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Leveraging Assets – SER-WE-U12

Leveraging Assets – SER-WE-U12

The service department is known to provide repairs, rebuilds, and maintenance services. We manage the labor function to have the highest possible labor efficiency and quality. High performance in a Service Department must maximize efficiency, maximize quality, and satisfy customers.  The first step to understanding and accepting what we have to do is to understand the assets at our disposal. From the technical skills of the mechanics, to the bays and vehicles we work from, and the specialized tooling there is a lot to consider. How to leverage these assets is the theme in this webinar.

Individual employees want to do a good job and they want to be able to provide the highest level of skill possible. We have a responsibility to maintain those skills with professional training programs. From the OEM’s, to specific training within the dealership we will explore all that training entails. It starts with the skills set inventory for each technician, and then a training plan for each person can be developed. We are expected to make money on our labor. What is less understood is that we are intended to be able to recover our costs on all of the tools and technology we use. In this webinar we uncover methods to be able to recover these department costs in a manner that is fair to customers and the company.

Each employee can show off their skills and knowledge especially well if we provide them with the comprehensive training and tools necessary to deliver world class service. We must provide leverage on these assets. This webinar is an important piece of their learning.

Sign up today for this learning opportunity.

The time is now.

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Buyer’s Needs – PTS-WE-U12

Buyer’s Needs – PTS-WE-U12 

A new reality continues in its approach.  By now everyone has been affected by “telemarketing,” your tele-selling future has gotten off to a successful start, and you have also learned how to handle the objections from the customers. You know all of the mechanics of selling. Now we need to make it easier for you by exposing the “buyer’s needs.”

The needs that the customer has in this transaction can stem from “ego satisfaction,” in other words knowing that they are making the right choice, to feeling that they are treated with respect. The sales person has to be sensitive to all of these various attributes and reasons which can underlie the buyer’s needs. But your customers also need your expertise and knowledge and experience. You are in a difficult position. In order to be able to satisfy the needs of the customer, you have to continue to keep yourself current on the product and Industry trends and competition. There is a lot to do.

This webinar deals with survey information obtained from the customers. If they are given a chance, customers will tell us what they need and want, and we then have to be in a position to deliver it.

Don’t miss out on this learning opportunity.

The time is now.

Webinar Learning Opportunities

This is going to be an exciting week.

We have eight webinars in process for this week:

Four for the parts business, and four for the service business.

They run Tuesday through Friday.

Parts at 9:00 AM Pacific Time – and Service at 11:00 AM Pacific Time.

Don’t miss out on this incredible opportunity for a knowledge transfer from one the foremost educators/trainers in the Capital Goods Industry.

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Management vs. Leadership #MondayBlogs

Management vs. leadership is a topic that comes up in many of the programs I teach.  It is often easy to miss the difference.  When we are managers, we see ourselves as managers of people.

You manage processes, not people.

You lead people.

It is not enough to manage the process: you must have clearly defined goals and procedures that everyone has agreed upon.  The days of the “invisible” employee should be behind us.

Remember Patrick Lencioni’s 3 signs of a miserable job –

  • anonymity
  • irrelevance
  • immeasurability

None of your employees need to be anonymous in your workplace.  We spend so much time at work, we all know each other quite well.  The same applies to irrelevance – with a leader in place who has sought and received feedback, each staff member has a voice and is entirely relevant to the work at hand and the future success of the department and company.

Immeasurability.

How do your employees know when they are doing a good job?  It’s important to ask this question, as both praise and constructive criticism play a key role.

Just some food for thought for you this evening.

The time is now.

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Webinars for 7 April, 2015

Tomorrow morning we kick off our spring series of webinars.

We begin with an hour long webinar for the Parts Department on TeleSelling, at 9:00 a.m. PST.

That is followed by a webinar for the Service Department on Inspections, at 11:00 a.m. PST.

Please register at www.learningwithoutscars.org to begin your training program with us tomorrow morning.

The time is now.

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Parts Management Webinars

Our webinar learning series begins next week, with our Parts Management webinars on TeleSelling, Basic Inventory Control, Warehousing, and Pricing.

