I'm pleased to be here with you today. And we don't have a real big crowd, but we've got enough to make this worthwhile. I want to talk to you about wowing your customers. And before we get started, I want to just do a couple of hand raising, housekeeping kind of exercises here. I'll let you know I'm not a professional speaker. I'm just someone who's got a lot of experience, have done this for many, many years, meaning been in front of customers, been with dealers, been in dealerships. And now I try to teach people how not to learn the way I did by making mistakes. So what I'd like to do today is talk to you about wowing customers, especially through your delivery process. But before we get going, if you just take a look at your screen here, if you can hear me OK, would you see the little raise hand icon up there? Click on that raise hand icon. And that way, I'll know that I'm coming through and that you can hear me. So OK, we've got that working. So that's all I needed you to do. If you look down below, you're going to see in the chat box audience questions. If there's something that you want to ask, there's a couple of ways you can do it. Throw the raise hand icon up, and I'll go ahead and call on you. And you can ask your question. Or if you don't want anybody else to hear you ask your question, you can go ahead and type it into the audience questions. And I will see it on the screen. And I will address it as best I can. So with that being said, let's get on with this. This is why we're here. Are you wowing your customers? Now, we sent out a little description of this seminar. And we talked about the delivery process. Are you wowing your customers through your delivery process? The challenge I've got here, and Rebecca, I'm having a technical difficulty. My screen isn't advancing. I don't have the arrows. Can we do something about that? OK, there they are. So that was my first wow. How do we recover from a wow like that? Well, you recover by doing just what we're going to do. You continue. When was the last time you were wowed? Think about it. How do you get wowed? Think of an experience. I don't care where it was. We're not talking about necessarily at the dealership or buying something large. It can be a restaurant. It can be a store. It can be working with the school somehow. Think of an experience in the last couple of weeks where you were wowed, that you go, wow, that was worthwhile, or that person really went beyond. I really feel good about that. That person really gets it. What was good about that? What made it different? Why was it so good that you thought about it and said, that's a wow? Was it intentional? When the person did it, was it because they intended to do it? Was it because they had a plan to do it? Was it because they had a system for doing it? Or were they just doing it because that's the kind of person they are? Was it just a person where they're going beyond the normal things that they do during the day? What we'd like to do is talk about both having people that want to do that, but then having a system in place where you allow them to do that, where it's expected. And in the end, when you're looking at it from the customer's point of view, does it really matter? Does it really matter how you did this? Well, it all starts with your people. Attitude is the big denominator in this. Without attitude, nothing's going to happen. With attitude, you can overcome all sorts of problems inside the dealership, inside the relationship, inside of everything. It starts with people having the right attitude. Then you've got to have a mission. Does your dealership have a mission? Do you have a mission statement? These days, it's been in fashion for 20 years now to make sure you had a mission statement. So I don't know the dealership today that doesn't have a mission statement. How often do you read your mission statement? How often do you review it when you're talking to your people? Or when you're being reviewed, how often do you refer back to the mission statement when you're talking about performance? This is something that I think people often give lip service to, but it gets lost in the daily grind of what we're doing. So you've got to make sure that you've got a mission and that your people understand the mission. And you have to remind them of the mission. And this can be signs. This can be cards on the desk. This can be whatever. It can mainly be living the mission, showing them by example how it should be. Because when you live the mission, then you have a culture. What is the culture in your dealership? If I asked you to write down your culture, I mean, if this was a live seminar, what I would do right now is I'd have you break into a group, take five minutes, and write the culture, not the mission statement, because that's kind of unfair, making you sure if you've memorized your mission statement or not. However, that's a clue. If you're in one of my seminars, you probably want to show up with your mission statement memorized, or at least a cheat sheet. But what's your culture, really? And is your culture reflecting your mission statement? Oftentimes, the culture is informal. It happens. It takes on a life of its own. And it may happen because of strong personalities. It may happen because of the activities in the dealership. It may happen for a lot of different reasons. It may happen for what you bring into the dealership when you come to work each day. But sometimes, it interferes with the mission. And sometimes, it grows with the mission and can