Posts

Friday Filosophy v.10.22.2021

/in , /by

Friday Filosophy v.10.22.2021

Aesop  620–564 BCE was a Greek fabulist and storyteller credited with a number of fables now collectively known as Aesop’s Fables. Although his existence remains unclear and no writings by him survive, numerous tales credited to him were gathered across the centuries and in many languages in a storytelling tradition that continues to this day. Many of the tales are characterized by animals and inanimate objects that speak, solve problems, and generally have human characteristics.

Scattered details of Aesop’s life can be found in ancient sources, including Aristotle, Herodotus, and Plutarch. An ancient literary work called The Aesop Romance tells an episodic, probably highly fictional version of his life, including the traditional description of him as a strikingly ugly slave who by his cleverness acquires freedom and becomes an adviser to kings and city-states.

  • No act of kindness, no matter how small, is ever wasted.
  • We hang the petty thieves and appoint the great ones to public office.
  • A liar will not be believed, even when he speaks the truth.
  • Every truth has two sides; it is as well to look at both, before we commit ourselves to either.
  • After all is said and done, more is said than done.
  • It is not only fine feathers that make fine birds
  • The level of our success is limited only by our imagination and no act of kindness, however small, is ever wasted.
  • We often give our enemies the means for our own destruction.
  • The smaller the mind the greater the conceit.
  • Any excuse will serve a tyrant.
  • Self-conceit may lead to self-destruction
  • He that is discontented in one place will seldom be happy in another.
  • He that always gives way to others will end in having no principles of his own.
  • The unhappy derive comfort from the misfortunes of others.
  • Better be wise by the misfortunes of others than by your own.

The Time is Now.

Did you enjoy this blog? Read more great blog posts here.
For our course lists, please click here.

The Digital Dealership, Your Audience: Strategic Segmentation Part 1

/in , , /by

The Digital Dealership, Your Audience: Strategic Segmentation Part 1

In tonight’s blog post, guest writer Mets Kramer continues his exploration of the digital dealership. Part 1 of a series, tonight we look at strategic segmentation of your audience.

You customers are only a small part of your Audience

All of us have heard the term “audience” over the last few years.  Long gone is the past association of audience with something the queen granted or with sitcom television.  An audience is no longer a small group of people because the internet has grown everyone’s audience.

Yet, even with the automatic growth of everyone’s audience, many dealers don’t think about their audience as they build their digital dealership.  Many of us think about our customers as audience.   Customers come through the door, call our phones and send us emails.  Our customers work with us daily, weekly or monthly as they use the equipment they purchased, or are looking for newer equipment.   Still, our customers are only part of our audience, even if they are a small and important subgroup.

The broader concept of audience is important for us to consider in several ways.  It’s important first when planning our marketing, second in designing operations and finally in developing our strategy.   For this article let’s start with Strategy, since it lays the groundwork for the rest.

The first thing to think about is how will you define or identify your audience.  What groups of people and companies will you want to draw in and communicate with?   This will vary depending on the type of dealership you have, and will need to be adjusted, as you reconsider who your audience is.  This is called segmentation.

For example, for a few large, well-established dealers the audience tends to be fairly set.  It typically consists of all the users of their brand of equipment, in their territory.  Potentially it might only include those customers with accounts in the dealer’s business system.  Another example is a smaller farm and yard equipment dealership.  Here the number of interactions with each customer will be lower, and the dealership needs to find new customers constantly.   A strategic approach to audience segmentation will be different for both these example dealers, but for both, clearly defining it lays the ground work for their business.

To define a dealership’s focus audience, we need to determine what audience segments fit into your strategy.  Start with these 3 audience segments or categories.   How important is each to your business?

  1. Repeat or Existing Customers
  2. Prospect Customers
  3. Unknown Audience (This is typically where your new leads come from)

Next, consider where your audience members are.

Are they:   Local, Regional, National or even farther?  How far do you want to reach? How will your strategy differ for those near you and those far away?

With all the audience segments identified, and priority segments selected, we can create a strategy for each of them.

