Customers Value Their Time

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Customers Value Their Time

Guest writer Alex Kraft talks about the importance of time, and how much your customers value theirs, as he continues to explore the ways in which technology has shifted our sales.

“No one will buy a $250,000 machine online”!  “But this is a relationship business!”  I’ve heard those 2 comments repeatedly.  First, Ritchie Brothers and Bidadoo have sold Billions (with a ‘B’) of equipment online, as-is where is. The crowd that clings to those two statements are missing the greater point:  the shift towards online transactions is due to customers placing more value on their time than ever before.  Why fly to an auction site when I can bid or buy the machine online without any interruption on my daily routine?  I was reminded of this the other day when I was speaking with a construction contractor who owns his company.  His insight is incredibly relevant since he started his career as an equipment salesperson and therefore knows both sides of the supplier/consumer dynamic personally. When we were discussing the growing influence of technology in the equipment industry, he mentioned to me: 

“As a salesperson I was trained to call on customers in person every day. Now that I’m on the other side, I’m always squeezed for time.  We’re trying to grow our business.  I’m out trying to land jobs for our people.  I don’t have time to meet sales reps for a beer or go to dinner. It’s nothing personal… If I’m not in the office or on one of our jobsites, I want to be with my family.”.

This is a common refrain.  It can be difficult to look at something through another person’s eyes, especially when it impacts you.  But think about your customers and how many different vendors are trying to build that same relationship.  For example, there are OEM dealers, independent dealers, rental houses, and service providers (auction companies, tire vendors, freight companies) all competing for that customer’s attention.  My contractor friend told me that he is called on by 30+ different vendors in a normal month.  This was incredibly eye opening for me, because I just assumed that it was just our dealership and our two biggest competitors that were calling on my friend.  

There are positive and negative aspects of technology and its effects on our culture.  I am amazed to see how many people will order a Starbucks coffee online to avoid the possibility of a five-minute wait.  One could argue technology has made us impatient and has created some real first world problems.  But there’s clearly a disconnect between construction customers and their vendors with how they want to interact.  Customers are working on jobsites coordinating and managing large teams against tight timelines and budgets.  Yet, equipment dealers encourage and push their sales teams to continue showing up unannounced on jobsites or offices with no real agenda other than ‘do you need anything?’  How is this productive and still part of the daily routine in 2022?  

I’m not suggesting that customers don’t want salespeople to exist.  The difference is customers want dealer salespeople when they want/need them.  This is the definition of the ‘on-demand’ economy. It’s possible to build relationships with people while relying more on digital experiences to communicate.  If dealers embraced these tools, their sales teams could be more prepared to serve their customers.  Every interaction could provide value thereby strengthening the relationship instead of wasting each other’s time.  Smart business is about listening to customers, and those that ignore this reality will probably create openings for their competitors that didn’t exist before.

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Equipment Sales in the “On Demand” Age

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Equipment Sales in the ‘On Demand’ Age

Guest writer Alex Kraft Started as an equipment salesperson for Flagler Construction Equipment (Volvo heavy dealer in Florida) in 2004. Tonight he brings his expertise here on the topic of managing equipment sales in the “on demand” age.

Selling equipment used to be so easy. Or that’s what I thought when I listened to the old timers tell me stories of taking a customer out and signing a “million-dollar order on a cocktail napkin”.  Then that damn internet came along and ruined everything! Truth is buyer behavior has changed. According to a recent McKinsey B2B study, there’s been an 85% increase in the preference for buyers to conduct online research, and a 238% increase in buyer preference for self-serve looking for information on the companies’ website.

The evolution of the sales profession is not just impacting the equipment world. There is a larger societal shift at play. For example, when I was younger, my perception of a salesperson was the Alec Baldwin character from the ‘Glengarry Glen Ross’ film.  Baldwin’s character berates a sales team with his hard charging, second place is for losers’ mentality (in the movie 2nd place gets a set of steak knives!).  Success was the result of those who simply ‘do not take no for an answer’.  Today’s sales culture is much different. Training materials focus on skills such as listening, empathy, and personalizing a solution.  I read a blog post today which mentioned the importance of understanding your prospect’s needs and not lumping all potential customers into the same broad category. I’d love to take a trip back with a time machine to see the Baldwin character’s face when someone mentions “empathy” as a key to closing deals!

