Management Musing v1.1

As everyone knows management is about getting things done through other people. Similarly most know that you can’t manage people, you manage process but you must lead people.

In leadership you start by creating followers in your groups. Then you help develop leaders. Most people have leadership skills. They are parents, involved with school groups or church groups, coach sports teams or lead scouts or girl guides. There is a lot of talent available. People are not problems needing solutions they all have talent in hiding that needs to be found and developed.

You won’t get anywhere without respecting other people.

In project management there are a couple of old fashioned truths. The first is “I can bully you to accept a deadline but I can’t force you to meet it.”  Second there is a lot of “publish the innocent and protect the guilty.” I would prefer that we use more of the “if it works it is yours – good work, if it fails it is mine.”

People need to trust management. People put their lives in the hands of their managers. They depend on them for their personal development, their income and their security. How do you stand up in face of this challenge? Management is a wonderful opportunity to make a difference in the lives of other people. It is a serious responsibility to be taken very seriously. Your Company, your employees and your families depend on it. The time is now.

Service Statements v1.1

So having the complaint cause correction troika to deal with we must move to what the customer wants and needs a quotation. Last week we talked about the inspection programs necessary to determine what needs to be done to put a machine in proper working condition. We have obtained the complaint from the customer and determined the cause from the inspection. So on we go to a quotation. The customer wants to know how much it is going to cost before giving you any approval to go ahead with the repairs.

To create a quotation we first must “segment” the work that needs to be done. The segmentation approach needs to follow the structure of the job coding that you use in your business. The job code must address the component on which the work is to be done, the operation that is necessary to affect the repair and the sequence code which follows the steps to do the work. Have you got these job codes, (if you don’t then refer to the coding structure that is used by your supplier for warranty reimbursement)? That is a good starting point.

You will have the standard objections from your technicians. That time is no good. If that is the case in your dealership have the technicians involved in what the factors should be to apply to those times for your use. Once the system has been in use for a time then the times will be based on your actual work.

So we have job codes and standard job times. Now you can create a quotation for the customer. If there is work that the customer turns down, leave the details on the work order so that there is a record for you that you found a problem but the customer chose not to act on it. The quotation will be approved by the customer and then you can put the job into the job queue. The time is now.

Parts Ponderings v1.1

The parts business has become a rather predictable and unexciting business hasn’t it? If you go into a major metropolitan area anywhere in the world and visit the equipment dealerships you will find a sameness that is rather boring.

How can we break this mold? Well I think we need to ask the employees and the customer what they think as everyone of you knows. What they ask for we should deliver.

However, let’s tell down the walls of the box and look to the convenience issue for customer in dealing with you. Typically they have stopped coming into the dealership. They use the phone. Why is that?

I think along with the convenience to them of not having to fight the traffic from their job to the dealer we have taught them that there is nothing to gain by coming into the store. They don’t get any better service do they? In fact we will leave a counter person to answer the phone. So we treat the customer who came to our store to a lower level of service. We don’t have an exciting waiting area or instore merchandise nicely laid out for them to browse through while they wait.

Altho0ugh it might be radical to many of you I think we should open parts stores. Let’s call them the EPS here (Equipment Parts Store). Choose a location that is central to the customer machine population. Or close to the job sites, perhaps even on the job site. Perhaps have an employee on the customer job site itself. Let’s take the store to the market directly. Who was it that ordained that the only parts store we have is in the main dealership building? Why don’t we have a whole series of stores all around the territory? After all the bearing houses do that. The hose and fittings suppliers do that. The hardware and supplies suppliers even take their product right to the customer shops and technicians. Who told is that we couldn’t have more stores?  Perhaps it is just stale thinking or maybe it is not thinking at all. Let’s start being more of a convenience to our marketplace and to the customers within it. The time is now.

Friday Filosophy #19

The most precious possession that ever comes to a man in this world is a woman’s heart.

Unknown

 

Experience is something you don’t get until just after you need it.

Unknown

 

When you think about it, what other choice us there but to hope?

Lance Armstrong

Marketing Missiles v1.0

I wonder how many people understand marketing in the Product Support world; what is that? Is it advertising or sales campaigns? What is it? Well my hope is that through this blog we can have more people think about the marketing of parts and service.

I will start with a definition of marketing as “the selling of products or services – the business activity of presenting services in such a way as to make them desirable.” In the case of parts and service I question the word desirable don’t you? But it is basically the sales of products or services.

I will pursue the basics of marketing – the 4 P’s. The “market” coverage subject as it relates to Product Support Salesmen and all that entails. I will address market share which is the ultimate measure of success in the marketing world. We will discuss customer retention and how we can influence that in our operating world. In other words this blog is intended to cover everything and anything about marketing parts and service. I hope you will join me on this voyage. The time is now.

Management Musings v1.0

In our new approach to the blogosphere we will be posting tidbits on a weekly basis on management. We are calling this management musings.