For each segment the dealership wants to reach, 4 main things must be considered.   First the message, next the communication channels and third the response method.  The final item to be considered is an important part of what makes your dealership the Digital Dealership, it is the integration of known audience information with each strategy.

In creating the strategy dealers need to think about the message.   This is often the product they want to communicate to each audience segment.  Is the product the machine, the dealer’s experience or something else?   Many dealers think they are selling equipment when a significant aspect of value is the dealership.  When communicating to unknown audience members, they merely provide the details of a machine in inventory, they forget to include the more important value the dealership brings.

The strategy should consider the channel for communication.   Dealers should understand what digital channels and platforms their target audience segments are on, where the audience will see or receive the message.  Channels include traditional communications, social media, email etc.  Depending on the product and the audience segment, different channels should be used.  Don’t use the same channel for everything and assume your message reaches the audience.

An often-forgotten aspect of communicating with the audience is the response method.   Typically, the faster the response from the dealer is the better.  Also, the response method should more closely matched the original communication method.  For example, if people are reading your email, they likely want to respond the same way.   We often see dealers mismatching the channel and the response method and seeing poor engagement.

Finally, before we can look at marketing and operations in the next article, we always need to consider the most important aspect of the Digital Dealership, the use of information. This starts by having clear strategies for each segment.  By using the information already known about the audience to fine tune the strategy, we get a much more targeted strategy.   For example, sending marketing campaigns to customers and prospect customers about a new backhoe, to customers known to have backhoes of a replacement age.   Image if your next email campaign started with “Hi Mets, because you currently own a 2012 Case 580SN, we’d like to share information on this 2017 CAT 430F.

In my next article I’ll continue and look specifically at Marketing and advertising to segmented audiences.  I’ll also post a work sheet for your dealership to work through to get started.

Mets Kramer

Mets.kramer@strategicevolutions.ca

Did you enjoy this blog? Read more great blog posts here.
For our course lists, please click here.

From Paper to Glass

/in , , , /by

From Paper to Glass

In a recent Podcast with Alex Schuessler, we were talking about technology and the changes that have taken place in the marketplace within our Industry. I have long used the example of the Steam Engine being replaced by the Electric Engine of how we resist changes. Yes, the tool was changed – the engine – but the methods and procedures did not change for a generation. Changing the tool was traumatic enough for the leadership of the day. They couldn’t handle that much change in their lives.

Fast forward to the current situation and the area of technology. The Large Computers arrived in larger businesses sold by consultants for the most part. Thus, a new tool was introduced to the market. We wrote everything on our usual forms and sent the “paper” documents to what was then called “Data Processing.” The information on the paper was punched onto cards. These cards were then processed through readers and then passed on to the computer for processing. The computer was then used to print a report of what was punched into the cards and processed that was sent back to the originator or the document in the first place. This was a lot of extra work. It was justified in the speed with which it could be processed once it was corrected.

The computers changed and the need for punched cards was eliminated when we had the arrival of “Computer Terminals.” This is the beginning of what Alex dubbed the “Paper to Glass” transition. It is a beautiful description of what has happened in dealer business systems, we have taken the older processes and procedures and methods of writing things on a piece of paper and instead of writing them down we have typed the information into a computer screen, from writing on a piece of paper to typing on a screen of glass. Rather a good precise description. This is exactly the same as changing the Steam Engine to an Electric Engine.

Typically, a generation is described as twenty years. With the dates of the 1960’s as the starting point for computers to the 2020’s we are talking about taking three generations to adapt and adjust or methods compared to one generation in the 1800’s. How smart do we appear to be now?

I have talked for years, perhaps decades about the three questions that a customer asks when they need to purchase parts from a dealer. Have you got it? How much is it? How long do I have to wait to get it? I believe that is very straight forward. These are the same questions I have when I want to purchase something. BUT. The first question someone asks when a customer calls into a dealer to order parts or walks into the business is never one of those three questions listed above. No, the first question we ask is “Who are you?” We need to know that because the first thing we have to enter on the glass is the customer number. It is very similar to writing the customer number of the order parts sales order form. Does that sound like progress? Or have we simply gone from paper to glass? Can’t we do better than that?

