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The Parts Business Going Forward

The Parts Business Going Forward.

Let me ask a few questions, of you, if I might:

  • What does your future in the parts business look like?
  • Is it a continuation of what you are doing now?
  • Are the results you are experiencing satisfying for you personally?
  • Is that the best you can do?
  • If you can do more what is holding you back?

By now you’re probably thinking, “WOW. That isn’t fair. You ask tough questions.”

Here is something to consider. If you continue to do what you have been doing you are facing extinction. That is a fact. I am 100% in agreement with that statement. Are you?

Let’s have a look at what goes on today. The phone rings or someone walks into your store, what many of you call your branch. An employee, in your parts department, if they aren’t already busy, will greet the customer. They will then proceed to determine what the customer needs. What is the customer doing? Rarely is that question asked. Would that question be helpful? Of course, it would be helpful. Then the parts employee will open up his computer system, if the parts employee knows who the customer is they can proceed to open a parts sales order. If they don’t know the customer they have to ask. And then they find the customer on their business system and then proceed to open a parts sales order.

How about processing parts orders for the service group? Does your technician walk to a back counter? Then a parts employee and the technician determine what parts are required for the work? Or perhaps the technician calls into the parts department and the process is similar to a customer parts sales order. Does the technician order their own parts using an electronic catalogue of the parts and service manuals and enter their parts orders to your business system themselves?

How about an instore display area? Do you have one? How do you operate the instore area? What is the number of customers coming in to your store on a daily/weekly basis to place parts orders? How many parts are sold from the instore displays on a daily/weekly basis?

Finally, we come to the internet. Do you have a facility that will allow your customers to place their orders online? How often are customers looking at your web site? How many customers check on your parts inventory availability? How many customers check your prices online? Do you allow your customers to have access to an electronic catalogue? Do you allow your customers to have access to service manual information online? How many customers place orders online through your website on a daily/weekly basis? Does your business system provide statistics on the number of customers visiting daily/weekly? How about price checks on the same frequency? How about availability checks for the same frequency? If a customer checks prices and availability but does not place an order does your business system notify the parts department daily on which customers were involved? Does a parts employee call the customer when that happens and determine what the customer was looking for and if they in fact found what they needed?

I guess the real question is “Are you working in the business or on the business?”

Perhaps even more directly are you in the order processing business or the selling business?

Or finally, are you in the parts business or the part number business?

The answer to these many questions should provoke some serious thinking.

As Jack Welsh used to say “when the world around you are changing at a rate faster than you are …. The end is near.”

The decisions you make will be with you for a long, long time.

The Time is NOW.

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Change #MondayBlogs

The past two weeks I spent reviewing two great dealers in Europe. One was in Norway and the other in Belgium. They were both family owned businesses with a strong history and terrific presence in their markets.

What I wanted to point out, however, is not how good they are at what they do, nor how skilled their employees are or how well their leadership executes strategies. No, it is how they view change.

Each part of the world seems to view change through a different lens. In North America one would think that American Companies would be right our front about innovation and change. Not so fast. In Canada you might be thinking about the conservative Canadian being more entrenched in tradition and not that open to change. Hang on there. Europe with all the centuries of tradition would be another case. Similarly, the South and Central America, the Middle East, Asia Pacific, Russia and Africa. All areas approach the need to change differently.

Change is difficult and except for a very small number of us would not be part of our lives. We love predictability. We struggle to learn how to live on our own, or the changes required when we get married or have children. We struggle to learn our jobs and get good at them. And once we get comfortable with our lives BAM along comes change.

I grew up in the late fifties and sixties, the 1900 version folks. Do you think the “baby boomers” see and have seen change? For starters think about this: The “Baby Boomers” were the first generation to have credit cards. No matter what you think about credit cards they have had a dramatic impact on the lives of everyone in the developed world. But the element of the credit card that I want to focus on is the unintended consequence of debt. We all have too much debt. Right? Look at governments, then look at credit card debt, then look at student debt. Need I say more?

Next look at Technology. I took a minor at University in Computer Science and learned how to “wire” Unit Record equipment. That is true. Most people would think about Unit Record computing in the same way that they would think about an “Outhouse” and indoor plumbing. But look how far the “computer” has come in the last seventy-five years. The last set of disc drives that I had to purchase cost over $1,000,000 that is right one million dollars. There were two banks of disc drives each four drives requiring a control unit. Each disc drive held a removed 44-megabyte storage unit. That eight-disc drive set up gave me 352 mega-bytes of disc storage and the cost was more than $1,000,000. Imagine that. Today I can buy a thumb drive with 8 GIGA-BYTES of storage for less than $20.00. How about that? Then we have cellular telephones. They are everywhere. They didn’t exist a short ten years ago. And what about AI, Artificial Intelligence? Big Blue, from IBL, beats the best chess player in the world. Watson wins Jeopardy. The self-driving car, the Roomba Robot vacuum, photography and on and on and on.

