Archive for category: Nick Mavrick

How Construction Equipment Dealers Can Succeed (Or Fail) Faster

November 5, 2024/in Guest Bloggers, Jordan Arsenault, Nick Mavrick/by Caroline Slee-Poulos

How Construction Equipment Dealers Can Succeed (Or Fail) Faster

Our new guest writers, Jordan Arsenault and Nick Mavrick bring big data to their first blog post for Learning Without Scars, “How Construction Equipment Dealers Can Succeed (Or Fail) Faster.” Don’t dig for data. Let data dig for you.

Big trouble: that’s how we are ending 2024, most economists agree. Inflation, investment bubbles, over-the-top government spending, technology disruption, dealer margin and market share compression and the exceptional market power of two major rental companies. How can your dealership thrive with more instability ahead?

One may turn to Warren Buffet’s counsel: “I don’t look to jump over seven-foot bars. I look around for one-foot bars that I can step over.”

In your construction equipment dealership, would you allocate capital differently if you knew how much revenue and profits were created by the top 10, or 20 percent, of your customers? What if you learned that 5% of your customers generated over 70% of revenue & profits? Or that your top customers’ life-time value was 5X or 10X larger than that of your average customer?

Consider the following construction equipment cases:

Major construction equipment service company: 23% of customers, 87% of revenue, each customer generates $43k annually, 5X greater than the next customer group.
Major equipment rental company: 3% of customers generate 62% of revenue and profits – only 15 customers per store, that each generate $250k annually 4X greater than the next customer group.
Major construction equipment dealer: 11% of customers, 83% of revenue and profits.

None of the above had been using the proportionality of their data for 80/20 capital allocation, to manage their salesforce, or in short – replicate what they are doing well, to do more of it – faster. They kept going by raising prices, cutting employee expenses, and taking incremental actions while remaining perilously close to a vicious doom cycle. Why?

While successful relative to their peers, they shared attributes that imperiled ability to replicate their successes by leveraging data:
Transaction driven, not data driven day-to-day busyness, obfuscated strategic actions, for tactics.
Siloed data, and disparate systems: DBS (dealer business system), CRM, Business Intelligence, data warehouses, ERP and more. They lacked a unified dataset.
Dirty data: garbled customer data was inconsistent by account; making it difficult to distinguish between decision-makers and influencers.
Tactically use of prospect databases and rarely used industry intelligence: not linked to internal data.
Business Intelligence: relegated to answering obscure ‘jeopardy’ like questions for their OEMs or ownership.
Territory management: based on geography, rather than market opportunity goals. This resulted in an inability to rank salesperson performance, or more importantly evaluate share-of-wallet penetrations with high value customers.

For the solution, one may turn to Charlie Munger for advice: “There is an old two-part rule that often works wonders in business, science, and elsewhere: take a simple, basic idea and take it very seriously.”

To solve data problems, BiltData.ai has constructed a Continuous Insights portal to transform a dealer’s data to quickly identify patterns and establish proportionality – which are referred to as the 80/20 rule.

Data is cleansed, structured, and enriched to provide a unified hierarchy and dataset for strategic use.
Quick-decision dashboards for customers and prospects drive action focused on Best, Future Best and more, resulting in laser-like focus to gain and secure profitable business, faster.
Geographic dashboards address sales coverage deficiencies that were not previously visible, and rank sales performance.
Smart leads help build market share faster by enabling multi-dimensional prospect insights, and visual filtering. This saves time by moving from cumbersome spreadsheets to one unified dataset, where action can be taken in 2-3 clicks.

The results: construction equipment companies can move quicker to take the most ‘profitable’ share, grow best customers, find the best prospects, grow share of wallet by upselling, launch new markets profitably and adopt new sales and pricing models

“In God we trust; all others bring data.” -W. Edwards Deming

Relentlessly pursue data for your continued success!

Did you enjoy this blog? Read more great blog posts here.

For our course lists, please click here.

Jordan Arsenault is Board Chair of BiltData.ai. Jordan is the Board Chair of BiltData.ai. With an extensive career in sales management, Jordan is an expert in using data to accelerate revenue and ROI. She currently serves as Chief Strategy Officer for Southland Resources, a leading raw material energy producer.

Nick Mavrick is the CEO of Biltdata.ai. With decades of B2B data science expertise, BiltData.ai provides a tailored industry solution. We enable the construction equipment industry to get going with X-Ray vision for customer and prospect data. Nick is an expert in CRM and data mining, as the cornerstone to segmented marketing, strategy, operations and driving ROI. He has vast experience in supporting B2B sales teams including VOLVO Rents, NationsRent, multi-brand dealers and more.