If we look at the service department, we have similar issues. We need to conduct an inspection, either with telematics and sensors or a physical inspection, to determine what is wrong. Then create a quotation, which in most cases is an estimate. Then determine the time line for the repair, establish a schedule, assign the work and complete the work to fix the problem. Of course, it is more complicated than simply finding what part is required to compete a repair but that sounds like a paper to glass transition to me. What about standard times and flat rate pricing? What about understanding objectively the technical skills of each technician and assigning someone to complete the job who has those skills?

I can go on and on in this vein.

Today we have a smaller number of DMS providers in the industry; CDK, DIS, EBS, e-emphasis, Infor, JD Edwards, Oracle, SAP, XAPT and others. (I am sure I missed a few) Each of them is based on the Paper to Glass process.

The real dilemma in all of this to me is that when you change your DMS it is not the cost of the hardware or even of the software that is the real expense. No, it is the retraining of all of your employees in the new methods that are being introduced. Then you go through the curtain on never wanting to go through that change again. It was so painful.

So, Alex called this “Paper to Glass” and he is in the Technology aspect of the industry. I think he is on to something very important and we will talk about this more as time passes.

The Time is Now.

Did you enjoy this blog? Read more great blog posts here.
For our course lists, please click here.

Friday Filosophy v.10.15.2021

/in /by

FRIDAY FILOSOPHY v.10.15.2021

In the last two decades with the arrival of social media and their platforms we have started to see various new challenges to one of our most fundamental rights; the Freedom of Speech. These quotations and thoughts should provoke some thinking on this subject. It is very critical to our lives and our future that we protect our rights.

  • If the freedom of speech is taken away then dumb and silent, we may be led, like sheep to the slaughter. George Washington
  • The only way to deal with an unfree world is to become so absolutely free that your very existence is an act of rebellion. Albert Camus
  • It does not take a majority to prevail… but rather an irate, tireless minority, keen on setting brushfires of freedom in the minds of men. Samuel Adams
  • May we think of freedom, not as the right to do as we please, but as the opportunity to do what is right. Peter Marshall
  • Free speech carries with it some freedom to listen. Warren E. Burger
  • Freedom consists not in doing what we like, but in having the right to do what we ought. Pope John Paul II
  • ‘Emergencies’ have always been the pretext on which the safeguards of individual liberty have been eroded. Friedrich August von Hayek
  • It is difficult to free fools from the chains they revere. Voltaire
  • Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn’t pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same. Ronald Reagan
  • When we lose the right to be different, we lose the privilege to be free. Charles Evans Hughes
  • A hero is someone who understands the responsibility that comes with his freedom. Bob Dylan
  • Freedom makes a huge requirement of every human being. With freedom comes responsibility. For the person who is unwilling to grow up, the person who does not want to carry his own weight, this is a frightening prospect. Eleanor Roosevelt
  • We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Thomas Jefferson
  • For to be free is not merely to cast off one’s chains, but to live in a way that respects and enhances the freedom of others. Nelson Mandela
  • The liberties of a people never were, nor ever will be, secure, when the transactions of their rulers may be concealed from them. Patrick Henry
  • Freedom and justice cannot be parceled out in pieces to suit political convenience. I don’t believe you can stand for freedom for one group of people and deny it to others. Coretta Scott King
  • What is freedom of expression? Without the freedom to offend, it ceases to exist. Salman Rushdie
  • What is ominous is the ease with which some people go from saying that they don’t like something to saying that the government should forbid it. When you go down that road, don’t expect freedom to survive very long. Thomas Sowell

The Time is Now.

Did you enjoy this blog? Read more great blog posts here.
For our course lists, please click here.

The Future Work Place

/in , , /by

The Future Work Place

The Future Work Place – What Will it Look Like?

