeople with entry-level subject matter knowledge were having more success than other highly experienced and highly knowledgeable salespeople in the industry. What I was witnessing is a phenomenon that is often flatly overlooked or described as “beginners’ luck” without any further investigation or question. Maybe you have noticed something like this? This phenomenon is most visible in sales but exists in all professions to some extent. We have all seen salespeople who have worked in the industry for decades and they are not closing sales. We have also watched brand new salespeople who are in the president’s club 3 months after they start selling. This new salesperson didn’t make the presidents club because of their huge knowledge base, meanwhile the veteran is struggling to meet sales targets despite having a deep knowledge of the industry and an intimate knowledge the product they are supposed to be selling.

In education we are told to believe that someone’s performance should be equal to their knowledge base. I started to question this paradigm while I was developing product sales training content for North American sales teams. At this time my mission was to develop cutting edge product sales training content and deliver this content to salespeople through web based and instructor led training. This is exactly what I did. The training content was excellent by all standards, and I successfully delivered hundreds of training offerings that received excellent reviews. I focused all my attention towards ensuring that the North American sales team had access to all the knowledge required to educate customers and help them make a purchasing decision. My efforts were successful, and salespeople soon had all the knowledge they could possibly desire at their fingertips. I felt that our training group had finally evened the playing field for all salespeople within the organization, and I was certain that massive increases in sales market share would be the result of these efforts.

I soon witnessed something very interesting. Some sales teams flourished with access to this increased knowledge and some sales teams saw no noticeable difference. This was concerning to me. How can two groups be exposed to the exact same resources but have completely different results? This question caused me to read many books and download many podcasts related to developing successful training programs. I soon learned that even the so called “experts” in sales training were slow to guarantee any results from the training experiences they provided. It was at this time that I stumbled across a book written by Jason Forrest called WTF: Why Training Fails. This book acknowledged something profound “164.2 billion is spent annually on training in North America, yet 70% of this training fails to produce ROI. “

I was shocked by this. Even more shocking was that the WTF book even promoted a trademarked performance formula: Performance=Knowledge-Leashes.

As described in WTF, a “leash” is the limiting beliefs that prevent us from acting on our knowledge. Basically a “leash” is an arbitrary rule or reluctance that salespeople have created because of past experiences and programming. Here are some examples of rules that you may hear salespeople verbalize: “You must make a friend before you make a sale” or “you must always ask for the sale in person” or even, “you can’t sell our products over a zoom video call it just won’t work”.

These are all examples of rules that will limit the success of a salesperson. The more rules a salesperson creates the harder it is to overcome those rules and make a sale. I came to the difficult realization that the training I had developed was based completely on knowledge and did not in any way remove the leashes or previous programming of the salespeople who consumed the content.

This realization prompted me to start researching how salespeople can overcome and sell through leashes. I discovered that everyone has leashes to some extent and to overcome a leash requires continued training and coaching. A salespersons leash must first be identified then a coaching program must be created that allows the salesperson to overcome and sell through the leash, essentially reprogramming the salespersons brain to think differently.

If you want your child to excel in sports, do you just drop them off at the sports complex, let them participate without any formal instruction and then pick them up a few hours later? Or do you hire the best coach and get involved? The answer is obvious, but our industry rarely applies this same thinking to professional selling. It is common to see sales reps with multi-million-dollar territories who have never received a selling script, and never been trained or coached on a selling process. A common practice is to condense sales training into a short period. This allows the salesperson to rapidly complete sales training, frame a nice certificate, and get right to work. This scenario sounds great to most sales managers and has become the industry norm.

Would you board an airplane if you knew the pilot skipped flight school and only attended a two-day seminar? I suspect not. Your customers feel the same way when they are making purchasing decisions.

I would urge you to think about your company’s existing sales training. Is this training focused solely on knowledge? What leashes might the sales team have adopted that currently limits their success? How often is the sales team receiving coaching that will help them overcome existing leashes? Is the sales team being continually coached and held accountable to a script or a proven process pattern or strategy?

When salespeople are trained and coached, they will perform at the top of their game, win market share, impress your buyer, and provide a massive ROI.