Our one-of-a-kind conference format for webinars enables you to have an interactive learning experience, without any of the travel.

This program is designed for all of the management and support staff in your parts department.

Please visit https://learningwithoutscars.org/webinars/parts-management/ to reserve your space today.

The time is now.

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Product Support Selling

Our seminar on Product Support Selling – The New Frontier is coming up in Dallas, Texas on April 15 and 16, 2015.  This 2 day seminar encompasses 4 elements:

  • The fundamentals of selling
  • The foundation of territory management
  • Managing Customer Relationships
  • Customer Service Fundamentals

This program is geared towards Product Support Sales, Customer Service, Instore Sales, Supervisors,  and Managers.

This course covers all the theories and applications necessary for Product Support Selling in the 21st Century.

The time is now.

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Parts & Service Marketing

Our Parts & Service Marketing seminar will be taking place in Dallas, Texas on April 13-14.

Back by popular demand, this course is geared towards sales personnel looking to make a difference.

Material will cover:

  • Defining Customers
  • Market Coverage
  • Customer Loyalty
  • Measuring and Managing Success

This seminar offers the fundamentals of Parts & Service Marketing for any personnel that deal with your customers.

For more information, and to register for the seminar, please visit https://learningwithoutscars.org/classes/parts-service-marketing/making-a-difference/.

The time is now.

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Training Tidbit – for the Service Department

Service has changed. Have you? Are you staying current? YOU must maintain your skills and knowledge. That is accomplished through reading and attending learning opportunities. We have management seminars in Dallas in a few weeks. Don’t miss out. The following might provoke some more thinking on your part.

I recently viewed a show on YouTube from BMW showing a technician replacing a radiator core. Nothing very fancy, right? Well, this technician walks up to his tool box and puts on a pair of glasses. Makes adjustments and pushes on them to start. He is standing in front of the car and an image is transposed over the engine compartment and shows in color the items to be worked on and then tells him vocally what to do. When he has completed a step he says “next step.” What a wonderful use of technology. As our world becomes more of a remove and- install of components and things, the technical skills needed from mechanics is reduced; at least for some categories of the work.

One of my many complaints about the operations of a service department that many of you have read over the years is that we have a peanut butter mentality to the work. We charge the same price no matter the skills of the technician, nor the tooling required, nor the degree of difficulty of the work— did we spread it equally, like peanut butter. We don’t schedule labor but we do give completion dates to customers for much of the work. How do we do that when we have variable skills required for the work and variable skills available from the technicians? Peanut butter. This is why we rarely meet completion dates and have lost so much of the available labor market.

We now have new technological tools and new uses of longstanding technology. Who will buy this technology and have it available for use?

We now have new technological tools and new uses of longstanding technology. Who will buy this technology and have it available for use? Hopefully it will be the authorized dealers and distributors.

In another direction, we also have technology roaring to our assistance but it isn’t loud enough yet, as I don’t see many dealers rushing to implement it. It seems that the rental industry has leapt ahead of the authorized distributors in how they treat their technicians. How so?

Well, the technician can stay in the bay and look up on a computer terminal and determine their parts requirement. Okay, some of you are saying that you already do that. Now, let’s start from the make, model and serial number of the machine they are working on and automatically go to a library of schematics and select the appropriate one that will allow them to select the parts they need. Do you do that, too? Oh, and they do that with a touchscreen. You do that, too? Well, then the parts list, which is in a “shopping cart,” is processed as an order in their computer system and prints a pick ticket in the warehouse, their store, so that the parts group can pick the part and deliver it to the technician in their bay. Do you do all that too? I didn’t think so.

It is long past time that we start putting technology to better use. These two illustrations are examples of where and how we can improve labor efficiency on the job. My estimate is that this will increase in labor efficiency by 30 to 60 minutes each day for each technician. Yes, that is right. The time that a technician spends each day walking back and forth to the parts department wastes that much time every day. If you think I am wrong, go watch the floor for a while. In the field it is worse because the technician has to drive to get the parts. And all that time the technician is on the clock.