TESTIMONIALS

Communication Vehicles

When I talk about Communication Vehicles, I am talking about Blogs, Podcasts and Newsletter.

The world has truly changed. I was first on the Internet in 1973 with a business called I.P Sharp Associates. Ian Sharp tried to bring me on with his Company but I was having too much fun and learning too much at the Caterpillar dealership in Montreal called Hewitt Equipment. The internet was available via two different telecommunications networks Telenet and Tymnet. Their speed was a rip-roaring 30 bps. Can you imagine that? The “computer terminal was an IBM Typewriter type device and the Modem was an “Acoustic Coupler” that you put the telephone handset into. I thought it was absolutely the end of the world. Fantastic.

Today the Internet has speeds that boggle the mind and I am constantly complaining that it takes too long. At Learning Without Scars, we are using a Learning Management Software package called Litmos from SAP. We use a credit card payment tool called Stripe. We use Quick Books for all of our accounting. I have grown used to Microsoft Software so I used Outlook and Excel and Powerpoint and Word. We use Word Press to drive the Website. We use MailChimp and Buzz Sprout to drive our Podcasts and we use Zoom to create our Candid Conversation with our guests for our Podcasts. We have come a long way with software and hardware in my work life since 1968.

For nearly twenty years we have used the “Blog” as a communications device. First on our Consulting business website www.rjslee.com and now with our employee development business www.learningwithoutscars.org. More recently, at the beginning of March, we have started a Podcast. These Podcasts will explain with an audio track the content of our classes in a more complete manner than the landing page for each class or assessment. They will also be the platform for what we are calling “Candid Conversations” with Industry leaders and influencers. And coming soon, July 1, 2021, we will launch a Newsletter. We are going through the process now of networking with my address book and asking the recipient of the email if they want to subscribe to the Newsletter.

This is all about communication, isn’t it? The website has evolved itself. In the earlier form, it was like a brochure. It had the company history the vision or mission statements, key employees. It was a Yada Yada Yada form of communications. Then we moved to having our inventory on the website with pictures and in some cases even prices. It became what I called Brochureware. The internet and websites have come a long way since then. However, many of us are stuck with the old methods and thinking. As an example, I still have a landline telephone. I know, I know leave me alone. So, it brings to mind a question I used to ask relative to the rapid pace of change in technology. “What do you do with a dead horse?” The first answer is “Change Riders.” A close second is “Buy a Stronger Whip.” Followed by “Harness together many Dead Horses.” And finally, “Promote the Dead Horse.” Clearly, tongue in cheek but change has become almost too much for most of us to be able to handle.

We are trying to communicate with YOU on our website. We are using three main vehicles to do this. The blogs, the Podcasts, and now a Newsletter.

The Blog

We give you articles we contribute as well as thought leaders in Industry on a weekly basis. Specific subjects that we feel will be helpful to you, our customers. We post these blogs every Tuesday evening.

The Podcasts

We give you audio tracks describing our classes or assessments. These audio tracks run between five and ten minutes and provide more detail than the job function assessment or subject-specific landing page on the website.

We also provide a Candid Conversation with thought leaders from the Industry. We do these with a recorded Zoom meeting. These conversations are with people in North America, Australasia, Europe, South America, Russia, India, and the Middle East.

The Newsletter

We will publish this newsletter four times a year, typically at the beginning of each calendar quarter.

It will contain articles of interest from us and significant thought leaders worldwide.

We will keep you posted on changes within the education community on current thinking and research into learning tools and methods.

We will highlight any special news on our progress on becoming your primary employee development product.

Please remember we are always interested in and will be responsive to YOUR needs and wants as our valuable customers. We wouldn’t be here without all of the support and encouragement you have provided over the years. Next year we will celebrate our thirtieth year in teaching within this Industry through Companies specifically involved in training personnel in the Construction, Agricultural, Engine, Material Handling, On-Highway, Forestry, Mining Equipment Industries.

We sincerely thank you for your continuing support.

The time is now.

Did you enjoy this blog? Read more great blog posts here.

For our course lists, please click here.

April 13, 2021

The New Style of Leadership is a Developmental Process

After a brief hiatus, guest writer and coach Floyd Jerkins is back with a new blog for our Coaches Corner: The New Style of Leadership is a Developmental Process.

What's the most important asset in your business? If your reply is about the facility or the brand of products you sell, hang on for a second. The reality is your people represent business’s greatest asset.

Leaders have much better success motivating their employees' creativity and challenging work when they take the employees' perspective and invite them to generate their own self-endorsed work goals.

