Each McDonald Group program is entirely customized for the sponsoring distributor. We work with you to define your most critical training issues and needs. These issues and concerns are then reflected in the lectures, content of materials, student projects and team discussion assignments. Workbook materials are printed specifically for your session with your logo.

Workshop Agenda...

• NEW EQUIPMENT BUSINESS MANAGEMENT.
  Audit your field sales operations. Learn how to build Premiere Account relationships. Discuss how “vulnerability analysis” can significantly strengthen your competitive position on large deals. Review how Team Selling gives you a strong, competitive edge. Build account intelligence profiles essential to success of each dealer revenue center. Examine best industry practices to improve profitable market share and achieve sales performance benchmarks.
• USED EQUIPMENT OPERATIONS.
  Audit your used equipment operations. Examine the Seven Axioms for highly profitable used equipment business. Discuss successful techniques for improving inventory turns, used equipment appraisals, buying it right, target marketing, inventory control and prospecting.
• RENTAL EQUIPMENT OPERATIONS.
  Audit your rental equipment operations. Examine successful practices in equipment rental market assessment, revenue and profit control and, rental costing techniques. Discuss rental trouble-shooting checklist, recommended rental polices and procedures.
• SERVICE OPERATIONS.
  Complete our 110 question service operations audit. Learn the Five STEPS to improved productivity and profitability. Discuss how to reduce rework, improve field service technician productivity, and raise customer satisfaction levels. See how incremental service billings yield huge revenue gains. Evaluate the critical balance between shop billing rates and labor productivity. Examine field-proven aftermarket Service marketing and sales techniques. Structure shop incentive programs.
• PARTS OPERATIONS.
  Conduct a detailed parts operations audit. Review the SIX STEPS to significantly improve parts revenue and service levels. Learn how to avoid large cash traps in the parts business. See how to calculate if the proposed discount is a “good deal.” Discuss the most successful aftermarket Parts marketing and sales techniques available. Examine how to eliminate dead stock, improve off-shelf fill rate, turns and optimize margins. Set up incentives that work for each parts department employee. Learn how service and parts can better collaborate for mutual success and greatly improved customer satisfaction. SPECIAL EMPHASIS on structuring the aftermarket field sales rep: market assessments, territory structure, performance measurement and incentives.
• CUSTOMER SERVICE & RETENTION
  Complete an audit of your customer service operations. Learn how to structure a highly effective Customer Retention effort throughout the entire dealership. See results from The McDonald Group’s studies on why customers leave. Examine how machinery customers define VALUE. Identify employee performance standards essential to Customer Retention. Build programs to improve “Value Delivery” in every customer interaction.
  
• CONCURRENT MARKETING STRATEGY.
  Learn how to establish Aftermarket Product Support as a barrier against competitors. Gain insight into what customers expect and how to best respond. Structure Product Support as a significant VALUE-ADDED factor in New, Used and Rental Equipment sales effort. Examine how team selling can boost sales.
  
• “WHAT IF” COMPUTER MODEL.
  Learn how to test alternate management profit improvement actions on The McDonald Group’s “what if” model. Bring your laptop with Word for Windows 3.1 and Excel to obtain hands-on experience with your personal copy of the software. All documentation included in your workshop kit.
  
• MAJOR CLASS PROJECT ASSIGNMENT. Work to complete a confidential profit improvement strategy to increase retail margins in your business. Resources include numerous industry articles and publications by The McDonald Group, Inc. Private coaching support for the assignment will be provided by your instructor.
  
• STRATEGIC ACTION PLANS FOR IMPROVEMENT.
  Develop practical ACTION PLANS to improve overall sales, profitability and positive cash in each Revenue Center. Build a performance improvement and customer retention model for your entire business.
  

Workshop Preparatory Exercises...

In order to get the most out of the program, participants are asked to complete a set of preparatory readings and exercises. A Preparatory Exercise Workbook and Study Guide will be sent immediately upon receiving tuition payment. You will be asked to benchmark forty-five important dealer performance areas (on a confidential basis). In addition there are “study guide” reading assignments in the following four paperback texts. Students are responsible for purchasing their own texts. You will gain an excellent head start on the workshop discussions by completing these exercises.