What does that mean for equipment salespeople?  First, it does NOT mean that salespeople are less valuable or that they will be unnecessary. To me, the job has changed. Customers aren’t basing their decisions anymore on who takes them to Ruth’s Chris or lunch twice a week. The most important trait for a successful equipment salesperson is responsiveness. What separates the best salespeople from the average is what they do AFTER the sale. Those that take ownership of issues that arise and solve problems are the salespeople that foster loyalty.

The best comparison I can make is to the medical sales industry. If anyone knows someone in the medical sales industry, you’ll know that a medical ‘salesperson’ typically doesn’t handle pricing. Instead, they focus on managing ‘cases’ or supporting the doctor’s usage of the products. Another industry that we can draw from is real estate.  Everyone is a real estate expert today due to the unprecedented accessibility of information, but there have never been more registered real estate agents. Despite this dynamic, an agent that helps a buyer through every step of the process is worth every penny.

Since more customers perform online research, they are more educated on the products than ever before. There are fewer unique brand features that a salesperson can point out to a potential buyer. One area that I see a huge opportunity for salespeople to take advantage of is the focus on telematics data. Every OEM/dealer is touting their telematics data capability and the amount of information available. The problem becomes who’s going to read through all that data? Great salespeople are ‘advisors’ for their customers, and what better opportunity to be an advisor than to use the data available on your customer’s machines to provide valuable insight on how they operate their fleet. How powerful could it be for a salesperson to come to their customer, with 3-5 observations on their fleet performance for a specific job? Do you notice certain operators that can benefit from additional training? Are there potential looming issues on machines due to fault codes? Another area that customers seem to struggle with is when to dispose of a machine.  Great salespeople know the market (like real estate agents) and could utilize their network to help customers maximize value for machines as they reach the end of their life cycle, so customers don’t always have to send machines to auction.

In summary, what do all customers seek from their vendor relationships? Value and support. As I’ve outlined above, customers’ definition of value has changed, so it’s time for dealers’ expectations for salespeople to adjust as well. That begins with redefining what a salesperson profile is. Some of the best equipment salespeople that I’ve ever seen were former mechanics.  Their technical aptitude became a huge asset for their customers, as they could help troubleshoot issues, relay information to their service department, and in a pinch even turn a wrench themselves. Salespeople who continue operating with the belief that their job is solely to quote pricing, buy lunch, and push all other duties to another department will become very replaceable, very quickly.

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Introducing Our Colleague Alex Kraft

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Introducing our Colleague Alex Kraft

Our new guest writer Alex Kraft Started as an equipment salesperson for Flagler Construction Equipment (Volvo heavy dealer in Florida) in 2004.  He worked in various positions at Flagler, ultimately serving as Chief Operating Officer from 2017 to early 2020 when Flagler was sold to Alta Equipment Company. Alex started Heave in July 2020. We at Learning Without Scars are happy to be introducing our new colleague, Alex Kraft.

For new(er) companies, the inevitable question is, ‘what do you do?’. In the simplest sense, Heave connects buyers/renters of heavy equipment with dealer sales reps.

I started my career as a heavy equipment salesperson in Miami. My manager handed me that ‘UCC’ report that showed the customers who had previously bought equipment in my territory for the prior three years. I attended a few brief product training sessions and was put in the field.  The old phrase ‘you eat what you kill’ is accurate. Dealers rely on their sales teams to be the marketing department, as there are very few (if any) “leads” provided to salespeople. Days can be lonely and involve a ton of driving.  It’s common for heavy equipment salespeople to drive 45k-50k miles annually. Everyone develops a common route through their territory, start at the furthest point and hit every jobsite/customer office on the way back home. Most dealerships will give their reps a target for customer calls or visits per day. Some expect 8 calls per day, for other dealers it may be 12-15 per day. If your revenue numbers lag your peers, the typical advice is, ‘well, make more customer calls!’. The truth is, most calls aren’t productive since they are rarely scheduled:  the customer is busy, the customer isn’t there, or the customer doesn’t need any equipment at that time. Yet this is how the industry continues to operate.