If you would like to learn more about the WTF book please visit: https://shopfpg.com/product/wtf-why-training-fails Forrest, J. (2017). Why Training Fails. MJS Press.

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Floyd Jerkins, Guest Bloggers

Coaches Corner v.11.03.2022

Guest writer Floyd Jerkins brings us our latest installment of our Coaches Corner, v.11.03.2022.

Can You Improve Your Employees Psychological Income?

One of the most profound human characteristics centers around our need to be appreciated. When we are in a relationship where we feel appreciated and valued, our self-esteem rises, and we are much more open to making changes and being part of a team. Leaders know this and work to create an environment for people to be recognized.

Employees need economic income and psychological income. To reach peak performance, both are needed to have balance in life while the business pursues high profits. When employees enjoy the economic portion, a question is how much more commitment could they make if they had the psychological income to match?

Managers Becoming Experts in Finding the Things That Go Wrong

More often than not, managers are on the job to find the things going wrong and fix them. Many become experts at this. One of the most serious challenges in motivating people is that over time if all they hear are the negatives, it breeds a less than average mindset or one that goes all out to protect themselves from ridicule. It’s hard to build a team of high-performing champions if all they hear is what they are doing wrong all the time.

The “emotional bank account” is a theory and a practical application. The theory suggests that the more deposits you make into someone’s emotional bank account, their self-esteem increases, trust builds and makes them more open to changes. You are overdrawn in the account if you don’t make purposeful deposits. The person then closes down and isn’t up for much of anything because they are always suspicious of your motives. The practical application is to be well invested in the emotional bank account with your teams through your leadership and communications style and the consideration you show.

Catching Team Members Doing Something Right

Many times, all a leader hears in a day are the negatives. Some staff will bombard you with every negative there is. As a leader, you are often the center of communications, and this can become draining if you don’t frame these issues correctly.

This is one of the biggest keys to making happy employees. As a leader, we often forget to praise someone when they do a great job. Our heads are into other business-related issues. I don’t bet but only on sure things. And I’ll bet your business has all kinds of positive service points of contacts every day. If you didn’t, you wouldn’t last long in the business. Do you see them? Can you make it a daily practice to praise your staff when they perform the correct customer service behaviors you want to see?

A client of mine owns a few McDonalds. They installed the “thank you” process. Each employee was to say thank you when another employee did something for them, or they witnessed a fellow employee performing an uncommon act of service. All the managers started the process weeks before they rolled it out with all the staff. My friend said it was amazing how quickly this caught on and the improvement it made to the attitudes of the staff. It became contagious.

An example from another client. If an employee goes over and beyond to help a customer or assist a teammate, they will get a “good job card” with their name on it at their monthly manager’s meeting. These cards can come from managers, other employees or from customers telling management. They then would get to put their cards into a box. The manager would draw a card out of the box with a name on it. That person would then win a gift of $100 in value. A few of their people didn’t care about getting a card until they saw the same people winning. Then they joined in by trying to go over and beyond at customer service or helping another teammate to win. It became contagious.

Strategy to Make Emotional Deposits: The Magic of Dimes

Business owners go to great lengths and expense to recruit and hire the right people. I’ve always wanted people who worked for me to come to work and enjoy what they are doing.

As I mentioned in this article’s opening lines, we all have basic human tendencies. As a leader, we can nurture people through our leadership style and grow the talent we need to continue to achieve the goals and mission of the company.

Try putting ten dimes in one pocket and moving them to the other pocket one at a time with each positive message you give to someone throughout the day. The idea is to try and break old habits, and I am sure that is what many of us have. How many dimes do you have at the end of the day? Track this for a couple of weeks; you’ll be surprised. If you do well, you will also notice a change in the people around you. It is magical.

You can’t be fake about this, nor be insincere. Remember, in the absence of leadership; people will follow the strangest things. With leadership, ordinary people can do extraordinary things.

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David Jensen, Guest Bloggers

Observations from Rural New Mexico

Guest writer David Jensen shares this week’s blog post with his “Observations from Rural New Mexico.”

