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What Subject Specific Classes Can Do For You

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What Subject Specific Classes Can Do For You

Moving from the role of an employee in an equipment dealership to being a consultant was an interesting transition. I started at Hewitt Equipment, the Caterpillar Dealer in Quebec, in March 1969 on a one-year contract. While with Hewitt I was given the opportunity to learn and grow my skills. I never forgot that. In 1978 I moved to Western Canada and worked for Finning Tractor and Equipment. In 1980 I moved back to Alberta where we started our consulting business. Through those twelve years I was given the opportunity to learn. I could never have done the work I did as a consultant without all of the training I received while working for those two Caterpillar dealerships. That opportunity for learning is what our subject specific classes can provide for you.

I don’t think I was very different then than the millennials and younger generation today. I needed to learn. I HAD to learn to progress in my work. I think the younger generations today are in exactly the same frame of mind as I was at their age. If I am not learning and progressing, I am wasting my time and should be looking for something else. I continue to be in awe at the knowledge of these younger generations. They have so much more knowledge than we Baby Boomers had at a similar age. I suppose that is a normal progression in society but it is one that needs to be respected. These younger generations are what we older generations have to rely on in our dotage.

In the consulting business I would be involved in identifying opportunities, negotiating solution options and implementing change. This invariably involved teaching people how to do things the “new” way. Before I started at Hewitt, I taught education at McGill University in Montreal. I absolutely love when I see the lights go on in a students’ eyes when they “Get” it. That really turns my crank. In the early 1990’s most of the OEM’s (Original Equipment Manufacturers) and business associations (AED Associated Equipment Dealers) stopped doing any management training in the Parts and Service business. I thought I could fill that void.

I spent the summer of 1992 creating three “text” books for management in Parts, Service and Product Support Sales. In other words, I created the foundation from three management training classes. I set up the classes to take place over three days and split the learning into six distinct categories. Selling, Operations, Asset Management, Finance, Leadership, and Standards of Performance. This was the beginning of Quest, Learning Centers. In 2016 we incorporated Learning Without Scars and transitioned to the internet. We now offer the largest selection of internet-based employee development classes in the Industry. We have ninety-four subject specific classes available to the parts, service and selling aspects of Product Support.

Last week the focus of our blogs was on the assessments. This week we are moving to our classes. The foundation question for the assessments, is what is the department that you are interested in reviewing. We start the same way with the classes. You select a department and then we take you to the class options for that department. We will take you to the next step tomorrow.

The time is now.

For more information on our programs and what we can do for you, please visit our website at learningwithoutscars.org

Skills Assessments – An Update

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Skills Assessments – An Update

You might have noticed we have refreshed our Learning Without Scars web site. This the first phase of the changes we have planned. The goal of this phase was simplification. At the bottom of the landing page there are two symbols; One is a question mark and the other is a graphic of a computer terminal. The question mark denotes our assessments.

Due to the wonderful response we have had from many of you, we have expanded our assessment offerings. We now cover most of the job functions in the construction industry.

In the Parts Business we cover:

  1. Counter and Telephone Sales
  2. Parts Office
  3. Parts Warehouse
  4. Inventory Management
  5. Purchasing and Expediting

In the Service Business we cover:

  1. Foremen
  2. Inspectors
  3. Lead Hands
  4. Service Office
  5. Technical Communicator

In Sales and Marketing, we cover:

  1. Product Support Selling
  2. Product Support Sales Back Office
  3. Parts and Service Marketing

In Leadership we cover:

  1. Parts Management
  2. Service Management
  3. Product Support Sales Management

And for Technicians we cover:

  1. Construction Industry Technician
  2. Rental Industry Technician

You will also notice there are two columns on the right-hand side, one for Spanish and the other for French. We have eight assessments available for both languages. Go ahead and “Click” on the Question Mark on the bottom of the page, or the Assessment tab on the banner, and explore what we have to offer you on assessments.

Oh, and by the way, you can register and pay and get started online now. You don’t even need to talk to anyone. Of course, if you do, we are here waiting.

The Time is Now.

Leaders with Skills and Knowledge – the PLP

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Leaders With Skills and Knowledge – the PLP.

We started our journey of assisting in employee development in the early 1990s with the management training programs we developed for the Parts and Service Teams. We created two-day classroom programs for executives, management, supervision and first line team leaders. These classes focused on operations, finance, selling and management supplemented with a manual of roughly 200 pages in length.

What we didn’t do was offer a test for each program and progress testing to plant the knowledge more deeply into the student’s mind. You will find another blog post later this week from the wonderful book “Make It Stick” which is aimed at “The Science of Successful Learning.”

