Data Mining – Statistics Revisited

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One of the useful attributes of a VoIP system is the ability to choose the important elements of information about a client that you want to appear on the screen as the phone is ringing. Of significance might be the date of last contact, date of sale, type of sale, and value of sale. From the probability discussion yesterday this will help you determine when the next sales transaction should take place. It might help how you approach the discussion. The time is now..

Product Support Selling

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We are considering bringing back the Product Support Selling Programs in 2013. Does anyone in the United States or Canada have an interest in these programs?

Selling Skills Part Five

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After setting objectives for each and every customer for each commodity and service program you are well on your way to selling success. The plan then would be to set up times and schedules for achieving each of your objectives. This takes us to the meetings with your customers. How do you get them to buy your products?  That leads us to our next step in the sales process.

3         Asking Questions

Alright you are in front of the customer. You have identified a specific subject for the call. You have a purpose. You are talking with the customer about the product or service. It is at this point in time that the sales function becomes active. You have two ears and one mouth so that you can listen more than you talk. But your customer is not talking. What do you do now? Well it is simple isn’t it? You start asking questions.

You need to get your customer talking so the kinds of question you are asking are very important. They have to be open ended questions. You know the ones. They cannot be answered with a yes or no answer. They require that the customer explain their answer or talk about it. During this time they will expose their biases and the concerns so that you can adapt your responses to their comments or thoughts. You have to arouse the interest of the customer and then you must adapt your presentation to their response. This is the hallmark of successful sales people.

The time is now…..

Books in the Bin

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Hi I will be writing a seeries of books in the coming years on subjects near and dear to my heart.

Several of you have commented that books would be more of interest than a monetized blog.

parts

  1. instore selling
  2. inventory management
  3. warehouse layouts and design
  4. backorder analysis
  5. pricing as a marketing tool
  6. purchasing
  7. metrics and dashboards
  8. instore merchanidising
  9. call centers
  10. the internet as a tool for a parts department
  11. teleselling
  12. technology as a process foundation

 

Service

  1. shop floor management
  2. field service
  3. flat rate systems
  4. service administration
  5. job flow and scheduling
  6. the internet as a tool for a service department
  7. inspection programs
  8. maintenenace programs
  9. service sales programs
  10. pricing and standard charges
  11. metrics and dashboards
  12. technology as a process foundation

 

Product Support Selling

  1. parts and service Selling is a science not an art
  2. territory management
  3. territory theory and design
  4. commission and compensation systems
  5. customer business management for parts and service

 

Marketing

  1. business development for parts and service
  2. market segmentation
  3. customer retention

 

management

  1. the balanced scorecard as a management tool
  2. activity-based management for parts and service
  3. personnel leadership

Selling Skills Part Four

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The first last time we talked about the six steps in selling we identified them all. The last time we communicated was on the first step – research. Let’s dig a little deeper into the second one.

  1. Objectives

Well after having completed all the research on each customer in their assigned territory the sales professional is now ready for the next step. That is setting objectives for each and every one of their customers for each and every commodity of parts as well as each and every service program offered.

This also involves some research. The parts purchases should follow the opportunity calculated for each customer based on the machine population, hours of work per year and the application. This is also true for the service programs.

When reviewing the customer purchases against the opportunity for each account the sales professional will identify where there are parts or service programs that the customer does not purchase at the levels that the opportunity presents. This is normally an indication that competition has penetrated this customer for some of their products or services. The diligent salesmen determines who gets the business and who the customer likes about this supplier and develops a plan to combat that competitive advantage.

This leads the sales professional to have a specific series of objectives for each customer which will allow them to have a purpose for each call. This purpose is to save the customer money, improve machine availability of some other tangible benefit to the customer. Having a purpose for each call and objectives to strive to achieve makes a difference in the success of sales personnel. The time is now…..

Selling Skills Part Three

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Last time we talked about the six steps in selling. Let’s dig a little deeper into the first one.

  1. Research

Within research there are three more points to cover.

a)      The Customer

b)      The Products of Service

c)       The relationship.

Customer: For researching the customer we need to know everything and anything that might be significant. In the Capital Goods Industries this means specifically the equipment that the customer owns. The make model and serial number of every piece of equipment; the hours of use of each unit and the applications; any special attachments or configurations on each unit. This is what determines the opportunity. The consumption of parts and service is dependent on the hours of use and the application.

Then we need to have a complete customer profile; family circumstances and birthdays and anniversaries, hobbies, etc. A company profile; in what industries they work (SIC codes); type of business, years in business, number of employees, influential, etc.

