CAC: Parts Marketing

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.

CAC: Parts Standards of Performance

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.

CAC: Parts Best Practices

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.

CAC: Parts Instore Merchandising

The days of your customers walking into your business have long since passed. This is truly a shame. Some thirty to forty years ago, we taught our customers that our inventory management meant that those parts that the customer wanted would not all be available when they came to our store. So they started to use the telephone and we didn’t see the customer in our store very much at all.

Yet it still continues to be true that you have an opportunity to create an interesting and successful retail store. This is the first step in becoming a retail operation. From Harley-Davidson to Ski-doo to Artic Cat, there are specialty suppliers that have made merchandising an art form. We will look into the successes in other Industries and how we can learn from them. The layout of your merchandising area, as well as the methods to keep it fresh and appealing, will go a long way to determining your success. All of this and much more will be covered in this content rich class.

Others dealerships and other Industries have turned this into a customer convenience and money making proposition. This is much more than just setting up shelves and displays. They have made the store a pleasing environment for both employees and customers. Learn the ins and outs of successful In-Store Merchandising with this comprehensive program.

CAC: Parts Pricing

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.  We will look into the new approach of applying an “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. This class will teach you how to 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 program will be beneficial for anyone in the parts business that is touching customers with the responsibility for selling or customer service.

CAC: Parts Activity Based Management

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.

CWI: Parts Inventory CSA

With the rapid changes we have experienced in our industry, we have reached the point where the skills and the knowledge of our employees is a critical difference in developing and maintaining our relationships with our customers. The requirements in inventory management have changed dramatically since the arrival of computers to drive this job function. Additionally, the technology within dealer management systems continues to progress at a rapid pace with cloud computing and “smart” systems to name just a few.

The comprehensive skills assessment covers all of the topics and subject matter required in the course of performing the inventory management job function. In assessing this job function we have taken the classes involved in managing the parts business and created an skills and knowledge assessment questionnaire. We have taken the 900 questions, from the pretest and final assessment, from all of the classes offered for the Part Business. We have taken all of these questions and boiled them down to ninety essential questions. Each question has an answer within a multiple-choice selection.

The results from the CSA, Comprehensive Skills Assessment, categorize the skills and knowledge of the individual being assessed, into one of our four levels of accomplishment: Developing, Beginning, Intermediate, and Advanced.

These assessments can be used, in conjunction with background checks and interviews, to screen applicants before they are hired. They should also be used in the annual performance review with each employee. They can even be used as a foundation piece of information related to the wages and salaries paid to the employees. Finally, and this is the genesis of the creation of the comprehensive assessment skills, the assessment has been developed to be used to create a specific employee development program for each employee in the parts and service business teams.

CWI: Parts Management CSA

With the rapid changes we have experienced in our industry, we have reached the point where the skills and the knowledge of our employees is a critical difference in developing and maintaining our relationships with our customers. The changes we face include machine design, computerization of componentry, telematics, and the use of exotic materials. Additionally, the technology within dealer management systems continues to progress at a rapid pace with VoIP, AI, and “smart” systems to name just a few.

The comprehensive skills assessment covers all of the topics and subject matter required in the course of performing the Parts Management job function. In assessing a Parts Manager, we have taken the 750 questions that comprise the final assessment from all of the classes offered for Parts Managers and boiled them down to ninety essential questions. Each question has an answer within a multiple-choice selection.

The results from the CSA, Comprehensive Skills Assessment, categorize the skills and knowledge of the individual being assessed, into one of our four levels of accomplishment: Developing, Beginning, Intermediate, and Advanced.

These assessments can be used, in conjunction with background checks and interviews, to screen applicants before they are hired. They should also be used in the annual performance review with each employee. They can even be used as a foundation piece of information related to the wages and salaries paid to the employees. Finally, and this is the genesis of the creation of the CSA, the assessment has been developed to be used to create a specific employee development program for each employee in the parts and service business teams.

CWI: Purchasing & Expediting CSA

With the rapid changes we have experienced in our industry, we have reached the point where the skills and the knowledge of our employees is a critical difference in developing and maintaining our relationships with our customers. We have arrived at the point that we must find every part that every customer orders, and do this on the day that they order the parts. Supply chains and transportation logistics are complicated subjects and need specialized skills.

The comprehensive skills assessment covers all of the topics and subject matter required in the course of performing the purchasing and expediting job function. In assessing this task, we have taken all of the classes involved in the Parts Business and created a skills and knowledge assessment questionnaire. We have taken the 900 questions, from the pretest and final assessment, from all of the classes offered for the Parts Business and boiled them down to ninety essential questions. Each question has an answer within a multiple-choice selection.

The results from the CSA, Comprehensive Skills Assessment, categorize the skills and knowledge of the individual being assessed, into one of our four levels of accomplishment: Developing, Beginning, Intermediate, and Advanced.

These assessments can be used, in conjunction with background checks and interviews, to screen applicants before they are hired. They should also be used in the annual performance review with each employee. They can even be used as a foundation piece of information related to the wages and salaries paid to the employees. Finally, and this is the genesis of the creation of the comprehensive assessment skills, the assessment has been developed to be used to create a specific employee development program for each employee in the parts and service business teams.

CWI: Parts & Service Marketing CSA

With the distribution networks supporting construction equipment becoming even more dependent on absorption and contribution margins we have recognized the critical nature of comprehensive and current marketing information. The Dealer Management Systems now offer comprehensive call reporting, machine population and all of the attendant reporting structures on market potential and market capture. The Sales Function requires very strong parts and service marketing.

The comprehensive skills assessment covers all of the topics and subject matter required in the course of performing the parts and service marketing job function. In assessing this position, we have taken all of the classes involved in selling and marketing and created a skills assessment. We have taken the 900 questions, from the pretest and final assessment, from all of the classes offered for Marketing and Selling. We have taken all of these questions and boiled them down to ninety essential questions. Each question has an answer within a multiple-choice selection.

The results from the CSA, Comprehensive Skills Assessment, categorize the skills and knowledge of the individual being assessed, into one of our four levels of accomplishment: Developing, Beginning, Intermediate, and Advanced.

These assessments can be used, in conjunction with background checks and interviews, to screen applicants before they are hired. They should also be used in the annual performance review with each employee. They can even be used as a foundation piece of information related to the wages and salaries paid to the employees. Finally, and this is the genesis of the creation of the comprehensive assessment skills, the assessment has been developed to be used to create a specific employee development program for each employee in the parts and service business teams.