Jack Welsh, when he was CEO of General Electric is famous for saying “when the world around you is changing at a rate faster than you are, the end is near.” Look around you. The world is changing very quickly and shows no signs of letting up anytime soon.

We need to embrace change as difficult as that might seem to many of you. To resist change is to be run over. So, look around. What could you do differently? What do you do that you don’t even need to do anymore? The world will be a better place and your job will be more enjoyable if you do things more effectively. The only thing in life that we don’t have enough of is time. Take advantage of all the time you are given. Make you job and your world a better place.

The Time is NOW.

Friday Filosophy #2015-31

In Friday Filosophy #2015-31 we are taking a look at leadership.

The world has changed rapidly over the past three decades and continues to change rapidly. If anything it is changing even more rapidly than it appears to be. However, there are some constants. From the Chairman at VW to the leader of the House of Representatives, we are seeing in front of us the challenges and difficulties in the position of leadership. Without making too much of these two examples you can see the challenges of CEOs in a number of different areas and Industries. Here are some quotes to consider from business and political leaders over the past half century.

I hope you enjoy them.

 

The key to successful leadership is influence, not authority.

Ken Blanchard

 

Before you are a leader, success is all about growing yourself. When you become a leader, success is all about growing others.

Jack Welsh

 

Are YOU growing yourself? Do you continue to learn? Do you read business books?

 

Management is about arranging and telling. Leadership is about nurturing and enhancing.

Tom Peters

 

Courage is what it takes to stand up and speak; courage is also what it takes to sit down and listen.

Winston Churchill

 

Leadership is not about titles, positions or flowcharts. It is about one life influencing another.

John C. Maxwell

 

Don’t follow the crowd, let the crowd follow you.

Margaret Thatcher

 

A leader is best when people barely know he exists, when his work is done, his aim fulfilled, they will say: we did it ourselves.

Lao Tzu

 

Isn’t that rather different than “You didn’t build that?”

 

I never dreamed about success. I worked for it.

Estee Lauder

 

We are not interested in the possibilities of defeat; they do not exist.

Queen Victoria

 

My job is not to be easy on people. My job is to takes these great people we have and to push them and make them even better.

Steve Jobs

 

There are two kinds of stones, as everyone knows. One of which rolls.

Amelia Earhart

 

I was never the smartest guy in the room. From the first person I hired, I was never the smartest guy in the room. And that’s a big deal. And if you’re going to be a leader – if you’re the leader and the smartest guy in the world – in the room, you’ve got real problems.

Jack Welsh

 

It is delusional to consider yourself the answer to all things.

Leadership and learning are indispensable to each other.

John F Kennedy

 

Management is doing things right; leadership is doing the right things.

Peter Drucker

 

A leader is a dealer in hope.

Napoleon Bonaparte

 

Too many companies believe people are interchangeable. Truly gifted people never are. They have unique talents. Such people cannot be forced into roles they are not suited for, nor should they be. Effective leaders allow great people to do the work they were born to do.

Warren Bennis

 

Contrary to popular opinion, leadership is not a reserved position for a reserved group of people who were elected or appointed, ordained or enthroned. Leadership is self-made, self-retained, self-inculcated and then exposed through a faithful, sincere, and exemplary life.

Israelmore Avivor

 

Leadership is the art of giving people a platform for spreading ideas that work.

Seth Godin

 

Let me close with some quotes from Charles Handy. Influential to the business world like Peter Drucker was in the US, but from his perch in Great Britain.

 

  1. The moment will arrive when you are comfortable with who you are, and what you are – bald or old or fat or poor, successful or struggling – when you don’t feel the need to apologize for anything or to deny anything. To be comfortable in your own skin is the beginning of strength.
  2. We cannot wait for great visions from great people, for they are in short supply. It is up to us to light our own small fires in the darkness.
  3. Change is only another word for growth, another synonym for learning.
  4. Instead of a national curriculum for education, what is really needed is an individual curriculum for every child.
  5. Creativity needs a bit of untidiness. Make everything too neat and there is no room for experiment.

 

The time is now.