It’s Time to Love the Cloud! Technology isn’t something to be feared. Used responsibly, technology is a tool that can assist us in our work. It’s Time for all of us to Love the Cloud! Don’t you hate it when you can’t access the correct customer data or someone on your team has completed something, […]

April 30, 2024

Marketing Isn’t Here to Just Make Things Pretty

Marketing Isn’t Here to Just Make Things Pretty Learning Without Scars is pleased to introduce our new guest writer, Stephanie Smith. This week marks her debut blog post for LWS, with “Marketing Isn’t Here to Just Make Things Pretty.” Stephanie Smith, a seasoned marketing strategist with over 15 years of experience across blue-collar industries like […]

April 30, 2024

What Is an Industry Analysis and What Can It Do for Your Business?

What Is an Industry Analysis and What Can It Do for Your Business? Guest writers Debbie Frakes and Steve Clegg are back with another resource available to businesses in “What Is an Industry Analysis and What Can It Do for Your Business?” Equipment dealers only have a limited number of resources at their disposal. The […]

April 23, 2024

#MondayBlogs, Virginia Cooper

Perpetual Growth of Leaders Through Lifelong Learning #MondayBlogs

Perpetual Growth of Leaders Through Lifelong Learning #MondayBlogs Guest writer Virginia Cooper returns this week with another look at ongoing education in “Perpetual Growth of Leaders Through Lifelong Learning,” our contribution to #MondayBlogs. In an ever-evolving world, the concept of lifelong learning stands as a cornerstone for community leaders. It’s not merely about the accumulation […]

April 22, 2024

Kurt Pease

The Hidden Value of Employee Recognition

The Hidden Value of Employee Recognition Guest writer Kurt Pease tackles employee turnover in this week’s blog post, “The Hidden Value of Employee Recognition: Why a Paycheck Isn’t Enough.” High employee turnover is a major pain point for businesses. We often assume money is the main reason people leave, but a recent Gallup poll shows […]

April 18, 2024

Personnel, Training

Our Virtual Garage

Our Virtual Garage The second installment of information this week comes from our Founder, Ron Slee. Please read on to learn about “Our Virtual Garage.” The image of the virtual garage brings to mind the humble beginnings that have started an individual journey. It is through relationships that this journey is carried through to success. […]

April 9, 2024

TESTIMONIALS

In the week just ending my readings took me to a comment from Carlos Slim – “Why 60 is the new 30.”

This is an intriguing thought isn’t it? Of course he is right – as someone no longer 30 I am still an eternal optimist. What he exposes is that the old 30 year old worker did physical labor and did it day in and day out for their whole lifetime. The new 30 in the job market works a 40 hour week, at least that is what they are paid for - less and hour or so a day for lunch and a break or two. So in reality they work about 35 hours a week. The work they do is every changing and it is normally not physical labor. So it is no wonder that “60 is the new 30, is it?”

Then also this week there was an article which exposed the hourly wages by age groupings and it reported that between the ages of 60 and 70 the average wage, in America, is $25.12/hour. This is the highest wage reported for all the decade age breaks in the article. This is the first time that this has happened, where the older worker is paid more than the younger worker, and Slim makes the point that “what would you expect?” The individual has the most experience, still is vigorous and knows more about the process, the Company and the job than anyone else. Why wouldn’t you pay more money to these people?

This takes me to the retirement age. When Social Security was first established the retirement age was 65 years old and the life expectancy on average was somewhere around 62. The government was clever in that here comes this wonderful social program but it won’t really apply to that many people. In fact it will apply more normally to higher income earners than lower income earners due to the health and work conditions - but enough of my cynical pontificating.

My grandchildren are soon to be eight and twelve and the retirement age should be approaching 80 when they get there. This means that the retirement age needs to increase at a rate of about 1 year for each seven to eight years. This is simply arithmetic and common sense. This takes my mind to the concept of job sharing for older workers so that we don’t lose their skills and we don’t over burden their bodies.

My work entails a lot of travel, 200,000 miles a year or so, which is what I have averaged over the past thirty years. That can get to be tiring. Well for people like me technology allows me to travel less and still have face to face meetings and discussions with my clients. Through tools like gotomeeting and gotowebinar and skype and facetime etc. we can talk and see each other and share computer screens. For more normal jobs, although somewhat controversial for many people still, working from home will become quite common for part of the work week at least. Collaboration in the workplace is becoming much more prominent and cross functional and cross geographic teams are popping up all over the place – read the book “Midnight Lunch” - which is based on the work of Thomas Edison if you have any doubt about this. Then there is the more normal office worker who has a job which requires a physical presence in the workplace. Why can’t this job be split into two pieces. Take the job and make it a fifty hour week and have two people working twenty five hours rather than one person working forty hours. This isn’t locked in stone it is a concept I would like you to think about. With the demographics of the world, which are quite daunting in places like Western Europe and to a lesser but still significant degree the United States, we need to keep the old worker in the workplace longer. This will also allow us to return more to mentoring the younger worker. One of the missing elements, that are standing in the way of progress really, is the misguiding thinking that many Universities are embedding in the minds of their students that if you work hard and listen to me and get good grades you will start with a nice office making $60,000 to $70,000 and have a group of people working for you. And oh by the way you can leave each day at 4:30 PM or so. There is the old adage that those that can do things work at them and those that think they can do things teach people how to do them. As a result of this intellectual arrogance business needs to take on a much more prominent role in determining curriculum and get students graduating with job skills rather than intellectual skills alone. The prodigious thinker, teacher and author Peter Drucker put this forward in the late 20th century. It is slowly starting to happen.

My family and I took a wonderful extended vacation between our daughter’s junior and senior years at high school. We went to Europe. One evening we were sitting in a pub in Ireland doing a cross word puzzle with help from all the wait staff. They were mostly young smart personable people. Almost all of them had University degrees, yet they were working in a pub. As the evening progress I asked my daughter to ask them what their interests were and what they took at University as their majors or specific study discipline. Not one of them had what I would call a commercially viable degree. I asked my daughter to think about that. To consider something that would have commercial applicability. This is to some degree like story told about the parents of Robin Williams, the brilliant comedian, - upon hearing that he was going to go to Julliard - the world renowned school for talented artistic people -they asked him to learn a trade, like welding, so he would be able to eat.

So now I come full circle and Carlos Slim got me going on this. We need to reexamine our thinking about the workplace. How do we develop the skilled workers of today and tomorrow? Where we do we find them? How can we hire them and get them to come to work for us? How can we keep them longer? How can we get the older workers to begin transferring their knowledge to the younger up and coming worker? Many questions - I think it is time we start answering some of them. What do you think?

The time is now.

June 21, 2013

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.

February 23, 2022

Socrates Says

Socrates Says