I hope the following diagram will really speak to you so that you can see the relationship between people, process and products, and how it interacts with the customer. For any business to be successful, we need to have the right amount of people, we need to have the right people in the right places, we need to have processes in place that enable quality control, which gives our customers a great experience, and we need to have the right products and services that the customer is expecting. So it's a combination of all of these activities, very integrated, that enables us to build a business, a successful business, whether we're talking about rental or some other business. So having two of the three will not get it done. For us to have exceptional customer experience, we need to have the right people, the right process and the right products. So to begin this course, we're going to begin to talk about people. The following is a typical org chart that you might use for your rental department. Starting with the rental manager, he may or may not have a direct rental salesman working for him. It's possible that that person may come from the sales department. Most likely, the rental manager would have a rental coordinator. That's generally someone that's working at the front desk, helping answer the phones, waiting on walk-in customers, writing up rental contracts, coordinating dispatch, that type of thing. The rental manager may also have a service tech or two that are directly assigned to them to help do the routine maintenance on the equipment. Some dealerships may choose to have the service techs directly under the service manager. Under the rental coordinator, you may have a yard man, and we'll talk a little bit more about what that role is. And you may or may not have your own delivery driver. You may choose to outsource that. And then over on the service side, we probably have someone that is manning the wash area and helping check in equipment and clean it up and top off fuel and those types of things. Now that you get some sense of maybe the number of people or the type of positions that would be required to develop a rent-to-rent department, we're going to start to look at some of the job descriptions or the type of work that each of these people would be responsible for. So let's start with the rental manager. Again, these are fairly high-level objectives, but the rental manager really needs to be someone that reports at a high level in the dealership. Generally you want the rental manager to report to a VP level. You don't want them subject to the sales department. You don't want them subject to the service department, and it's not a clerical position. A rental manager is someone that's going to manage assets for the company and be responsible for driving profitability. They're going to have responsibility for the departmental expenses, managing the daily activities. Everything that happens associated with rental, the rental manager would be responsible. They would have responsibility for financial utilization and time utilization of the rental fleet, and all the fleet performance would be their responsibility. They would have decision-making responsibility for qualifying customers, deciding what the rental rates are, enforcing company policy. They need to have hiring and firing capabilities. They would establish the standard operating procedures in the rental. They'd also be responsible for training of the rental staff and developing and maintaining a culture of urgency. And they also have the responsibility for customer satisfaction. So anything and everything to do with the rent-to-rent department, we need a manager that is capable of doing all those tasks. Now the rental coordinator is someone that is generally the right-hand man for the rental manager. This person usually handles all the rental incoming calls, and they wait on the customers that may walk in the dealership. They usually are involved in helping qualify the customer, meaning asking enough questions to determine whether the customer is using the right piece of equipment for the application as well as deciding whether this person has an account or whether we need to get one open for them, or if your dealership will do transactions on a cash basis, then they need to get enough information to qualify the customer. The rental coordinator really needs to know the ins and outs of the equipment. They really need to know practical application so that they can select the proper equipment. They need to be a great communicator to be able to teach and demonstrate to the customer the safe operating procedure of the equipment. The rental coordinator usually is the person that's writing all the rental contracts, and they are acting as dispatch, whether that's with your own trucks or whether they are working through third-party transportation services. And they usually are closing all the rental contracts and doing the invoicing on behalf of the rental department. For a rent-to-rent department to really be successful, we need someone that is out promoting the business and educating customers about what we do, the services that we provide, the various types of equipment that we have, and so a rental salesman is a key ingredient to this. And their primary duties are identifying prospects, again, qualifying customers that they may run into the field to determine, is this the type of person that we would like to do business with or the company? Do they meet our credit qualifications? A rental salesman, to be effective, really needs to understand process. So as he meets customers, he needs to really dig into the details and understand what type of equipment do they typically use, what do they do with it, what are the specifications for that equipment. They need to know what the customer's expectations are in dealing with a supplier, specifically a rental supplier. And in conversations with the customer, hopefully they can uncover some pain points and maybe the customer or prospect's current supplier isn't doing a good enough job and they may be able to find an opportunity to do more business with them. A salesman needs to be a problem solver. He needs to educate the customer as well about the equipment. And every day that a salesman is out in the field, they should be gathering market intelligence. And that's everything to do with competition. What's going on with our competitors? Are their fleets getting bigger? Are they changing their rates? Is the number of jobs opening? Is that getting bigger or is the pipeline of work getting smaller? All of those things are part of market intelligence that an outside salesman needs to bring back to the business. And then as you might imagine, they are supposed to promote the business and be of such character and presence out there in the marketplace that they can attract new customers.

successful business

exceptional customer experience

rental manager

rental coordinator

rental salesman