Sometimes, a part won’t be available within your store, or your chain of stores, or from your supplier, OEM. When a backorder takes place, you can never forget to conduct an analysis of WHY this has happened.
If our customers tell us what they want, shouldn’t we give it to them?
This means providing them with parts and service beyond compare. To do that, you have to know what is going on in your inventory management.
The time is now.
What a great day it is today. Happy Monday to all of you.
There is a great new world out there. In the period following the economic disruptions of 2008, caused in part by government overreach and a lot of greed in the banking Industry, I followed behind the financial management company PIMCO with their “New Normal” program with our “New Reality.” This new reality was a rebirth of the operational aspects of the parts and service businesses within the Capital Goods Industries.
We have made some good progress on many fronts.
In the late 1990’s business guru Peter Drucker mused that adult education was going to become one of the larger needs for business. He further suggested that there would be extremely large growth in the education workforce. We see this with activities such as Khan Academy, with a stated objective of providing world class education to anyone anywhere, and all of their content is free. Then there are other efforts such as EdX, a free education site provided by MIT, and Harvard, Berkeley, and University of Texas, as well as others and CorpU, which aims to unlock the collective genius of an enterprise.
This is where we are making our modest entry with Learning Without Scars.
There is a huge opportunity.
Today, the jobs report gave further evidence of the effects of the recent government regulatory efforts to reduce the burden that has been eating away at businesses everywhere.
Unemployment in the US is 4.4%, which on the face is a good number. But the participation rate, the percentage of the working age population that is in fact working, sits at 62.8%. Stated another way means that 37.1% of the working age population is NOT working. (Note: the participation rate in 2007 according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics was 66.4%) The REAL problem here is that there are currently in excess of 6,000,000 jobs that are open in America that have not been filled. According to a recent CNBC survey 46% of Company Presidents and CFO’s believe that “the workforce is not receiving the proper skills training businesses require.” Further, 63% reported having had difficulty in filling skilled positions in the past 12 months.
That is the backdrop against we have created Learning Without Scars, and our new training. We’ve all experienced great disruption to our “normal,” and in this New Reality we have our greatest opportunity: to learn and provide opportunities for learning to our employees. You’ve heard me say it time and again – your employees are your “heroes.” They’ve invested themselves into your business, and they deserve to have your business invest in their knowledge and expertise.
We can create a healthier economic and professional reality together. It all begins with education.
The time is now.
Last week, I mentioned that we have been working with Xfinigen Media Productions here, and filming numerous videos to add into our classes.
Today, I’m thrilled to present to you our very first video: the Learning Without Scars Promo Trailer.
The video below will tell you a little more about who we are and what we do, along with my own background.
Please enjoy the following trailer, and feel free to contact me with any feedback.
The time is now.
Most of what we know about Socrates we have learned from his students, especially Plato. We know he was a Greek philosopher and a teacher. From his teachings, we developed the Socratic Method: a style of teaching that involves the asking of multiple, open-ended questions of the students.
It was Socrates who told us, “I cannot teach anyone anything. I can only make them think.”
As we have learned in the many centuries since then, thinking is the foundation of all learning.
From this Greek Socrates, we have named our Learning Without Scars “mascot.”
We felt that the owl was apt, as owls symbolize wisdom. And naming him Socrates took our commitment to continuing education into the perfect symbol.
At Learning Without Scars, we are dedicated to continuous improvement for people: managers, supervisors, salespeople, counter people, and every individual working to make your dealership a profitable and effective business in today’s market.
Let us show you what happens when you have highly trained staff who are confident in the job that must be done.
Join us in 21st century, online employee development. You won’t be disappointed.
The time is now.
It’s that time of year again. Our Parts Management Webinars return next week, beginning on Tuesday, September 15.
What is Parts Management? What are the key management areas in which we can increase our profitability? How can we implement systems and training to make more money?
Be sure to join us for a refresher, or few new training, to get this unique, interactive, conference style training geared at profitability, productivity, and systems within the Parts Department at your Dealership.
For a complete description of each webinar, and to register, please visit our Parts Management Webinars page on our website.
Fall brings with it the return of our training offerings, and the opportunity to continue to develop in your pursuit of excellence.
The time is now.
It’s that time again, here at Learning Without Scars. It is time for a new post on our upcoming events and this week it is all about webinars.
Next week, beginning on Monday, June 8, 2015, we are continuing our Product Support Selling and Parts & Service Marketing Program.
