By Walter J. McDonald
If your machinery dealer management team were to focus on only three activities to strengthen your competitive position, dramatically increase sales and vastly improve customer service what would they be?
This year’s results are in. Here are the top three plus one:
- Monthly email promotions
- Customer Satisfaction Surveys
- Off-Shelf Parts Fill Rate to Service for Primary Line
Plus one…
- Track website visitors
We have high confidence in these recommendations because they are based on data derived from over 10 years of tracking dealer customer transactions from the experience of over 100 machinery dealers managing more than 500,000 customer relationships by Winsby, Inc. (Winsbyinc.com)
1. Monthly email promotions
Once a machinery dealer has complete and accurate email addresses and begins email promotions, dealers formerly at a sales growth rate of 5–10% per year are now at 20–40% sales growth rate.
The first secret is effective list management. People change jobs. Companies go out of business. New companies are started. You need to monitor the most attractive market segments. Build and maintain your customer email list to 90% accuracy. Otherwise, 20% of your list becomes inaccurate each year.
The second secret of a dynamite monthly email campaign is to include offerings from each department: rental specials, parts promotions, winter shop maintenance programs, special interest/financing for new machinery, and a monthly feature describing personnel and activities of a department, such as parts. Email me to send you some samples.
2. Customer Satisfaction Surveys
One of the most effective ways to achieve and maintain high levels of customer satisfaction is the follow-up customer service call after the Repair Order has been completed and billed. Problems can be immediately handled. Customers appreciate your concern and are very willing to offer their reaction to the work performed. The quality of your aftermarket service is one of the primary reasons they purchased their machinery from your dealership.
Utilizing surveys to monitor customer satisfaction improves retention rate by 30% over dealers not conducting surveys. Customer number growth rate is 49% higher and dealer revenue growth rate is 123% for machinery dealers conducting monthly surveys.
Only 8–9 phone surveys a week from Repair Orders for each branch location would deliver positive results. Simply say:
Thank you for your business.
Was the work completed satisfactorily when promised?
Did you receive value for the amount charged?
Would you recommend this dealer to your friends?
You want to uncover any problems or areas of dissatisfaction now before they become a big collection dispute. Customers appreciate your concern and follow-up. But, don’t over sample an account. For customers with lots of Repair Orders, perhaps only contact them once every 6 weeks or so.
Conducting ongoing customer satisfaction surveys is one of the easiest and least expensive ways to protect and build your customer base.
3. Off-Shelf Parts Fill Rate to Service for Primary Line
Off-Shelf Fill Rate is a machinery dealer’s single most important performance metric, a major contributor to technician productivity and customer satisfaction.
The Service Department is the Parts Department’s largest account. Yet, Service often receives poor, uncooperative parts support. A close working partnership is of great value to both Service and Parts and Customers and the Dealership.
Fill rate is the percentage of parts line items on a Repair Order filled 100% off the shelf. Partial fill of a line item is “no fill” in the calculation. Many high-performance dealers capture off-shelf parts fill rate data overall, fill rate to the service department, and fill rate to your primary line(s).
With proper planning Sales, Parts and Service Managers can make progress toward achieving a 98% off-shelf parts fill rate for service jobs on Primary Line equipment models. You can also support selected Key Accounts with a highly competitive level of parts support. This is easily done by managing a specific, finite set of parts.
Service and Parts managers should meet frequently to review upcoming repair work and advance order special kits or components needed. They should work together to establish an iron-clad “in-out” recording of parts movement by all hands. You must develop management leadership to defend the integrity of the Stock Status Report.
Achieving high fill rate to service for your primary line challenges and develops the skill and knowledge of your Parts Manager. This metric demands full knowledge of how to work with the Stock Status Report, how to collaborate with service to support their needs, how to assess the recommended stock lists provided by the OEMs, understanding the replenishment logic and reorder points in your system and learning how to manage the Parts Department as a business.
+ Track website visitors
If you asked me to name one more Big Gun that has enormous potential to strengthen a dealer’s marketing and sales strength it is tracking website visitors.
More than 90–95% of purchasers (customers and prospects) will investigate a potential dealer’s website and product information before contacting the dealer. This is the exact time to capture their interest and significantly increase dealer awareness of deals. For full details, contact Debbie Frakes at dfrakes@winsbyinc.com
Identifying and capturing “active interest” in your products and services, by monitoring your visitors, is the cutting edge in lead generating activities for your dealership.
If you would like to discuss any aspect of this article please contact me:
Walt@McDonaldGroupInc.com