Articles

As we start to see a rebound in equipment activity, it’s time to revisit how we cover the customers in the marketplace. With equipment salesmen, rental developers, product support salesmen and other forms of customer contact, an organized and structured approach has become more important.

On the equipment side of the business, a term used often is “visibility.” Essentially it means: Was the salesman involved in all the sales that took place in a territory in the month? Or did the sale take place without a salesman from your dealership involved? This has a direct bearing on your market share. If the dealership was involved in the deal, you had a fighting chance. If not, there was no chance. In the product support world, it’s an impossible area to measure. However, you can make determinations about your “visibility” by looking at the equipment sales you’ve made and the parts and service business you received from them.

How many machines, sold in 2002 by your dealership, did you sell a part or labor hour for in 2003? This is a simple exercise that needs to be done regularly.

Get your machine sales from 2002 and check each customer’s purchase history to determine if there is activity on the account for parts and service. Of course that means getting the model and serial numbers of the machines for which you are selling parts and labor. In service, it’s easy. You’re working on the machine and can easily get the information. In parts, you have to ask for it and put the information into the sales order transaction. With that information, you can determine whether or not the customer who bought a machine from you has done business with you on that particular machine.

Sadly, the machines we sell deliver parts and service business back to the dealership less than 60 percent of the time in the subsequent year.

This can be minimized by regular contact with customers after they purchase a machine, but not just by equipment salesmen and product support salesmen and not just your normal promotional mail pieces. You need a planned personal contact coverage model that keeps the customer involved with the dealership’s key personnel.

There are a series of contacts that should be made on all “new” customers. (All business is new business.) Each dealership should develop a contact approach that follows some, if not all, of the following points.

• Have the Parts and Service Managers send a letter to each customer that buys a machine thanking them for the business and introducing themselves. It should also include what the dealership provides in product support. Better still, have them visit the customer or machine.
• Have a product support specialist go with the machine when it is delivered and review the key maintenance items and operations with either the operator or owner of the machine.
• Offer “specials” for the first filter change and use kits to make it easy to buy.
• Follow the “After Sale Service” time lines recommended by your manufacturer.
• Have a regular telephone contact between the dealership and the customer with the same person making the call each time. This will allow more intimate knowledge of the machine, and the customer’s working conditions and needs.
• Have a product support salesman visit on a regular basis even though the customer might not own a lot of machines or represent a strong potential of purchases.
• Have the equipment salesman follow up the sale within three months to maintain the level of satisfaction the customers felt immediately after the sale.
• Send a personal card to everyone that purchases a machine when the machine reaches its purchase anniversary.

Using these techniques, the customer will purchase more of the parts and labor required for their machine from the dealer. But, unless you contact the customer in a planned deliberate manner you will not get the business that the machine generates to your satisfaction. The working condition of the machine and your customer satisfaction and loyalty requires your involvement.