Marketing 101
Today’s blog post, Marketing 101, is written for us by our new Guest Writer, Bonnie Feigenbaum. Bonnie has a wealth of experience as a professor of Marketing in Quebec, and shares with readers a detailed overview of the subject.
Bonnie Feigenbaum is a Senior PR Consultant with TNKR Media, former Town Councillor and Chief of
Staff to a Federal MP. She has almost 30 years of teaching experience, creating, and delivering courses
at five post-secondary institutions, including McGill’s Desautels School of Management. She is a
bilingual, marketing and communications professional with 15 years of participation in local politics and
almost 40 years of community involvement.
Through Bonnidée Services, her own boutique communications company, she has been responsible for
all aspects of the strategic plan for a wide range of clients, specializing in government relations and
stakeholder management.
Her teaching philosophy, EDU-TAINMENT, is rooted in flexibility and adaptability using a three-pronged
approach of presentation, practicality, and participation to integrate real-life experiences in marketing,
communications, politics, and business to create a dynamic environment within a theoretical base.
Marketing is a process where the company attempts to understand their consumer to satisfy their needs and thus reap the rewards of profits and loyalty.
Research is the key to gaining the knowledge to develop those customer insights. A company needs to continually stay abreast of the ever-changing macroenvironment. Demographic, Cultural, Environmental, Economic, Technological and Political are the six macro environmental factors that can positively or negatively impact any industry. For example, since March 2020, an uncontrollable natural environmental factor, the worldwide pandemic known as COVID-19 has wreaked havoc on the business community. Some issues that had to be managed on the fly were new highly sanitized customer reception requirements, shortages due to lack of raw materials and supply chains jams and absence of human resources.
An overview of your industry and your company’s strengths and weakness can illuminate where you can leverage upcoming opportunities and mitigate potential threats. This constant surveillance, use of marketing intelligence can keep your company in a pro-active position at the forefront of your field.
The business needs to learn all they can about your customers’ needs, wants and demands so you can create a marketing offering, product, service or idea that will have value for consumers. Theses insights will allow a business to answer the first TWO questions of customer outreach;
WHO will your company serve and HOW will your offering be different?
WHO to be served can be derived by separating your market, by demographic and lifestyle variables and then deciding which segment will be the best match for you? Your primary target of interest will usually be the group or groups that is easiest to capture (“low hanging fruit”) and will bring you the most reward, in the form of sales in a product or service industry or in the form of buy-in to the idea in a social marketing context.
HOW is related to the appeal your product brings to the customer. How will your product be special, have added value or create that special customer connection? In marketing terms, we call that USP-Unique Selling Proposition, what makes you stand out and what value proposition are you presenting to your target.
Now that we know our goals, we can start on the pathway to success and use our marketing tools to create a marketing strategy that delivers the right product, at the right place, at the price to the right people and promote that messaging. The use of the marketing mix (4P’s) is how we implement our strategy. For example, companies that deal in tangible offerings would first want to use their research to fully develop the THREE levels of the product. A CORE (1st level) need links to the real consumer problem, like thirst can be satisfied by water. However, the choice of how to satisfy your thirst is the ACTUAL PRODUCT (2nd level). You can choose coffee, wines or even energy drinks to satisfy the problem of being thirsty. The 3rd level, AUGMENTED PRODUCT is about the promises you make, your warranties and guarantees that should provide added value to your target. Remember, promise made must be kept. In fact, Red Bull agreed to pay more than $13 million to settle a false advertising lawsuit about the drink’s ability to boost energy. Sketchers USA faced a class action lawsuit when their Shape-Ups toning shoes did not provide the advertised health benefits and actually could cause injury.
This serves to illustrate the importance of a truthful, clear messaging strategy that clicks correctly and clearly with your customers. This is accomplished by leveraging the five components of the company’s integrated marketing communication plan (IMC- Advertising, Sales, Sales Promotion, Direct Marketing which includes many new (social) media components, and the often forgotten and thus underused, Public Relations.) which is really an expanded version of the promotion “P”.
The decisions range from content to creativity, what will you message to your consumers be and how will you deliver it? You will also need to determine what media channels to use, how often you engage as well as if and who you would use as your messenger. This is the controllable part of the communications plan which involves of all the channels you pay for or own.
The uncontrollable aspect is called earned media and it involves of all the user generated content and conversations about your brand. If a client is willing to recommend your product, an indicator of brand loyalty, they become quasi-brand ambassadors, and promote your products for you organically. To generate this level of advocacy you need to exceed customer expectations and ensure customer satisfaction. This will also allow your company to maintain profitable long-term relationships.
Research again comes into play. You need to confirm you have created value for your targets. We can accomplish this through surveying. We can ask our clients: –
- Have we met or hopefully exceeded their expectations?