“Work, really?

Again?

Didn’t I just do that yesterday?”

I recently observed a t-shirt with the above phrase. It seems to sum up the current attitude among many regarding work. Clearly the individual is in disbelief that we are to return to work the next day. If you Google the statement, “My Work is ……” some of the top responses are as follows: boring, makes me ill, is killing me, is stressful. At the risk of sounding as old as I am, I do not understand how the current generation views employment. From my teen years working in my father’s store to the present, I have found work to be the source of many important life lessons. So, what is up with this generation? Is it a generation that been “bubble wrapped” to the point that the slightest disappointment is too much? In a current TikTok, an individual was denied requested PTO (paid time off) so he hijacked the phrase PTO to mean “Prepare The Others I am quitting!” Is this a generation of quitters? Is this idea of work life balance gone too far? Recently, an associate of mine was preparing to offer an applicant a job when this would be employee spoke up and offered a list of demands: no nights, weekends off, two weeks’ vacation and all federal holidays off. The applicant did not get the job!

Living in rural New Mexico in an agricultural community, nights off and no weekends sounds very foreign. Our livestock operates on their schedule not ours. Although, since only 6% to 8% of the population works in agriculture, maybe “weekends off” is a thing. That said, what is really going on with this generation? Perhaps the researchers who survey worker attitudes and then mark the trends can help provide the answers.

The Gallup Survey

Jon Clifton, CEO of Gallup, in a recent book entitled Blindspot suggests that world leaders have missed the level of employee unhappiness (subjective wellbeing). The belief that an improving GDP benefits all is false. The “misery index” which includes among several indicators a measure of employee dissatisfaction over the last ten plus years is trending higher. Regarding worker dissatisfaction, the Gallup researchers found, based on survey questions that workers can be sorted into three categories.

Employees who were thriving at work (engaged), who felt they had meaningful employment, equaled 20 % of the population.
Employees who were indifferent at work (disengaged), who were “quietly quitting” just enough effort not to be fired equaled 62% of the population.
The remaining 18% were miserable and were actively disengaged to the point of working against the goals of the organization.

If you have 100 employees, on average 62 are slow walking the effort and not significantly contributing to the success of the enterprise! Worse yet, you have on average, 18 who are actively working against the goals of the organization.

Lessons learned! Or relearned! …The Engagement Check List

So, this current generation is not a lost generation after all. The workers are simply disengaged. Lesson learned by leaders are sometimes forgotten. You may recall what the General Electric classic research into experimenter bias taught us. Simply paying attention to the workers improved productivity and the lights had little to do with the outcome. In a time where competition for skilled a worker is ever increasing, the challenge and opportunity that organizations face is to move some of those 62 employees into thriving category (engaged).

Below is a short check list for getting started:

Item 1. Company culture needs to promote positive assumption regarding their employees. People come to work to succeed not to fail. That assumption allows the company to design programs and processes that work to ensure that success is guaranteed.
Item 2. Employees who come to work to be successful deserve quality supervision. Training supervisors in best practices for engagement is essential. Engagement should become the center of the plate for the “employer brand”.
Item 3. Work rules that are designed to protect the company from the 18 employees that are seeking to undermine company success should be reconsidered. Any HR policy that communicates a negative value or lack of trust to the 62 we seek to engage, should be eliminated when possible. Fair employee treatment and equal employee treatment are not same. It is important to provide fair and valued treatment to the 62 that we seek to engage.
Item 4. Connect and engage the employee’s family to the “employer brand”. Extracurricular company activities for the family. Company logo shirts and caps for the family. Anything that supports a work/life balance can lead to engagement.
Item 5. Encourage employees to volunteer in the community. A community volunteer is less likely to be indifferent and disengaged at work.
Item 6. Provide opportunities for employees to contribute and learn in their jobs. Skill building and career development is another essential part of “employer brand”
Item 7. Encourage employees to recruit a close friend, shared experience between friends can enhance the work environment,

Conclusion: Organizations should develop their own list of actions to enhance engagement. To succeed in a competitive job market with fewer workers, engagement strategy is an essential part of the employer brand. Otherwise; “Prepare the Others” (PTO) I am leaving!

