Socrates Says

Selling Skills

Preparation is one of the keys to good selling skills. Of course that is common sense for most or at least it should be if you want to succeed at selling. Imagine not know the customer? Not knowing what they want and need. What they own and how to make their operations more effective. The […]

Lead Times in Inventory Management

With JIT (Just in Time) supply chains we really have come to a point where customer service is in jeopardy. The problem is our cavalier approach to the lead time component of order points. The lead time is the total elapsed time between when a part reaches the order point in the warehouse location and […]

Service Technicians

The complaints are still out there- “I can’t find any experienced equipment technicians.” Isn’t it obvious by now that anyone worth anything that has experience is going to be working already? If there is a technician available and they apply for work I am sure that you will give them a very thorough interview and […]

Dashboard Management

In the January issue of the Construction Equipment Digest, the monthly magazine of the Associated Equipment Distributors, my monthly column focused on the use of Dashboards as a management tool. You can see the article at www.rjslee.com under the Articles tab, CED January 2012. I suppose the promotion of Dashboard management started with Jack Welsh’s book […]

Can we make a difference

The transition to team management while still encouraging curiosity is struggling as management doesn’t know how to encourage risk taking without contradicting the work of the team. The story of the ages is that people will take risks when they have less to lose and be risk averse when they have a lot to lose. How […]

Are employees looking around today?

December was the first month in many years that had more people quitting their jobs than being laid off or fired. Is this the beginning of musical chairs with employees? Is the labor market now strong enough to absorb all the employees that feel they were hard done by over the past three or four […]