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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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Drones and You!

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For some time now, the Capital Goods Industries has used global position and equipment monitoring technologies. Last week I talk about the Cloud Based Technologies that were impacting our world. I want to look in a different direction this week.

On March 22nd the following press release got my attention:

China: – Commercial drone data company Skycatch, and DJI, the world’s leading manufacturer of civilian drones and aerial imaging technology, have extended their partnership to manufacture and deliver a fleet of 1,000 high-precision drones for Komatsu Smart Construction.

The Skycatch Explore1 drone autonomously flies over job sites to create highly accurate 3D site maps and models and will be deployed on Komatsu job sites. This map data will be used for Komatsu Smart Construction’s new data service that enables robotic earth moving equipment, used in the earthwork stage of the construction process, to correctly dig, bulldoze, and grade land autonomously according to digital construction plans.

“Conducting a site survey using a drone used to take hours. However, by implementing Explore1, users can carry out surveying quickly and easily. Now it is possible to perform drone surveying every day. Taking off, landing and flight route setting are all automated. Ground Control Points (GCPs) are no longer needed. 3D data is immediately generated and an entire construction site can be visually checked with the 3D map. The Explore1 is a true game changer for the construction site,” said Chikashi Shike, Executive Office of Smart Construction Division at Komatsu.

And some of you didn’t think we were being impacted a lot by technology. Imagine?

How do we keep up? That is an interesting question for many of us. In University I took a minor in Computer Science. We learned to program in Fortran and Cobol. We used punched cards. How old do you think that makes me feel?

The last time I purchased disc drives for a computer center was in the late 1970’s and for the price of $1,000,000 I bought eight-disc drives with removable 44 MB drives and two controllers. You read that right – a million bucks for about 350 MB or storage. The current pricing is about $1.00/GB.

In the early eighties I was running a software business in Denver. They had at their peak over 450 dealers using their software. Caterpillar was offering a product from DDPD – Dealer Data Processing, that took paper input from dealers had it keypunched and returned to the dealer after processing. They did the invoicing, inventory management, everything. With Paper.

Time have certainly changed.

That is one of the challenges that we have faced in our training business. I have personally had to change and adapt. I used to teach at University. I had a classroom, a blackboard with white chalk and a room of students. I talked (some called it teaching) and they listened. In England they called it learning from the pipe smoke of the teacher sitting in a room with the students.

I started Quest, Learning Centers, in the early 1990’s and taught in a hotel meeting room to a group of 25 or so students. It was for me going back to the classroom. But first we had overhead slides. We had “text” books of about 250 pages each that we created using voice recognition software. Voice recognition is everywhere today but it was a rarity in 1992. Overheads morphed into power point presentations.

However, training was a challenge for many dealerships. You see it cost money. Many dealers didn’t want to invest in their employees. The employee was expected to arrive with the necessary skills and they would be taught about the products. That is another “Imagine That” isn’t it?

In many cases that still remains true today. Companies are not investing in employee development as they should. It is quite disturbing actually.

To go full circle, we moved from the classroom to webinars. The classroom was thought to be too expensive and the webinar eliminated travel. The problem with a webinar is that the instructor has no idea what the student is learning. I was not happy about that learning device at all.

Then we explored Learning Management Software (LMS) starting in the early 2000’s,  or what they call the “aughts.” Well the products available weren’t ready for prime time. Today they are amazing at what they can do. Now we can do some amazing things. I know more about what the student is learning using current LMS software than I did in the classroom. It is terrific.

Then we took the slides from power point with audio tracks overlaid to them and had an online webinar. Then we used an extremely capable film company to come to Hawaii and spend a week filming us. We created over 500 film clips that we have embedded into the learning products we put out in Learning Without Scars.

Paul Baumann, the owner of Xfinigen, was excellent at flying drones which is why I was do interested in the Press Release from China talking about Komatsu. He used drone shots for many of our film clips. You can see them on our web site at www.learningwithoutscars.org and select either of the two blue bars to see some film clips. The one on the left shows some of Paul’s talents with drones.

Time have changed and they are still changing. The pace is accelerating. Adapt or Die.

The time is now.

Change #MondayBlogs

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Time is NOW.

Friday Filosophy #2016-17

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Over the past three to four decades there has been many trillions of dollars spent on technology. Unfortunately there has not been the same investment in sociology. Friday Filosophy #2016-17 offers some timely quotes on technology.

It has become appallingly obvious that our technology exceeded our humanity.

Albert Einstein

 

The number one benefit of information technology is that it empowers people to do what they want to do. It lets people be creative. It lets people be productive. It lets people learn things they didn’t think they could learn before, and so in a sense it is all about potential.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

 

If someone tells you that you have a lot of potential when you are sixteen that is a complement. If that some someone tells you that you have a lot of potential at sixty six you have to ask what you have done for the past fifty years.

R.J. Slee

 

Technology is just a tool. In terms of getting kids working together and motivating them, the teacher is the most important.

Bill Gates

 

Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

Arthur C. Clarke

 

Technology… is a queer thing. It brings you great gifts with one hand, and it stabs you in the back with the other.

Carrier Snow

 

Our technological powers increase, but the side effects and potential hazards escalate.

Alvin Toffler

 

The internet is so big, so powerful and pointless that for some people it is a complete substitute for life.

Andrew Brown

 

Men have become the tools of their tools.

Henry David Thoreau

 

The time is now.

Training Tidbit – for the Service Department

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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.

Technology

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We comment on a series of subjects related to the capital goods industry supply chain; from parts to service to management and to my take on filosophy. I am introducing a new one this week – Technology.

I will attempt to address various areas of the use of technology in the capital goods supply chains whether from the dealer or the customer perspective. I am sure this will be controversial at times and I invite your participation in the discussion. The more the merrier. It is never important that we all agree on a subject or a topic but it is critically important that we hear and understand other positions.

Management is about communication. It is about three major pillars – understanding, accepting and committing. I hope you will participate in the discussion.

The time is now.