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Guest Bloggers, John Andersen

Another Look at Success

Learning Without Scars is pleased to introduce our new guest writer, John Andersen. As one of the original owners of PFW Systems, John Andersen was the first person in the industry to be labeled an Evangelist. Over his 30 years with the company, he visited thousands of dealers in North America sharing a unique vision of the heavy equipment industry from a dealers and customer perspective. With over $150 million dollars in sales credited to his commercial teaching skills he later aided in the transition to CDK Global where he continued as Director of Sales before “retiring” in 2016. John now operates as a freelance consultant bringing vastly diverse experience bridging technology, consumerism and sales to several industries. We invite readers to join us as we take another look at success.

Another Look at Success

I read a recent blog from Learning without Scars about success and its various definitions. Insightful as all of Ron’s blogs are, this one really sat with me for a long time. The definition of your own personal success and measurements of it can really shift over time. The most important takeaway for me was that long term success seldom happens by accident and recurring themes like hard work, dedication and sacrifice always bubble to the top. You don’t often hear someone talk about a myriad of miscues, wrong turns, or potholes along the way, but I believe they are the catalyst to continued success.

I have been known to bring a box of mistakes with me to a presentation just to illustrate. It’s filled with items like a RIM Blackberry, a Hughes Satellite terminal, my Grandmother’s pressure cooker, and a treasured Dick Tracy watch from my childhood. The reactions are always the same when I present these items one by one. Nods of approval or, “I remember that”. Each has been replaced with a more successful or refined success like a Google phone, a Starlink system, an Instant Pot, or even my trusty Apple Watch. This kind of evolutionary success doesn’t happen on its own.

For each success someone has taken the time to look at the result and ask what could be better. On rare occasions the answer jumps out, in most cases it requires a hard look followed by harder work and even greater investment. This begs the question, what would happen if you looked at your own success with that same intention. What would you look like if you went from a 1960’s pressure cooker to a Ninja Foodie?

The first step is the toughest. It takes an incredibly difficult look in the mirror. A stripped down, honest, humbling introspection is the hardest thing to do when looking for a model of success. Let me share a story.

I always viewed the peak of my success was in 2010. I was 46 years old with a thriving lifestyle. I traveled the country as the evangelist for a growing software company. I was married to the love of my life and together we had a 10-year-old princess. I collected interesting cars; we celebrated birthdays in Disney, and we cruised the islands a few times a year. We had completed our dream house and were just settling into the most “successful” part of our lives. In July of 2010 I walked up the stairs and dropped from a heart attack called the Widow Maker. Lies, I’m still here. Shortly after that my beautiful wife was given a terminal diagnosis of stage 4 cancer. I left my career to take care of my family, my heart, and those who shared my heart. That was my sole mission for the next 5 years.

As rewarding as that was, I felt like there was more left to do. The measure of success hadn’t been met in my eyes. I worked for a few folks, took on some side gigs, even tried my hand at some new industries but nothing gave me that feeling. I was forever looking for that opportunity. Fast forward through Covid when like everyone else I had the time to finally take that hard look over the wall. If my new role was that of caretaker to my family, then I better be able to do it both mentally and physically.

I started with a lifestyle coach. That meant a huge change in what I was eating followed by what felt like ridiculous amounts of exercise. I had a group that helped with the physical and mental side of getting healthy. I know now that’s the the trinity of well-being: mental health, physical fitness, and sustainable healthy fuel. What’s the worst that could happen? I lose a few pounds make a few friends. Perhaps it would help me sleep better, snore less, walk easier and smile more.

I could not have predicted the result. I was evolving into my own success model. I found myself changing from a Blackberry to an iPhone, or a Hughes satellite to an Elon Musk powered Starlink. The transition was slow at first but like most good ideas it started picking up steam. Pounds fell off, energy levels went through the roof, sleep came peacefully, and most of all…. I felt great!