In the current labor market we have recent college graduates that are having an extremely hard time finding a job to get their career started. We also have companies that are bemoaning the fact that the younger generations are not the same as their generation. The work ethic is different, expectations are different, and the focus is different. I couldn’t disagree more. The current generations are every bit is motivated and ambitious as we were. The difference that I see most prominently is that they are better rounded, more curious, and less tolerant of nonsense than we were.

Today’s management is much more about “Freedom and Responsibility” than is about “Command and Control.” The new generations are not going to be as obedient as we were and I say “good for them.” Just issuing edicts and expecting to be blindly followed is not going to work.

“Today’s good managers give their employees the right context in which to make decisions – then employees make them” From “How Will You Measure Your Life” by Clayton Christenden.  We have a new world today and we as management need to change our posture and outlook. The battleground for the next several decades, if not as far as the eye can see, is going to be for the talented younger work force. This new workforce, the Gen F, is a talented group of young men and women looking for a manner in which they can feel that they have a worthwhile life and a work on a worthwhile career in which they can make a contribution. The time is now.

Service Statements v1.0

This is the first of a weekly commentary on the operational, sales and customer service aspects of a service business in the equipment Industry.

The starting point for a service department is now, has been and will forever be an inspection.  This is the most basic yet the most overlooked requirement for performing repairs and maintenance. How can you provide a quotation or even an estimate until you know what it is that needs to be done? Obviously you can’t.

Why don’t we perform inspections as a matter of course? I am sure by now I have heard most all of the reasons. We don’t have the time to do it – We don‘t have the space to do it – The customer won’t let me do it. I am sure you know the list of reasons as well as I do. But that doesn’t excuse our not performing inspections on most everything we do before we start the work. Imagine having your doctor, based on your diagnostics. go ahead and schedule for a bypass surgery without doing an inspection? Not going to happen.

If we perform inspections we can create quotations and time lines. These are two of the top four needs customers have from a service department according to surveys conducted by the AED – Price and Responsiveness. Yet also in those surveys customers say they want honesty from the service department. Doesn’t that tell you something?

On the inspections tthat I am discussed here there needs to be a specifically training inspector. This is not every mechanic. Not every mechanic has diagnostic skills. This is a one or two hour inspections that evaluates the machine not just the customer complaint. This will lead to a comprehensive quotation for the work to be done.  This detail stays on the work order whether the customer gives you the go ahead to make the repair or not. That detail notes that the customer chose not to approve that segment of the work we found that should be done. It is inconvenient for the customer, in more ways than one, when that which we pointed out as needing to be repaired but they denied, actually failed or needed the work to be done.

How can anyone run a service department that deserves the customers’ loyalty that doesn’t do inspections? I know you agree with me on this so why not do it? The time is now.

 

Parts Ponderings v1.0

This is the first of a weekly commentary on the operational, sales and customer service aspects of a parts business in the equipment business.

I want to start with the most important people in your business, your heroes; these are the men and women who serve your customers every day.  They struggle with the tools we provide them from the business systems to the telephone systems in a department that is like the equipment we sell today with little or no differentiation from the other dealers in the market with whom you compete. We have all become a “oneness.”

We have taken to heart the drive of TQM or CQI from the 80’s and we have improved the processes ad nauseum. To the point that now we are process junkies and not particularly interested in changing anything for fear it will all fall apart.

What is the joy of working in that environment? How can we continue to attract and retain the talented people that we need to do the work? This will become a very large problem in the not too distant future.

I have just completed two wonderful books on this very subject. One is by Gary Hamel called What Matters Now and the other is by Clayton Christenden called How Will You Measure Your Life. Interested people should read them both.

I am interested in how we can make our work magical as in Apple. How we can provide customers with experiences that they want to experience more of in their work? But that is a trick question isn’t it? It isn’t up to us if we truly think about it. It6 is about those wonderful men and women doing the job now. They know what is needed if only we would free them from the shackles of the processes in which we have them locked. But that is too scary for the moment. Not a wise thing to put off. We need to start making people want to come work for us above everyone else. We want an interview to be an event like at Southwest Airlines where it is like a casting call. Yes we can do that too. Think about your parts store and them go visit an apples store and note the differences. That is where we need to be. The time is now.

The blog going forward

After our first four months into the blogosphere and input from several respected people we are going to begin a more predictable and we hope a more useful structure for the blog.

We will continue with some of the staples such as Friday Folosophy and Book of the Week but we will begin to feature a Parts Blog, a Service, a Product Support Selling & Marketing Blog and a Management Blog. Each of them will be done weekly and will be on the same day each week. We hope you will enjoy and benefit from this new structure and we would welcome and thoughts you might have on it. The time is now.

Friday Filosophy #18

Love is the joy of the good, the wonder of the wise, the amazement of the Gods.

Plato

 

It’s easy to halve the potato where there’s love

Irish Proverb

 

Once you have learned to love, you will have le3arned to live

Unknown