The Products or Services: This is the full features and benefits area. This has become a lost art for many people in sales. I think this is extremely important. It allows you to separate yourself from the competition. It allows you to sell value if you have this knowledge. I also think it is important knowledge such that you will be able to “position” your offering rather than making a presentation which can become stale and sound canned.

The Relationship: This is the purchase history of the customer with your company. What they buy and what they don’t buy. How the purchases relates to the potential – this for both parts and service.

With these three stages completed in Research we can move onto the second step in the sales process. Good sales people are diligent in their research. It makes a difference in their success. The time is now…..

Thoughts on Selling

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Selling is as old as the hills. It probably started with Adam and Eve, and I am not sure who was selling to whom. People who are not involved in the sales profession are somewhat intimidated by the thought of selling. There is still a negative connotation to being a salesman for many people.  Imagine what the world would be like if there were no salesmen. What a thought that is isn’t it? So to better understand selling let me list the six fundamental steps in the sales process.

  1. Research
  2. Objectives
  3. Questions
  4. Benefits
  5. Objections
  6. Closing

Within each of these six elements there are several important steps – more on that later. As in life selling is pretty simple it is people that screw it up. The time is now…..

Selling Skills Part Two

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Presentations in the world of parts and service sales are truly a lost art. Rarely does a Parts and Service Salesman go to a customer and make a presentation on a product or service that they are offering. Yet this is a skill and call type that needs to be developed if we are to obtain the proper capture rate for the authorized equipment dealers.

The first problem that I encounter is that there is a serious deficiency in features and benefits knowledge on what we are selling. How did this happen? I submit to you it is because we are in the order processing business more than we are in the sales business.  We will deal with this matter in more depth later.

The second is that we don’t know how to deal with objections. An objection is a huge signal indicating what it is that you as a salesman have to overcome in this discussion with your customer. They are telling you that there is something here that they don’t understand very well. You need to become adept at communications and show all your feature and benefits knowledge. One thing to remember is that the features are for you. It is the benefits that are for the customer so don’t spend a lot of time bamboozling them on fancy mumbo jumbo on fantastic features.

Finally is closing the sale. This reminds me of the high school dance at the gym. The guys lined up on one wall and the girls on the opposite wall. A boy walks across the floor to ask a girl to dance and returns in front of everyone having been turned down. Many salesmen have that image imprinted on their brain and they are afraid to ask for the order. Imagine.

Selling is pretty simple it is people that screw it up. The time is now…..

Market Capture Rates

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Some of you have equated the labor efficiency blog with the actual market capture rate of labor. They are two very different elements in the business. One measures the performance of the supervision of the labor pool and the efficiency of a particular technician on a specific job or group of work orders. The other measures how much of the available market the dealer in question has actually obtained and maintained.

The market capture rate is dependent on maintaining an accurate and up to date machine population and the hours of work for each of the machines in the dealer territory. With the arrival of GPS on most current production machines this is becoming easier to maintain and to track. Older machines, however, still outnumber new machines in most geographical jurisdictions and as such this remains an elusive goal.

If we have an accurate machine population as well as the hours of work for each machine then we can calculate the market potential for both parts and service. This is an important step in the maturation of the parts and service management as we will be able to determine the successes of each of the store locations in a territory. We will then need to become much more professional and effective in our processes, systems and skills when we deliver customer service. The Manufacturers and your bosses will be able to measure objectively how well we do our jobs. I think that will bring a lot more attention to the skills and execution of the management and supervision in parts and service. The time is now.

Standard Times – Does Your DMS Pass the Test?

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Many Dealer Management Systems (DMS) allow a dealer to access a manufacturers’ information on standard times that are used to reimburse the dealers for warranty work. There has long been disagreement as to whether the time provided is adequate. That having been said it is also true that someone is trying to help a dealer in establishing standard times for repairs – the suppliers.

So what if the time is inadequate? Or in some cases it might be too generous. That just means you need to do a little more work. Meet with your technicians and determine the factor to apply to the time in order that the work can be performed within the time, consistently, and allow you to develop a labor schedule to follow. Well this is where the DMS has to allow the dealers to apply factors to the times provided with the supplier interface and create dealer time files. Does your DMS allow this? Don’t you think it should? When you have reasonable times to apply to a job assigned to a technician you can build a schedule. With a schedule you can develop a completion date for all work. With a completion date that you can meet consistently you will get more business. Isn’t that what you want?

I suspect you should pose this question to your DMS provider. Can you take the standard times provided for warranty and apply a factor by component code, or operation, or a machine group or even machine model. If you can’t I submit to you that it is important to be able to do this simple thing. The time is now.