- Will they continue to purchase from us, purchase more?
- Will they recommend us to others?
This is an example of generating primary research. The macro and micro environmental research discussed earlier usually is done through secondary research and internal databases as that is much quicker and cheaper. Timely decision-making information provided by marketing research allows management to make the right choices. When you have created the right appeals for the target customers, in terms of product, price, place and promotion, you collect sales, profits and customer devotion.
Did you enjoy this blog? Read more great blog posts here.
For our course lists, please click here.
What Is the Role of the Sales Rep in the Digital Dealership?
What is the role of the sales rep in the Digital Dealership?
In tonight’s blog, guest writer Mets Kramer defines and explains what exactly is the role of the sales rep in the Digital Dealership.
At this year’s AED Summit, I ended up in the same conversation several times. It took one of two forms. First, the question was raised, what is the role of the sales rep at dealerships in the future? The second, even more blunt, do sales reps still have a use? If they do have a use, what is it?
Let’s start off by saying, absolutely, sales reps are still important and will likely remain important.
Yet, the fact that these questions are being asked suggests the role of the sales rep must change. When I spoke to dealers, reps and even some customers, over the course of the event, it became clear that customers are changing. Modern customers, typically next generation owners or their buyers, have no use for the coffee-bringing and unprepared rep that comes for a chat and to ask “do you need anything”. Customers now have access to all the information they need about the equipment they are interested in. From numerous websites, social media and videos a contractor can research to their heart’s content. They find specifications, performance review, instructional videos and opinions. They use this information to make their purchase decision, often without the need or involvement of a sales rep. In a 2014 survey by the Acquity Group, only 12% of all respondents wanted to see a sales rep. The rest wanted to do their research and get various forms of on demand support. Imagine how much that has changed in 8 years and with Covid’s acceleration to digital.
When I was responsible for parts and service in Canada years ago, I loved getting invited by sales reps to meet their customers. When we arrived, conversation was always lively, with customers expressing their problems and concerns and we were able to discuss solutions. Sometimes these meetings took several hours but there was always value. I started to realize that customers were busy, knew their business and valued their time. When the conversation was valuable customers were happy to receive us, if not, they had work to get back to. It’s this question of value, the value we bring when we visit the customer that is changing the role of the sales rep. Providing value gives us access to the customer’s time and allows us to build a relationship.
Years ago, sales reps were the ones with product training and access to specifications and brochures. Their value derived from having access to information that customers didn’t have available. As the internet has taken over a huge part of that role, the value of brochure bearing sales reps has dwindled. The new opportunity is the role of Trusted Advisor. This role can focus on different aspects of the customer’s business, but typically it’s based on providing customers with a more in-depth understanding of their equipment and fleet in the context of their business. For the sales rep it’s a golden opportunity to develop a richer relationship with customers, by bringing more value to their customers, but with a new perspective.
For dealers and manufacturers this transition comes with several challenges. The first is recognizing the change is happening and unavoidable. Second it will require restructuring and retraining salespeople and finally dealers will have to become more knowledgeable about their customer’s business and put information in place to allow salespeople to bring new valuable insights to their customers.
This first challenge might be the hardest, it’s one caused by a generational and expectation gap between senior leaders at dealership and the age and expectations of the buyers and decision makers at their customers. If dealers continue to believe their customers think and act the way they used to, they will make the mistake of continuing old sales models. They risk continuing to provide sales teams with only modest product training and nothing of further value and they risk having customers who see no value in the sales rep or the dealership.
Once dealers and manufacturers wake up to the new reality of their customer’s expectations, the second challenge begins. It starts with redefining the role of salespeople, it means recognizing the new and changing channels of communication customers prefer and identifying the areas of knowledge reps need to be trained in. To some degree this will require sales teams with different backgrounds and skillsets. They will have to be able to understand construction, contracting and fleet finance. Dealers will have to invest in more training than in the past.
Finally, after recognizing the change, dealers, with the support of manufacturers, will need to create tools and information that exceeds the capabilities of their customers. These tools will need to be accessible to salespeople in real time, as customers are more informed and want to transact faster. The information will have to give the sales rep and the customer new insights into fleet management, finance, and project or production costs. Armed with this information the rep will continue to be a valuable resource for their customers. They will continue to be welcome.
Once implemented, this new role for dealers and reps will provide even deeper relationships, not only based on friendship and personality, but on knowledge and understanding. For those dealers that make this change soon it will be a source of competitive advantage and differentiation. What’s clear is customers are making or have already made the change. Their expectations are different, how they prefer to engage has changed more than dealers think.
Did you enjoy this blog? Read more great blog posts here.
For our course lists, please click here.