The Pandemic has had a devastating impact on life around the world. Many of us have lost close friends, co-workers, associates and family members. It has been very personal. On top of that many of us have had either short term or long-term changes in our jobs as well as in the nature of our work. And interestingly some of us have reevaluated our lives and how we live them. It has been a very dramatic change in almost all of what we got used to prior to the Pandemic.

Now I have questions. What will be the future of our work? Will we work from home or in the office, or some hybrid? Obviously, technology will play a much larger role in our work and home lives. We can already see rather stark statistics. Ed Gordon has been publishing and providing us with blogs called Job Shock. He is pointing to the difficulties that the education work is having providing work ready people to the work place. Education has changed and is undergoing serious challenges where standardized testing is going away and not being used by universities for admission purposes in many cases. The value provided by the ACT and SAT tests and even Briggs-Myers are being challenged. Diversity issues have become much more important in the work place. Demographics are working against us as baby boomers are leaving the work force. Then we see an amazing fact: currently there are ten million job openings in the US, which is more than the total number of unemployed people looking for work. So yes, I do have questions.

Even before the pandemic things were changing but it was slow, as in most changes. Four-day work weeks were becoming more common. Second and even Third shifts were becoming more common in distribution and other Industries that had not seen much in the way of the shift world. The generational stress between the baby boomers who expected people working in the office was pitted against the Millennials and GenX who wanted the opportunity to work remotely.

A recent Gallup survey found that 40% of the US workforce was actively looking for a change in their jobs. The main reason being that the employees did not feel engaged. Into that mix comes the Society for Human Resource Management. They are suggesting that flexible work arrangement can provide several advantages.

  • Improved Employee Retention
  • More Success in Recruiting
  • Reduced Hiring and Training Expenses
  • Improved Employee Productivity
  • More Diversity in the Workforce
  • Increased Employee Engagement

Harvard Business School, in recent research, found that 81% of employees either didn’t want to go back to the office or would prefer a hybrid schedule going forward. So, we are going through another change where business will have to support employees who can and want to work at home.

In the 1980’s and 1990’s when the rate of change was slower employers were able to find the required skills outside the company and hire the skills required. That is no longer the case. Yet many companies are still in denial and refuse to spend money training their current employees.

Then the recent McKinsey Global Survey states that 69% of the reported respondents reported an increase in skill building. This pandemic has disrupted the skills foundation dramatically and companies are starting to acknowledge that they need to build new skills internally. Skills are lacking in empathy and leadership, adaptability and communications and problem solving. Critical thinking skills are seriously missing. According to Deloitte it can cost six times more to hire externally than to develop skills by training internally.

All of this is pointing to a serious challenge to our leaders. One that they have not had to face and deal with in their careers. The most important asset in any business is their employees. Yet this is the one asset that leadership has completely disregarded. They hire people and then leave them alone. If the skills required are no longer available, they get rid of the current worker and hire new people. It has been true and, in their minds, working for over three decades. This is no longer working. It should never have been the strategy. People are the most important asset in any way you look at it. And please don’t forget that this need for employee development is at every level in a business, from the owner to the least important job function.

I have advocated for years that we have skill sets tied to job functions. We put our assessment programs in place specifically to address this issue. We also wanted depth charts like in sports. Who is in line to follow the current leadership? We wanted succession planning. We also wanted annual performance reviews. These reviews allow positive discussions with each employee to determine the needs and wants of each employee. They provide an audience for discussions on continuous improvement. We have a lot of talent in our employees. Everyone of them. You all know I am interested in helping people identify their potential and then help everyone achieve that potential.

We must get going. Time is passing. And time is an element we don’t get back.

The Future Workplace will embrace new thinking. It will experiment more. We will try things. We have to make more progress in improving everything we do for our employees and our customers and our suppliers. We have to provide an environment where everyone wants to learn. We have to stop reacting and start innovating. We need to be able to adapt more readily. Some people call it agility. I call it basic common sense.

As a teacher I have always said common sense isn’t particularly common. Today we have a huge opportunity to turn the negativity since March 2020 into a positive response. Making the future of our desires and abilities. Are you ready?

The Time is Now.