multiply and enhance the mission. You want to make sure that you're living your culture and that your people know what your culture is. Here's a little quiz for you. We haven't had the information yet, but read this and fill in the blanks. This is about customer satisfaction. And I will get to the delivery process here in a little bit. But if you're picking up on this, what I'm going to tell you is I don't care what kind of delivery process you have. If you don't have a dealership with people that are dedicated to serving the customer, you can have the best delivery process in the world, and it won't mean a thing. So when we're talking about customer satisfaction, what is the number one reasons that customers defect, that they go to someone else? I felt like no one really blanked my blank. Let's look at the second one. Over a blank percent of the time, a customer problem solved blank and blank increases customer satisfaction. And then what I'd have you do is think about a person in your apartment that's not a leader in customer satisfaction. How would you bring the subject up? I don't know if you're a manager or if you are a individual contributor, as we call it. How would you bring it up? Should you bring it up? Is it your job to bring it up? And what would be the first commitment that you'd request of that person? If you're that person's manager, how would you bring it up and what would you expect of them? And attracting a new customer costs how many times more than retaining an existing customer? Let's take a look at that. The number one reason that customers defect is that they say, I felt like no one really appreciated my business, pure and simple. They don't appreciate it. When someone doesn't appreciate your business, you're likely to go somewhere else because there's a lot of choices today. And it's just as easy to go somewhere else where they appreciate your business. That may well just be the difference. Over 80% of the time, a customer problem solved promptly and fairly increases customer satisfaction. This sounds kind of odd, but the studies have proven, there's been a lot of research in this area, that customers who have problems but have them resolved promptly and fairly end up having a higher level of customer satisfaction than those customers that have never had a problem at all. Keep that in mind as you address problems promptly and fairly. And attracting a new customer costs 6 to 10 times as much as retaining an existing customer. So once you have someone in the door, once they're writing you a check, it's extremely important to keep them on board. Because to go out and replace them, you've got 6 to 10 times the cost. And without getting into it, this isn't that seminar. But just think about the marketing costs, the cost of people, how do you reach out to them. It costs a lot more to go get a new customer than it does to retain one that you've got. So keep that in mind as you're talking to your existing customers. Let's talk about departmental silos. What's a departmental silo? In a dealership, we tend to build up silos. We did in the dealerships I was in, and I've seen it in many others. And it's a constant battle to break these down. The key to breaking down the silos, and what I mean by a silo, is that inability to communicate from parts to service, from service to sales, from sales to administration, or any of the directions in between all of these. And especially when you get to the point where you could even be working against one another at times. The key to breaking down these silos is really how we recognize and repair the internal communication between the different departments in our dealerships. We want to serve more effectively and improve not only our quality of life at the same time. So we can, Rob Park was a good friend of mine. Rob Park passed away recently. Not that it's part of this seminar, but he was a big believer in this. And he lived it throughout his career. And he worked with many dealers, both in his own dealership and then with dealers later. And this was a big deal. You've got to learn to communicate internally. Because internally, you've heard about internal customers. Your other departments are your customers as well. Now, I'm not sure what department you are in, the people that are on this seminar. So I'm going to talk about all of them. What does it look like at your dealership? Is there a silo effect? What does it look like when you're talking about sales versus service? What does service versus parts? What does parts versus service look like? Let's talk about an example. What does a silo look like when you're talking to the sales department? A silo looks like a salesman in front of a customer when something goes wrong. And the salesman goes, I don't know where he is. I told him that you had a problem. And they were supposed to be out here this morning. They probably just forgot. Now, that's just throwing the service department under the bus. It doesn't do anything. It doesn't make the sales department look better. What it does for the customer is make the customer feel like you guys are not in alignment. It makes the customer feel like you guys aren't together working for the benefit of the customer. So what you've got to do is make sure that you can build up the other department. So the other department may well be what you should say in FID is something along the lines of, I'm not sure what's going on. I did communicate with them this morning. That way, it at least tells the other department or the customer that you did follow