So, what does success look like a year after the hard conversation with me? For starters I’m 70 lbs lighter. I go to spin classes at 6am twice a week, I go to the gym three times a week, and on Saturdays I RUN! I mean 5k, 7k, even 10k and nobody is chasing me. I run in the heat. I run in the cold. I run and listen to Ron Slee podcasts. I smile when I run, and I think deep thoughts when I run.

I would have to say my most successful time is now. The love of my life is still here and still fighting, my daughter met all of her goals so far (she even runs with me sometimes) and I have found my version of the fountain of youth. I think clearer, everything is a half-step ahead, and most importantly opportunity now seeks me.

Seeking success requires a first step. Take a hard look at you, your goals, your dreams and most importantly your “why”. Everything you are already good at will remain, but the add on skills will put you in a new stratosphere. Measure yourself honestly, painfully, and accurately then just do something. You don’t have to be a 1960’s pressure cooker. You literally own your success. It just takes a difficult conversation with yourself and then, like every success: hard work, dedication and investment.

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Caroline Slee-Poulos, Guest Bloggers

Learning Inventories

This week, our Curriculum Designer, Caroline Slee-Poulos, continues our series on Lifelong Learning with her post on learning inventories.

When we speak of learning styles, most often we are referring to three primary categories: visual, auditory, kinesthetic. If you are a visual learner, you are thought to learn most effectively through images (or, you know, visual aids). For auditory learners – who, by the way, are technically aural or auditory-musical learners – it is thought that hearing information is the most beneficial delivery system. For kinesthetic learners, we consider the “learn by doing” method to be most effective, although incorporating movement in any way can be helpful.

Most of us don’t necessarily pay attention to learning and education in a “meta-” way: we don’t study how we learn.

The difficulty we face with learning styles is two-fold.

First of all, those three categories above aren’t actually all of the categories. The full list is seven learning styles: visual, auditory, kinesthetic, social, solitary, verbal, and logical. Considering there are seven of them, it’s pretty strange that many learning inventories cover only those first three.

Second, these learning styles have been thrown out the window as an effective way of teaching. Although the “know thyself” wisdom of the Temple of Apollo at Delphi is always valuable – for the learners – an educator should not be seeking to sort students into neat little compartments. Or houses. This isn’t Hogwarts, after all…

With asynchronous education, we have to reach multiple styles and multiple forms. I think we can all agree that online learning isn’t necessarily geared towards movement, even though a standing desk (or, better yet, a treadmill desk!) can change that. Despite that, our classes do hit the visual, auditory, verbal, logical, and solitary notes.

Then again, since you have the flexibility to take a class at home, you may very well be surrounded by family. This wouldn’t be solitary at all.

The question is: do you know yourself? What would you say your own learning style is? This week, I would like to ask each of you to take a simple learning inventory quiz. Once you have your result, give it some thought. What surprises you in your results? What did you already know about how you learn? How can this information help you in your continuing education? Let us know in the comments!

The learning inventory can be found here.

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Alex Weaver, Guest Bloggers

Thinking About Customers and Customer Satisfaction

Guest writer Alex Weaver focuses on the annual goals we focus upon in our industry with this blog post on “Thinking about customers and customer satisfaction.”

Many dealers/resellers in the Construction Equipment Industry, set annual goals around Financial Performance, Market Share, Customer Satisfaction, and Employee Satisfaction.

For now, let’s focus on Customer Satisfaction/Service. Is your customer satisfaction better, the same or less after the Covid/Pandemic shutdowns? In our industry, the balance between the customer interface using technology and humans – real voices, real answers have always favored human interaction.

Is that still true? Technology has changed and is changing customer expectations. Customers are younger. Using eCommerce for transactions is a growing trend in our industry. Do we understand those changes?

What is the best method for finding out?

Many companies use an annual Customer Satisfaction Survey. But, can you truly understand the impact of any major change in a survey?

I suggest that the best way of understanding the pressures and needs of customers is to talk to them. Do executive management team members schedule annual ride along with sales staff? Not just interact with customers at a golf outing or cookout.