Friday Filosophy v.02.18.2022
Friday Filosophy v.02.18.2022
Abraham Harold Maslow (April 1, 1908 – June 8, 1970) was an American psychologist who was best known for creating Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, a theory of psychological health predicated on fulfilling innate human needs in priority, culminating in self-actualization. Maslow was a psychology professor at Brandeis University, Brooklyn College, New School for Social Research, and Columbia University. He stressed the importance of focusing on the positive qualities in people, as opposed to treating them as a “bag of symptoms”. A Review of General Psychology survey, published in 2002, ranked Maslow as the tenth most cited psychologist of the 20th century.
The Time is Now.
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How Artificial Intelligence Is Changing Online Education
This Is How Artificial Intelligence Is Changing Online Education
(And the audiobook industry)
Tonight’s guest post on how artificial intelligence is changing online education is from our new guest writer, Helena Sjögren. Helena Sjögren is a Swedish commercial executive and entrepreneur. With over twenty years of experience in global digital companies, fast growing start-ups and scale-ups she is one of the co-founders of the AI audio technology company Reedz.
If I told you that you could have your one-pager translated into spoken words into 70 languages to be able to address almost every person on the planet.
Would you call me crazy then?
And what if I said that this could happen faster than a week at a fraction of the price you pay for translations AND it all is done by a machine that actually sounds human?
Would you call me insane?
I rather think not. I like to think I’m, at least, half sane. Let me get back to why later in this post.
We all have had our perceptions about how a non-human voice sounds, right? With the idea of it sounding like how R2D2 in Star Wars had sound if he could speak or something similar.
So, with the “how hard can it be?” attitude and some groundbreaking AI technology Reedz started to develop text to speech (TTS) solutions and as late as December 2020 the company was founded by a group of friends living in Dubai and Sweden.
The first step was to create an audiobook service with summaries of the best-selling management and inspirational literature and via an App to give listeners access on the go. As per today the content also includes other topics such as health, parenting and special content for kids.
We have created an audiobook service that is developed to suit knowledge-hungry consumers who are interested in developing themselves and their knowledge in an easily accessible way.
Assuming that everyone has a mobile phone and that the time to read for many is limited, no summation is longer than 15 minutes. In addition, we know that our target group is often very concerned about their children’s development, which is why we have created 5-minute fact books especially for children
Along the way we also saw a huge potential in supporting educators to reach a broader audience in their local language. This is how AI is changing education and the way knowledge is reaching beyond borders.
“To do this collaboration with Ron and Learning Without Scars is a great example in many aspects. Our library is enriched with Ron’s expertise and with our technology it is possible for more people to take part of Ron’s classes in their local language. Simply a Win-Win.”
So, back to the question of me being insane or not. With machines so powerful it’s possible to improve the quality of the translation and it all happens as we speak. You are in the middle of this evolution.
We have started to expand very fast. We have shown that technology, languages and our audiobooks work. We can reach a market of between 3.5 and 4 billion people in their home language at the moment but the target is beyond that. We will reach “all” in their first or second language this spring. No one else can do that today. We can produce audiobooks and voice overs at a pace that no one else can.
For us, this is also a democratic issue, we want everyone, no matter where you live in the world, to have the opportunity to share knowledge. Today, it is the already rich and well-educated who have the greatest access to knowledge and preferably in a commercially viable language. We want to change that.
There is a large knowledge bank in the world in addition to what the publisher companies provide who are just waiting to reach their recipient. And there is a big trend in the world that genuine and local content is something that a global audience wants. To be an enabler for that to happen, and to democratize the opportunity to learn is Reedz’s mission.
Learning is everything.
Did you enjoy this blog? Read more great blog posts here.
For our course lists, please click here.
Marketing 101
Marketing 101
Today’s blog post, Marketing 101, is written for us by our new Guest Writer, Bonnie Feigenbaum. Bonnie has a wealth of experience as a professor of Marketing in Quebec, and shares with readers a detailed overview of the subject.
Bonnie Feigenbaum is a Senior PR Consultant with TNKR Media, former Town Councillor and Chief of
Staff to a Federal MP. She has almost 30 years of teaching experience, creating, and delivering courses
at five post-secondary institutions, including McGill’s Desautels School of Management. She is a
bilingual, marketing and communications professional with 15 years of participation in local politics and
almost 40 years of community involvement.
Through Bonnidée Services, her own boutique communications company, she has been responsible for
all aspects of the strategic plan for a wide range of clients, specializing in government relations and
stakeholder management.
Her teaching philosophy, EDU-TAINMENT, is rooted in flexibility and adaptability using a three-pronged
approach of presentation, practicality, and participation to integrate real-life experiences in marketing,
communications, politics, and business to create a dynamic environment within a theoretical base.