I think we better get serious, and what better time than now?

The management of a service operation is aimed at two specific major elements: labor efficiency and quality. If we can keep the technicians in the bay where the work is done we can improve their labor efficiency. If we can deliver current accurate schematics from which they can order the necessary parts we will improve the quality.

Are you ready for that? This is not a question of if you will use technology effectively; it is a question of when. This is coming to us and we don’t have any control over it. In this market and these conditions I believe the sooner that we implement these technologies the better. The choice is yours.

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Training Tidbits for the Parts Department

Here’s some food for thought and training tidbits for members of your Parts Department.  I’ve had the thought of keeping “current” on my mind lately, and so wanted to share this with you.

You have the responsibility to maintain your skills and knowledge. How are you doing in that regard? Don’t miss the opportunity to attend one of our Parts Management seminars in a few weeks in Dallas.

For as long as I can remember, the No. 1 requirement for customers from an equipment dealership’s parts department is parts availability. I want to review what we do in parts inventory management, expediting and delivery systems to live up to this availability challenge.

Inventory Control Systems and Processes. The business system suppliers (DMS) and vendors have not been sitting still. The use of statistical probabilities and the demand pattern matching with various statistics models has helped dramatically. The statistical approaches vary by vendor; MMI from Volvo, Poisson from Caterpillar, John Deere with their Critical Codes, and Komatsu’s shared approach with their dealers. Yet they all are aiming at the same target: higher availability for customers via the supply chain. The main software providers have been making adjustments as well. From lead times by part numbers to abnormal demand recognition and much stronger interfaces between vendors and distributors and worldwide search patterns on shortages, systems are much more responsive to the needs of customers and dealers.

Replenishment Cycles. Over my career, the replenishment cycles (lead times) have been reduced dramatically. It starts with the order frequency being increased. Most of the major vendors today offer daily stock orders. From a biweekly or weekly stock order to daily is a very significant improvement. With the increased order frequency the order size is reduced, allowing the vendors to turn around stock orders much more quickly. Transportation logistics have also improved. Today “best practice” vendors have replenishment cycles consistently approaching two to three days. That consistency leads to differing inventory levels and much better serviceability. That is truly something to brag about in the marketplace.

Delivery Systems. From customers walking into dealer/distributor stores to using the telephone, to the Internet and parts kiosks, delivery systems have become much more user friendly. Electronic catalogs allow customers and technicians to determine their own parts requirements, and use of the “shopping cart” online order style for customer convenience and responsiveness has become much more common.

Operating Standards. The goals are more evident, clear and visible. Put away every stock order the same day it is received. Find every part that the dealer is short the day of the order, and communicate with the customer as to where the part is available before the end of the day. Ship every order the same day it is ordered. Simple goals that make a difference to the customers. Isn’t that what we are here to do?

So with all of these improvements, why shift the emphasis? I am not sure we can do much better in the support systems, but I want to move the solution closer to the customers. In the words of Jack Welsh, “When the world around you is changing at a faster pace than you are, the end is near.” Let’s look at the world around us.

Amazon offers a “club” for frequent buyers called Prime. This comes with perks for the customers – access to a lending library, access to streaming videos, elimination of freight charges, to name a few. American Express has their “member rewards” and catalog and Internet retail sales, plus entertainment venues for select card members. Visa and Master Card offer their programs, too. Everyone is trying hard to differentiate themselves in the retail world from their competitors.

I believe that the differentiation that used to exist with parts availability has been eliminated. Almost every major vendor in the capital goods industries provides similar levels of availability. The large differences have completely disappeared. Availability is good from everyone. So, we need to find enhanced serviceability standards and methods.

Perhaps convenience will become more of an issue. We could have supply items “stores” more conveniently located to the customer jobsites. We could bring our parts to jobsites with vans and “Sprinter” type vehicles, rather than waiting for our customers to order from us. We should help customers with their purchasing. We could deliver parts to the customer – what a concept.

With the Opportunity Model in the PSOH, we should know what the customer will need, discuss this with the customer, and make buying easier for them – not just easier for those of us in the distribution channel.

The time is now.