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As the economy continues to sputter along, I think it is time to get off defense and start taking a strongly aggressive position and grow our business.

Let’s first remember, you don’t make a profit with cost cutting. You make a profit with growing sales. So get back to growing sales again.

It starts with a current and accurate machine population. I know you all know that this is a strong requirement for managing the parts and service business properly. Yet most of you have not done this yet. Every customer in your trading territory must be contacted and the equipment they own and operate updated on your computer system. This includes machine make, model, serial number, hours per year and application. And your data should capture all machines, not just the brands you represent.

Match this machine population to the customer purchase records, and create a matrix of your customers. This matrix should cover potential parts and service opportunity, actual purchases in parts, and actual service purchases. In our normal market segmentation, we use four levels of population: Fleet, Large, Medium and Small. We also use four segments for parts purchases and service purchases: A, B, C and D. This provides 64 different market segments.

Some intelligence needs to be applied, now, to determine which of these 64 segments can be grouped together and covered in a similar manner. For instance, the Fleet and Large machine population groups coupled with the A and B purchasing ranges could be one segment. Once this is completed, you can start to look at how you cover your market and control customer communications.

You have a lot of people who communicate with the customers in your company. From equipment salesmen to parts and service salesmen, instore telephone salesmen, field service technicians, as well as management and supervision in parts and service, rentals and finance. There are lots of personal contacts. What’s missing is the organizing of these internal contacts toward a common mission.

This is where a much-maligned product comes into play – CRM products or customer relationship management systems are an absolute necessity. Every single dealership should be managing and controlling their customer communications with a CRM system. Everyone who touches a customer, for whatever reason, should make an entry into the system. This sounds like a lot of work to many of you, but one thing I will guarantee is that you will be left behind unless you get this under control.

While any communication is going on with any customer, the employee should be able to review on the screen everything that has been done with the customer by everyone in the company over whatever period of time they want to review. What have been the promises made? What problems have existed and what solutions were applied? What purchases have been made and what backorders or warranty failures have there been? What safety or product improvement notices have been made on equipment this customer owns?

You might consider VoIP, which I’ve discussed in the past. With this technology, your phone system, driven by your computer system, automatically populate the employee’s computer screen with the highlights of your customer’s history with your dealership.

Now all you need to do is determine which of the products and services you want to offer to which customer segment.

Look at your parts business:

• Ground Engaging Tools
• Undercarriage
• Engine Parts
• Transmission Parts
• Hydraulic Parts
• Electrical Parts
• Maintenance Parts
• Filters and Fluids
• Bearings
• Gaskets and Seals
• Hardware

And look at your service business:

• Maintenance Programs
• Inspections
• Undercarriage Measurement
• Component Rebuilds
• Exchange Programs
• Repair and Maintenance Programs
• Oil Sampling
• Block Labor
• Shop Cost Programs

You have a lot to offer and a lot to cover with your customers. Your market capture rate is clearly not at saturation, so you have lots of room to grow. Isn’t it time to get growing? I thought so, too.