Marketing is a process where the company attempts to understand their consumer to satisfy their needs and thus reap the rewards of profits and loyalty.
Research is the key to gaining the knowledge to develop those customer insights. A company needs to continually stay abreast of the ever-changing macroenvironment. Demographic, Cultural, Environmental, Economic, Technological and Political are the six macro environmental factors that can positively or negatively impact any industry. For example, since March 2020, an uncontrollable natural environmental factor, the worldwide pandemic known as COVID-19 has wreaked havoc on the business community. Some issues that had to be managed on the fly were new highly sanitized customer reception requirements, shortages due to lack of raw materials and supply chains jams and absence of human resources.
An overview of your industry and your company’s strengths and weakness can illuminate where you can leverage upcoming opportunities and mitigate potential threats. This constant surveillance, use of marketing intelligence can keep your company in a pro-active position at the forefront of your field.
The business needs to learn all they can about your customers’ needs, wants and demands so you can create a marketing offering, product, service or idea that will have value for consumers. Theses insights will allow a business to answer the first TWO questions of customer outreach;
WHO will your company serve and HOW will your offering be different?
WHO to be served can be derived by separating your market, by demographic and lifestyle variables and then deciding which segment will be the best match for you? Your primary target of interest will usually be the group or groups that is easiest to capture (“low hanging fruit”) and will bring you the most reward, in the form of sales in a product or service industry or in the form of buy-in to the idea in a social marketing context.
HOW is related to the appeal your product brings to the customer. How will your product be special, have added value or create that special customer connection? In marketing terms, we call that USP-Unique Selling Proposition, what makes you stand out and what value proposition are you presenting to your target.
Now that we know our goals, we can start on the pathway to success and use our marketing tools to create a marketing strategy that delivers the right product, at the right place, at the price to the right people and promote that messaging. The use of the marketing mix (4P’s) is how we implement our strategy. For example, companies that deal in tangible offerings would first want to use their research to fully develop the THREE levels of the product. A CORE (1st level) need links to the real consumer problem, like thirst can be satisfied by water. However, the choice of how to satisfy your thirst is the ACTUAL PRODUCT (2nd level). You can choose coffee, wines or even energy drinks to satisfy the problem of being thirsty. The 3rd level, AUGMENTED PRODUCT is about the promises you make, your warranties and guarantees that should provide added value to your target. Remember, promise made must be kept. In fact, Red Bull agreed to pay more than $13 million to settle a false advertising lawsuit about the drink’s ability to boost energy. Sketchers USA faced a class action lawsuit when their Shape-Ups toning shoes did not provide the advertised health benefits and actually could cause injury.
This serves to illustrate the importance of a truthful, clear messaging strategy that clicks correctly and clearly with your customers. This is accomplished by leveraging the five components of the company’s integrated marketing communication plan (IMC- Advertising, Sales, Sales Promotion, Direct Marketing which includes many new (social) media components, and the often forgotten and thus underused, Public Relations.) which is really an expanded version of the promotion “P”.
The decisions range from content to creativity, what will you message to your consumers be and how will you deliver it? You will also need to determine what media channels to use, how often you engage as well as if and who you would use as your messenger. This is the controllable part of the communications plan which involves of all the channels you pay for or own.
The uncontrollable aspect is called earned media and it involves of all the user generated content and conversations about your brand. If a client is willing to recommend your product, an indicator of brand loyalty, they become quasi-brand ambassadors, and promote your products for you organically. To generate this level of advocacy you need to exceed customer expectations and ensure customer satisfaction. This will also allow your company to maintain profitable long-term relationships.
Research again comes into play. You need to confirm you have created value for your targets. We can accomplish this through surveying. We can ask our clients: –
This is an example of generating primary research. The macro and micro environmental research discussed earlier usually is done through secondary research and internal databases as that is much quicker and cheaper. Timely decision-making information provided by marketing research allows management to make the right choices. When you have created the right appeals for the target customers, in terms of product, price, place and promotion, you collect sales, profits and customer devotion.
Did you enjoy this blog? Read more great blog posts here.
For our course lists, please click here.
Friday Filosophy v.02.11.2022
Friday Filosophy v.02.11.2022
Alexander III of Macedon July 356 BC – June 323 BC), commonly known as Alexander the Great, was a king of the ancient Greek kingdom of Macedon. A member of the Argead dynasty, he was born in Pella—a city in Ancient Greece—in 356 BC. He succeeded his father King Philip II to the throne at the age of 20, and spent most of his ruling years conducting a lengthy military campaign throughout Western Asia and Northeastern Africa. By the age of thirty, he had created one of the largest empires in history, stretching from Greece to northwestern India. He was undefeated in battle and is widely considered to be one of history’s greatest and most successful military commanders.