Did you enjoy this blog? Read more great blog posts here.
For our course lists, please click here.

Friday Filosophy v.10.08.2021

/in , /by

FRIDAY FILOSOPHY v.10.08.2021

We have been focused on individuals in our Friday Filosophy. I am shifting this week to deal with personal issues, our lives. Over time there have been wonderful individuals who have made powerful statements regarding life. Perhaps some reflection on these people and these quotations is warranted. Enjoy

 

  • Nothing in life is to be feared, it is only to be understood. Now is the time to understand more, so that we may fear less. Marie Curie
  • We do not remember days, we remember moments. Cesare Pavese
  • The truth is you don’t know what is going to happen tomorrow. Life is a crazy ride, and nothing is guaranteed. Eminem
  • Do not dwell in the past, do not dream of the future, concentrate the mind on the present moment. Buddha
  • Life is what happens while you are busy making other plans. John Lennon
  • He who has a why to live can bear almost any how. Friedrich Nietzsche
  • Life is a dream for the wise, a game for the fool, a comedy for the rich, a tragedy for the poor. Sholom Aleichem
  • Life is a song – sing it. Life is a game – play it. Life is a challenge – meet it. Life is a dream – realize it. Life is a sacrifice – offer it. Life is love – enjoy it. Sai Baba
  • Never be bullied into silence. Never allow yourself to be made a victim. Accept no one’s definition of your life; define yourself. Harvey Fierstein
  • Open your eyes, look within. Are you satisfied with the life you’re living? Bob Marley
  • Every man dies. Not every man really lives. William Wallace
  • Life isn’t about finding yourself. Life is about creating yourself. George Bernard Shaw
  • When I stand before God at the end of my life, I would hope that I would not have a single bit of talent left, and could say, ‘I used everything you gave me’. Erma Bombeck
  • A life is not important except in the impact it has on other lives. Jackie Robinson
  • The only disability in life is a bad attitude. Scott Hamilton
  • Growth is the only evidence of life. John Henry Newman
  • Our prime purpose in this life is to help others. And if you can’t help them, at least don’t hurt them. Dalai Lama

The Time is Now.

Did you enjoy this blog? Read more great blog posts here.
For our course lists, please click here.

The 6 Behaviours of Successful Business Owners

/in , , /by

The 6-Behaviours of Successful Business Owners

In tonight’s blog post, guest writer Bruce Baker shares the 6 Behaviours of Successful Business Owners. These key behaviours can make the difference in keeping your business thriving.

You have undoubtedly heard the depressing statistics of how many businesses fail within their first few years. I am one of the many who talk about the causes of failure and what to do about it and have the privilege of looking from the outside-in and the inside-out. I to have and continue to have my own experiences and understand why some business owners succeed and others fail repeatedly. Business owners only succeed because once they know what they want, they:

  • First, accept the challenge and work that builds their success and the failure that naturally forms as part of these efforts.
  • Choose to partner with those that have been successful not because of their “success” but because of what they learned from their “failures.”
  • Relentlessly execute to achieve what they’ve set out to do but not at their demise!

Human beings only make progress because of adversity and their insistence and commitment to execution – nothing more, nothing less. I wrote an article several years ago trying to explain (and justify, I suppose) how business owners fall in love with their goals but out of love with the actions that make these goals a reality.

The notion that business owners/CEOs would not grab what was staring them in the face to ensure success was mind-boggling.  I asked myself, “are people lazy?”; “are people this complacent?”.  Many are guilty of laziness and complacency when they don’t execute and fail as a result. Still, many also act out like a “wounded animal,” blaming everything they can other than themselves. Why? Because they become driven by their goals first instead of being aware and committing to the concessions they will have to make as part of achieving success.

Business owners I work with achieve their success because they choose to think and behave differently in the following six ways:

  1. They decide what they want but become excited by what they must do to become successful, regardless of whether it’s gaining or sacrificing.
  2. They expect and plan for failure.
  3. They seek out those that are successful as a result of their failures.
  4. They map out their plan and system(s) they will use to respond to inevitable failure that they will use to achieve success.
  5. They will succeed and be motivated to succeed again.
  6. They will fail and be motivated to fail again in the name of increasing their strength and resilience.
  7. They will not point fingers to justify their failures but identify the reason for failure and use it as a reason to continue to succeed.

