Webinars for 7 April, 2015

Tomorrow morning we kick off our spring series of webinars.

We begin with an hour long webinar for the Parts Department on TeleSelling, at 9:00 a.m. PST.

That is followed by a webinar for the Service Department on Inspections, at 11:00 a.m. PST.

Please register at www.learningwithoutscars.org to begin your training program with us tomorrow morning.

The time is now.

Parts Management Webinars

Our webinar learning series begins next week, with our Parts Management webinars on TeleSelling, Basic Inventory Control, Warehousing, and Pricing.

Our one-of-a-kind conference format for webinars enables you to have an interactive learning experience, without any of the travel.

This program is designed for all of the management and support staff in your parts department.

Please visit https://learningwithoutscars.org/webinars/parts-management/ to reserve your space today.

The time is now.

Product Support Selling

Our seminar on Product Support Selling – The New Frontier is coming up in Dallas, Texas on April 15 and 16, 2015.  This 2 day seminar encompasses 4 elements:

  • The fundamentals of selling
  • The foundation of territory management
  • Managing Customer Relationships
  • Customer Service Fundamentals

This program is geared towards Product Support Sales, Customer Service, Instore Sales, Supervisors,  and Managers.

This course covers all the theories and applications necessary for Product Support Selling in the 21st Century.

The time is now.

Parts & Service Marketing

Our Parts & Service Marketing seminar will be taking place in Dallas, Texas on April 13-14.

Back by popular demand, this course is geared towards sales personnel looking to make a difference.

Material will cover:

  • Defining Customers
  • Market Coverage
  • Customer Loyalty
  • Measuring and Managing Success

This seminar offers the fundamentals of Parts & Service Marketing for any personnel that deal with your customers.

For more information, and to register for the seminar, please visit https://learningwithoutscars.org/classes/parts-service-marketing/making-a-difference/.

The time is now.

Training Tidbit – for the Service Department

Service has changed. Have you? Are you staying current? YOU must maintain your skills and knowledge. That is accomplished through reading and attending learning opportunities. We have management seminars in Dallas in a few weeks. Don’t miss out. The following might provoke some more thinking on your part.

I recently viewed a show on YouTube from BMW showing a technician replacing a radiator core. Nothing very fancy, right? Well, this technician walks up to his tool box and puts on a pair of glasses. Makes adjustments and pushes on them to start. He is standing in front of the car and an image is transposed over the engine compartment and shows in color the items to be worked on and then tells him vocally what to do. When he has completed a step he says “next step.” What a wonderful use of technology. As our world becomes more of a remove and- install of components and things, the technical skills needed from mechanics is reduced; at least for some categories of the work.

One of my many complaints about the operations of a service department that many of you have read over the years is that we have a peanut butter mentality to the work. We charge the same price no matter the skills of the technician, nor the tooling required, nor the degree of difficulty of the work— did we spread it equally, like peanut butter. We don’t schedule labor but we do give completion dates to customers for much of the work. How do we do that when we have variable skills required for the work and variable skills available from the technicians? Peanut butter. This is why we rarely meet completion dates and have lost so much of the available labor market.

We now have new technological tools and new uses of longstanding technology. Who will buy this technology and have it available for use?

We now have new technological tools and new uses of longstanding technology. Who will buy this technology and have it available for use? Hopefully it will be the authorized dealers and distributors.

In another direction, we also have technology roaring to our assistance but it isn’t loud enough yet, as I don’t see many dealers rushing to implement it. It seems that the rental industry has leapt ahead of the authorized distributors in how they treat their technicians. How so?

Well, the technician can stay in the bay and look up on a computer terminal and determine their parts requirement. Okay, some of you are saying that you already do that. Now, let’s start from the make, model and serial number of the machine they are working on and automatically go to a library of schematics and select the appropriate one that will allow them to select the parts they need. Do you do that, too? Oh, and they do that with a touchscreen. You do that, too? Well, then the parts list, which is in a “shopping cart,” is processed as an order in their computer system and prints a pick ticket in the warehouse, their store, so that the parts group can pick the part and deliver it to the technician in their bay. Do you do all that too? I didn’t think so.

It is long past time that we start putting technology to better use. These two illustrations are examples of where and how we can improve labor efficiency on the job. My estimate is that this will increase in labor efficiency by 30 to 60 minutes each day for each technician. Yes, that is right. The time that a technician spends each day walking back and forth to the parts department wastes that much time every day. If you think I am wrong, go watch the floor for a while. In the field it is worse because the technician has to drive to get the parts. And all that time the technician is on the clock.

I think we better get serious, and what better time than now?

The management of a service operation is aimed at two specific major elements: labor efficiency and quality. If we can keep the technicians in the bay where the work is done we can improve their labor efficiency. If we can deliver current accurate schematics from which they can order the necessary parts we will improve the quality.

Are you ready for that? This is not a question of if you will use technology effectively; it is a question of when. This is coming to us and we don’t have any control over it. In this market and these conditions I believe the sooner that we implement these technologies the better. The choice is yours.

Training Tidbits for the Parts Department

Here’s some food for thought and training tidbits for members of your Parts Department.  I’ve had the thought of keeping “current” on my mind lately, and so wanted to share this with you.

You have the responsibility to maintain your skills and knowledge. How are you doing in that regard? Don’t miss the opportunity to attend one of our Parts Management seminars in a few weeks in Dallas.

For as long as I can remember, the No. 1 requirement for customers from an equipment dealership’s parts department is parts availability. I want to review what we do in parts inventory management, expediting and delivery systems to live up to this availability challenge.