During his youth, Alexander was tutored by Aristotle until the age of 16. His father Philip was assassinated in 336 BC at the wedding of Cleopatra of Macedon, Alexander’s sister, and Alexander assumed the throne of the Kingdom of Macedon. In 335 BC he campaigned in the Balkans, reasserting control over Thrace and Illyria before sacking the Greek city of Thebes. Alexander was then awarded the generalship of Greece. He used his authority to launch his father’s Pan-Hellenic project, assuming leadership over all the Greeks in their conquest of Persia.
In 334 BC he invaded the Achaemenid Empire (Persian Empire) and began a series of campaigns that lasted 10 years. Following his conquest of Asia Minor (modern-day Turkey), Alexander broke the power of Persia in a series of decisive battles, including those at Issus and Gaugamela. He subsequently overthrew King Darius III and conquered the Achaemenid Empire in its entirety .At that point, his empire stretched from the Adriatic Sea to the Indus River. Alexander endeavored to reach the “ends of the world and the Great Outer Sea” and invaded India in 326 BC, achieving an important victory over King Porus at the Battle of the Hydaspes. He eventually turned back at the Beas River due to the demand of his homesick troops, dying in 323 BC in Babylon, the city he planned to establish as his capital. He did not manage to execute a series of planned campaigns that would have begun with an invasion of Arabia. In the years following his death, a series of civil wars tore his empire apart.
Alexander’s legacy includes the cultural diffusion and syncretism which his conquests engendered, such as Greco-Buddhism and Hellenistic Judaism. He founded more than twenty cities that bore his name, most notably Alexandria in Egypt. Alexander’s settlement of Greek colonists and the resulting spread of Greek culture resulted in Hellenistic civilization, which developed through the Roman Empire into modern Western culture. The Greek language became the lingua franca of the region and was the predominant language of the Byzantine Empire up until its end in the mid-15th century Alexander became legendary as a classical hero in the mold of Achilles, featuring prominently in the history and mythic traditions of both Greek and non-Greek cultures. His military achievements and enduring, unprecedented success in battle made him the measure against which many later military leaders would compare themselves. Military academies throughout the world still teach his tactics.
The Time is Now
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The Digital Dealership: Metrics Are NOT Integrated Data
The Digital Dealership: Metrics Are NOT Integrated Data
Guest writer Mets Kramer debriefs us on this year’s AED Summit, and continues to explore the Digital Dealership with a look at how metrics are not integrated data.
This year I attended the AED Summit and again spoke on the Topic of the Digital Dealership. Before going, I wrote in my last blog that I wanted to look at the impact of two influences on the equipment industry in my presentation. These influences are changing the landscape of the industry and all dealers need to plan for these changes.
Information use at dealerships has been a long-standing topic of conversation, from print out reports to the use of metrics. Dealers collect lots of transactional data and turn it into reports and metrics. These metrics are presented to dealership team members who are supposed to use it to improve their performance and that of the dealership. Frankly, this is not an effective way to drive performance improvement in organizations.
Even fewer dealership goes beyond metrics and reports by turning information into triggers (You can read more about triggers here). Triggers capture the information gathered in reports and metrics and create action. They either feed information into the right place for a person to take action, our automatically update systems.
But there is so much more data available outside our transactional systems…
At the AED Summit this year I had the pleasure of walking around the CONDEX and seeing how many information providers we have in the industry. Many companies collect information from the market and even from dealers to create large and valuable datasets for dealers to use in their business. These datasets include market sales pricing, rental rates, operating costs, auction values, finance costs and much more. This data can predict market trends create heat maps and guide decisions. During one of my many conversations with one of the companies we started reviewing their website. They told me dealers who subscribe come to their website to review data. So, I asked if anyone integrated the data. I was stunned to learn that not a single dealership customer, of theirs, pulled the data back into the dealership DMS or CRM.
Market data and other sources of data have very limited value if they require you to log into a site and do manual searches or reviews. This way, the data’s value is defined only by the provider’s vision and presentation. Also, you can’t rethink what the data means and apply the analysis of the data to your day-to-day business operations or put it in the hands of people that it matters to.
In this case, the companies I talked to all have APIs available for integration. This means your existing systems can call a lot of data or a small amount of information and inject it into the right place.
Here’s an example, in this screenshot from a DMS, we have a function used for setting the advertised price on machines going to the dealer’s websites or to some of the machinery advertising sites: DMS Mets Kramer Screenshot
By injecting live market pricing data into the screens, used by people in their daily activities, your team members can make better decisions. They are rewarded with better performance from their activities. The work required to get this integrated is usually small and is quickly paid back by the time saved looking this same data up on another website. Then the performance increases gained by being more accurate with your pricing is all profit.