Years ago, I had the opportunity to observe a “master” in action. Back in the “horse and buggy” days, there were financial institutions called “Savings and Loans”. “The savings and loan association became a strong force in the early 20th century through assisting people with home ownership, through mortgage lending, and further assisting their members with basic saving and investing outlets, typically through passbook savings accounts and term certificates of deposit.

The savings and loan associations of this era were famously portrayed in the 1946 film “It’s a Wonderful Life.”

The personal touch. The gentleman I observed was the primary shareholder and president of the Savings and Loan – He maintained three desks. One in the lobby, one in the loan office, and one “upstairs” out of public view. He was at his lobby desk when the doors opened, used the loan department desk before and after lunch. He used his private desk in the late afternoon. He was raised on a farm without a formal high school education, but he knew and understood customers. What they want/need – how he could help them achieve their goal of Home Ownership.

I spent my college years, in the summers, working as one of the “grunts” on the appraisal team. He always asked the grunts for their observations and recommendations. I rarely agreed with our (his) decision because I did not understand the “people” side of the equation. He met many of his depositors, face to face, from his Lobby Desk. He met many of the loan customers, in the loan department. He personally inspected each home or property loaned on. While staff members did the grunt work, ERL would visit with the homeowner. Notice the condition of the property – cleanliness, indications of personal pride in the home and property. Personal involvement with the customers, both savers and borrowers were his focus.

Customer Satisfaction. One of the cornerstones of success in our industry. We measure it or at least survey it. How do we stack up? Have the scales tipped more to technology than human touch? What is your score, and how do you know?

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Guest Bloggers, Sara Hanks

Where to Start with Data Quality

Guest writer Sara Hanks builds our foundational knowledge with her blog post on data: “Where to Start with Data Quality.”

Fall is my favorite season for two reasons – beautiful scenery and the National Football League. This year, I joined a fantasy football league for the first time. The league uses the ESPN fantasy football app, which is great because it contains analytics that make it easy for a novice like me. Each week, my team is matched up with another and there is a predicted outcome for each player as well as the team overall. I can use the predictions to decide who to bench or trade. This is possible because there is a ton of high-quality data that feeds the algorithm.

According to Joseph Juran, quality means “fitness for use.” According to Philip Crosby, it means “conformance to requirements.” Data quality encompasses both definitions – it needs to be able to provide insights to make decisions real-time. Here are 10 elements to consider with data quality:

Accuracy – the data needs to be correct
Complete – the data does not have missing values
Consistent – the data needs to be defined the same across all IT systems
Valid – the format of the data needs to match the data structure, such as a date field
Singular – the data should not be duplicated
Seamless – the data needs to move from one system to another without compromise
Repeatable – if two people are recording data, they both record the same thing.
Preserved – the data needs to be retained according to the retention policies
Compliant – the data needs to adhere to privacy laws, and internal policies
Accessible – the data needs to be democratized in a way that people can consume it, according to their skillset.

To achieve a high level of data quality, the data needs to have a clear owner. The owner is most likely responsible for executing the process. For example, the customer information is owned by the sales team, and the supplier data is owned by the purchasing team. The IT team must support the data owners because they can ensure that there are proper controls in place to detect issues with moving and storing the data.

Getting started with a data quality plan can be overwhelming, so it is best for businesses to prioritize the data first. I recommend starting with the fundamental, foundational data for your business. I like to consider this data the cost of doing business and understand that data quality is just as necessary as closing the books at the end of the month. The next area I recommend tackling is all the data used to generate operational KPIs. Finally, focus on the data necessary for transformation efforts.

Once the scope of the data quality plan is set, it is good to create a baseline of the data quality. An audit of the data can help data owners understand the baseline. The audit is a deep dive into a sample of the data to get a representation of the overall data. During the data audit, the data owner will need to get hands on with the data, as well as interview people to understand the accuracy of the data. At the end of the audit, create a metric around how much of the data is considered defective. The audit findings facilitate recommendations and plans to improve the data quality.

At a minimum, the data quality plan must include a process around ensuring new data is created with high quality. The process needs to define who has authority to create the data, and it needs to define the process to update data.

Improving data quality takes time and resources, so start small and drive incremental improvements over time.