Inventory Control Systems and Processes. The business system suppliers (DMS) and vendors have not been sitting still. The use of statistical probabilities and the demand pattern matching with various statistics models has helped dramatically. The statistical approaches vary by vendor; MMI from Volvo, Poisson from Caterpillar, John Deere with their Critical Codes, and Komatsu’s shared approach with their dealers. Yet they all are aiming at the same target: higher availability for customers via the supply chain. The main software providers have been making adjustments as well. From lead times by part numbers to abnormal demand recognition and much stronger interfaces between vendors and distributors and worldwide search patterns on shortages, systems are much more responsive to the needs of customers and dealers.

Replenishment Cycles. Over my career, the replenishment cycles (lead times) have been reduced dramatically. It starts with the order frequency being increased. Most of the major vendors today offer daily stock orders. From a biweekly or weekly stock order to daily is a very significant improvement. With the increased order frequency the order size is reduced, allowing the vendors to turn around stock orders much more quickly. Transportation logistics have also improved. Today “best practice” vendors have replenishment cycles consistently approaching two to three days. That consistency leads to differing inventory levels and much better serviceability. That is truly something to brag about in the marketplace.

Delivery Systems. From customers walking into dealer/distributor stores to using the telephone, to the Internet and parts kiosks, delivery systems have become much more user friendly. Electronic catalogs allow customers and technicians to determine their own parts requirements, and use of the “shopping cart” online order style for customer convenience and responsiveness has become much more common.

Operating Standards. The goals are more evident, clear and visible. Put away every stock order the same day it is received. Find every part that the dealer is short the day of the order, and communicate with the customer as to where the part is available before the end of the day. Ship every order the same day it is ordered. Simple goals that make a difference to the customers. Isn’t that what we are here to do?

So with all of these improvements, why shift the emphasis? I am not sure we can do much better in the support systems, but I want to move the solution closer to the customers. In the words of Jack Welsh, “When the world around you is changing at a faster pace than you are, the end is near.” Let’s look at the world around us.

Amazon offers a “club” for frequent buyers called Prime. This comes with perks for the customers – access to a lending library, access to streaming videos, elimination of freight charges, to name a few. American Express has their “member rewards” and catalog and Internet retail sales, plus entertainment venues for select card members. Visa and Master Card offer their programs, too. Everyone is trying hard to differentiate themselves in the retail world from their competitors.

I believe that the differentiation that used to exist with parts availability has been eliminated. Almost every major vendor in the capital goods industries provides similar levels of availability. The large differences have completely disappeared. Availability is good from everyone. So, we need to find enhanced serviceability standards and methods.

Perhaps convenience will become more of an issue. We could have supply items “stores” more conveniently located to the customer jobsites. We could bring our parts to jobsites with vans and “Sprinter” type vehicles, rather than waiting for our customers to order from us. We should help customers with their purchasing. We could deliver parts to the customer – what a concept.

With the Opportunity Model in the PSOH, we should know what the customer will need, discuss this with the customer, and make buying easier for them – not just easier for those of us in the distribution channel.

The time is now.

Service Management Training

Our Service Management Training seminar series begins in Dallas, Texas on March 11th.  This is the introductory level to the 3 part program.

Attendees will learn:

  • The Principles of Management
  • Introduction to Accounting and Finance for Service Personnel
  • The Operational and Process Foundation
  • Customer Service

To bring your Service Department up to a new level of profitability, be sure to register your staff for this course on “What It Looks Like When It’s Right.”  This training is beneficial for Service Leads, Instore Sales Leads, Supervisors, Managers, and Executives.

To learn more and register, please click on the following link:

https://learningwithoutscars.org/classes/service-management/what-it-looks-like/

The time is now.

Parts Management Training

Our Parts Management training series begins March 9th, 2015 in Dallas, Texas.  This is a 3 course series, beginning with “What it looks like when it’s right.”

This course is ideal for Parts Leads, Instore Sales Leads, Supervisors, Managers, Executives.

Attendees will learn:

  • The Principles of Management
  • Introduction to Finance and Accounting for Parts Personnel
  • The Operational and Process Foundation
  • Customer Service Excellence

Please be sure to register for this first part of the Parts Management Training Series.

https://learningwithoutscars.org/classes/parts-management/what-it-looks-like/

Membership

American Express coined the phrase “Membership has its privileges.”  This is entirely true.  Most of us have professional memberships to various organizations: the Associated Equipment Distributors, the National Trailer Distributor’s Association, the National Groundwater Association, the National Trailer Equipment Association, just to name a few.

We are inviting you to become members of our own group, Learning Without Scars, because we want to recognize individuals and businesses that want to participate in their personal and professional growth.  We discussed doing this by means of special promotions and loyalty programs, amongst many difference alternatives.

 

We settled on the membership approach.

By joining Learning Without Scars at the nominal cost of $35,00 per year, we have found that we can offer more to you for less.

All members receive a price reduction of 30% on all LWS learning products.  That means that all webinars, self study programs, and classroom programs will be offered at a 30% price reduction to our members.  For those of you who know me, please note that this is NOT a discount!  I still hate discounts.

So, what are you waiting for?  Spend $35.00 and start saving.

The time is now…

Pricing Power

Webinars come in a wide variety of forms and flavors. Some are offered for free as a means to whet your appetite and get you to buy other services. Others represent a transference of information en masse.   Then, there are many options in between. We have already told you about our new dynamic. Now we are putting our money where our mouth is.

Learning Without Scars represents our teaching business for the next twenty years. Perhaps it will morph again, who knows, but our intent is to continue to stay current and hopefully at the front of the pack.

In 2015 we want to change the dynamic of learning with webinars and we are making a one year price change to make a difference for our clients.

Effective immediately, our webinars will be priced at $100.00. If you are a Learning Without Scars member that price becomes $70.00.

So now it is up to you. We have done our bit and dropped the member price dramatically. Do you want to take advantage of this stunningly low price for an hour of quality learning?

The time is now…