Numerous other opportunities exist in our daily activities at the dealership. For example, market rental rates integration with the functions where users review and set Rental Rates in your platform. Even better, integrated where sales reps log their won and lost rental opportunities. What about Engagement data from email campaigns? Like data on opened campaigns integrated into your CRM so sales reps can see what their customers are viewing and interested in before they talk to the customer.
Today’s market leading dealership need to learn how to make use of the vast amount of information available to them. This information is more than nice to have or part of a quarterly review exercise. Leading dealers will optimize all their interactions and engagements by using the information available to them. These dealerships will be Digital Dealers, understanding the value of information, and in so doing get the most out of the huge amount of capital invested in their bricks and mortar operations.
Are you using the information you have available? Do you have an idea to explore? Connect with me on your preferred digital channel, even the phone.
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For our course lists, please click here.
The Evolution of Business Owners
The Evolution of Business Owners
Change is just one inevitability in life. Guest writer Floyd Jerkins walks us through just one change in his piece on the evolution of business owners.
It is quite rare for a dealership to be able to adequately plan succession in the ranks of their mid-management staff. So often, a manager must be replaced in quick order. In that instance, should you look for a replacement within your ranks, or should you go outside to find a suitable replacement? What are the critical skill sets that predict success? What kind of training will the new manager need to have a reasonable chance for longevity in the position and the potential for career growth?
The problem is that these decisions are often made in haste. A good parts salesperson certainly will be a good parts manager, right? It only makes sense that an outstanding technician who knows your products and your customers will be a natural as the next service manager. However, making this most obvious choice in many instances has led to an unfortunate professional and personal lack of fit that has hurt the dealership and an outstanding employee.
If these issues arise at the mid-level management, what is the big picture view of the dealership owner? Where is the career path of a dealer principal? Can an owner be quickly replaced? How does the owner become better educated and identify the right resources for their personal learning pathway? What are the skill sets that predict success?
The Evolution of Owners’ Skill Sets
With one store doing $10M in sales, the competencies for an owner typically require them to be able to change a tire, handle bookkeeping, sell a piece of equipment and maybe even stock the soda machine. They probably do all the hiring and firing. They have to wear several hats.
Many owners of single-store operations come from a sales background. Where do they learn to sell? In my experience, these owners hardly ever take a professional selling course or become constant readers of sales-related material. They learn on the job and through trial and error. The issues this causes in the day-to-day operations is a whole other topic of discussion.
Developing a business that has $1M sales per employee with revenue from $50M to over a $1Billon requires different skill sets. The knowledge, skills, and attitude must improve to be adequately prepared for what is yet to come. As an owner expands their operation, the plan of getting personal education should grow as well.
Owners Learning Pathway During the Stages of Consolidation
We know that with consolidation in any market, the organizations continue to grow larger. Will all of them follow this model? The answer to that is no. Every market has movers and shakers while still supporting the smaller operations. But make no mistake, consolidation reshapes local and regional markets. I call it Shark or Bait. When owners are not proactive; they are often forced to make hard decisions before they might be ready.
Once the organization achieves a certain size and scale, the business becomes less about what industry you’re in and more about adapting to the best practices highlighted by successful companies. This requires the owner to have a new vision and different skill sets.
There still seems to be a lengthy discussion going on about whether or not hard skills are more or less important than soft skills. I’ve said for years that what has been commonly called soft skills are now hard skills. You can’t ignore them because they are a fundamental part of leading a company and for your teams of champions to achieve peak performance.
The key to enduring success lies within the people who deliver the day-to-day operations. They must be in harmony with the policies, procedures, and methods of operations to reach peak performance. The owner or owner group is still setting the pace and controlling many of the businesses’ outcomes with their decisions every day. With an operation of 30, you can meet with everyone and change a policy in almost a day. With over 300 employees, policy changes must be carefully thought out and creating an implementation plan is critical or it could take months and months to become reality.
Business Owners Are People, Too
Each business owner is unique with strengths and weaknesses, just like everyone else. Just because they own the company doesn’t automatically give them all the necessary skills to be an effective leader. Instead of trial by fire, business owners can develop a method to go through a learning pathway that will provide the foundation for success. Assessing their own competencies isn’t something that comes naturally. Commonly outside influencers are needed to affect real change.
What is your learning pathway? Once this is prescribed, then you have focused learning that brings about the most substantive changes.
Self-Evaluation Can Lead to Happiness and a Dynamic Lifestyle
Be honest with yourself about what you’re good at. Listen to others about who you are vs. who you think you are. There are numerous “outside-in” assessments and methods to evaluate your knowledge, skills, and attitudes. “Find what you are good at and hire the rest.” There are just some skill sets that you can’t master and knowing this is powerful. Set the ego aside so once you hire them, don’t micromanage. Get out of their way and let them do what you hired them to do.
