The Mheda Journal

Members of the American Armed Forces serve their country in times of peace and conflict, continuing a long tradition of honor and pride. Whether training at a domestic Reserve camp or being deployed halfway around the globe, these men and women display commitment and determination to protect the United States of America.

In addition to their allegiance to the military, some of these determined men and women are employed in material handling jobs. The experience gained by these soldiers is helping them while on active duty and in Reserve units. Conversely, these service people have also benefited from their military experience when returning home to civilian careers. Whether driving heavy wheel military machinery or fixing a forklift at home, the service of these individuals to our country and to our industry is a mark of honor and pride. The MHEDA Journal and wikiMHEDA salute these brave and generous men and women of MHEDA companies who have served their countries.

Read more here. Thank you! Congrats!

I ran across this little nugget today while researching our wikiMHEDA headlines. With all the talk still circulating the industry about green technology, I found it interesting.

A company in Buffalo, NY, specializes in eco-friendly products, like turning scrap tires and computer parts into item like wheel stops and sign posts. They have turned their attention to recycling old industrial conveyor belts made of rubber. According to the blog post in Buffalo Business First, “We don’t want to have any waste or have effect on the environment so were taking scrap and making it into different products. We’re going to take old conveyor belts from quarries and mines and cut them out and we have a customer in Texas who makes them into dock bumpers.” The quote is from Deborah Robbins, VP of Rubberform Recycled Products. They expect the process to start as early as next week.

As you’re all aware by now, the theme for MHEDA in 2010 is The Rules Have Changed. This is another example of small business ingenuity at work. If you or your customers have any old conveyor belts lying around, maybe it can return to another customer’s factory as a dock bumper. Full-circle material handling!

Have a great Memorial Day weekend, everyone!

Earlier this week, I sent an e-mail to every MHEDA Member who I know earned a “Top Dealer” award from a material handling equipment manufacturer in 2009. Now is the time of year when those lists start making the rounds, and once again, they are littered with MHEDA-member distributors. (If you won an award but did not receive an e-mail from me, that means I don’t know about it! Send me a message at editor@themhedajournal.org or leave a comment here to inform me!) It is our goal in the July issue to highlight some of those dealers who were able to acheive success in 2009 despite the conditions.

In the e-mail, I asked distributors how they did it? What was their strategy going into 2009? How did they implement it? How did they meet the award criteria? A smattering of the responses so far:

• “Our strategy was to keep all our salespeople and push service and units in stock for sale. We maintained stock levels in parts and rental fleet. We made ourselves a ‘one-stop shop’ by adding additional product offerings.”
• “We changed our sales force structure to an account management basis with each sales rep being assigned a minimum of 150 customers and target accounts. For each account, they developed their strategy to support the accounts. We provided incentives to our sales staff for doing new business, including equipment and aftermarket sales. We provided special service packages to our customers to assist them during these recessionary times.”
• “We simply listened to what customers needed to have done on their projects and made sure we met their goals with our finished prducts. We were not worried about meeting any special criteria, just stayed focused and kept everyone in the company busy.”

It’s all sound advice. Congrats to the winners, and I’d love to hear from even more of you! There’s still time. Now’s your chance to be included in the “How I Did It” issue of The MHEDA Journal, coming soon to your mailbox.

With all the uncertainty out there among small business owners, they can take some solace in the fact that, at least for this week, Washington’s eyes are focused on them. May 23-29, 2010, has been proclaimed National Small Business Week by President Barack Obama and the Small Business Administration (SBA).

The events surrounding National Small Business Week, being held at the Mandarin Oriental Hotel in Washington, D.C., include roundtable discussions, executive forums, speakers and award presentations, including the announcement of the National Small Business Person of the Year.

“America’s small businesses are proving their resiliency as they continue to drive economic growth and job creation,” says SBA Administrator Karen Mills. “During National Small Business Week, we’ll honor the spirit of entrepreneurship, innovation and determination that makes small businesses the engine of our economy.”

In making the official proclamation, President Obama said, “Small business owners embody the spirit of entrepreneurship and strong work ethic that lie at the heart of the American dream. They are the backbone of our nation’s economy, they employ tens of millions of workers and, in the past 15 years, they have created the majority of new private sector jobs. During Small Business Week, we reaffirm our support for America’s small businesses and celebrate the proud tradition of private enterprise they represent.” Read more here.

This marks the 47^th annual National Small Business Week celebration. For more information, visit www.nationalsmallbusinessweek.com. The site will have live webcasts of all the related events throughout the week.

Enjoy the spotlight, small business owners. I hope it translates into some growth in your bottom lines!!

An op-ed piece in Thursday’s The New York Times provided an interesting perspective on green buildings and LEED certification, a topic we’ve covered in this space and in The MHEDA Journal before.

The Times article, titled “Don’t LEED Us Astray,” talks about how LEED certification (a U.S. Green Building Council certification given for incorporating eco-friendly design) has become a bit misguided. “While the standard is well-intentioned, it is also greatly misunderstood. Put simply, a building’s LEED rating is more like a snapshot taken at its opening, not a promise of performance.”

The article suggests that because once a building is built, it’s so difficult to predict what it’s actual green impact will be—after all, a bike rack doesn’t make people ride bikes—follow-up requirements should be implemented. “A number of local, state and federal agencies require LEED certification for their new buildings — so why not have them institute follow-up requirements as well? Buildings that efficiently generate on-site power should be able to claim tax credits. Tenants who reuse paper or install efficient lighting could claim rebates. At the same time, agencies should conduct regular energy-use checkups to ensure that landlords and tenants live up to the promise of their LEED certification—and those that don’t should lose their subsidy.”

