Everyone knows about the repair and rebuild business. That is where the excitement is for technical people. In the product support business, we have two major goals: reduce the owning and operating costs for the machine owner, and protect the residual value of the machine. The first step to understanding how to reduce owning and operating costs is to understand the importance of the maintenance service recommended by the OEM. Most customers view maintenance as the necessary evil of changing fluids and filters. There is much more to it than that. How to develop a maintenance program to reduce those operating costs is the theme in this webinar.

There is a fundamental conflict that has to be dealt with in the labor management group. Maintenance is boring, anyone can do it. In fact the OEM dealer has less than 6.5% of the maintenance market. Nearly 90% of the maintenance is done by a customer mechanic. Yet survey data indicates that nearly 90% of the customers would give the maintenance business to the dealership if their price was less than what the customer currently pays.

This webinar will discuss the methods and processes to follow in order to be able to meet that price and performance need.

May 11, 2015

Parts, Training

Parts Management – Basic Finance

Before we can be of any value to anyone else we have to be of value to ourselves. That is an old adage, but it still rings true. Ignorance is not knowing what to do. How can we know what to do if we don’t understand basic finance?

Here we will expose and explain all aspects of the operating statement, the balance sheet, and the cash flow forecast. These are the three major documents in the world of finance. We will define and describe all of the terms that accountants use. There will be no mystery to basic finance when we are finished. We will explain cost of sales and what it consists of, as well as all of the various expense elements. Personnel Expenses, Operating Expenses, and Fixed Expenses are discussed so that everyone will be able to understand and accept how and why money is spent and how we make it.

The fundamentals of basic finance have been a mystery for too many people for far too long. This webinar gets past that so that the employees in a parts business will understand the effect of each of their decisions.

May 11, 2015

Parts, Service, Training

Learn How To Make It Matter!

On Tuesday, 5/12/2015, we are presenting our two “Make It Matter” webinars.

At 9:00 a.m. PST we have PTS-WE-U13: our Parts Management – Make It Matter program.

At 11:00 a.m. PST we have SER-WE-U13: our Service Management – Make It Matter program.

These webinars address the two most important questions we must answer in our Capital Goods Business: What do you provide? What do you do? The answers are not as simple as they appear to be. Everything we do has a profound impact on our customers, suppliers, coworkers, and other stakeholders. This webinar will present information on how to differentiate yourself within your business, and for your customers.

In other news, we have just released our second Self-Study program, this time for Service Management. Please learn more about these programs under the Self-Study tab on our website. The Foundation is now available for both Parts Management and Service Management.

The time is now.

May 10, 2015

Service, Training

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.

The time is now.

May 6, 2015

Parts, Training

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.

May 6, 2015

Training

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.

May 3, 2015

#MarketingMonday, #MondayBlogs, Management, Personnel, Training

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.

April 27, 2015

Parts, Service, Training

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.

April 6, 2015

Management, Parts, Training

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.

March 31, 2015

Customer Service, Marketing, Product Support Selling, Training

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.

March 25, 2015

TESTIMONIALS

With the new business, Learning Without Scars, I wanted to clarify some points regarding the learning options we are presenting.

We start with Webinars. These webinars are intended for everyone in the department and anyone else who has interest in the particular subject. These are intended to transfer knowledge to the attendee. In 2015 we offer the following webinars; fifteen for the parts business, fourteen for the service business, five for the product support selling business, and six for parts and service marketing.

The next level of training is the Internet Based Self-Study Program. These programs are intended for the individuals in your business who you have selected as potential management or supervision. Of course they are also offered as a tool for anyone to learn the subject matter.This is for the leaders of today but more importantly for the leaders of the future. We are starting with one parts self-study program and one service self-study program in September 2014 and then will roll out two additional self-study programs every two months until we have reached our goal. We are aiming to produce internet self-study programs as follows; four parts programs, four service programs, three product support selling and three parts and service marketing.