Finally, be sure to put yourself into a position to have some fun. If what you do in the company isn’t generating that fun factor, change your role. One of the privileges of owning a business is that you can change your role to something that is a better fit for where you are in age, business acumen, and above all, the desire to live a dynamic life. Remember, there is a life after owning a business.
Did you enjoy this blog? Read more great blog posts here.
For our course lists, please click here.
Friday Filosophy v.02.04.2022
Friday Filosophy v.02.04.2022
Elizabeth II (Elizabeth Alexandra Mary; born 21 April 1926) is Queen of the United Kingdom and 14 other Commonwealth realms. Elizabeth was born in Mayfair, London, as the first child of the Duke and Duchess of York (later King George VI and Queen Elizabeth). She was educated privately at home and began to undertake public duties during the Second World War, serving in the Auxiliary Territorial Service. In November 1947, she married Philip Mountbatten, a former prince of Greece and Denmark, with whom she had four children: Charles, Prince of Wales; Anne, Princess Royal; Prince Andrew, Duke of York; and Prince Edward, Earl of Wessex.
When her father died in February 1952, Elizabeth—then 25 years old—became queen regnant of seven independent Commonwealth countries: the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, Pakistan, and Ceylon, as well as Head of the Commonwealth. Significant events have included her coronation in 1953 and the celebrations of her Silver, Golden, and Diamond Jubilees in 1977, 2002, and 2012 respectively. In 2017, she became the first British monarch to reach a Sapphire Jubilee. In April 2021, after 73 years of marriage, her husband, Prince Philip, died at the age of 99. 2022 marks her 70th year on the throne.
Elizabeth is the longest-lived and longest-reigning British monarch, the longest-serving female head of state in history, the oldest living and longest-reigning current monarch, and the oldest and longest-serving incumbent head of state. Elizabeth has occasionally faced republican sentiment and criticism of the royal family, particularly after the breakdown of her children’s marriages, her annus horribilis in 1992, and the 1997 death of her former daughter-in-law Diana, Princess of Wales. However, support for the monarchy in the United Kingdom has been and remains consistently high, as does her personal popularity.
The Time is Now.
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Likes and Dislikes
Likes and Dislikes
Founder and Managing Member Ron Slee talks about the significance of like and dislikes when highlighting the ways we listen to our customers.
We Listen to our Customers.
We are all in the customer service business. Everyone that I know and have worked with is in a constant state of asking for help. We all ask our customers – what do you need and want from us.
In the Employee Development world, we have to listen many different influencers. The education world as to what the latest and greatest advancements in learning and retention of skills and knowledge. The Learning Management Software world to a stay current with everything going on in internet-based teaching tools. The Dealer Business Systems to be aware of the latest developments in what operational tools are available to dealers, wholesalers, manufacturers and OEM’s so that our subject specific classes are always exposing our students to what systems and processes they will be working with. The specialized software suppliers from Sales Force and CRM, Telematics and Sensors in equipment that can monitor the health of a specific piece of equipment, Maintenance tools to determine when each service interval is expected and schedule parts, labor and equipment to be available when necessary. Artificial Intelligence and all of the Data Management tools to allow information to be obtained that is useful and timely. And many more.
Most importantly we want to listen to our CUSTOMERS.
I learned that early in my life when I was being coached as a swimmer. My coach was constantly asking me to do different things with my head, my arms, my hands, my legs, my hips and my feet. He was looking for the right place for my body in the water for all of these “things.” I would be giving him my feedback and the clock would be giving us another piece of information.
It seemed so natural to me to ask questions. Then when I started teaching, I was constantly asking questions. I didn’t think anything of it until one of my bosses told me that I was using the “Socratic Method” in teaching. I had to research that and found he was right. I never really gave my class the answers to the questions I was asking. I would keep asking questions and in the dialogue that we had, teacher and students, we would come up with the answer together. I thought then, and continue to think the same today, this is the way that I would teach and that this method was a better learning tool for my students.
In my years at dealerships, I was probably a real pain as I was constantly asking why. Why do we do it this way? Why not this way? I used to ask my team members what they liked about how I worked with them. What they liked, what they didn’t like, and what didn’t matter.
When I started in our Consulting business nothing changed, although it was now expected with the job that there would be questions.
It seems that I like to know what other people are thinking about almost everything that they deal with in their lives.
When we set up our first employee development business, Quest, Learning Centers, in 1994 I started with the creation of our textbooks and our class structures. Then I ASKED. I asked a group of executives and owners and managers to come to a class that I had created, at their expense, and get their feedback. Our first classes were three days long, it was twenty-four hours of learning. We called it “What it Looks Like When it is Right.” After all the discussions and suggestions and comments we ended up with two-day classes providing fifteen ours of learning. I will be forever grateful to those individuals for their help.
