Strategic Growth Articles

Strategic Growth

Customer Centric Culture

Leadership Lessons - Drive a Culture of T.E.A.M. Work to Stay Customer Centered as Generations Change (October 2021 by Daniel Surprenant & George Russell) - MAC Advisors Daniel Surprenant and George Russell ask, How will your people take care of your customer?" Their answer: it's T.E.A.M. - work! They review the characteristics of each generation focusing on your people and their the behaviors and expectations.
Leadership Lessons - How Will Your People Take Care of Your Customer? It’s T.E.A.M. (Work) (August 2021 by Daniel Surprenant & Russ Green) - Daniel & Russ describe the skills and knowledge your front-line employees need to help you achieve your goal to go from "Good to Great." It's T.E.A.M. (Work)!
Leadership Lessons - The Customer-Centric Dealership of 2030? (July 2021 by Jim Henderson) - MAC Advisor Jim Henderson discusses what customers see when they look at a dealership and what the right way for the future is. Is “customer-centric,” helping the customer? And does it lead to a more effective, profitable dealership in 5-10 years?
Leadership Lessons - 7 Step Customer Service Process — Creating the Right Culture & Attitudes (May 2021 by Daniel Suprenant & Bill Hoeg) - Successful businesses of the future will need to rely on solid customer service processes. In an industry where relationships still matter, being customer centric is more important than ever with a focus that has the customer’s best interests in mind.
Leadership Lessons - Catch & Release or Catch & Keep (April 2021 by George Russell & Daniel Suprenant) - Can fishing help you appreciate the value of customer retention? If you’re “just fishin’,” catch and release is OK. But if you want to eat or sell the fish you catch, you want to do the things that hook the biggest fish. That’s the way to think about changing from conquest sales to a focus on keeping the customers you have. Retained customers are the most profitable.
Leadership Lessons - Creating a Customer Centric Culture: Defining Customer Retention Turning a Good Concept into Reality (March 2021 by Bill Hoeg) - A MAC colleague, Bill Mayes, has a way with words. His article last month sets up our 2021 theme of “Creating a Customer Centric Culture” and is a great concept. But how do we get there? Given that you can’t manage what you don’t measure, we define here how to measure customer retention.
Leadership Lessons - Focus on Satisfied Customers, Not Customer Satisfaction (January 2021 by Bill Mayes) - The customer is king! The customer is always right! The customer pays all our paychecks! You’ve heard these things and you’ve probably said them many times. I know I have. So, how can I possibly hate customer satisfaction?
Leadership Lessons - Creating a Customer Centered Culture - Lesson #1: Repeat Customers is the Objective (December 2020) - What have you learned since the Spring amidst the chaos of COVID-19? As a dealership leader, how will you apply those lessons to position your company to be relevant, sustainable and growing — how will you build your dealership’s momentum to move from good to great?

Good to Great Flywheel

Leadership Lessons - Good to Great Dealership Flywheel – SPOKE #5, Robust Marketing Process Drives Segment Sales (October 2020) - The fifth spoke in the upper right completes the Good to Great Flywheel — “Building your dealership brand with all segments” by employing a robust marketing process. Done right the process grows sales with all types/segments of buyers and generates momentum for the new to used cascade described in spoke 1. We’ll define the 5 steps of marketing and then the 3 critical elements of a robust process in a “great” marketing dealership. We’ll focus on element 1 in this article and will tackle elements 2 and 3 next time.

Leadership Lessons - Good to Great Dealership Flywheel Spoke #4 - Build a Balanced Dealership that Sells Solutions and Earns Trust (September 2020) - How your entire dealership hears and serves the customer is at the core of the 4th spoke of the flywheel. Dealerships that are built with balance and whose people are trusted to deliver and serve consistently will retain those customers and attract more new customers.
Leadership Lessons - Good to Great Dealership Flywheel – Leveraging Technology Assessing Technology as a Force Multiplier (June 2020) - Technology is a “Force Multiplier” for your dealership. The force multiplier concept comes from the military but to explain it simply, think of a hammer. A hammer amplifies your effort to produce more output. This idea fits exactly with the flywheel analogy for building a good to great (G2G) dealership as the leveraging of technology tools exert forces, speed and connection to increase a dealership’s momentum.
Leadership Lessons - Good to Great Dealership Flywheel Spoke 3 — Part 2, Build a Performance Culture: Be the Employer of Choice (June 2020) - The best dealerships attract and keep the best people. To move from good to great, you must strive to be the employer of choice. Do you want good people to work for you or your competitor? This spoke of the Good to Great Dealership Flywheel is building a performance culture, and it involves processes and people. Processes was part 1 of this spoke and here we’ll expand to people or being the employer of choice. In both, performance means discipline, rigor, consistency and willpower to succeed.
Leadership Lessons - Good to Great Dealership Flywheel Spoke #3 Build a Strong Culture & Leverage Vital Processes (March 2020) - “Culture eats strategy for breakfast” — a quote attributed to management guru Peter Drucker defines the core idea of this spoke. The best plans fail without a strong culture to support them. On the flip side a strong culture means your dealership is more likely to overcome setbacks and changes even without a strong strategy. To grow from good to great requires more than a strong culture — being great requires a culture of performance.
Leadership Lessons - Good to Great Dealership Flywheel Spoke #2 Invest to Grow: High Absorption (February 2020) - Absorption is simple to calculate, but to understand its “Good to Great” power in a dealership is complicated. Absorption is both a defensive and offensive strategy, and, although it is a financial metric that contributes to a high return on assets (one of two goals of a dealership), better absorption also contributes to creating repeat customers (the second main goal).
Leadership Lessons - Good to Great Dealership Flywheel, Leveraging the New to Used Cascade (February 2020) - What is the New to Used Cascade and why is it important as the first spoke to describe in the Good to Great Dealership Flywheel? There are many implications for leveraging the New to Used Cascade, which is why I choose to start our journey here. The biggest implication is the fundamental approach a dealership makes to selling machines.
Leadership Lessons - From Good to Great – The Sustainable Dealership Flywheel (December 2019) - What makes a dealership good? And what does it take to move a dealership from good to great? These questions are our subject for this column in 2020. Over the year, we’ll discuss each element of the Sustainable Dealership Flywheel, and how they link to build the momentum that distinguishes a “Good to Great” dealership.

