Parts Pricing February 13th 12:00 Noon Pacific

Pricing – WP4

Your price is a marketing tool but most of you don’t use it that way. How often have we heard that “your price is too high” or “I can get it down the street for less”? How well customer contact personnel respond to these and other comments about your prices is critically important to your success. The price points you use should be a product of your need to make money and the competitive nature of your marketplace.

Over the years dealers have applied a methodology called “matrix pricing.” This approach started in the 1970’s and it still continues today, well beyond its useful life. We will explain how it works and we will also expose the “new” realities in price theory for the parts business.  Looking into the new approach of applying a “array” of variables to develop a selling price; activity, price, competitiveness, and inventory risk. This four element array leads to several thousand mark ups designed to allow the dealer to attach a price that will be competitive while at the same time produce an overall gross profit that allows the Company to maintain the profit required to sustain itself.

Learning the impact of a discount on your business is a critical aspect of defending your price. See the impact on gross profit and net profit. Learning how to respond to price objections and overcome them is a principle that is important to understand and is discussed in this webinar. This webinar will be beneficial for anyone in the parts business that is touching customers with the responsibility for selling or customer service.

 

Warehousing February 13th 9:00 AM Pacific

Warehousing – WP3

That big area in your facility stuffed with parts can and should be a showcase for your dealership. A distribution center which has been designed and developed to be space effective, productive and safe is a wondrous thing. Not many equipment dealerships have such a warehouse. Do they? A warehouse stores parts, it requires that there are aisles for people and equipment to perform the order picking and receiving functions as well as the physical counts. It also has to have packing and shipping benches as well as staging areas for inbound and outbound shipments. And finally there are the shipping and receiving docks.

This webinar will present warehouse theory from what the location number should consist of to the sizing principals to use in determining the storage space required. It will expose different picking methods and the appropriate storage media and material handling equipment for each. The metrics of picking and packing, storage efficiency, shipping and receiving and dock handling will be developed.

The overall sizing theory of cubic and square foot requirements for each part number stored and systems to utilize that will tell you which location size should be used for which part and how many of each of these location sizes are required helps with the designs and layouts of your warehouse in a manner that can be used by everyone.  This is a common sense expose of a little understood area in a dealership: The warehouse.

Basic Inventory Control February 12th 12:00 Noon Pacific

Basic Inventory Control – WP2

Have we completed the transformation of the inventory from being managed by people to being controlled by systems? This webinar will reintroduce the fundamentals of Inventory Control so that everyone can understand why we have the parts we have and don’t have the parts we don’t have. In the market today customers and demanding more service from suppliers and suppliers are shrinking assets at the same time. That is quite a contradiction and one which is impossible to explain without knowledge of the subject. How do we expect the customer contact personnel to be able to serve customers without understanding Inventory Management? This webinar solves that problem.

The basics of order point and order quantity theory will be discussed and explained in a style that is simple yet clear. Lead times, order costs and carrying charges will be exposed and details given as to their content. The fundamental metrics to employ to maintain control of the performance from the inventory rules in the dealer business system will also be covered.

Finally the Backorder Analysis function will be described in detail such that the participants can proceed from the webinar to the operation and conduct this analysis and determine what it is that is causing backorders and what they should do about it. The program will provide you with the understanding and tools necessary to manage a parts inventory more effectively.

TeleSelling February 12th 9:00 AM Pacific

Tele-selling – WP1

A new reality is approaching, by now everyone has been affected by “telemarketing”. Customers and consumers are starting to resist it. That is clear from the laws that are being presented and passed.  Customers want service, they want customer service calls.  As a result the rules that are set for your telemarketing program should emphasize your wish to have an effective telemarketing program to provide your customer base with high quality customer service. It can be as simple as a word. That word is tele-selling.

Each person has an aura, a reputation in the company or in the market.  This presence is a function of many things; knowledge, personality, the quality of voice, the intangibles of attitude.  It is the feeling of trust that the customer has in the person on the other end of the telephone.  This is a condition that is earned and achieved it is not something that can be mandated.

In telephone selling the customer either has called with the need or you are calling to see if there is a need. Yet now we confront the dilemma. Rarely, if ever, has anybody provided training on tele-selling.  This program will provide you with an outline, an approach, to use when selling on the telephone.  This program will provide you with a plan, a structure, and with this structure your tele-selling future can get off to a successful start.

Training Tidbit #3

Webinars are a terrific tool to transmit information to people doing the job. Our webinars last about an hour, are subject specific, allow more than one person in the room and are inexpensive at $95.00.

They are the usual format. It is a GoToMeeting style with slides showing bullet points related to the topic being discussed. There is a short Q&A at the end to allow for clarification or expansion on the topic at hand.

In February we are offering a series of webinars on the operations of a Parts Department as well as the operations of a Service Department in the Capital Goods Industries.

For the Parts Group

  • February 12th
    • TeleSelling
    • Basic Inventory Control
  • February 13th
    • Warehousing
    • Pricing

For the Service Group

  • February 19th
    • Inspections
    • Work Order Proces
  • February 20th
    • Service Organization
    • Labor Efficiency

Those of you that have not attended one of these informative webinars should make the time and register. You won’t be sorry. The time is now.

 

 

Education #11

In 1987 Allan Bloom the landmark “The Closing of the American Mind,” then last year Richard Arum and Josipa Roksa published their landmark study of collegiate learning, “Academically Adrift.”  So starts an article in the National Review on October 15th, 2012. I won’t dwell on the article other than to extract a key metric. (Those of you interested in learning will find the article refreshing in its candor and I believe enlightening.)