The new style of leadership is a developmental process. When you replace giving directives and commands with working patiently and diligently to see the situation from the other person's point of view, you have better success motivating others. Gathering input and suggestions to pull all that information together to offer some constructive goals and strategies creates sustainable changes. Although these approaches to motivating and engaging others are somewhat difficult, they are well worth the effort.

Leaders use certain behaviors to engage and motivate employees. They know they cannot control employee motivation.

Optimizing internal human resources is one of the quickest methods to add profit to the bottom line. To scale and leverage a business requires a strategy that makes sense. Learning how to maximize effective working relationships tends to improve with training and a company-wide developmental program.

Creating intentional strategies to maximize the return on your investment in your people just makes good common sense and is a good business decision. We get into business to make money. When you follow my dynamic living articles, you know having fun and enjoying life can be accomplished while you own or work in a thriving business. To think you work 100 hours a week but don't have time to enjoy life is not a fulfilling lifestyle.

Leaders who recognize there is more potential to develop people than there are technical improvements or cost-cutting measures outperform those who don't.

Numerous studies reveal every year that, without a doubt, the top 1 or 2 reasons talented people leave their place of employment are because of the culture and the way their supervisor treats them.

A leader always knows their own strengths and weaknesses. They want to maximize employees' strengths and ensure their weaknesses do not weaken their strengths. They are self-learners and seek to learn new attitudes and skills to maximize their effectiveness. The goal is to be the leader that followers like to follow.

Don't think you can apply a one-size solution to improve your leadership capacity in your business. Improving one's leadership abilities requires more than the five-step approach that many suggest. Each person is different, so their strengths and weaknesses are different. The learning path they need is unique to them.

Reading my articles, you know then that being effective and efficient can easily make more money in less time. A business with culture and leadership issues doesn't mean the company isn't profitable. It's just not as profitable or satisfying to operate as it could be. It could be subject to chronic issues that could cause a business to fail quickly. Measuring the cost of turnover can lead to a loss of sleep at night. The numbers are staggering to realize, but there is an even more significant issue with many relatively easy solutions when leaders use the appropriate leadership style.

People issues cost your business about 25% of its efficiency.

Your business improves when your people improve, and leaders and management lead that process to affect the culture positively. An employee who needs consistent attention and coaching can easily cost you more time than they're worth. You want to see them growing into a role vs. being shoved because they don't have the right skills or attitude. Moving people into different positions to find what they are best suited is easily an intentional strategy to improve overall performance. You just have to do this for the right reasons.

Middle management people are often overlooked and don't get the respect they deserve. Their ability to get the job done is a duplicatable trait, and many I know enjoy coaching others. They typically have wonderful insight into what works and what doesn’t. When one quits or dies, you know first-hand how painful and costly they can be to replace.

Unleashing the creativity of your management staff unlocks the controls to your business's growth. There is more power to solve business problems and grow the opportunities when you unleash this natural creative energy you already have at your fingertips.

Motivation is a complex process to explain and equally difficult to realize fully. Science tells us that motives are internal experiences that can be categorized into needs, cognitions, and emotions that are influenced by a business's culture.

These internal and external forces highlight how we can intervene to increase motivation. Depending on the motivational situation we are dealing with, we can design interventions that target physiological or psychological needs and make adjustments to the environment to create the opportunity for increased motivation.

"Among all the prospects that man can have, the most comforting is, on the basis of his present moral condition, to look forward to something permanent and to further progress toward a still better prospect." Immanuel Kant

Finding what is easy to do is rarely what is effective. You often have to go back to the drawing board to do the challenging work of designing effective interventions and motivational support.

Unleash Creativity in Your Most Valuable Asset — Your People

Creating a learning and teaching environment creates a progressive culture that employees like. Key leaders with specific knowledge of performing a particular task or set of functions can quickly become teachers. Documenting these processes is a wonderful best practice to implement while creating a clearer pathway to scaling the business.

Many times, a one-on-one is needed to foster an individual's talents. Based on the assessment of a group of leaders, they may require classroom-style training so they all hear the same organizational message, and you can measure the anticipated outcomes.

Those you've identified as up-and-coming leaders may need more clearly defined learning pathways and resources. Other individuals may require a personalized approach utilizing inside or outside resources.

Various classroom, online learning, and one-to-one resources are available and cost-effective today; yes, even executive coaching services are available. My service fits nicely into this kind of developmental and implementation work.

Remember, in most businesses, there is more potential to develop people than technical improvements or cost-cutting measures. Create that learning pathway so your young and mature leaders can be far more effective at influencing and optimizing your most important asset. You are better together.

Did you enjoy this blog? Read more great blog posts here.

For our course lists, please click here.

February 9, 2023