As we begin the last session in this intermediate rental course, I want you to reflect on the things that we've talked about so far, which were people, process, and products. And we talked about what the organization chart might look like to support a robust rent-to-rent fleet. We talked about the profiles of the type of people that you would want working in different positions. Then we focused on process and four or five areas of the company that need some refinement so that we can push equipment out the door and have good quality control. And then when it comes back, it can get through our system and be checked out properly. Then we talked about our products and that it was a little bit more than just our core products, that we needed to wrap services around that. And that included everything like transportation and support in the field, and we needed to potentially have some ancillary products to go with our core products. We talked a little bit about having some rental protection plan, which also enables customers to have a little bit less risk. And so now that we are starting to pull all those pieces together, which are key elements, now we need to make sure that we are validating our assumptions about everything from our pricing to our operating hours and what customers are expecting and maybe what it takes to get them away from their current suppliers. So we need to have a real strategy for marketing our rent-to-rent department, and this should be something that's not in a silo where we're doing it just at the rental department, but it really should align itself with the greater strategy of the company on how we market your particular company products and services. So we're going to start taking a look at some of the different ways that you need to think about marketing, and specifically your rent-to-rent. So let's just start with things like store location, where it is located in terms of convenience. You're probably not going to be able to do anything about this, but I will tell you that your location can either work for you or against you. So if you're in a difficult place to get to, customers aren't inclined to go there. And so what happens there is it puts more pressure on your transportation because you're not an easy place to get to. Your inventory display, both outside in the yard, how things are attractively organized or not, and inside the store, whatever supplies or equipment you may have on display. It says a lot about how you think about yourself and when you present yourself and your location and your equipment and your employees are dressed in uniform and they present themselves well and there's enough of them and they seem to have the right attitude. All of those are kind of subliminal messages that suggest to the customer that this is a good place to do business. Things like our trucks and trailers that are going down the road, are they clean? Do they seem to, even the chains and binders, the way they're organized on the truck or not? Mud flaps, are we consistent with just keeping our trucks in order? Are they clean? Our company logo, is it proudly displayed where people know when we're running a truck or trailer up and down the highway or even on our equipment? That we're proud of our name and our company and it's really easy to see where this equipment came from. And then there's some things that maybe aren't so obvious to you, such as our paperwork, our invoices and our statements, our rental contracts. Are those things easy to read? Are they too long? Can people easily identify the content of these things and they can figure out what this invoice is for? If there's an issue, is our phone number real easy to find on there? This should be part of our marketing as well. Our company website, easily you can see where that is a big deal today for people to go on and basically assess what we have in our rental fleet. You may or may not choose to put rental rates on there. But I do think it's important because our customers are looking at us 24-7 and they need to be able to find information. We need to be easy for them to find us. Our business cards, that's a way that we make a statement about our company. And so our business cards and our logos, don't know if your company is serious about your brand or not. But even the colors and the fonts, everything that's being used needs to be scrutinized so that you're consistent with it. Because all of those things are images that the customer is seeing and making an opinion about your company. So now let's take a look at some of the things that your company might be spending money on in terms of trying to attract an audience. And that would be stuff like signage that could include billboards. That may even be directional signage in your yard. It's just how good are we at it? Does it communicate a message effectively? Clearly things like sports radio shows or talk radio might be a good place to market your rent-to-rent fleet. Local cable TV is usually a pretty inexpensive place. Direct mail. We should be laser focused on who we're trying to do business with. We are not a mass media type of business. We are not for everyone. We are for a very specific crowd. So we need to have our marketing materials laser focused so we're spending money on the right thing to the right audience. Social media. I would highly recommend if you don't have a Facebook page that accompanies your company website, I would suggest you look into that. There's some amazing things going on in the marketplace today in terms of how to attract customers. Newspaper ads, again, can be very effective in the sports section. And then any Internet advertising puts a big net out there, especially for selling used equipment. Additional marketing strategies would include direct sales. You know, an outside sales presence, going to some local trade shows or regional trade shows. Trade associations, such as a general contractor's association like the AGC or it could be a utility contractor's group. It's a wonderful opportunity for networking. The reason that I think direct sales is so necessary is you need feedback. The very idea of putting up a billboard or running an ad in a newspaper or something like that, that's all good. It takes out messaging. But when the audience does not respond to us, we don't exactly know why. We don't know whether they are already in love with their current supplier or maybe our rates aren't good enough. Or when they have called us, we didn't have what they were looking for. So we don't get any feedback from that. Some of the opinion that this is the best money you can spend in terms of marketing is have a direct sales presence. And you've got to have a dialogue with customers to where you're finding out what is it specifically they're looking for, can't find. What is the expectations that they have for a supplier? And when you hear this information and now you bring it back and you take action upon it, now you can better align your services and your offering with their expectations. So feedback, I believe, is a critical piece of marketing. So the first thing we want to do is take a look at your data. Your data is very rich with information about how we can go forward with marketing rent to rent. So the first thing I would ask you today is who are you doing business with? And a lot of businesses can't really answer