Now that we've had an opportunity to examine the different types of personality profiles, I want to make one more round through the different jobs in the rent-to-rent department so that you can start to match up in your own mind what is it that these people do and who's best suited to do that type of work. So I'd like to start with the rental manager, and I've broken these job roles and responsibilities into three areas. The administrative aspects of the job, and then the people skills, and then what I'll call the technical side of things. I believe most every job in your company has those three elements, and they're not all the same in terms of demand. So some jobs are more administrative, and some jobs are more people skills, if you will, and some jobs are more technically oriented. So hopefully this listing will also give you some guidelines maybe to write your own job descriptions for your dealership as you're trying to attract people, or strengthen a job description that you already have. So starting with the rental manager, roles and responsibilities. Ultimately, this is a profit center for the dealership, and so this person has got to be responsible for the profitability of the department, end of story. So they also have responsibility for the staffing, the hiring and the firing, the fleet management, expense control. What types of things might be in there? That could be everything from transportation, that could be repair and maintenance, that could be managing payroll within their department. A variety of things that might be part of expense control. Billing, they have total responsibility for making sure the invoicing is done accurately and timely. As I said, managing the payroll, working in concert with the sales and the service department to try to achieve the goals of the company as well as the individual goals of the rental department. This person would have responsibility for establishing the rental rates and periodically reviewing those to make sure that you're being competitive. Set the guidelines on whether we can discount rental rates and that type of thing. Looking at the people skills for rental manager. Very critical that this person be a leader. Someone that is not afraid to take some chances. Someone that does not feel like they have to be a friend to everyone. This isn't a popularity contest. This is about managing potentially millions of dollars worth of assets and having to be responsible for that. They do have to have some salesmanship skills. Meaning they've got to inspire those people around them and you have to be able to do that through salesmanship and that's also courting new customers. As it says here, being collaborative. That's both with other departments within the company and then being a good negotiator. Again, with customers. Whether it's a customer that you're trying to get them to do business with you and you're negotiating pricing. Or maybe it's a situation that has occurred and turned negative and maybe there's some damages or there's some complaints about rental billing. A rental manager has got to be able to stand tall in the face of all of that. Negotiation is one of those real skills to be able to figure out what it's going to take to solve an issue and be willing to make the hard decisions. Technically, it's very helpful if a rental manager has mechanical aptitude so that they just kind of have a sense of how things work. It's not impossible for somebody to be a rental manager and be somewhat clueless mechanically but it certainly helps. They do have to have good problem solving skills because that happens a lot. Operating skills. It's helpful for a rental manager to be able to understand what it's like to sit in the seat of a particular machine and make it operate. Basic operational skills anyway. They do need to know application knowledge because in some cases they are the guy that makes the final decision about whether we're going to let a machine go into a particular application. They need to understand capacities for machines and things that might overload a machine or potentially get us in a dangerous situation where it's just not safe to use the machine in that type of application. Part of knowing that is this idea of construction phases. They're not out in the field. This rental manager is generally in the office most of the time. They may go out on certain job sites or projects. But to have a real understanding of when a new project is going in the ground and they begin to break ground. What happens first in terms of the site preparation and then starting to put the drainage in place and the pipes and potentially retention ponds? And then what happens next in terms of a building coming out of the ground? They need to have some sense of how things are made actually around them. So if I had to give you a high achiever profile, this is kind of going back to the example of can a cleanup batter bat first? Yes, he can. I'm giving you the example of the switch hitter, base dealer. This is your number one person to try to be a rental manager. You're looking for somebody that has high energy and good charisma. This person needs to be a natural leader where people want to work for them, they believe what they're saying, and they are caught up in the enthusiasm and energy that this person puts out. This person needs to be very competitive and assertive. A can-do attitude, meaning that whatever it takes, we're going to figure out how to do that. We're not going to get stumped at 9.30 in the morning because of some issue and then the rest of the day we don't really know what to do. This person needs to be an excellent communicator, both written and verbal, so that when they're