The classroom classes will continue to be the finishing school. Anyone who has gone through the internet based self-study and scored highly enough can move right into the second level. We offer the following classes; three parts, three service, one product support selling and one parts and service marketing.

I look forward to seeing you at one of more of the learning options we have put together for you.

The time is now

August 11, 2014

Leadership

This week, our guest writer Christopher Kiely writes about the ways in which Leadership can become more effective when it comes to people.

$366 billion dollars. If you spent $366 billion dollars on training only to obtain negligible to non-existent results you might start thinking you were wasting money, or at least most people would. Not corporations though. In 2019 an article by Chris Westfall for Forbes magazine¹ put the yearly global Leadership training expenditures at $366 Billion, yep Billion with a B. You can use your Doctor Evil voice, it is appropriate. $166 billion of that is apparently spent in the USA alone. The article goes on to claim most of that training does not work and then cites another article from Chief Learning Officer Business Intelligence Board² that says 94% of corporations “plan to increase or maintain their current investment in leadership development.” Wow!

Let’s recap, $366 Billion spent, mostly on ineffective training, but the vast majority of corporations plan to continue spending on the ineffective training. This is a condemnation of leadership training in and of itself. Who has the gumption to point out the emperor has no clothes (a leadership trait BTW) when it comes to leadership training? Apparently, almost none of the people that had $366 billion spent on them.

If you Google “effective leadership” you will be presented with lists upon lists of “characteristics” and “qualities”, those seem to be the two prevalent terms used, some lists will be 6, some 10, others 12. There seems to be variation in how many qualities are required. Just as there is variation in what those qualities are, but a few do stand out. Listening, empathy and being “authentic” come up a lot. Not sure how you train those things to adults and apparently after billions spent neither do leadership trainers.

I have been in the communication courses where we learned what designated colour or shape everyone was and how their colour or shape changes how we communicate with them, I was a blue square, for what that is worth. I have taken the course where we all learned each other’s Meyers-Briggs personalities and how to effectively work and lead different personality types. I have taken part in different forms of empathy training and team building initiatives. None of them changed anything, the next day we all went back to being ourselves and doing as we do… which is what people do, because it is what people want. They want to be themselves, warts and all.

If you Google “define leadership” you get “the action of leading a group of people or an organization”. A not infrequent case where a form of the word being defined (i.e., leading) is being used to define the word (i.e., leadership). A leader leads. Ahhh… got it, thanks for that Google.

What even is a leader? How does one become someone that takes part in the “action of leading a group”? Most people are simply designated leaders. Paying big bucks for some MBA or other C-suite qualifying degree from some fancy business school makes you a “leader” apparently, then you move up the leadership ladder chosen not by those you will lead but those that designate you to be the leader. Seems dubious to me.

Some people are leaders, and some are not and most of what is learned about the basics of leadership characteristics is learned young. Most the “characteristics and qualities” used to define effective leadership are developed during youth or they are not developed or even developable at all. If billions down the drain with little to no positive results proves anything it is that training adults to be leaders doesn’t really work. Sure, you can perhaps blame some bad training, or cliche training programs with more sizzle than steak and even a leadership development industry that is more about personal branding and making money than developing leaders. There are plenty of all three.

But a follow up article³ to the initial Forbes article was written by Kevin Kruse a year later, in it he gives 6 reasons for why the money was wasted. He begins to get to the heart of the matter with “Reason #2: Training Too Late”. If you are seeing the need to train adults how to “listen” have “empathy” and be “genuine” (i.e., don’t only think and listen to yourself and try not to be a phoney). It seems to me you don’t have a training problem as much as you have a narcissist problem. Leadership training is full of these sorts of nuggets. Harvard Business School online⁴ adds “Integrity and Accountability” with “…’high moral standards’ as the most important leadership competency.” I’m not sure “morals” are a “competency”. If you are planning to train morals into a bunch of 30-something C-suiters, good luck to you.