through with what you were going to do. But I will follow up with you. They are very good about getting out here. And I know they've got you on the list. So I'll check on it just to make sure that they're on the way. You want to do it in a way that builds up the benefit to the customer. What does service versus parts look like? What would you say in an example? Service versus part looks like, and have you ever heard this? Well, I would have that thing done today, but parts never has the part in stock. So we had to machine down it. I sure as heck hope they don't try to charge it for the freight. That is a service versus parts silo that I've seen way too many times. And the other one that we get into is a parts versus service. And that is just the reverse of the one we've had before. I gave them the part. I don't know where your machine is. I guess they're just swamped and just can't get to it. I'm not sure they know how to work on that machine. Way too many times, and here's the other one I've heard. And I don't have it on here, but it's service versus sales. The service guy in the field goes, I don't know why they sold you this thing. None of them ever work. We've got to watch out for those kind of comments. And when you see those comments, you need to address it. You need to bring it up to someone and say, I'm sorry, but that's just not appropriate. And talk to them about what they should say. Build up the other department. Because as a customer, when you look at this, what it just says to you is that I've got a dealership here that isn't together. It's not unified. It doesn't have a common goal. And it's not really serving me. I'm the customer, and these guys are more interested in what they're doing with one another. They've got a lack of commitment to my business. And who's the customer really interested in? Themselves. Their business. It makes you look like you're difficult to do business with. How many times have you heard, don't you guys ever talk to one another? Sadly enough, I heard that way too many times in my career. Yes, we do talk to one another, you want to say. But there's a lot of things going on. It's difficult to talk to one another. It's difficult to keep track. So you have to make sure that you're really working with the other department to communicate. Because when the customer talks to one department, as far as they're concerned, they just talk to the whole dealership. And it may not be your problem. It may not be something you can do something about. In that case, you need to make sure that you pass it to the person that should be handling it. Inconsistent in policy and performance. That's what this ends up being. You need to be consistent with the customers. And it creates doubt about having repeat business. So here's some things you want to do about reducing the silos in your dealership. Check your attitude at the door. When you come in the dealership, you represent the dealership. You may have problems at home. You may have things going on with the kids. You may have something else in the house that needs to get taken care of. But check it at the door. When you come to work, come to work. When you come to work, come to work for the customer. And you are one team. Make sure that your attitude stays outside. Make a personal commitment to serve others. And in this case, the others isn't necessary to the customer. You've got internal customers as well. So make sure that you've got a personal commitment to help those other people in your dealership do their jobs. Seek first to understand, then to be understood. First to understand, listen first. Ask questions first. See where the other person's coming from. And then you want to make sure that you're understood. Because if they don't think that you're hearing their side, they're not going to listen to your side. So the only person that can control this is you. Walk in your team member's shoes. Some of you have had the opportunity to work in other departments. Think about what it was like in that department when you worked there. They've got their own set of problems. They've got their own set of demands. They've got their own set of regulations. Walk in their shoes. You know, they're not there just to serve you. Yes, they should help you. And you should help them. So think about what they're facing as well. Understand the expectations. What is your part in this process? Their expectations of you. What do you need to bring to the table so that they can do their job? What do they need to bring to the table so that you can do your job? And communicate frequently and honestly. Frequently and honestly. Doesn't have to be formal meetings. Formal meetings are good, but they need to be short. So how do you break down the silos? First, the message needs to come from the top. It needs to come from the dealer principal. It needs to come from the general manager. And then trickle down, if you will. Hopefully it's not a trickle. Hopefully it's a flood through the management. If you're a manager, take this on as part of your responsibility to take the message that's been given to you and pass it on to those that report to you. And if you don't have the message given clearly to you, go find out what the message needs to be. It's in your mission statement and you can be the start of the message and you can be the top. You are the top for your people. So make sure that you act like the top for your people. Frequent department and inter-department meetings is a practice that you need to get into. Inter-department