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? This is especially true within the labor business, where the technicians look at their hourly wage and compare it to the labor rate charged to the customer.

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 the 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, especially in the labor business. This program gets past that so that the employees in a parts business will understand the effect of each of their decisions.

In this Basic Marketing class, we explore a broadly misunderstood sector of business. It is much more than mailings, promotions, and tradeshows. It is all of the aspects involved in influencing the customer to purchase your products or services.

Marketing is the science of choosing target markets through the use of market analysis and segmentation. This class exposes all aspects of marketing: Relationship Marketing, Business Marketing, Social Marketing and Internal Marketing. In Relationship Marketing, we focus on suppliers and customers, and the goal is to build loyalty. The Business Marketing is all aspects of the traditional marketing functions: advertising, promotion and communications. Social Marketing looks at everything that impacts society. For instance, the impact on the environment from the use of clean engine technology. Internal Marketing, is the broad communications to all employees of everything that we are doing in the business.

This program covers all the basics of marketing: from the four P’s to the more current addition of SIVA. We expose you to everything involved in basic marketing theory today. Without creating the environment where your product or service is understood, you make the job of selling much more difficult. This program aims to provide you with the tools to use to make selling more successful.

In this Basic Marketing class, we explore a broadly misunderstood sector of business. It is much more than mailings, promotions, and tradeshows. It is all of the aspects involved in influencing the customer to purchase your products or services.

Marketing is the science of choosing target markets through the use of market analysis and segmentation. This class exposes all aspects of marketing: Relationship Marketing, Business Marketing, Social Marketing and Internal Marketing. In Relationship Marketing, we focus on suppliers and customers, and the goal is to build loyalty. The Business Marketing is all aspects of the traditional marketing functions: advertising, promotion and communications. Social Marketing looks at everything that impacts society. For instance, the impact on the environment from the use of clean engine technology. Internal Marketing, is the broad communications to all employees of everything that we are doing in the business.

This program covers all the basics of marketing: from the four P’s to the more current addition of SIVA. We expose you to everything involved in basic marketing theory today. Without creating the environment where your product or service is understood, you make the job of selling much more difficult. This program aims to provide you with the tools to use to make selling more successful.

The work in a Service 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.

The technicians have a forward workload that leaves little room for inefficiency or ineffectiveness. In the shop or the field whether for repair or maintenance or rebuilds the work never ends. Your “heroes” do incredible work keeping up with this activity. They work in difficult working conditions, they deal with specialized equipment and tooling, they do inspections, prepare equipment for sale and make ready equipment for rent and lease. 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.

The work in a Service 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.

The technicians have a forward workload that leaves little room for inefficiency or ineffectiveness. In the shop or the field whether for repair or maintenance or rebuilds the work never ends. Your “heroes” do incredible work keeping up with this activity. They work in difficult working conditions, they deal with specialized equipment and tooling, they do inspections, prepare equipment for sale and make ready equipment for rent and lease. 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.

It is of critical importance to be able to communicate effectively. In order to be able to communicate effectively means being clear. Clarity is all about understanding and acceptance of what it is that we do and the context within the Company. Many people can tell us what they do. Some people can even tell us how they do it. But people struggle with telling us why they do it.

The answer to the question “what do you do,” is not simply the same as describing your job function. It is much more than that. This also takes into consideration the culture of the business. Each of us has to be clear on the direction of the market, of your company within the market, and how each of us can impact that. This program explores how we can have more clarity in our communications with each other in the course of our day job.

The “What you do” question is the key point here. This class discusses the who we serve in our jobs, why we do it, and significantly what we create in performing our important work. What value do you bring to your work?

The core function within every Service Department is the work order process. Despite that, little attention seems to have been given to this most important function. During this program we will take you through the complete process from the “Service Request” up to and including the Invoicing of the finished job. The process is not complicated, but there are a lot of details which, if mishandled, will not satisfy either the customer or the dealership.

The only group within an equipment dealership that allows a business to differentiate itself from the competition in the market is the Service Department. Yet the typical dealership leaves the Service Department and the dealer business system to establish the methods to be used. This program addresses the complete process from labor posting to outside purchases, from ordering parts to returning them, from introducing the structure of the job to the scheduling of work. We will address them all.

The individual elements will be covered in complete detail in further programs but the basic structure to employ will be detailed in this session. You will be able to return to your work and review how your structure relates to these “Best Practices,” and begin the transformation of the department from a place where repairs and maintenance are performed to a productive, high quality, and safe service shop. This is the type of work order process that attracts talented people to work within it, and retains the customers who use it.

Everything that we do in the labor business has a profound impact on our customers, suppliers, coworkers, and other stakeholders. There has to be a difference in what and how you do your work that is visible and obvious to everyone that you touch in the performance of your work.

You have to be able to answer two very simple questions. But they are not that easy to answer. What do you provide?  What do you do? Most of us will look at these questions and think it is obvious, it is self-evident. We supply labor solutions – repairs, rebuilds and maintenance.  Pretty simple, isn’t it? The trouble with it is that there are many people trying to do it. We have to recapture the business we have lost from our customers and competitors. We have to make a difference. We have to make what we do “matter.”

We will explore who you are and what you bring to the organization and to the customer. We will explore how and why you make a difference. Each of us has to create our own brand. That is how we will differentiate ourselves and what we do from the crowd. We will explore serving people in the parts business. We will explore all that our work means to the market and how we make a difference: how we make it matter.

With everything that goes on in a labor business it is easy to forget that we also have a responsibility to make money. We have to make money to be able to pay competitive wages to attract and retain talented employees. We have to make money to have available buildings and equipment that allows us to perform repairs and rebuilds and maintenance on the equipment we represent. We need to make money to be able to provide the most current tooling and training to provide effective and efficient labor.

This program provides you with the understanding of the costs of operating the service business. It exposes you to the means and methods of how to make money. From understanding how the labor prices are created and how those pricing systems work. How the prices are calculated and the variables that are in use. You will learn their effect on the gross profit. The approach used to derive the price points based on skill sets, job degree of difficulty and frequency, will be explained in detail.

When performing repairs and maintenance the employee needs to understand the impact that their work makes on the profitability of the department and in fact, on the dealership as a whole. This class provides all of that.

The parts and service businesses within the construction equipment Industries has never had a precise method to calculate the share of the labor market for a specific brand. To some degree this has allowed the service business to operate without a critical performance measure being in place.

This program married the market potential, which is covered in another class, with the actual sales for a dealership for a specific brand. The market potential model allows a dealer to calculate the potential consumption of labor on specific machines. That, together with the actual service sales, allows a calculation to be done arithmetically that determines the percentage of a customer business obtained by a dealer.

This class provides a detailed methodology to calculate the share of the market the dealer obtains. This is the market capture rate that the dealer obtains in the labor business. Ideally, we would be able to perform this calculation by machine model.

Similarly, we touch on the “mean time to failure (MTF)” statistics provided by the OEM’s for their products. With territory potential, market capture we can drive market coverage methods which with the MTF the sales force can be targeting customer needs in a timely manner. This program covers all the details and methods required to perform the calculations required to measure market capture.