We will be hosting webinars on Monday through Thursday, at 9:00 a.m. PST and 11:00 a.m. PST. All Product Support Selling webinars are at 9:00 a.m. PST, while the Parts & Service Marketing are at 11:00 a.m. PST.
In Product Support, we will have a one hour webinar on each of the following: Presentation, Overcoming Objections, Customer Retention, and Territory Potential.
In Parts & Service Marketing, we will offer a one hour webinar on each of the following: Market Coverage, Customer Retention, Compensation Programs, and Territory Management.
This will wrap up the spring webinar series in its entirety. We will return in the fall of 2015.
Don’t miss your opportunity to finish your coursework with us!
The time is now.
As you can see, we haven’t yet written many of these this year, as this is Training Tidbit v2015-3.
The first of the spring webinar series is just about completed. We have conducted 58 webinars, with another 8 before July 1, 2015. 64 in total. I am extremely pleased with the attendance. We are averaging over ten for each webinar.
I am also pleased at the response from Industry associations and software providers who are starting to promote our webinar products. This will be a long process as we work towards bringing high quality, low cost training to the Industry.
The participants are also indicating on which subjects they want to receive more training and we have so far determined another 11 webinar subjects we will create before the start of 2016.
We are also in the process of responding to the participants. We offer two webinars a day for four consecutive days this year. People would like more flexibility. They like the content and the delivery but would like to be able to control the schedule more. We are in the process of putting all of the webinars up on the internet. That way you purchase a time slot the webinar and then you can schedule when you want to take it. This will be in place prior to the start of 2016.
There are still miles to go before we rest.
The time is now.
Product Support Selling – Preparation
Everyone everywhere sells. That is a truth that is little understood. We sell ideas at work and we sell manners at home. There are many things that we sell over the course of our lives. Sales personnel sell for a living, and the skills that they have as individuals are enhanced when they know the proper tools and methods involved in being a professional salesman.
All of the various steps in selling are discussed in this webinar which is the first of two parts. This part deals with the set-up of the selling process: the research, the objectives, and the questions that need to be asked. There is a lot of work that goes into being a professional salesman and it starts with research. This is not dramatic or exciting work, but it is necessary. What the research needs to cover is discussed in detail. With each and every customer there needs to be objectives. These goals and objectives will take on many forms: from calls to parts business, to service business, to profitability. Finally, in selling everyone knows about the “talking” aspect of selling but more important is the “listening” part of it. In order to get the customer talking, the professional salesman must know what type of question to ask and how to ask it.
Selling is much more a science than an art and this first part covers the first three elements necessary in becoming a professional salesman.
The time is now.
Parts & Service Marketing – Basic Marketing
Our Parts & Service Marketing series of webinars begins this Thursday, May 14, 2015, with the introductory course: Basic Marketing.
Marketing is a broadly misunderstood sector of business. It is much more than mailings, promotions, and tradeshows. It is all of the aspects involved in influencing the customer to purchase your products or services.
Marketing is the science of choosing target markets through the use of market analysis and segmentation. This webinar exposes all aspects of marketing: Relationship Marketing, Business Marketing, Social Marketing and Internal Marketing. In Relationship Marketing, we focus on suppliers and customers, and the goal is to build loyalty. The Business Marketing is all aspects of the traditional marketing functions: advertising, promotion and communications. Social Marketing looks at everything that impacts society. For instance, the impact on the environment from the use of clean engine technology. Internal Marketing, is the broad communications to all employees of everything that we are doing in the business.
This webinar covers all the basics of marketing: from the four P’s to the more current addition of SIVA. We cover it all. Without creating the environment where your product or service is understood, you make the job of selling much more difficult. This webinar aims to provide you with the tools to use to make selling more successful.
Parts Management – Delivery Systems
In the parts business we communicate with the marketplace in a variety of methods. With the telephone, with people walking into your store, some customers will send orders by mail, or via a fax, and some use the internet. But the variations of the work don’t stop there: we also have to contend with a variety of “delivery” systems as well. These are not transportation systems. This is a customer service delivery system.
We process sales orders for our customers and we all know that not all customers are created equal. Some customers spend a lot of money with you and deserve to get special treatment. Well, we also have some processes that are cost intensive but also some that are very efficient. These are the customer service delivery systems.
From the customer who does not know the part numbers that they need, to the customer that can order parts from an electronic catalogue on the internet, there are wide ranges of differences. Each of the delivery systems has a different cost component, and that can lead us to provide differentiated services dependent on the delivery system that is chosen by the customer. We explore all aspects of the delivery systems we offer to the market in this important webinar.