meetings, particularly between parts and service, need to be stand-up meetings. Stand-up meeting is one that takes five, no more than 10 minutes. It doesn't include donuts and coffee, unless you bring your own coffee and stand there and drink it while you're talking. But you stand up, you talk about issues at hand. You have a format. It's frequent, but it's formal. It's something that you can have a process. Okay, we're gonna go over the work orders we've got in front of us today. We've got this one, this one, this one. We're waiting for parts. We've got this one, this one, this one going out the door. And just make sure that everybody knows what's going on. Check the reason for the goal. What are you trying to really get done here? Consider cross-department incentives. Now, if you're a manager, this is something that you need to look at. Parts and service should have some goals where they get together and they win together. Whether it be raising sales, whether it be some customer satisfaction goals, whatever it is, incentivize both departments together and then celebrate each other's department. When someone does something well in another department or another department achieves something, at least congratulate them. So what you wanna do after this is check your own leadership silo effect. I want you to ask yourself, how much of an issue is poor communications because of silos in my dealership? Am I running into this in my dealership? And in what ways is it causing me more difficulty to perform my job? Those examples I gave, are they happening in your dealership? If they are, you should address them. What's the first way to address them? If you've ever said them, quit. Catch yourself. Don't ever say them again. Support the other department. When the customer has a question about why the other department hasn't done their job well, find a way to say, I will find out for you. I understand this is not normal and therefore we will find out what's going on. Support them. So how is it showing up in the way you service your customers? You want it not to show up. I'm gonna spend just a minute on why dealerships struggle with change before I jump into the delivery process. Leadership. You need to have effective leadership if you're going to change. If the leadership doesn't wanna change, nothing's going to change. There's a nothing wrong mentality. This is the way we've always done it. We've always gotten along. How many dealerships have gone out of business in the last 10 years? How many of them said there was nothing wrong with the way they did business? Why are they not here today? Have an inward focus instead of an outward focus. It can be easy to be comfortable in doing your job the way you've always done it, but times have changed. Technology has changed. Customer demands are changing. The world's moving faster than it ever did before. You need to focus outward, not inward. The customer's not here for you. You're there for the customer. Your comfort company infrastructure. How long does it take to get a decision? This can be a big deal if you've got a problem. Like I said earlier, 80% of the customers can have high customer satisfaction if you solve a problem promptly and fairly. Find a way to make sure the infrastructure doesn't get in the way. Is there conflict? If there's conflict in your dealership, get rid of it. Find the source and handle it. If it's a person, address it with the person. Address it with the person's boss. Address it individually. Address it offline. Don't address it in front of a group. When you've got a negative situation, take it offline, take it in private, and deal with it in private. But deal with it honestly and openly. Number six is in love with the past rather than focusing on the future. Remembering the glory days. Nobody cares about the glory days. That's what you do at the picnic. You talk about the glory days. You reminisce. You have good stories. You can build relationships talking about the glory days. Just don't be in love with them. Don't be in love with them. Afraid of risk and lack of faith. What is versus what might be. A lot of people are more comfortable with the what is because they're afraid that if they try something new, it's not gonna work and they're either gonna look stupid or they're gonna have something worse than that happen to them. You've gotta look ahead. You've gotta plan on what it's going to be and you've gotta take the risk and put it out there. Afraid of pain. Who's not afraid of pain? I won't say any more about that. We're just gonna have to get over it. Talk more than act. Boy, is that a big one. How many people walk the talk? A lot of people talk the talk. Very few people walk the talk. I'm not gonna talk about this one at all except that look at the three colors. Create the change, engage and enable, and implement and sustain. There are a lot of places you can go to learn more about leading change and you'd really need to do this if you're a manager. You need to get into the science of change because you wanna create. You wanna create an environment that allows change. You wanna then engage your people to enable. You wanna make sure that there's no roadblocks to the change and then you wanna sustain the change and celebrate the change when it happens. So you wanna be part of the process for leading change, not one of the followers. So with that preamble, let's jump into the delivery process. And what you might pick up from how much time I devoted to the preamble, it's actually more important than your actual delivery