I would love to take credit for their success, but realistically, I can’t. I provide business owners guidance and best-in-class business practices, but only they can decide if they want to succeed. I experience their successes and failures with them, but the successful ones see their failures as building blocks, not obstacles to their achievements.

You don’t need to be an expert Accountant or have a post-graduate degree in business to be successful. What you need is resilience, drive and a sense of humour!

Do you truly understand yourself?

  • Do you know exactly what your natural behaviours are that are either driving your success or holding you back?
  • Can you identify and take advantage of what drives you and what demotivates you in building your business and know what to do about it?
  • Do you know what the core competencies you need to develop to enhance your chances of business success?

If any of these questions resonate for you, send me an email at bbaker@4workplaces.com letting me know why they resonate with you. I’ll send you a complimentary assessment to complete so you can start discovering what you are not aware of about “you”! Once you become aware, your world opens and your mind is officially blown!

Did you enjoy this blog? Read more great blog posts here.
For our course lists, please click here.

How Do You Build Trust with Your Employees?

/in , , /by

How do you build trust with your employees?

This week, guest writer Sonya Law walks us through the critical importance of the employee performance review in part two of her series. In “How do you build trust with your employees,” Sonya shares the methods of trust building we can all use in our businesses.

The irregularity of the sometimes twice a year Performance Review at mid-year and End of Year (EOY) does not lend itself to building trusted relationships.

What is going to build trust is:

  • Approachability – for some this is an open-door policy that physical signal that they are open for business. Others they like to walk the floor and talk with people and be seen.  Either way both methods work and encourage people, employees to come and talk with you.
  • Congruency – for some managers they may have an open-door policy and walk the floor but may give off a signal that they are not approachable. This is where emotional intelligence is important in leaders to have a self-awareness of their body language and tone when talking with employees to ensure that they are also presenting themselves as open and approachable.
  • Regularity – the consistency and regularity of these exchanges with employees encourages people to open up and builds trust.

As human beings we are wired to detect if people or situations are threatening and are constantly picking up on cues in our environment and behaviors of others.  To assess whether a person or situation is psychologically safe, the workplace is no different.  When we build an organisation that is built on trust and it’s not just a token value but a lived experience, we experience greater levels of:

  • Innovation – feeling safe to share ideas without them getting shut down without a fear of making mistakes, which enables learning.
  • Collaboration – when ideas flow freely amongst the team, in a collegiate way this balance of power ensures that everyone is heard and the focus is on a better solution.
  • Problem Solving – this collegiate environment encourages the team to solve problems together rather than a focus on individuals.

Some organisations value technical skills the hard skills; over leaders who are more approachable and collaborative as these are seen as soft skills.

48% of employees in workforce in USA are looking to change jobs, for more flexibility, to align with cultures and leaders who display these soft skills and clarity of purpose.  Cultures who truly engage with their people in an authentic way. Leaders who are self-aware, open, transparent in their communication and vulnerable, win the hearts and minds of employees and extract the discretionary effort that hits the bottom-line time and time again.

Most organisations know what they do, how they do it but not why, these workplaces are stuck in fire fighter mode, directionless and leaking talent, innovation and in most cases money.

So where do we go from here?

Make feedback and performance reviews a habit, stack it with best practice:

  1. People being aligned with the STRATEGY
  2. Remind employees of your WHY
  3. Connect people with your PURPOSE

The business landscape is rapidly changing and the nature of work and skills required are different.

Businesses need to reflect back to inform their strategy of what is needed to achieve business growth in the following areas:

  1. Continuous improvement
  2. Remove road blocks
  3. Market intelligence – competitor activity
  4. Customer intelligence – customer buying behavior
  5. Pandemic fatigue – shift towards holistic view of employee wellbeing
  6. AGILE – how can we become more agile
  7. Scalable Technology – how are we using technology to solve societies problem of social connectedness and remote work.