What has happened to create a corporate culture where hating one’s boss is common, where the phrase “people don’t quit their job, they quit their boss” becomes cliché? When it is already becoming difficult to attract young talent can we really persist with known issues of decades past? There needs to be a fundamental shift in the notion of corporate leadership. You may begin to notice I like the “fundamental” changes; we’re swinging for the fences over here folks, I need to make it worth the price of the ticket for you.

That same Harvard Business School online post that talked about needing morals had “Ability to Influence Others” as the number one characteristic of being an effective leader, stating:

“…influence is “the ability to produce effects on other people’s behavior.” Influencing others requires building a strong sense of trust with your colleagues. “This means [you] need to understand the types of resources people value when it comes to achieving safety and self-esteem,” says Harvard Business School Professor Julie Battilana.”

Uhm??? Not tell Harvard what-is-what, but that is kind of messed up. Leaders should not be seeking to “produce effects” on their employee’s behaviors by manipulating their “safety or self-esteem”, that is Machiavellian nonsense. Do we wonder why we have a narcissist problem? Do we really wonder why people hate their boss if this is what the elite schools are telling the C-Suiters? Enough with the designated top-down “leaders” and the billions wasted trying to turn adults in to caring empathizers with morals that then apparently will seek to “produce effects” on people’s behaviors by manipulating their self-esteem. What a colossal mess this whole corporate “leadership” notion has become.

I played a lot of youth sports when I was young. You know youth, when you learn empathy and morals. The best most effective team I ever played on was barely coached, it had no top-down leadership at all. We had a head coach that was always busy and a few dads that supervised us. We lost one game in two years of competitive rep-football. That team was successful because even at 12-15 years of age it had strong natural leaders, no billions needed. And they mentored a culture of caring and accountability. Where each and everyone of us knew the other had their back and would perform at the expected level and if we didn’t, we would call each other out on it, but only in the huddle and only ever that once. And if you needed help blocking the giant from the other team, you got it. All that leadership pre-Harvard business school. Wow, almost like you don’t teach that stuff…

I have spent 20 years now training various corporation’s employees all over the world. If you have been a mechanic’s trainer you know a lot of venting goes on in training sessions, perhaps this is unique to mechanics, but I don’t think so. When people are removed from their daily work environment they tend to talk, probably where the slang “talking out of class/shop” came from. They say as a trainer you learn more from the class than they do from you, it is often true. I have learned most people do indeed hate some of their bosses (there are layers) and often for good reason. I have learned some people are leaders and some are not, and some are active (in the moment) leaders, the doers, and some are passive (after the fact) leaders, the listeners. The main lesson on leadership I learned is that it is naturally occurring in almost all groups, a lesson I originally learned on the football field when I was 12.

What most corporations fail to do is recognize, legitimize and foster it and you don’t really do that by designating anyone “the leader” or by bringing in “leaders” with big degrees from outside the group, unless you have some serious problems with current group dynamics. You foster internal groups with a sense of accountability and caring that have people that are the natural leaders of the group acting as mentors, not designated top-down authorities. If done right, you are selecting the people the group wants in those positions, no authority is required. No one needs to be “in-charge” and these types of working groups if structured right will often self-regulate to ensure no one considers themselves such. If the quarterback of a football team suddenly starts thinking he is the main man-in-charge, the offensive line quickly reminds him otherwise. If the people who are natural leaders lack the business acumen or skills to be entirely successful in the designated rolls than corporations should be training those competencies and skills, not trying to train “listening, empathy and morals” to the tune of $366 billion a year, that is a lot of college MBA degrees.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/chriswestfall/2019/06/20/leadership-development-why-most-programs-dont-work/?sh=636f883b61de

https://www.chieflearningofficer.com/2018/03/21/follow-the-leadership-spending/

https://www.forbes.com/sites/kevinkruse/2020/01/07/top-6-reasons-your-leadership-development-program-is-failing/?sh=764f7eea74fc

https://online.hbs.edu/blog/post/characteristics-of-an-effective-leader

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April 4, 2023