that question. What they'll tell you is the name of certain contractors that are their biggest ones, but they don't really know what market segments that they're doing business with because they've never taken the time to segment their customers. So I would suggest to you that you need to take your entire customer database if you haven't already and come up with probably 15 or 20 major types of markets. And this could be mining, it could be utility contractor, it could be site contractor, it could be plumbing or excavation or concrete. Whatever these groups are that you decide, then go through and assign every one of your customers into one of these groups. And as soon as you do that, then you start to look at the revenues produced by these types of customers every month, and you can start to see where your business is coming from. So once you know that information, taking a look at line number four, then we look and say, how do these opportunities line up with our current rental fleet? Does our rental fleet line up well with the segments that we have that we've got the most customers from? Or do we probably need to supplement it with some different types of equipment to make it a little bit more interesting for those groups? And then as you analyze that information, you can determine, okay, which is our best performing groups of equipment? Because we can start to look and see, well, gosh, I've got wheel loaders that are outperforming excavators. Why is that? Who's using those things? And so we've got to get a read on what are our best producing customer types, and then what's our best functioning rental categories of equipment. Then we have to figure out which ones are our worst performing categories so that we can focus on them and determine, are we just not talking to the right people? Do we not have the right pricing? Do we not have the right type of machine for this particular market? And then we need to determine, what does our used equipment sales look like? Because one of the things that we're going to intend to do with the rent-to-rent fleet is roll this equipment out just in time to match local market demand for used equipment. So is that 24 months? Is that 36 months? Is it 48 months? Is it 2,000 hours? You've got to look at your own local market to determine when do we want to roll wheel loaders out? What's the optimum time? And so we need to look in our data and take a look at our used machine sales and find out, what is it, where's our sweet spot for selling used equipment? So now let's take a look at the major markets that probably are in your area. We can have things such as commercial construction, the mining industry. So that's not in everyone's territory, but a lot of you dealers do have mining. Then we've got industrial construction and maintenance, and that's different than commercial construction where maybe we're building hotels or retail shopping or housing, that type of stuff, or schools. Industrial construction could be industrial warehousing or it could be industrial plants. Then we've got things like public works and government, and we've got, whether it's city, county, government, it could be state government, it could be federal government, there's all types of public works groups. And then we've got residential construction, and that's everything from the home builders to the site contractors, and that can be roofers, that can be landscape guys, all types. We've got the agriculture and forestry market. So I would suggest that maybe you have these six major groups, and then we start to get into subcontractors. Subcontractors, site developers, road contractors, steel erectors, electrical contractors, masons, plumbing, sewer contractors, underground utility folks, demolition, landscape, general contractors, marine contractors, all of these are very specific groups of contractors that use different types of machines from us. And so I think if you'll go through and segment everything and then run your results, and I suggest doing that for the last 24 months, if not 36 months, to kind of see whether you're actually growing in any of these specific areas. Or let's take a look at two years ago and run your top customers from top to bottom, and then run it for last year, top to bottom, and see if they have shifted. And then run it for this year and see whether your top customers are staying with you or not, or whether you're losing some of those. And then what you want to be able to do is look and see not only their total spend, but you'd like to be able to look and see what is it that they're spending on new machines, what is it they're spending on used machines, how about parts and service, and then rental revenue. And I think what you'll discover is that even if you've got hundreds of customers, there's probably very few that are getting all of those services from you. And so it immediately creates some opportunity for a targeted sales effort to go out and promote your rent-to-rent fleet, because now you have mined your own data, and you start to see where the gaps are, and you can start to see where some customers are, in so many words, cherry-picking your services, and they're not using all that they could be getting from you. So I really want you to focus on this survey circle, because I think if you can get this process really memorized across your entire sales staff, whether it's the machine salesman or your rent-to-rent salesman, that this will help you, because it's an ongoing process that just should become automatic for you as you work with customers. So we're going to start with our current customer list, and we need to go talk to those folks and really play fairly ignorant and say, you know what, I don't think I've ever taken enough time to really understand what it is you guys do all day. I would like to really understand when your guys show up at a job site, what happens next? What type of equipment do you need from the beginning of a project to the end? When materials show up on the job, how is it unloaded? Is there anything that's got awkward size, or do you have to hoist things way up in the air? What's the weight of those types of things? Because I'd like to better understand, really, what the nature of your work is. And so you talk to the customer about that. And so what we're trying to do is identify the processes that they use to be successful in their business. And then we talk about their expectations of their current suppliers and then any pain points that they've got. And so they may not be forthright with that. They may tell you that, no, I'm good, everything's fine. But as you see going around this circle, we're trying to learn from them, and then we're trying to get a sense of where our opportunity is, and then we're going to develop a solution for them and then promote this offering, and it's going to go around the circle. So the first two things we're trying to do is identify their processes and then also their expectations. So you're going to ask questions such as, what time do you guys get started every day? Do you go typically and pick up equipment that you need to rent, or do you have it delivered straight to the job site? What time does it need to be there? Do you guys use purchase orders? Do you get clearance through the office, or who's got authorization to make those decisions? Do you guys have your