The Quest, Learning Centers, classroom courses were developed and then tested with executives who sat through the programs as they were being developed to assist us in how these programs were created.

Since the inception of these leadership classes we have had the opportunity to teach more than 4,000 dealer employees.

This film will define and describe how the PLP – Planned Learning Programs, classes work. Each one covers ten classes and provides twenty hours of training. The PLP programs are three years and covers thirty classes with sixty hours of knowledge transfer.

With the PLP’s we have a twenty question, multiple choice exam at the conclusion and also put forward “quizzes” three or four times through the learning experience. These “tests” are aimed, as indicated above, at implanting the knowledge more completely into the students’ mind. The science of learning tells us that testing stops almost completely forgetting the content of the class.   

The film you are about to see, which is the final program in the troika of learning and will give you an explanation of the PLP Program. I hope you enjoy it.

The Time is Now.

People

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People

Nothing is possible in the parts and service business without people. We closed our last post with the fact that we have standards of operations that address the people subject. These are “traditional” standards which are based on traditional operational methods and systems and processes.

But our operations need to be tuned up. Let’s start with productivity. Do you think that with your current structures and personnel levels you will be able to handle the business that will come with increased sales and market share we discussed last time? I submit to you that it will never be achieved if all you do is continue to do what you have always done.

The Industry started in the late 1970s and early 1980s to look at sales per employee as the holy grail of headcount. However, most companies looked at those standards and said to the operational people that they needed to operate at higher and higher sales per employee levels. That the higher the number the better it was.

WRONG.

The truth is that if you do not have enough people to do the job properly the people will decide what is important that needs to get done. What that is to them is satisfying the customer that the yare dealing with at the moment. If there is no time for anything else – such as calling back on backorders or calling out to customers who have not been seen or contacted for some time, or anything else to protect or grow your market share – so be it.

That is exactly what we have today with most parts businesses worldwide.

Is it any wonder that the authorized equipment dealer has a parts market share is in a range of 20% to 40%? Quite frankly they don’t deserve even that much.

Let’s go back to the fundamentals of the numbers of people to employ. Let’s look at financial standards based on the compensation packages offered to employees. This compensation package covers all payroll expenses, sales, wages, commissions, as well as all benefits such as medical, vacation, paid time off, etc.

The following are standards that are normally what I see in best practice dealers.

 Parts < 7%
 Service < 15%

If you are higher than the above measures then you need to focus on innovation. Improve methods, processes, systems and everything you can to achieve the personnel numbers above. The only way you can achieve radical improvements in operational performance is if you get all of your employees involved in the process. If you are lower then you are unable to satisfy the customer needs and need to hire more people. It is that simple.

The Time is NOW.

The Parts Business Going Forward

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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.

Let’s Get Serious About Our Employees #MarketingMonday

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Some thoughts for your consideration:

You have seen over the past two to three weeks a change in the approach to the blog. We have been exposing Vimeo based film clips. You have seen our promotional trailer, the animation of Socrates, an introduction to the company and a video clip on market segmentation. I want today to present a situation and then pose some questions in the Socratic Manner. Socratic teaching forces people to come to their own conclusions.

Employees transition through three or four stages in their career:

  • Enthusiastic Beginner
  • Disillusioned Learner
  • Capable but Cautious Performer
  • Self-Reliant Achiever

 

Unfortunately, it is their immediate supervisor that has a direct impact on this transition. Too often we get stuck at the Disillusioned Learner as a result of the style of the boss or the lack of any interest from the boss in the employee.

 

As individuals as we move from school to work we have to overcome a series of things that I will call “personal obstacles.” These things come from our families, our friends and peers and our schools. I have often said we are taught to be obedient in our developmental years and when we get to the workforce we are asked to think on our own.

 

These obstacles normally are

 

  • We are told everything we want to do is impossible
  • We are afraid of hurting those we love by pursuing our own dreams
  • We are afraid we will fail in pursuit of our dreams.
  • We are afraid to succeed.

 

One of the important questions we need to ask of ourselves is “what would I do if I wasn’t afraid?”

 

In our training approach, we are developing an employee development program that will take each employee in the parts and service groups from the enthusiastic beginner to a self-reliant achiever. My question is “how do you achieve that today?

 

The time is now.

Webinar Learning Opportunities

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This is going to be an exciting week.

We have eight webinars in process for this week:

Four for the parts business, and four for the service business.

They run Tuesday through Friday.

Parts at 9:00 AM Pacific Time – and Service at 11:00 AM Pacific Time.

Don’t miss out on this incredible opportunity for a knowledge transfer from one the foremost educators/trainers in the Capital Goods Industry.