After so many years in the Industry and having seen so many cycles come and go it is still disturbing to me that we are so quick to let people go in Parts Departments yet so slow to add them. The downturn that began between 1998 and 2000 depending on your specific territory precipitated a serious reduction of staff levels in Parts and for many of you the complete elimination of the Product Support Sales force. As we all know customer service and market coverage is directly related to customer satisfaction and retention as well as your Parts market share. And as you all know I am most adamantly opposed to the reduction of Product Support sales staff unless it is due to poor performance.

That having been said I am also an advocate of meaningful standards of sales per employee and taking the appropriate action when the results are outside the standards. We published those employee standards in the Product Support Handbook for each of the jobs within the Parts Department. For those of you who have used this Handbook you will remember there is a range of sales per Employee that is presented. As well for all functions within the Product Support group we provide training and explanation of each of the calculations for all of these standards.

Having clear objective measurable standards is a critical part of management. But having standards, without providing feedback is worse than having no standards at all. That is why I always use a range of results to bracket performance on almost all strategic objectives and goals.
If the Sales per Employee is too low then profit is at risk; if it is too high customer service is at risk.

In the past year many dealers have not kept their staff levels within the range. To the many Managers and Supervisors that have been through the Quest, Learning Centers and heard me say that we must make a “deal” on staffing one side of the deal is being kept but the other side is not. The deal is that, if the Sales per Employee in part’s is at a level below the Standard times 80% for three consecutive months on a twelve month rolling average then we must drop an employee. That side of the deal has been kept. However, if the Sales per Employee in parts, increases to a level above the Standard times 120% for three consecutive months on a rolling twelve average then we must add an employee. Yes I do understand that these are unpredictable times. It is also true, however, that you don’t just hire someone in the Parts Department and they are ready the first day on the job to do the job. It takes time for the new hire to learn everything there is to learn and that can take quite awhile to accomplish.

That side of the deal has not been met. I have spoken to and worked with many, many dealers in the past two years who have overworked, stressed Parts Department employees with no prospect of adding people to get to the right number. Haven’t we learned yet.

Our market share is at levels that we seem to work very hard to achieve. I am sorry if that appears cynical. We deserve the levels of market share that we are experiencing when we don’t provide adequate staff for the workload at hand and as a result provide less than superlative personal service. The product Support Opportunities Handbook survey told us that we aren’t viewed as any better skilled or responsive than our competitors. That embarrasses me and yet it appears that many dealers don’t want to provide the level of staff to provide the service that our customers expect and deserve.

Isn’t it time we paid more attention to the Sales per Employee and add people at the right time?

I, for one, know it is over due and must be corrected. What do you think?

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