Why Is It So Valuable?
By Walter J. McDonald, President, The McDonald Group, Inc.
Today’s highly competitive machinery business environment demands creative new approaches. What worked a decade ago is mostly obsolete today. Digital marketing, aggressive new OEM lines, tariffs, rising costs, market uncertainties, powerful and well-financed multi-location, multi-state dealer organizations all make today’s machinery dealer market a challenge, to say the least.
Success in this machinery market demands a highly skilled and trained dealer organization utilizing all the tools available to leverage accurate information, gain meaningful insights, uncover customer needs/expectations and make good decisions. Where should management invest its time and costly resources? How does the entire organization gain financial competence, a better understanding the financial impact of daily activities?
Beyond profitable machinery sales, what performances are critical to your success? What quantitative measurements will be most beneficial in accelerating good performance? What programs, policies and procedures have proven to be the most effective in supporting positive change and administrative competence?
This is where The McDonald Group’s Master’s Program in Machinery Dealer Management can help. This comprehensive machinery dealer management resource can be accessed in two ways: a 12-volume resource library or through an instructor-led 10 session distance learning virtual seminar that includes the resource library in tuition cost.
The McDonald Group Master’s Program helps you determine
- Which performances to measure (KPIs-Key Performance Indicators)?
- What are the benchmark performance scores of high profit dealers?
- What administrative programs, policies and procedures are most effective in aiding dealer management achieve benchmark KPI levels *World-Class Best Practices)?
Which Performances
KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) are those Best Industry Practices that most contribute to machinery dealer operations success in market share gains, profitability, cash flow and customer service and retention. Improvements in these performance areas lead to higher levels of sales and operations excellence. These are the day-to-day activities managers can control almost immediately, at first sign of performance shortfall. Corrective action can be taken perhaps weeks or months before there is a negative impact on the financial statement.
What Benchmarks
High Performance dealers have set industry Benchmarks scores that optimize market share building, maximize profit, strengthen cash flow and promote excellence in customer service and retention. No one dealer, in my experience, has been able to exceed Benchmark scores in all areas at the same time. This illustrates the necessity of establishing continuous improvement efforts to constantly challenge the organization to upgrade performance.
For example, we know that in the KPI “Over Dealer Sale Mix,” dealer parts and service sales should be above 30% of total dealer sales. Absorption rate should be at least 100%. These are big, big challenges for any machinery dealership and it may take several years to achieve these performance levels. But they are the secret to long term survival and prosperity.
Which Best Practices
World Class Best Practices are the “how to” programs, policies and procedures are relevant and essential today? New end-user research indicates the Best Practices that have significant value and high positive impact on dealer operations. Simple things such as personal follow up calls after Repair Orders directly contributes to additional business and much higher levels of customer satisfaction.
If you want to learn more about these high-impact dealer management development resources see Management Sets on our website for details on the 12-volume reference library and Training Programs for more information on our Master’s Program in Machinery Dealer Management instructor-led virtual seminar.Then, please contact me with your questions.