Sales & Marketing

Technology to Exceed Customer Expectations (Oct/Nov 2013) - I love what I do. Every day I work with leading farm and construction equipment dealers all across the continent as they strive to get better. I continue to learn much from these progressive dealers who are constantly working to better serve a customer base with rapidly rising expectations.
Use Technology to Sell Technology Profitably (March 2012) - First in a "Technology for Profits" articles series which will show bottom line benefits of selling technology of the 3 "P's" of Productivity, Profitability and Personal Connections.
The Link Between Sales & Absorption (Oct 2011) - Whether it's from your manufacturer's demand for market share or machine population, or your need for more revenue, dealers continue to look for ways to boost sales. A good place to start selling more machinery is to look first at your parts and service departments. There is a strong link between sales coverage and better parts and service profitability - meaning better absorption.
Territory Management vs. Account Management (June 2011) - The account management approach is customer focused and allows you effectively manage the time of your key people. In our experience, the quickest way for a farm equipment dealer to increase their top line revenue is to implement account management.
Equipment Rental Programs: Are they Worth It? (March 2010) - Examines why a farm equipment dealers should establish a rental department. Risk and Rewards.
Why Add or Drop Product Lines (Sept 2009) - To Add: Margins, Diversification, Penetrate accounts. To Drop: Focus, Poor total returns, Redundant products. Best Practices with additional products.

Monetizing 'Dealership Wisdom' (April/May 2015) – What is the value of the knowledge, experience and analytical ability (or troubleshooting) that your dealership has developed in order to sell and support your customers? This ability, which has been developed over time and exists in the minds of you and your employees can rightfully be called dealership wisdom.
Fight Tech with Tech, But Add Personal Touch - (Oct 2014) - When it comes to online equipment dealers, you either have to fight ‘em or join ‘em.
How Farmers, Dealers Adopt New Technology (June 2014) - What do you think about new technology? Do you want new things as soon as they're available? Or do you wait until a new concept is proven and tested before you adopt it?
Social Media: Colossal Waste of Time! or the Future of Marketing? (March 2014) - Facebook. Twitter. LinkedIn. Friends. Tweets. Connections. Smartphones. Tablets. Page Ranking. Most of these are new and strange terms that are part of social media marketing. As a farm equipment dealer, is social media marketing important to your business? Or is it irrelevant and a passing fad?
What is CRM and Why Should You Care? (July/August 2013) - CRM means Customer Relationship Management. The short answer to why you should care is that your future success may depend on if and how you implement CRM. Retail, your business, the business of selling and serving end users, is very competitive. Long term success often depends on doing a lot of little things right. Selling and servicing farm equipment is no different than any other industry where CRM is now a standard practice. But our industry is just starting to learn about its benefits of and to use CRM successfully.
Use 'Smart Software' in Your Marketing (March 2013) - The focus of this month's column is on two different "Smart Software"? applications developed to help your dealership increase sales by improving the visibility of your product and services, and providing a quicker and lower cost of acquisition and capturing prospects' interests

Strategy & Growth

Are You Ready for the 2nd Machine Age? (April 2014) - What is the connection among Nebraska Tractor Tests, Moore’s Law and the second half of the chess board?
Consolidation: A Year of Changes (April/May 2010) - Updates changes in large dealers and pace of consolidation by brand and starts regular updates "Dealers on the Move."
How to Determine the Value of Your Store (July/August 2009) - Base economic value vs 'blue sky'. Valuing intangibles, Discount for Lack of Marketability, What measure & methods to use.
How Top Performing Dealers Prepare for a Down Cycle (June 2009) - Options: reduce costs, increase gross profits or a combination. Presents ideas for these and benchmarks for productivity.
Opportunities & Challenges of Expansion (April/May 2009) - Scale advantages for customer service, investment in training & facilities and attraction of skilled managers. Risks of stretched management and real reduction in costs.

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