In effect how are we building a culture of feedback, performance and innovation, that is engaged and with a common purpose and a spirit of connection, belonging and community.

Humans are the greatest adapters:

In an article titled, Humans May Be the Most Adaptive Species, Scientific American:

“Constant climate change may have given Homo sapiens their flexibility.  Man had two key advantages: our brains and our capacity for culture.  Our brains are essentially social brains. We share information, we create and pass on knowledge. That’s the means by which humans are able to adjust to new situations, and it’s what differentiates humans from our earlier ancestors, and our earlier ancestors from primates”.

If we take care of the people we work with they will share knowledge, pass down knowledge and innovate and be agile, our role as leaders is to provide an environment that fosters trust for them to thrive.

Did you enjoy this blog? Read more great blog posts here.
For our course lists, please click here.

Five First Tasks to Becoming the Digital Dealer

/in , , /by

Five First Tasks to becoming the Digital Dealer

Guest writer Mets Kramer continues his series on the Digital Dealership with today’s post: Five First Tasks to Becoming the Digital Dealer.

When I started as a service supervisor, part of my job was closing invoices.  On average, I probably opened (and therefore should have closed) 2 work orders per day.  Yet my metric target was 9 days average invoicing cycle   That meant 9 days between the last day someone worked on the machine and when the invoice was sent.  At the time I thought that seemed quite reasonable.  There were always some outstanding items on the work order, or more commonly I was too busy to close them faster.  The metric was an average number of days, so some work orders were much slower to invoice.  Unfortunately, as we all know, invoices sent well after the end of work are more likely to be disputed and less likely to be paid.

Years later, now responsible for all service operations, I started to ask myself where the 9 days came from.  Why not 10 or 8 or 7 or any other number? There was always some reason to be found why an invoice couldn’t be sent yet.   Then I started wondering why, when I send my car in to get work done at the dealership, do I get an invoice right when I want my car back.  Why don’t they wait 9 days to send me my bill?   I came to realize the reason was because the car dealership had figured out how to make sure every part and charge was on the work order before the work was done.  They do this because they won’t get paid if they give your car back before they send a bill, and they can’t hold your car until the bill is ready.

The car dealership had done the work and created tasks to remove all the problems that delayed getting everything on the work order on time.  So, I started the same process at the branches.  Finding out what stopped invoicing the same day and found ways to remove the hurdle.  It included using purchase orders with confirmed values, real-time digital service reports and even just better vendors. We even changed the metric on invoicing cycle. 75% of work orders had to be closed within one day, 25% could average up to 5 days.  This new metric created tasks for people to figure out how to prevent delays and we showed it was possible to invoice same day in almost all cases.

It’s what Ron calls the Art of the Possible.

In 1993, I got my first dial up internet access, via my 14.4 modem, on my IBM ThinkPad 700.  That’s almost 30 years ago.  Clearly the internet has been around for a long time.  Now, in 2021, here we are talking about the digital dealership and still have open tasks and reasons why we aren’t as digital as most other industries.  The truth is, it is possible!  Possible to have our dealerships capable and positioned where we want them to be.

The Art of the Possible, is about completing the tasks you know exist, to achieve your goals.   It might be a matter of getting some additional help to complete the task.  Either because of manpower, knowledge, or technical limitations.  Sometimes it’s as simple as implementing what you already have in existing systems.   Many of you will agree, you have software systems in the dealership with capabilities you don’t use.  Even though it would make the dealership better.

We’d like to help. Make some time to send Ron Slee or myself a list of 3 – 5 tasks you want to complete. These tasks should be oriented toward a goal aligned with becoming a Digital Dealership and from any department. Examples can include “I’d like to allow customers more flexible ways to communicate with us” or “I’d like to store and use information properly to drive sales”.  Send us your open tasks and we will help you work through implementing them.