process. But how do you wow a person with your delivery process? And what I'm talking about here is a person buys a new machine. You deliver that new machine and the person now has a machine on their job and now what? The salesman doesn't call on them again. They don't know who to call. They're just sitting there got their nice shiny new machine, but now what? You need to make sure that you've got a delivery process and a delivery process is more than just making sure that you deliver the machine to the right location. So first, I wanna ask you, do you have a formal process for delivery and for follow-up? If you don't have a formal process, you need to get one. This means write the process. This means if you have a process manual, put it in the process manual. If your process manual's online, put it online. If you don't have a process manual, you need one, get one. And then put this one in there. It's a big one to start with because it has a big effect on customer satisfaction. What does your delivery process look like? What does it include? Again, if this was a live seminar, what I'd have you do is I'd have you start throwing out some things. Obviously, it includes making sure that I know where it goes and when it's supposed to be there, making sure that the machine is set up right so that it's going to do what it's supposed to do when it gets there. What else does it look like at your dealership? And then put yourself in the customer's shoes. I talk about putting yourself in the other shoes at your dealership. Put yourself in your customer's shoes in your delivery process because what you don't want to have happen is a customer sitting out there on their brand new machine and starting to get buyer's remorse. Why did I buy this? I'm not sure how to run it. I'm not sure this thing looks different than the one I rented. I'm just not sure about this. You want to make sure that you make them comfortable. So step one, and you can go ahead and write these down. I've tried to make it as simple as I can and put it in a few steps for you. Introduce them. Make sure that you get the customer into the dealership either immediately or shortly after. It can even happen before the delivery, but make sure that the customer gets introduced to the people that they're going to be talking to over the life of that machine. Make sure that they're all the key people in your department, and depending on whatever your department is, but you want to make sure that they're key department people in other departments too. The parts manager is a person they absolutely need to meet. Why? Because they're going to do more business transactions than they do with any other department. Maybe not dollar volume, but more times they're going to transact business with parts and if they know who the parts manager is, it gives them a feeling of comfort. Parts counter people. It's always good to know the parts counter people, at least to meet them, to know that you've got a face there, a smiling face, someone that acts like they are ready to help you. They may not remember the parts counter people's names, but let them at least meet them. This is an obvious one. If you have a PSSR, they need to know who that PSSR is because the PSSR is going to be the point person in this ongoing relationship with them. It won't be the salesman. It's going to be the PSSR because there's going to be a lot more activity and product support keeping that machine running than there is in anything else. So the PSSR needs to build immediately and a relationship with them. Accounts receivable. Why in the world do they need to meet accounts receivable? Because if there is a problem, it's going to be a lot better for them to think of the person on the other end of the line as a person. Because there could be a financing problem. There could just be a question. There could be... This is a person. You want to make sure that you personalize all of the activities in your dealership so that the customer feels like they're dealing with a group of people, not with some kind of entity. Step two, make sure that the customer gets a welcome letter. Okay, they bought 10 machines from you. If you know them that well, change your welcome letter a little bit to personalize it, but give them a welcome letter. The welcome letter should say, thank you for your business. And I'm talking about a letter that goes out right away and thanks them for the business. Include the names of the people that you introduced them to. Here's the names of the people that you're going to be doing business with in my dealership. Give them the phone numbers. These are the contact numbers that they need to have for parts, for service, for after hours. Give them an email. A lot of people will be able to use email. And if they need to contact you, show them how they can do that through email. Obviously, if they're going to use email, make sure that someone on your end is checking that inbox frequently because nothing worse than having them fire an email into you and 30 minutes later, no one's even responded. Make sure they know what the after hours number is and what the after hours process is. And if it changes during the year, because often it does as you get into your busy season, make sure that they're aware of that. And I would send out another letter for your after hours. If your after hours service changes during the year, send out a notification, put it on your website, make sure people know that you've got a change in your after hours service. And then let them know that