Dealing with change is one of the biggest challenges we face in our lives. It will also be one of the largest challenges you face in creating value for customers and remain relevant in the supply chain. Jack Welsh is famous for saying “When the world around you is changing faster than you are…. the end is near.

Look around. Look what has happened in only just the past two decades; Cell Phones, Smart Appliances, Artificial Intelligence to name just a few. Look also at the changes in the equipment we support; computerization of componentry, telematics, etc. Now look at your business internally. What changes have you made in how you do things? This program covers all of these issues.

It is critical that we know how to lead through these periods of rapid change. We have to be able to communicate effectively. What are we doing? Why are we doing it? And how we get everyone committed to these changes is covered in detail in this comprehensive class.

Managers must understand how to engage their team, and lead the business, through change. You will learn how to effectively manage change, become consistent in identifying and resolving critical change issues and innovating in how you do the work and find new and different ways to grow is covered in detail. Don’t miss this important class.

One of the most important and significant activities in which we can be involved, in our professional lives, is helping in the development of the younger less experienced employees. Whether it is a direct coaching job or when we mentor the younger less experienced workers, we have a responsibility to transfer our knowledge to them. In older times each new employee was assigned to a “mentor” with whom they spent time. They would take breaks together, have lunch together, and this new employee worked as if they were helpers for the experienced employees. This is also a critically important job of leadership. The leaders must coach their employees to be all that they can be. The dilemma with this is that not everyone is good at transferring their knowledge and some employees will just not do it. Selecting the proper people to assign this responsibility is critical. Starting through all of the job functions, from the beginning to the end. Communicated in a different manner from the time the employee arrives at work until they leave at the end of the day. Everything and anything that pertains to the work. This is part of developing a strong corporate culture. Culture is aimed at your heart. In this style of “onboarding” new employees, each person will feel part of the team. This is an extremely important function and this class will help you avoid the difficulties in performing this function.

The ultimate measure of your service to customers is the loyalty that they give you with the business. That can be measured by customer retention. During the 1980’s Harvard Business School did the definitive research on this subject. That work was published in a book called the “Service profit Chain.” This is one of the foundations that is used in this class to show students the “how to” measure customer loyalty.

There is a direct correlation between employee satisfaction and loyalty and customer satisfaction and loyalty. This correlation is explored and explained in this program. Various surveys are exposed to measure employee satisfaction. This information provides recommendations for action.

The Construction Equipment Industry has conducted customer surveys every five years that asks customers about their buying habits. These surveys provided guidance to the dealers on what the percentage of defections would be in the Industry. This class provides a direct linkage that can be used on profitability related to customer retention by the parts business and the service business.

This Customer Loyalty class starts to address the retention measures to use when a customer is assigned to a specific employee. A customer assigned to a Product Support Salesmen has a retention goal, a customer loyalty goal, of 100%. The tools to perform this calculation are provided in this class.

All of the training and tooling in service, and the inventories and systems in parts, and all the good work by professional salesmen will be wasted if you cannot keep your customer for life. The Japanese taught us that in the 1970’s, and Harvard Business School did the definitive research in the 1980’s. This class deals with the facts of customer retention and “how to” minimize the number of customers that “defect” from your dealership.

The statistical impact of defection on profitability across differing Industry groups is exposed. It is shocking. In the Industrial Distribution business, if you can increase your customer retention 5%, then you can increase your profitability as a Company by 45%. There is no single element of what we do that has the impact on dealership profitability like customer retention. The tools you should use to minimize customer defection are discussed in detail in this impactful class. Everything that we do in the performance of our jobs is at risk if our responsiveness and convenience are not to the customers’ liking. Don’t miss out on this powerful program.

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 class.

Customer loyalty is crucial when it comes to your success in your business. In the midst of managing the parts business for the highest levels of customer loyalty, we often overlook the profitability of the parts business.

The profits provided by the parts business goes to cover the expenses and costs of operating the business. This is the contribution of profit to the business. This is all very straightforward, of course. But where we all clearly understand the contribution of profit to the business, absorption is something that is less clear.

In the 1950s, the model of Absorption was developed as a way of managing profits and expenses in the parts business. This important class offers clarity in the financial aspects of a fiscally healthy parts business, and how it positively impacts the overall strength of the dealership.

The use of activity-based management as a management tool, has been relatively recent in our Industry. It was an unintended consequence of the work of Edward Deming, in Japan, and allows dealerships to review activities in a different manner. The use of the sales per employee implies a series of activities and relationships to our work that relies on historical approaches and does not take into account the opportunities to reinvent the operations of the department.

Our business is based on satisfying customer requirements. In order to be able to satisfy these needs we must better utilize technology and information in better and different manners. In many cases organizational transformation, has rarely been done without the attendant review on process effectiveness and market coverage methods.

This program will expose a series of thoughts that will allow the learner to be better able to evaluate the processes and methods in use today. The business world has been inundated with various “new” thinking approaches. This is Industrial Engineering at its’ root which morphed into the Continuous Improvement Movement, to Kaizen, then Six Sigma and finally the 5 S approach today. Each of these approaches is married to financial reporting which allows a more comprehensive review of all we do from an activity-based perspective. You will never regret taking this class.

In the parts business we communicate with the marketplace in a variety of methods. We deal with various systems, manually and technologically. We have a responsibility to serve and retain customers while at the same time we have to make money for the business. This is a complicated business.

To assist us in managing the business and help us implement our company strategy we use a business tool that is called the “Balanced Scorecard.” The Balanced Scorecard was developed in the 1990s, designed for use in the planning and implementation of a company’s strategy. The scorecard looks at your business from four directions; finance, internal, innovation and customer. From this vantage point the company can develop a strategy as part of their operating plan.  These plans are meant to help a company achieve its goals.  If a plan cannot be agreed upon and effectively executed, a business cannot effectively reach its goals.

In this class, you will learn the ins and outs of this valuable tool, and the costs we pay in our business when we fail to execute our plans for success in our market.

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 class gets past mystery so that the employees, in a parts business will understand the financial impact of each of their decisions.

Have we completed the transformation of the inventory from being managed by people to being controlled by systems? This program 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 are 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 class solves that problem.

The basics of order point and order quantity theory will be discussed and explained in a style that is simple and 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 to 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.