A few years ago, I went to see a dealer after my presentation at AED.  I presented on using customer fleet data to predict sales and drive sales activities.  This dealer had all the capacity to implement this concept, and even agreed they should be doing it, but it was still an open item on their list, for the last 20 years. Don’t let small hurdles get in the way of being a better dealership for your customers, don’t let a list of POSSIBLE tasks stop you from becoming a Digital Dealer.

Did you enjoy this blog? Read more great blog posts here.
For our course lists, please click here.

 

 

Why Do I Do What I Do, Part Two

/in , , /by

Why Do I Do What I Do, Part Two

In tonight’s blog post, guest writer Ryszard Chciuk brings us a sequel post: Why Do I Do What I Do, Part Two.

It is a very sad fact; most people have no idea about the meaning of their lives. This is because it is really hard mental work to find it out, and people do not like to overload their brains. As Victor Frankl mentioned in Man’s Search for Meaning, those people are caught in the “existential vacuum”. “They do not even know what they wish to do. For such a man No instinct tells him what he has to do, and no tradition tells him what he ought to do; sometimes he does not even know what he wishes to do. Instead, he either wishes to do what other people do (conformism) or he does what other people wish him to do (totalitarianism)”. Those poor people are very close to you, maybe in the organization you are working for.

During the lectures in Vienna in 1946, Victor Frankl listed the four main reasons a man wants to kill himself. One of them is the lack of faith in the meaning of the rest of life. Such a person can be very near to you.

As I declared in the article Why I do what I do, I believe the person searching for the meaning of his life can be inspired by the mission of the team he is a part of and will adopt it as a kind of response to his problem of not knowing that. And those who already have a sense of meaning will realize that working for the team is helping them to fulfill their lives’ missions.

Following that concept, around twenty years ago, I decided to start the creation of a new after-sales department for Volvo CE in my country by presenting my own professional mission to my new colleagues. I told them:

We provide machine users with the highest machine availability at the lowest cost of operation, by delivering service works exceeding customers’ expectations, and keeping profitability on the level assuring steady development of the service department and securing financial liquidity of our dealership in a downturn in the economy.

When you read my department mission, you could say:

  • They are devoted to the well-being of their customers.
  • They think customers’ priority is the highest machine availability and the   lowest cost of operation.
  • They are going to satisfy those needs by lowering the cost of machines’   operation by providing customers with excellent services.
  • They are also devoted to the well-being of their dealership.
  • They want to earn enough money to develop their service potential and to   survive in the market turmoil.

You can ask: and what about employees of the aftersales department, what about colleagues working for other silos? What you are going to do for your suppliers and local society. Will you respect the environment?

I was also not very satisfied with that definition. It was already too long to memorize! We could remove part of the definition regarding earning money, but I wanted to be honest with our customers and also, I wanted to keep our owners as my friends.

It was not the best expression of the idea I lived myself with, expression of my WHY I do what I do. My life’s meaning, my mission was ­— and still is — to make the world a little bit better than it was when I was born. Despite our saying “with the good intentions the Hell is cobbled”, I immodestly or naively believe it is possible.

That’s why it was a must to develop our vision and the main principles (values). We also had to work intensively on the organizational culture.

As I mentioned in my post Principia for After-sales, Part Two, it was necessary to present the whole idea simultaneously. I used to do it myself in the course of the introductory training for all new employees.

Then, most importantly was to prove to all my direct and indirect subordinates that I would treat those fancy words seriously, despite my personal cost, all the time. Unfortunately, it was rather common within our corporation, that so-called shared missions were not very popular. Other departments did not define clearly their shared missions, visions, and values. As it appeared in the future, it was an overwhelming obstacle.

Let me close by asking you some serious questions please.

  • What is your life’s mission?
  • What is your purpose?
  • What is your WHY?
  • Have you already found the meaning for your life?
  • Do you intend to spend half of the rest of your life working for an organization without a mission you could share?
  • Do you know why some of your subordinates and coworkers do not work with passion and engagement? Will you help them?

As Ron says, the time for your answers is now.

Did you enjoy this blog? Read more great blog posts here.
For our course lists, please click here.