The key metric I want to refer to is the “Collegiate Learning Assessment (CLA). The CLA measures what American undergraduates learn in college. In the work of Arum and Roksa they find that 36 percent showed “small or empirically non-existent” gains in “general collegiate skills” – critical thinking, complex reasoning, writing, and computational skills – after four years of college. Rather astounding don’t you think? The article goes on to identify some of the reasons for these poor results. I don’t think you will find there is much that is a surprise to you.

Meanwhile in the Texas legislature there are efforts underway to pass a law requiring all students at public colleges and universities requiring all students to take the CLA during their freshman and senior years. “Every institution would be called to account for how much students learn under their tutelage.” “The CLA would ultimately serve as an alternative credential to the bachelor’s degree.” “This would help students, parents, and legislators to take a more open-eyed view of the current state of higher education.”  This might also begin to allow more parents and educators to come to the conclusion that specific technical learning is an important alternative to the sacred cow thinking that everyone should have a college degree. The time is now.

 

Training Tidbit #2

Webinars are a terrific tool to transmit information to people doing the job. Our webinars last about an hour, are subject specific, allow more than one person in the room and are inexpensive at $95.00.

They are the usual format. It is a GoToMeeting style with slides showing bullet points related to the topic being discussed. There is a short Q&A at the end to allow for clarification or expansion on the topic at hand.

On the 15th and 16th of October we offer four webinars. Two on Monday, TeleSelling and Basic Inventory Control, and two on Tuesday, Parts Pricing and Warehousing.

Those of you that have not attended one of these informative webinars should make the time and register. You won’t be sorry. The time is now.

Training Tidbit #1

Training has long been a problem for many dealerships.

  • The employees should come to the job trained and ready to work
  • The employees should continue their schooling on their own time
  • Why should I train people they just leave me and go work for the competition

On the other hand

  • I don’t want to have under skilled people ever
  • I will support learning in any form
  • I expect my employees to be curious and hungry learners

In the years since 2008 – which I will label “BBS” – “Before Bear Stearns” dealerships have reduced their expenditures on employee training dramatically.

We offer management training through associations and directly to manufacturers and dealers for Parts Management, Service Management, Parts & Service Marketing Management and Product Support Selling via a Company called Quest, Learning Centers. We have developed nine programs each of which is a fifteen hour training class. These Quest classes had an average attendance of 25 to 30 managers and supervisors in our “class room” sessions. Since 2009 that number has fallen to from 10 to 15. One of the many different advantages from class room learning is the interaction between attendees both in the room and after hours.

Our response to this reduction has been to produce and provide alternative forms of learning; The Webinar and Internet Self Study.

As an educator I am not happy with the webinar format. I cannot see the learner. I don’t know if they got it or not. I don’t know if they are paying attention of not. But I have created sixteen webinar classes; eight for parts and eight for service. We offer each of them twice a year, each of them lasts about an hour. Technology is advancing and we now have available a format where we can see the attendees on a webinar and they can see each other and the instructor. On Self Study we have been slow to get to market. It has been a learning curve but we are in the final phases of introducing our internet self-study programs. There will be four for the parts group and four for the service group and each program will take from four hours to six hours to complete.

I believe in learning. I believe that each individual has a responsibility to continue their education through their complete life. I live that belief too. I hope you agree with me and will join me in encouraging everyone to continue their personal development through attending learning sessions whether it is in a classroom or some other format. The time is now.

Last Chance

Don’t miss the webinars today on Service Management. It is can’t miss webinar day.

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Education Step 8

The Liberal Arts education that has been the push for the past five decades has not delivered what was intended. Slowly in the halls of academia this is being recognized. There are changes underway to address some of the issues. Internet lectures offered for free is one of them.

I want to explore a different direction. One that is tried and proven and comes from Germany. You have heard me say that the battle of the coming decades will be for talented personnel. I have no idea how long this will exist but it will be for some time as the needs and the resources will be slowly rebalanced.

Peter Drucker once said the brightest future business opportunity for going to be in adult re-education. Retraining people who have had the value of their skills eroded as productivity increases have brought dramatic changes. But that does not address the young people starting out in the work force. How do they get opportunities? When the Universities are too expensive (see student loan debate) and the product (the student) that they deliver doesn’t fit the needs of society something is terribly wrong.

In Germany there is a partnership between schools, business and yes even government. “Germany’s apprenticeship programs and its renown as the standard bearer of quality manufacturing are helping companies rejuvenate their workforce with foreigners eager to escape economic malaise at home” – Bloomberg online.

“Germany’s unique educational approach is rooted in a guild system dating back centuries. Trainees receive a modest salary during their education and most get a job offer once they complete their apprenticeships. The country’s vocational training system combines practical training with classroom sessions and has companies pitching in, offering more than half a million high-school graduate’s annually hands-on education in hundreds of professions as well as a respected alternative to a university degree. With the government paying for the schools, the system has helped keep youth unemployment at 7.9%, the lowest rate in Europe.”

We have some schools leading the way with advanced degrees in Industrial Distribution, or partnerships between equipment dealers/distributors and manufacturers of construction equipment and State Universities. But much more needs to be done. The image of vocational schools has been besmirched with the message from colleges and universities over the years that vocational school was a code word for education for the low skilled workers. Nothing could be further from the truth but it fit nicely into the political messages pronounced over the decades. This self-aggrandizing approach from politicians and ivory tower educators has badly hurt two generations, so far hopefully it is going to change soon. The time is now.