Delivering Knock Your Socks Off Service by Karen Anderson and Ron Zemke
The Personal Efficiency Program by Kerry Gleeson 1994.
Good to Great by Jim Collins
Developing the Leader Within by John C Maxwell

ABOUT YOUR INSTRUCTOR...

Walter McDonald is founder of The McDonald Group, Inc., a private consulting firm focusing on marketing and business strategies, executive education and development. For the past twenty-five years, Walter has been a highly successful material handling, construction and forestry equipment, and, heavy duty truck industry seminar leader. In addition, he has worked on numerous business consulting assignments for equipment manufacturers and distributors.

Walter is a popular guest speaker and specializes in customized in-company training programs. He has published more than 40 articles in the MHEDA Journal, Material Handling Business and Construction Equipment Distribution magazines. Since 1975, Walter has conducted well over 2,600 management seminars and workshops on advanced service and parts management, business strategy, industrial marketing and sales management, aftermarket sales operations, organizational development, industrial product management and, product support.

His adult education clients have included the American Rental Association, Associated Equipment Distributors, the Material Handling Equipment Distributors Association, Caterpillar, Hitachi, Melroe/Bobcat, Melroe Europe, Timberjack, Deere CE, Ingersoll-Rand, Komatsu, Vermeer, Vermeer S.E. Asia, CASE/New Holland, JCB, Ditch Witch, HYSTER, NISSAN Forklift, Toyota Industrial Trucks, TCM, Mitsubishi Caterpillar Forklift, Volvo Trucks North America, Peterbilt Motors, Mack Trucks, Freightliner, Kenworth and numerous independent industrial equipment distributors in North America, Europe and the Far East. In 1999 Walter founded The Institute for Distributor Development to offer industry-specific public seminars and workshops on a wide variety of distributor development topics.

Prior to his 25-year professional management consulting career, Walter held several sales, marketing and general management positions at the senior level in industry including Vice President and General Manager of a $160 million distribution company. Some of his earliest career experiences were in prospecting, selling and installing business computer systems in major accounts.

Walter received his Management Consultant Certification (CMC) from the Institute of Management Consultants in New York. He graduated Cum Laude from Louisiana State University with a B.A. in Economics, attended M.I.T.'s Sloan School of Management in Cambridge, Mass. and pursued graduate studies in marketing and finance at the University of Chicago's Graduate School of Business. He and his wife live on the Northern tip of Northeast Wisconsin's Door County Peninsula.

Here is what participating managers say about Successful Revenue Center Management:

“The workshop built teamwork among our participating dealer managers and provided insight into the challenges faced by other managers in each of their departmental operations. Participants got to visit with their counterparts from other dealerships and we enjoyed valuable exchanges of information. This program is an excellent environment for creative thinking away from the office with no distractions. We have time and opportunity to talk and think through concepts important to our business.”

General Manager

“Working as a dealer management team allowed everyone to see the details of other departments’ practices and created a team spirit of improvement. Seeing benchmarks for each department that were new to the group created new awareness for improvement potentials, which were unknown before the meeting. The mature market we are in forces us to be the best we can be and this workshop gives you the benchmarks to allow the dealer to improve virtually every area. The interaction between dealers, when confronted with new ideas presented in the workshop, provided a deeper insight into the problems and solutions in the various markets, which would have been impossible outside the workshop.”

General Manager

“The workshop gives you the opportunity to be exposed to potential solu-tions to common problems by hearing how other dealers have dealt with them. The Action Plans commit you to taking what you’ve learned and ap-plying them to your unique dealership rather than just have the good ideas fade away. I loved the different types of analyses: extremely useful and simple. The workshop workbook is great. Developing customer relation-ships and creating a partnership mentality really came to the forefront. Customer perception is something we don’t focus on enough. The customer survey ideas were tremendous.”

Controller