LWS: Parts Basic Inventory Control

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.

LWS: Parts Overcoming Objections

The sales process is complicated. With professional selling, we know the methods and the processes. We have an assigned sales territory, and we are responsible for market penetration and market share. But all of that is put in jeopardy if the salesman does not know how to handle the objections that the customer might present.

This is an element of the presentation class. However, because of the importance of overcoming objections, we are going to deal with them exclusively in this program. How these objections are handled can make the difference between a sales success and a failure. This program deals with the methods to employ: the “how to” of overcoming objections. In the sales process, typically you are looking for an order, or at least a positive outcome of the sales call. In order to achieve that outcome it has to be understood that the customer has to learn about what it is that you are selling. In many cases, an objection is simply an indication that the customer does not have enough information yet to make an informed decision.

From keeping your cool, to making the objection specific, and providing compensating factors, everything about the “how to” overcome an objection is exposed. You can’t afford to run the risk of losing a sale by missing this important program.

LWS: Parts Warehousing

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.

LWS: 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.

LWS: 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.

LWS: Parts Leadership

The management and supervision in business is in many cases misunderstood. You manage process but you have to lead people. Often, we get consumed by our need to improve our processes. Since the 1980’s with the “Japanese” continuous improvement movement we have been obsessed with eliminating non-value added, tasks and processes. But what have we done to inspire management to improve their ability to lead their employees.?

Leadership is a complicated function. It involves compassion, courage, trust, integrity, commitment, loyalty, inspiration, and communication. A true leader will take people to places that they would not have gone to on their own. This program explores the true meaning of leadership and talks about differing leadership styles and their impact on performance.

Leadership has to ensure that the day to day operations are performing and at the same time they must focus on the future. They also have to understand and accept how important managing change is to improvement. They have to be able to look at their businesses with “fresh eyes” to ensure that they can identify and eliminate their “sacred cows.” This is a critical class for anyone in a leadership position.

LWS: Parts Balanced Scorecard

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.

LWS: Parts Basic Finance

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.

LWS: Parts Time Management

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.

LWS: Parts Customer Retention

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.