you're still with them. You didn't leave them hanging. You're still there. If they have a question, a concern, or a problem, give you a call. Step three is the delivery. So it's step three before we ever get the machine out there. Don't just drop it off. Have someone else go with it. If you have a PSSR, that's the best person to go with it. If it's not, have someone else go with it that is accustomed to doing walkarounds, that is accustomed to familiarizing the customers with their machines. The other person isn't the truck driver, unless the truck driver has been trained in doing these other steps. In which case, that's great. You can make a truck driver's job more fulfilling, but often the demands on a truck driver mean they have to get back in the truck and leave. Have someone go with that machine so that they can do a walkaround. Okay, this person's had a machine. They've had one of your bulldozers. They've had one of your lift trucks. Why would I do a walkaround? Because if it's more than a year old, or if it's got a model series change, or even if it doesn't, things have changed. Controls have changed. The electronics have changed. One of my last jobs was I was a part owner in MachineryLink. And I was managing, or head of all of the product support. And one of the things we got into was we had combines. And we had 300 combines that were being rented. And we have a customer that would call in and say, this machine isn't working. It's not doing what it's supposed to do. And they'd say, I've run these machines for 50 years, three generations. I know all about it. We'd go out finally after trying to diagnose it. And we'd find out that they had it electronically set to harvest corn, and they're trying to harvest wheat. People know how to run the controls. They know how to steer it. They know how to drive it. They know a lot of things. But they may not know some of the very fundamental, basic things that have changed on the machine. Because as we try them, we meaning the manufacturers, try to make things smarter and easier and more productive. Oftentimes, it gets harder to use to get it set up. And if you don't have it set up right, it's not going to function. Do a walk around and don't assume anything. Don't assume they know even how to start it. Because we've had that situation where things need to be put in the right position to even get it to start now. And it's more than just a safety switch and sitting in the seat. And sitting in the seat, having your foot on the brake and doing some other things. How many of you have gotten in a rental car lately and had to sit in the seat, put your foot on the brake, put it in park, and then find the button and push the button? Things change. There are new features. Make sure that people know the new features and the new controls. Things will change on the machine. It'll be more productive. But only if they know how to use it. And then review the contact information. If something goes wrong, here's who you call. Step four is follow up. You should follow up at seven days by phone. Someone who's charged with this responsibility needs to be calling in and needs to be calling that customer and just following up. How's things going? How's it running? How are you feeling? Do you have any questions? Not do you have any problems. Do you have any questions? I'm just checking. Oftentimes, they will not have heard from the salesperson yet. Oftentimes, the salesperson's too afraid to even go out there and talk to them after delivery. That floors me. I was a salesperson and I've managed salespeople. Why in the world would you not do it? I'll tell you why. Pure and simple, they're scared. What are they scared? They're scared that the machine isn't running the way they said it was going to run. They're scared that it's got to be a problem. They're scared they're gonna get out there and the customer's gonna ask them a technical question and they're not gonna know the answer. And they're gonna look stupid. And they don't like looking stupid. So what do they do? How do they handle that? They just don't go back. They go on to the next customer. They're salespeople. They're in there looking for the next job. They're out there trying to close another deal. This person already bought, so they're pretty much crossed off their radar. That is absolutely the wrong thing to do. What they need to do is amplify them on their radar because what they're going to do then is they're going to ask them for a referral. I'm glad you love this machine. Oh, there's a problem with it? Let me address that. No, I'm not the mechanic. I don't know how to do that, but I know someone at the dealership who does. Let me talk to them. Let's get a work order open. Let's get someone out here. Sure, it's under warranty. Let's get it taken care of. It's not broken down. That's why you're still using it. Well, because I just don't like this. This light's flashing, but it's running. Let's make sure the light doesn't flash. Let's make sure everything's going the way it's supposed to go. That's the way you should be handling this, not the way that it often is. Therefore, you need to have someone formally following up and doing that to make sure that someone is asking the customer those questions. At 30 days, someone needs to do it in person. Hey, if you're the service manager, you're the best person to do it, depending on what your sales volume is. Obviously, you can't do it on everyone, but you will floor them if you go out and talk to a customer 30 days after they bought a machine and