Instore Merchanidising Webinar – March 19th @ 9:00 AM Pacific

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Don’t miss this lively event.

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 on 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, 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 fast paced webinar.

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 Instore Merchandising with this comprehensive webinar.

You can register at aednet.org search products and then seminars to register.

The time is now.

Parts Pondering 2.3

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Walking through airports or shopping malls you see a new item – vending machines that sell other than drinks and sweets. Theses vending machines are a new retail opportunity for some suppliers. You can buy electronics, safety items, communications products and accessories and much more.

This got me to thinking about our business. Why don’t we consider some parts or tools for a vending machine and put them on job sites? I would be very interested in your thoughts and comments on this as I believe that this represents a terrific customer service opportunity which would also produce revenue.

The time is now.

Warehousing

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The prevalent thinking is that a warehouse is strictly a store room. How wrong can we be?

I remember visiting a consumer goods distribution center in Chicago and watching in awe. The order pickers were given a days work when they arrived and told they could leave when they had finished. There was another visit to a Kodak plant in Stuttgart, Germany which went with no emplyoees at all. No lights on unless someone went into teh building. Finally a tool distribution center with a 30 meter high facility. One of the storage aisles had been out of commission for months until they discovered that there was a deflection on the mast which for safety reasons disabled the motion motors.

Warehousing and distribution centers can be complicated or they can be simple. It is like most things, the more you know the more yioi uare prepared to accept that you don’t know it all.

Join us on our webinar February 13th and learn and enjoy. See you then.

The time is now.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Parts Pondering 2.2

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It is intriguing watching dealers’ worldwide continue to do what they have always done. Why do we assume we know what we are doing when their market capture rate for the parts business is typically less than a third? More importantly many of the dealers have half or more of their parts business coming via their mechanics. It is intriguing.

While that is the definition of insanity it is also a sign that we still are not engaged in trying to satisfy our customer needs for parts. We let more than two thirds of the parts market fend for themselves and do the sourcing and buying of their parts needs wherever they think is appropriate. Why do we do this?

Perhaps because it is too difficult to do it any other way; We have to know our customers, we have to know their buying habits, we have to know our competitors, we have to know how to sell and what to sell. All of that is a lot of work. We will explore this more in coming months.

The time is now.

Time is Getting Short

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Monday November 5th and Tuesday November 6th in Chicago Illinois.

The “New” Quest Parts Management – Unit I

What it looks like when it is Right

A more professional, productive and profitable Parts Operation is necessary for the distributors in the Capitals Goods Industries to be successful. To assist in the development of this Parts Management team we have designed a new series of training courses aimed at enhancing the skills of those charged with this responsibility. The “New Quest Parts Management Unit I” consists of 4 elements presented during a two day seminar.

The Principles of Management

The Basic Principles of Management – what we call the Pursuit of Performance: Planning, Organizing and Control; Job Descriptions and Responsibilities, Performance Standards and Targets – what it looks like when it is right; Employee counseling with praise and constructive criticism in Personnel Management; Time Management to set yourself free; The Business of Change and how to overcome resistance to change; How to survive in spite of ourselves.

Introduction to Accounting & Finance for Parts Personnel

Understand Financial Statements from the Parts Department Perspective.  Clear and understandable definitions of the main financial terminology a supervisor/manager must have. Learn the Dealership Financial Fitness Model; and Profitability Pyramid. Asset Management and the value of Return On Assets. Pricing and Return on Capital Employed (ROCE) Discover new truths about the famous “Discount” and the consequences of it on the customer and the business.

The Operational and Process Foundation

Balancing Inventory Requirements with Customer Service: The impossible made understandable. Order Points and Order Quantities; Lead Times and the EOQ; Order Cost and Carrying Cost. Unleash your true power of knowledge by learning the theory of Inventory Control in all its glory. In physical distribution – the job everyone thinks they can do is easy but no one wants to do: Storage systems, transportation logistics; Shipping & Receiving; Parts Office, Sales Counter and Instore Merchandising Design and Layout that makes sense.

It’s All about Customers

Satisfying everyone’s requirements and developing relationships: “Up Selling”, Product knowledge, Features & Benefits selling, and effective telephone techniques. How you should use price as a marketing tool. Instore displays and merchandising; Value added selling; and the value of Customer Retention. Surveys to develop satisfied customers for life: Customer Profiles and all the background required to make customers your apostles.

This “New Quest Parts Management Unit I” provides a broad base introduction to Parts Management for the 21st Century. It is intended for Parts Lead hands, Instore Sales Lead hands, Supervisors, Managers and Executives. The material covers all of the management and operational disciplines required of a Professional Parts Manager.

Go to www.rjslee.com to register under teh Learning tab select Classroom courses.

Shameless Promotions

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Don’t forget the webinars Monday and Tuesday. One hour of great content for $95/site. You can get more information at www.rjslee.com under the Learning Tab choose webinars and go to parts. You can obtain information about the content and register directly there. The time is now.

Parts Pricing Webinar

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Don’t miss the October 15th, 2013 webinar. It starts at 12:00 PM Pacific time.

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.  Looking into the new approach of applying a “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. 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 webinar will be beneficial for anyone in the parts business that is touching customers with the responsibility for selling or customer service.

You can register at www.rjslee.com under the Learning tab click on webinars.

Parts Warehousing Webinar

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Don’t miss the October 15th, 2013 webinar. It starts at 9:00 AM Pacific.

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, 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. And finally there are the shipping and receiving docks.

This webinar will present warehouse theory from what the location number 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 and 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 expose of a little understood area in a dealership: The warehouse.

You can register at www.rjslee.com under the Learning tab click on webinars.

Parts Basic Inventory Control Webinar

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Don’t miss the October 15th, 2013 webinar. It starts at 12:00 Pm Pacific time.

Have we completed the transformation of the inventory from being managed by people to being controlled by systems? This webinar 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 and 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 webinar solves that problem.

The basics of order point and order quantity theory will be discussed and explained in a style that is simple yet 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 and 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.

You can register at www.rjslee.com under the Learning tab click on webinars.

Parts TeleSelling Webinar

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Don’t miss the October 15th, 2013 webinar. It starts at 9:00 AM Pacific.

A new reality is approaching, by now everyone has been affected by “telemarketing”. Customers and consumers are starting to resist it. That is clear from the laws that are being presented and passed.  Customers want service, they want customer service calls.  As a result the rules that are set for your telemarketing program should emphasize your wish to have an effective telemarketing program to provide your customer base with high quality customer service. It can be as simple as a word. That word is tele-selling.

Each person has an aura, a reputation in the company or in the market.  This presence is a function of many things; knowledge, personality, the quality of voice, the intangibles of attitude.  It is the feeling of trust that the customer has in the person on the other end of the telephone.  This is a condition that is earned and achieved it is not something that can be mandated.

In telephone selling the customer either has called with the need or you are calling to see if there is a need. Yet now we confront the dilemma. Rarely, if ever, has anybody provided training on tele-selling.  This program will provide you with an outline, an approach, to use when selling on the telephone.  This program will provide you with a plan, a structure, and with this structure your tele-selling future can get off to a successful start.

You can register at www.rjslee.com under the Learning tab click on webinars.