own insurance for rental equipment, or do you typically try to get a rental protection plan? You're trying to understand about credit. Do they expect to be on a 30-day charge, or what kind of terms, and how does their cash flow so that they can pay their bill? And through all of this, you are trying to get an understanding of what their pain is. And so you're asking questions about, you know, what's your current supplier not doing, or where's the opportunity? What's the thing that really aggravates you about renting equipment from somebody? And just let them talk. And you may or may not find an opportunity right away, but this is an ongoing process. Ultimately, if we can't identify a pain point for them, then we have a difficult time going forward. I have spent a lot of time with salesmen that go out, and they don't ask very many questions. What they do is they show up, and they basically go through this little monologue to the customer, saying, this is what we do, this is what we do, this is what we do, this is how much it costs. Do you need anything? And then the customer politely says, no, but I'll keep you in mind, and they go away. Well, there's not much chance that we're going to lure that guy away from a current supplier because we didn't really engage with him to figure out even if we could serve them or not. So it is really important that if you're going to make an investment in a rent-to-rent fleet, that you have got to make sure that that stuff's going to go out the door. Okay, well, the way that we figure that out is we've got to talk to customers to figure out what is it that's missing in the marketplace, or where is our real opportunity? And we've got to really hone in on that about the quantity of machines that we might need, the particular models that we need, and we need to get the pricing correct. And then we've got to get the transportation correct to be able to make it actually show up on the job site. So identifying the pain point, you've got to work real hard to try to get to that point where you know how this customer operates, what they do all day, you understand what their expectations are, and now you're starting to understand what their current aggravation is, and now we have a shot. So once we have identified what their pain is, now it's up to us to go back and figure out, okay, how do we solve the problem for this person? We need to have a strategy for them. And I'm not talking about they've got a machine broke down this afternoon and can we get them another machine. I'm talking about building a relationship with a customer. And so I'm starting to get a sense of how they run their business, and can we be a trade partner with them? And so to me, I'm thinking about a pipeline of revenue with these guys. And so when I think about a solution, it's not a one-off solution to fix a problem just this day. What I'm really looking at is how can I be a better trade partner with this particular contractor better than somebody's already doing it for him today? Now once I determine what that is, then I have to go promote it to them. And so I have to go all the way back around, and I have to tell the customer, this is what we can do for you, make my offering. And then we try to see whether they respond to it or not. And so that's where we measure the results. And we see, did they do any more business with us since say the last 30 days or 60 days since we were there and talked to them? And if so, great. That means that we were good listeners, we came up with a suitable solution, and they responded. If that's the case, then we go try to find some more rental customers that look just like those guys. And we repeat the process. So if I'm at the place of measuring results and I really don't see any difference from that contractor that we made the offer to, then I have to go back to them and say, look, maybe I missed something. When I was in your office about 45 days ago, we talked about this, this, and this. And I thought I understood you to say that if we made this kind of proposal to you, that that would be attractive and maybe I could earn your business. And I really haven't seen anything change. So did I miss something? Did you give us a shot and somehow we messed up? So you're back to listening again. And maybe you didn't understand the customer's expectations. So at the end of the day, we have got to be really good at listening, and we've got to be able to put together a strong offering for the customer. So our solutions have got to be compelling to make them be able to leave one supplier and move over to us. So our fleet mix is really important. Do we have a broad enough offering of equipment that will allow these people to completely do what they need to do? Or are we just offering a partial solution and therefore we're really not a viable option for them? Secondly, do we have enough machines? And are they available when they need, when they have called us? Were we available? And sometimes that can mean they want the machine at 7 o'clock and we don't open until 7.30. So availability also means store hours. It means transportations and logistics. Pricing, do we have our pricing correct? Are we attractive? Are we competitive? And I don't mean low-balling somebody. I just mean that we need to be in the ballpark. We don't want to be a, we don't want to build our business around being the lowest priced option. Our quality control, when they get equipment from us, can they expect it to run and not have a service truck come out there right away? And then if it is staying out for a longer period of time, are we going to have the product support show up to take care of the machine and do the routine servicing? And do we have expertise both in the field, in our sales team, as well as the guys behind the counter that is answering the phone? Our credit policy, is it reasonable for them? In other words, do we have a strong enough line of credit that they can do their business and pay their bill on time? Or are credit limits too tight and that makes it difficult for them to do business with us? And ultimately, convenience, are we easy to do business with? So if you look here, we want to be easy to do business with, we want to be convenient, and we want to be friendly, and we want to be responsive. So when we go back to the three P's, the people, the process, and the products, we have got to constantly be massaging that to be successful in this rent-to-rent business. And so we need to constantly be talking to customers and listening to them and tweaking what we do. So we want our people to be smarter, we've got to have them trained, we've got to have a sense of urgency about how we answer the telephone and how we respond to things that are down in the field. Our processes, we need to not have all our machines tied up in the shop, we need them to mostly be available. And our products, we need to have good, reliable machines in our fleet, they need to be well-maintained, and we need to have a strategy for transportation that makes sense. We've got to have a rental protection plan that makes sense, and we've got to be really good at telling our story and marketing our company. And therefore, we have an opportunity to have a profitable rent-to-rent business.

marketing

rent-to-rent industry

marketing strategy

direct sales

target markets

continuous improvement