introduce yourself or reintroduce yourself and say, I just want to make sure that things are going the way that they need to. How's this running? Did you see this feature? Let me answer any questions that you've got. This is enough time after 30 days that the person should have some questions about the machine. They will have, if you can just get them to ask those questions. Get the operator off to the side. If it's not the owner, if it's not an owner-operator, and many times it won't be because we're dealing with a lot of bigger customers than we did in the past. Get the operator off to the side. Ask them how they like the machine, because guess what? The operator may not have been the one that wanted to buy this machine. And if they wanted that other machine, that other brand, then guess what they're going to do? They're going to be bad-mouthing your machine the whole time they're on it. And they're going to be looking for things that are wrong with it. But are they going to tell you? Probably not. Are they going to give you a chance to do something about it? Probably not. So you want to make sure that you get out there or someone gets out there and addresses it non-confrontationally. Show that operator why this is a good machine. Show them, expect them to fall in love with it and show them how they can be more productive on this one and how they can show up that person that's running the machine they used to run and show them up and show them how much better they are on this new machine. Make them proud to be the one on the new machine. This is a good time then to also ask them if they want to purchase an extended warranty or a maintenance contract. Why? Because if they have had a problem, then say, you know, you might want to think about this before your warranty expires. You didn't buy the maintenance contract, but you can go ahead and do that. We can do your maintenance for you or you can get an extended warranty. And then if you do have a problem at the warranty period, it's going to get taken care of. No sweat, no hassles. We'll be out here anyway, but why worry about the cost? You can fix your cost by doing it now. And it's a great time to ask for them to purchase a warranty after they've had a problem. Because once you resolve one and it's under warranty, you go, you know, you can continue this and not have to pay these bills in the future as well. Have a checklist. I didn't make this a step, but this is just a part of the process. Have this process, since I said, need to have a formal process written down and have a checklist of all the steps that need to get done. The things that I've been talking about and some of the questions, some of the sub steps. In your CRM program, if you have one, your CRM is your Customer Relationship Management Program. Whether it be ACT or whether it be Goldmine, whether it be something that's Salesforce. I don't care what your program is. Your CRM program is designed to get information about the customer and about what they own. It's also designed to talk about or to show you what recent appointments people have had with them, what they did on those appointments, and to remind you of what upcoming appointments there should be. So in your CRM program, load the machine and load in your delivery process. You'll have flags in your CRM program that say, okay, seven day call. And then it'll pop up and it'll go to the person that's responsible for doing that. Because various people, especially if it's an electronic CRM program, it can send that reminder to that person and that person will know they're on my call list today. Or two days before the 30 days, it'll pop up on the person who's responsible for doing that and they'll know that I need to schedule my 30 day follow up. So make sure that it's in there. The other thing you can do with that is everybody's gonna see it. Everybody's gonna be able to know if there was a problem, the salesperson before they go out there and make a call, they can bring up the CRM program and they'll know, have someone made the seven day call? Has someone made the 30 day call? Was there a problem? Has someone called in? Has this customer called in with a problem? How was it resolved? I can go ahead and check with the service department and say, hey, there was a problem with the starting. What was that? And did it get resolved? Or is there something going on that I need to be aware of? So I can go out and look like the left arm is talking to the right arm. It can give you reminders for your next step. What is that 30 day? What is the next thing that's coming up? And make sure that the person is going to know about it. And like I said, you can input your notes. Step five is don't drop the ball. Take a look at the ball on here. That's a ball that's hard to drop. It may drop you, but you're not gonna drop it. I don't know if you've ever been inside one of those, but it's a kick. If you haven't, go find one. I did one, I live in Costa Rica and they had one at the beach in the water. And you talk about something that's hard to stand up in, but you talk about not dropping the ball, that's gonna bring it home to you. Don't drop the ball. If it's your responsibility, do something about it. How do you not drop the ball? As a dealership, you have a process. How many times have I told you, have a process? That's because that's what this seminar is about and I'm a process person. If you have a process, it tells someone who's responsible for each step of the process. Make someone responsible for the whole process of delivery