talking to customers it's very clear and points are articulated. Same way with working internally with the employees, that everyone knows what's expected and it's very clear. Willing to make the hard decisions, and sometimes that's a lonely place. Sometimes you make the right decision, sometimes you don't. But someone that is willing to say, okay, based on what I know and to the best of my knowledge, I'm going to make this decision, and they're willing to stand with it. Meaning they're willing to take a risk, they're not afraid to make a mistake. Part of this has to do with how the senior management team in the dealership views mistakes. If you want to short-circuit a real manager, start playing second-guessing every time they make a mistake, because then what you'll do is you'll basically neuter the managers to the point where they will discover it's not popular to make a mistake around here, so therefore we don't want to take any risk. You don't want an environment like that. We want people to take risk within reason. As I said earlier, this person is going to hire and manage a team of people. A small organization chart with outside sales, rental coordinator, truck driver potentially, yard man, technician, wash rack, they need to be able to understand personality styles and skills and talents and make sure that they put their people in the right position. In essence, the rental manager is the coach and manager for the rental department. They've got to have really good people skills and sense about people. Then they need to know numbers. They need to understand their operating data. They need to know how much in assets are they really managing on behalf of the company. They really need to understand budget and targets and percentages of things. That may be something that they need to get schooled on or trained, but it is a key ingredient for them to be successful as a rental manager. The rental coordinator is another key role in the rent-to-rent department. As we took our first cursory look at roles and responsibilities, we identified that this person handles almost all the incoming calls to the rental department. They have to make sure they collect the data from the customer, job site information, PO number, those types of things, accurate billing address and so on. Then they need to really have at their fingertips the product specifications and rental rates and whether we have things available. Whether it's a computer system, hopefully they've got a dashboard and can see things, or maybe they have to put together some type of a manual system that enables them to have access to information readily available. When they're talking on the phone, they don't have to hang up and I'll get back with you. I need to go look that up. No, they need to know where product specification information is because they will be asked. They need to know very quickly what rental rates are and is it available and how much would the transportation cost. So they need to have some kind of chart or schedule handy to them so they can answer that question. Rental coordinator is also responsible for creating all the rental reservations, putting the rental contracts into the system. They also need to keep a log of the phone calls that come in because you can get into some pretty crazy disputes with customers when they think they called and ordered something or maybe they think they called and turned something in off of rent and they actually didn't or maybe they didn't give you a PO or whatever might be the thing. So a daily log for incoming phone calls is really important and they also need to keep score on the missed rentals. Every time we have to tell a customer no, whatever reason that is, we need to record it that we missed a front end loader rental for three weeks and here's the name of the customer, here's the project they were on and the three-week rental was equal to $2,700 we just gave away because we didn't have it available. That's critical information to managing a rental fleet. The rental coordinator also closes the rental contracts when those machines come back. If somebody hasn't returned a machine on time, they need to get on the telephone and call the customer and find out what's going on. They also need to have high awareness of a customer's credit situation. So whether that's a pop-up window that comes up on your computer or that's an aging sheet that is sitting by the front counter so that they can look and quickly see whether this customer is in good credit standings with us to proceed with a rental. So that's kind of the administrative duties for this person. Now the rental coordinator from a customer relations standpoint, they've also got to be very good communicators because a customer is calling the store and trying to hand off a problem to be solved. And so the rental coordinator's got to be able to gather the right information, ask enough questions that they have the complete understanding of what it was the customer expected to happen. And they've got to be able to recommend the right piece of equipment for what the customer's wanting to do. They need to collaborate with the salesman in the company. If there's an issue about a particular job or a particular rental, they need to be kind of the go-between between a customer and the salesman trying to make sure that expectations are being met. The rental coordinator can also be the person that is doing some add-on sales. When they've got the customer on the phone, the customer's not in the presence in the store and can't see things, so they don't know whether you've got additional supplies available for sale or additional smaller equipment to go with the big equipment that