Today we offer Blogs, Podcasts, Newsletters, Audio Learning and Suggested Reading Lists as Resources to our students, our CUSTOMERS. We now have at the bottom of each screen a question for the reader
It’s a LIKE button, for feedback – thumbs up or down.
I most humbly ask each of you to let us know what you think. It would be really very helpful. You will see this on most every page that you could look at on the website.
The Time is Now.
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Introducing Our Colleague Alex Kraft
Introducing our Colleague Alex Kraft
Our new guest writer Alex Kraft Started as an equipment salesperson for Flagler Construction Equipment (Volvo heavy dealer in Florida) in 2004. He worked in various positions at Flagler, ultimately serving as Chief Operating Officer from 2017 to early 2020 when Flagler was sold to Alta Equipment Company. Alex started Heave in July 2020. We at Learning Without Scars are happy to be introducing our new colleague, Alex Kraft.
For new(er) companies, the inevitable question is, ‘what do you do?’. In the simplest sense, Heave connects buyers/renters of heavy equipment with dealer sales reps.
I started my career as a heavy equipment salesperson in Miami. My manager handed me that ‘UCC’ report that showed the customers who had previously bought equipment in my territory for the prior three years. I attended a few brief product training sessions and was put in the field. The old phrase ‘you eat what you kill’ is accurate. Dealers rely on their sales teams to be the marketing department, as there are very few (if any) “leads” provided to salespeople. Days can be lonely and involve a ton of driving. It’s common for heavy equipment salespeople to drive 45k-50k miles annually. Everyone develops a common route through their territory, start at the furthest point and hit every jobsite/customer office on the way back home. Most dealerships will give their reps a target for customer calls or visits per day. Some expect 8 calls per day, for other dealers it may be 12-15 per day. If your revenue numbers lag your peers, the typical advice is, ‘well, make more customer calls!’. The truth is, most calls aren’t productive since they are rarely scheduled: the customer is busy, the customer isn’t there, or the customer doesn’t need any equipment at that time. Yet this is how the industry continues to operate.
I was amazed that still in 2020, customers had to call sales reps every time they wanted to rent or buy a machine. I’ve seen an equipment manager order Uber Eats for lunch, then call 4 different sales reps and leave a voicemail message asking for rental rates and availability. Therefore, customers are typically waiting for information. Heave exists to solve this problem. We are an aggregator website, in the mold of Lending Tree or Thumbtack. Customers come to www.heave.co and specify what they want to rent or purchase. For example, a customer this morning posted a request for quotes to buy a new 11,000-13,500 lb. canopy mini excavator in Princeton, Texas. Every dealer sales rep that has Collin County, Texas received a text message alert for this opportunity. Sales reps can quote this deal directly from their phone. Customers receive notice upon quote submittal, and they can view the quotes all in one place.
One key feature of the Heave platform is how the communication is handled. We understand that customers come to Heave because they want an easier experience that they can control. Therefore, we allow the customer to dictate the next step. Customers choose which sales reps to release their contact information to once they view the quotes. The customer clicks ‘contact sales rep’ and the salesperson receives a text with the customer’s full name, phone number, and email address. They can communicate offline to address any questions or finalize the deal.
Our initial focus since launch in May 2021 was to build a platform where customers begin their equipment search. The long-term plan for Heave is to continue adding services so customers don’t have to visit multiple places for each part of the transaction, simplifying the entire process. This past fall we partnered with Mazo Capital Solutions to offer equipment financing on our site. Next, we see an opportunity to find partners to show our customers instant freight and warranty quotes alongside their machine quotes. What used to take customers or dealers multiple calls, can be brought into one place on www.heave.co in seconds.
In my opinion, one part that is glossed over when discussing technology solutions is what it frees up suppliers to do. Everyone is rightly focused on their product and what it solves, but technology can free up supplier employees to focus their effort on true customer value add activities. For example, as I highlighted above, how much of a salesperson’s time is wasted everyday driving? Those empty miles could be better served proposing fleet solutions or analyzing telematics reports for their key customers. What value is added by taking parts orders over the phone and entering that order into a business system? With an ecommerce parts solution, parts employees could be repurposed to either manage stock levels better, run parts to technicians (reducing repair times), or deliver parts to customers. Predictive analytics could dramatically help service departments prevent catastrophic failures and better help prioritize their technician’s time. To me, that’s what embracing technology can unlock for equipment dealers- what are the menial tasks that eat up our employee’s time, and how can we utilize certain tools to provide a better customer experience?
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