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.
With standards of performance, we dealt with what it looks like when it is right. With Best Practices we aim for performance excellence. What is it that the most successful dealers are doing to achieve excellence? This is discussed in detail in this program to allow dealers to see optional approaches to processes and systems. From using the telephone as a sales tool, to inventory turnover; from customer retention, to sales per employee everything is discussed.
We cover all aspects of the processes required in a parts business: from dealer business systems, to telephone systems, to warehousing storage systems. People and system productivity and effectiveness are critical in any business today, but this is especially true within the equipment business where the gross margin on the prime products continue to erode. There are many aspects within a parts business that must be covered that can make a significant difference in either cost or market positioning, and which can make the business more competitive.
Process manuals – electronic or paper – and procedures, as well as training methods to employ become critical to the consistent delivery of excellent customer service. How to measure your success in the area of customer satisfaction as well as all operational processes becomes part of this program. Anyone interested in achieving the best possible level of performance within the parts business will gain insight from this class.
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.
When you have the part in stock you are the same as everyone else. The only part that matters is the one you don’t have in stock. The equipment and parts suppliers have made the ordering process so simple that we have lost sight of expediting and the purchasing function. If a machine is down, the customer wants the part now.
The first rule for a successful parts business is that the employees will not go home until every part that every customer or mechanic has ordered is either supplied, or the location from which it can be shipped is located. That doesn’t mean leaving it with a supplier that does not have the part on hand. This is expediting with a purpose, and we deal with what to do and how to do it to satisfy “Rule #1.”
Purchasing becomes the last resort in satisfying customer’s needs, as we will deal with the prospect that the part is not available in your supply chain. Finding alternate sources is not easy. Communicating with the customer on their options and penalties is even more challenging. All of the “in’s and out’s” of purchasing and the liabilities associated with supplying a part which is not from your original equipment manufacturer is discussed in detail.
Learn new methods to solve this age-old problem of finding every part that every customer or mechanic wants to have – the same day they want it – and doing that before you go home EVERY night: that is what is at stake in this important class.
What does it looks like when it is right? Performance in a Parts Department must maximize productivity, manage assets, and satisfy customers. The first step to understanding and accepting what needs to be done is to have meaningful, measureable and achievable standards. How to develop your own standards and yet continue to reach for excellence is the theme in this class.
Individual employees want to do a good job, yet many do not know what doing a good job entails. This is a fundamental requirement of good management: communicating performance expectations and measures to the employees. In this webinar we will cover the fundamentals exposed by Patrick Lencioni in his important book “The Three Signs of a Miserable Job.” Anonymity, Irrelevance and Immeasureability are the three symptoms of this disease which leads to the “Sunday Blues.”
Each employee can also deliver more than they think they can, yet each is fundamentally lazy. Leadership methods to entice or motivate employees to deliver good performance for coworkers, customers and the Company will be discussed in this extremely important program.
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.
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, and 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. Finally, there are the shipping and receiving docks.
This class will present warehouse theory from what the location nomenclature – the location identification, 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 as well as 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 commonsense program exposes a little understood area in a dealership: the warehouse.
The work in a Parts Business within the Construction Equipment Industry is complex and filled with details. It is within this environment that our employees work day in and day out. These people who I call your “heroes” are the warriors that make your business a success.
They are overworked in many cases and the work comes in what is called “lumpy” demand patterns. There is a burst of activity first thing in the morning, then another smaller one just before lunch. Another small one just after lunch and a final rather large burst just before the end of the day. Your heroes do yeoman’s work keeping up with this activity. They work on the telephones, at the counter, they answer technical questions, process orders, stock the shelves and receive parts from vendors, other stores and your principal suppliers. They get to the end of the day and take a deep breathe to indicate that they made it through another day. They deal with the Art of the Possible every single day.
In this class we will explore the major pillars that comprise your business; Buildings, Inventory, People, Technology, Purchasing and Employee Development. We will then apply and show you how to apply the Art of the Possible.
One of the true challenges in the parts and service business is to determine the successful penetration of the market: the market capture rates. This is another term used to represent your “market share.” How well you are looking after the needs of the customer is the real question at this point.
With this class, we develop a “market potential” model which can be used to determine the purchase potential of each machine. With this tool, an overall potential can be developed for each customer. This is a tool that can be used by management and the sales force to develop strategies to improve performance. We deal with the creation of the model and all the variables within in this comprehensive program.
It all starts with the machine population. That is the list of equipment owned by each customer, and the work application and hours worked each year. With this and the statistics available from the OEM’s and their mean time between failure facts, a reasonable degree of precision can be developed. The major components can be managed in this manner: engines, transmissions, and hydraulic systems. The wear rates of ground engaging tools and undercarriage can assist in the life of these wear parts. Finally, we have maintenance as the last element. Don’t miss this market potential class.
Time is one of the many elements of our lives that we deal with every day. It is one of those elements, however, that does not change. We do not have the ability to add more time to a day. As a result of that fact it is important that we use all of the time that we have as effectively and as efficiently as possible.
Rarely do we accomplish that. We do things over and over again, we defer conclusions and decisions, we get interrupted with unrelated issues, we have to deal with meetings and the internet and the telephone. There is a lot to the use of your time.
From your desk, to your email and telephone you will find thirty powerful methods to better use your time. This is not about “efficiently” it is about being more “effective.”
This program will introduce you to different styles of work and a series of steps that you can consider to more effectively manage your time. At the conclusion of the course you will have been exposed to a wide range of options for you to consider that will assist you in managing your time more effectively and efficiently. Don’t miss out on this powerful class.