I was amazed that still in 2020, customers had to call sales reps every time they wanted to rent or buy a machine. I’ve seen an equipment manager order Uber Eats for lunch, then call 4 different sales reps and leave a voicemail message asking for rental rates and availability. Therefore, customers are typically waiting for information. Heave exists to solve this problem. We are an aggregator website, in the mold of Lending Tree or Thumbtack. Customers come to www.heave.co and specify what they want to rent or purchase. For example, a customer this morning posted a request for quotes to buy a new 11,000-13,500 lb. canopy mini excavator in Princeton, Texas. Every dealer sales rep that has Collin County, Texas received a text message alert for this opportunity. Sales reps can quote this deal directly from their phone. Customers receive notice upon quote submittal, and they can view the quotes all in one place.

One key feature of the Heave platform is how the communication is handled. We understand that customers come to Heave because they want an easier experience that they can control.  Therefore, we allow the customer to dictate the next step. Customers choose which sales reps to release their contact information to once they view the quotes. The customer clicks ‘contact sales rep’ and the salesperson receives a text with the customer’s full name, phone number, and email address. They can communicate offline to address any questions or finalize the deal.

Our initial focus since launch in May 2021 was to build a platform where customers begin their equipment search.  The long-term plan for Heave is to continue adding services so customers don’t have to visit multiple places for each part of the transaction, simplifying the entire process. This past fall we partnered with Mazo Capital Solutions to offer equipment financing on our site.  Next, we see an opportunity to find partners to show our customers instant freight and warranty quotes alongside their machine quotes. What used to take customers or dealers multiple calls, can be brought into one place on www.heave.co in seconds.

In my opinion, one part that is glossed over when discussing technology solutions is what it frees up suppliers to do. Everyone is rightly focused on their product and what it solves, but technology can free up supplier employees to focus their effort on true customer value add activities. For example, as I highlighted above, how much of a salesperson’s time is wasted everyday driving? Those empty miles could be better served proposing fleet solutions or analyzing telematics reports for their key customers. What value is added by taking parts orders over the phone and entering that order into a business system? With an ecommerce parts solution, parts employees could be repurposed to either manage stock levels better, run parts to technicians (reducing repair times), or deliver parts to customers. Predictive analytics could dramatically help service departments prevent catastrophic failures and better help prioritize their technician’s time. To me, that’s what embracing technology can unlock for equipment dealers- what are the menial tasks that eat up our employee’s time, and how can we utilize certain tools to provide a better customer experience?

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The Transition from an Equipment Dealership to a Technology Platform

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The Transition from an Equipment Dealership to a Technology Platform

Our new guest writer Alex Kraft Started as an equipment salesperson for Flagler Construction Equipment (Volvo heavy dealer in Florida) in 2004.  He worked in various positions at Flagler, ultimately serving as Chief Operating Officer from 2017 to early 2020 when Flagler was sold to Alta Equipment Company. Tonight he brings his expertise to our readers in his blog post on the transition from an equipment dealership to a technology platform.

Alex Kraft knows all about that transition. Alex started Heave in July 2020. Heave is an equipment platform.  Customers come to Heave and post an equipment need, our technology connects them with dealer salespeople, providing them multiple quotes in 1 place.  No more chasing salespeople down, getting voicemail, and waiting for calls back.  We love being brand agnostic and 100% focused on getting customers information that they need, quickly and with a lot less effort than they’ve had to put in traditionally.