they're renting. So the rental coordinator has to have some sales skills. Ask relevant questions about, is there any restrictions about us being able to get into this project? Is there certain times of day that we can't get in there? Or if I'm bringing access equipment, am I going to be bringing it in at dock level or am I going to drop it in the parking lot? Rental coordinator in some ways is almost like an air traffic controller. I mean, there's so many things going on relative to getting orders out and the timing and the logistics. And if for any reason there's a delay, they need to be very proactive and call the customer and let them know, hey, we're going to be an hour late, here's what happened. And so very conscientious this person needs to be. And then any contracts that are not closed out, things they can get back on time, they need to be working the telephone, contacting the customer and explaining to them that the equipment should have been back and here's the additional charges and such on overdue contracts. From a technical standpoint, also the rental coordinator needs to have mechanical aptitude, if at all possible, and basic understanding of construction processes. They have to have some problem-solving skills as well. It's not unusual for a customer to call and say, here's my situation, what do you think I should use? Or between this machine and that machine, which one do you think would be better? And so they have to have some real understanding of how equipment works, its capacities and limits and such. Working knowledge of construction phases. They need to know how a road is built, what happens in the process. If a bridge is being built or a commercial office building, kind of what happens as soon as they start breaking ground and as it comes out of the ground, what typically happens next, and for how long. Is this something that generally takes a week or no? They'll be on the site part for three or four months. They need to have a common knowledge of common equipment failures. So a customer calls up and says, I can't get the machine to start. That should not be, let's pass that to the service department immediately. We probably need to ask a few questions to determine, okay, the battery is dead. I've just figured that out because you forgot to plug the machine in that night. Or you've run it out of fuel. Or maybe you're not pushing the lever correctly. Maybe it's not in the right gear or out of gear before you are trying to crank the machine. So a rental coordinator can be a troubleshooter as well. When a customer calls with a equipment failure, they should be able to ask a few questions and potentially solve the problem. And they need to understand the differences between equipment. In some cases, you may be out of what somebody is asking for. And they can make a very sound substitution by explaining to the customer, here's how this machine is different and why it's suitable for what you need to do. So we're going to look at a high achiever profile for rental coordinator. What would this person look like? I would put it high on the top of the list is good memory skills. When customers call, after you start to build a relationship, they kind of expect you to know who they are just by their voice. And they know what job they're working at. And so even to the point of what machine they rented last. And so someone that can get a lot of things right, the person that's got the better memory, I would choose that person. Because there's a lot to pay attention and remember about what happens on a daily basis. Excellent customer service skills. So the person's got to be able to go from one incident to another and put the happy face on and roll with it. And just keep on going through the day and each customer is a unique experience. They're not going to let a bad experience ruin the rest of the day. Need to be very organized in the way they keep and manage information and rental contracts. And ultimately, they've got to be able to sell themselves over the telephone. So when a customer calls, a customer may or may not know your rental coordinator and they've got to gain a trust by the way this person is presenting themselves and talking over the phone that they can hand off this problem to the rental coordinator and the coordinator's going to handle it. And so sometimes you've probably experienced it. You've called a place. You told them what you wanted. And when you got off the phone, you wondered, gosh, I don't know if they really understood. They sure didn't seem to come across with a lot of confidence. So a rental coordinator's got to be able to sell themselves through the phone and make the customer have a lot of confidence that they can handle it. And lastly, they need to be able to do a lot of things at the same time, honestly, whether it's answering multiple phones that are coming in or a customer walks in or a driver's standing in front of them asking them a question or a technician shows up while he's on the phone and asking them, you know, which bucket was it you wanted me to put on there or the hydraulic hammer's not working or we got to go get a hose. There's all types of scenarios, and a rental coordinator cannot get rattled by all that. They have to be able to multitask, if you will, and be able to keep their head about them because it can get really busy, crazy, and that's a good thing. But some people are not wired to be able to handle that. So make sure that you get the person that can really flow with things as the rental coordinator because they are a key component in the success of your business.

rental manager

administrative

people skills

technical skills

profitability

rental coordinator