and then make someone responsible for each step of the process. Train everybody. If they've got a responsibility in the process, make sure they know it. Make sure they know how to do it. If they're supposed to do the walk around, make sure they know what a walk around looks like. Make sure they know how to do a walk around on each piece of equipment. Make sure you have a format. This is another process that you're gonna have. You're going to have a walk around process. And the walk around process is going to show how you start, where you start. Typically, you'll start in the seat of the machine. You'll show the controls. You'll show the basic things about what you do from the operator's compartment. Then you're gonna get down out of the door. Typically, it's on the left side. You'll start on the left side. You'll open the engine compartment. You'll walk around and you'll show these things. That's what I mean by a walk around process. Make sure the person that is going to be doing it understands that process and does that process in the way that you've defined that process because you define that process that way because that's the way that works best and that way you don't miss things. If it's something the customer knows, keep going. You don't have to dwell on it just because they're there. Don't have to spend your whole day on it. But train everybody and train everybody in the dealership that you have a process. They may not have a specific part of it, but they need to know that there is a delivery process. So if the customer calls into them, they'll at least know that there was a process and that someone needs to understand it. Execute your process. Make sure that everybody who has a part in the process does their part. How do you do that? You make someone responsible and as a manager, you have to review the status report. Part of having a process is having a status report. Part of having a checklist is having a status report. When a person finishes the walkaround, they send you a note that says, I did the walkaround on this date with this customer. It can be on a slip of paper, it can be on an email. It's just however you write your process. But then whoever manages the process loads that in to the checklist and make sure that that's checked off. Okay, done on this date. What's next? And that way you can look at it, look at the date and you say, oh, these three machines were due for a call and I don't have a status on them. I need to follow up with this person and make sure that they haven't dropped the ball on this. Oh, that person was on vacation. Let's make sure that if it can wait, they can pick it up when they come back or typically you'll have someone that's filling in for them. Can we delegate this to the other PSSR or can we give it to someone else to do this? So someone has to manage and review that status report. So here's when I would like to turn this over to you and say, what do you do at your dealerships? Now, it's a little difficult on this. So I'm not going to ask you to share your ideas. It's a shame that we're not in a live seminar because this is where it can get fun. But think about what would you do if you're in a seminar right now? And I'm going to have you take 15 seconds, which is going to seem like a long time, write down two things you do as part of your delivery process. Go ahead and write them down. And if you don't have a delivery process, the first one you're going to do is write down, we need a delivery process. And if your old delivery process is finding out where it needs to be delivered, write that down. So what I would have you do is, we scheduled an hour for this, and you're going to have a couple minutes left over. What I'd ask you to do is take five minutes after we hang this up the phone here and think about your delivery process. Think about your silos. This is a time where you can take a couple of minutes to, as Stephen Covey calls it, sharpen the saw. If you spend all your day cutting down trees and never sharpen your saw, after two or three days, it'll take you hours to cut down a tree, which should take you minutes. This is sharpening your saw. Think about your delivery process. Think about your silos. Think about the role you have in aiding and abetting, in leading, in helping your department be better. Think about what you're going to do with this information. You were probably assigned to sit in on this. I would like to think that you wanted to, but I will probably assign. Put some notes together for how you're going to give this information back to the other people in your dealership. And call me. Go wow somebody. Make something happen. Here's my name. Here's my number. Here's my email. Send me a note. If you have a question, I'm available. This is a service that's brought to you by AED, and therefore, they want you to use it. And they bring me on board to do these things so that I can assist dealers. And so, to answer phone calls, to answer questions is gratis. Won't cost you a dime. And I'm glad to talk to you. So with that, raise your hands. Just let me know you're out there. And I will turn it over to you. So I appreciate your participation. I really enjoyed doing this. It's a lot more fun when I can talk to people and hear from people. Do you have any questions? I'm gonna take that as a no. And in that case, I appreciate your attention. And go wow somebody. Thank you very much.

customer satisfaction

delivery process

formal delivery

key dealership personnel

welcome letter

walk around

follow up

department silos