The heavy equipment dealership/rental house couldn’t be more opposite from the “start-up” world.  But my dealership experience has helped me understand what is so special about the start-up environment. I started as a heavy equipment salesperson at 24 years old. It was my first “real job.” I didn’t know much about the industry before I started my career. As a young salesperson, I did my best to try and shadow some of the more successful vets, as well as pay attention to how the overall operation ran. It doesn’t take long to understand that “this is the way it’s always been done” is a mantra that is adhered to. The dollars are huge, brand names have been established, and dealers have protected territories. When you’re younger, you naturally ask a lot of questions: ‘why do we do it this way?’ and ‘has anyone thought to _____?’  Equipment dealers, and companies in general, are full of naysayers who love to tell you the three reasons why something won’t work. I’ve worked with tons of those people. There are those that probably would say I was that person at one time. It leads to constant stasis as no new ideas are introduced. You live in a world where it feels like the culture is, ‘let’s not screw this up’ as opposed to ‘let’s get this accomplished.’

When I took the risk of starting my own company, I had an idea based on my industry experience. We were now a start-up. One major difference off the bat: there are no bad ideas.  Everything is a test. It’s incredibly liberating because nothing stays the same. Our team’s internal conversations usually start with, ‘we tried this for 30 days, this is what really worked well, this is where things fell off….’.  We make a tweak and do another experiment. We’d fix that issue, then something else arises. We go through the same process all over again. I understand that this can seem exhausting for some, or for others who like structure it sounds like a nightmare, but for me it became such an energizing experience. I thought back to the times in my early career and realized how draining it can be to have teammates who are always shooting things down. Yet you sit in a customer meeting, and they tell you it’s your last chance because the people change, but nothing ever seems to change at your dealership.

With a start-up, it’s very empowering to work in a climate where it’s ok to be wrong, where it’s almost expected. When an idea doesn’t pan out, it’s because we tried it and have data that tells us it didn’t work. But also, what comes out of it are nuggets that we can apply to get a little bit better. Over time, those little incremental tweaks and improvements lead to a viable successful project. This entire process is what helped our young company figure out our niche and get traction with a new product in this market. If we were stubborn and had I shot down all my team’s ideas (since I was the only one with industry experience), we’d probably have folded up the tent and I’d be talking about what could have been. This is also what leads to great optimism because you become comfortable with the unknown, since your company is in a constant experimentation mode.

The point I want to get across in this post is to encourage dealer leaders to remember that they don’t have all the answers. And that’s ok. I may be wrong, but it seems like everyone is fearful of ‘digital’ and ‘technology’ because they represent new ways in an ‘old school’ industry. You may be the market leader right now and feel that you have the most to lose if you make some missteps trying something new. Technology can be a great equalizer for some other companies who aren’t afraid of embracing different ideas. Borrow a page from the start-up culture, and experiment in certain areas. Engage your teams and try something new, whether it’s in sales, rental, parts, or service. There is a large knowledge base in the market, so you all have team members with a great deal of experience. Start on a small scale, whether it’s selecting only one location as a test or a small sample size of customers. You don’t have to try a pilot across the entire company (actually I would discourage that since it may not be manageable). Give your employees the confidence that it’s their idea, it’s all in the interests of the company getting better, and they can be wrong! Let the results speak. Maybe it doesn’t get the intended result. That’s ok, at least you tried something different, and you know. The funny thing is, I bet your customers will be appreciative, because they respect your company trying to improve, and I bet your people will have some tweaks to the original idea that will get what you’re looking for. You will probably see a new energy among your employees as well, as they feel more connected to the company and in control of their destiny.

I don’t know Ron Slee that well yet, but I’d imagine that ‘Learning Without Scars’ is emblematic of trying something and messing it up, leaving a scar to remember.  When I think more about it, with my athletic background, we always learned more from losses than our wins. Yet, in business, it seems most companies are ultra-conservative and are trying to avoid mistakes. It is encouraging to see more industry specific content available on sites like this, as the dealership world has always been under the radar. Now the next step is to do something with this information and act.  All your customers will benefit.

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