I don’t really know enough about LEED to have an opinion, but I did find the argument compelling. I’ll throw it out to all of you: what do you think?

For the next issue of The MHEDA Journal, we’re focusing on distributors who were honored with Top Dealer awards by their manufacturers. In the past, we’ve simply published the list of honorees and highlighted the MHEDA Members in boldface. This year, we’re taking it a step further. We’re reaching out to the members listed by the manufacturers to find out their secrets.

Obviously, 2009 was a down year for the industry, so how were these dealers able to achieve what passed for success in such an environment? A couple of the distributors I’ve already talked to said, I think only half-jokingly, some form of, “We just didn’t do as bad as everybody else” and that’s their secret.

Even if that is the honest answer, the reasons why they didn’t do as bad as everyone else can still serve as a learning tool for the rest of us. If limiting the damage is considered success, then how did you do it?

Over the next few weeks, as I talk to more and more people, I’ll be sharing some of these distributor secrets. For now, I’ll just mention that we’ve actually gotten a wide range of brilliant strategies, ranging from making more customer visits by sales managers, to doing more product demonstrations, to enhancing Web presence. I’m sure you’ll find a nugget you can use from one of these top dealers in the July issue of The MHEDA Journal. Stay tuned!

While surfing the Internet this morning looking for any breaking industry news, I came across an interesting story. While only tangentially related to the industry through the use of RFID tags, it did strike me as a great way for a small business to differentiate itself from the competition. The theme of MHEDA’s recent Convention was “The Rules Have Changed,” and Izzy’s Ice Cream shop in St. Paul, MN, has taken that mantra to heart.

An article in Computerworld magazine outlines Izzy’s new strategy for keeping the customers informed of flavor options. Apparently, one of the biggest customer service issues a shop like Izzy’s has is that customers don’t know what flavors are available until they get to the front of the line. Shop owners Jeff Sommers and Laura Hammel took care of that.

Izzy’s began using RFID technology to give customers real-time updates on the flavors it is offering each day. The store offers nearly 100 flavors, but only serves 32 on any given day. RFID readers in the dipping cabinets—the glass case where the ice cream tubs are housed—scan tags attached to the signs that label each tub to give customers updated information on available flavors. Every time a tub is replaced, an Izzy’s employee changes the RFID tag with one corresponding to the new flavor. The readers scan the tags 22 times every second and sends the information to a systems that projects the different flavors onto a wall in the store.

The information is also displayed on the store’s website, giving customers up-to-the-second information on whether their favorite flavor is available. 

Now that’s innovative! And just in time for summer!

How many ears of corn grow on one giant stalk? Most people (myself included) think the answer is “a lot.” But if you said “one,” that means you’re either from Nebraska or you attended 2009 MHEDA President Duncan Murphy’s workshop at last week’s MHEDA Convention.

I want to revisit Duncan’s presentation before it gets too much further into the past. Not that the information would be any less timely…I just don’t want to forget to mention what I got out of it. I didn’t really have time to give it the attention it deserved at the time.

Duncan gave a presentation titled, “Strategic Planning: A Practical Application to Help Grow Your Business and Your Profits.” It was well-attended by distributors and suppliers alike, and I have no doubt that everyone left with some new information and tips to better run their businesses. As the title suggests, the session was about the importance of developing a strategic plan. I won’t go into the details of the strategic planning model used (it’s the same one MHEDA uses that has been presented at past conferences) but I do want to focus on the point of the corn analogy above.

One stalk only grows one ear of corn, but each ear of corn has 300 kernels, which are the seeds to grow a new stalk of corn. Duncan explained that the strategic planning process at your company can sprout the same way. He explained that a strong team of managers developed the plan (the ear) and then dispersed the message to all the employees (the kernels). Once the employees buy-in to the plan – which is a multi-step process that includes improved communication, measured results, goal setting, reviews and revisions, etc. — then the “kernels” can sprout. The employees will perform better, and they can be the basis for a new, improved company (the stalk).

I thought this was a really interesting concept. I assure you that Duncan explained it much more eloquently than I just did. (Downloads of presentation materials are available on MHEDA’s website.) All you really need to know is that by following the strategic plan he outlined in his presentation, Riekes Equipment Company was able to increase its profit despite a 18% drop in sales and earned 2009 “Top Dealer” awards from both Yale and Combilift. Not a bad year, all things considered. That’s the importance of a strategic plan.

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Upon returning from the MHEDA Convention, I was of course overwhelmed by the amount of e-mail in my inbox. I had responded to the urgent messages and messages from actual people while I was gone, but that still left the mountains of newsletters and promotional items to sift through. Most of them I simply gave a cursory look to before deleting, but there was one that I thought deserved special mention.

Having the opportunity to work with and on behalf MHEDA’s membership, I spend a lot of time talking to small business owners. I’ve come to admire, particularly in the past couple of years, the dedication and courage it takes to be out there in the trenches, fighting the good fight. That’s why one particular press release, from the National Federation of Independent Business (NFIB), a small business watchdog group based in Washington, D.C., caught my attention. The article below was written by NFIB President Dan Danner and is used with permission:

“Why America Admires Small Business

It’s conventional wisdom these days: Many people are frustrated, even angry, with government and other major sectors of society. New research from the Pew Research Center confirms this thinking. In a recent survey, the group asked Americans whether they thought 13 different institutions and sectors had a positive or negative effect on the way things are going.

At the bottom of the list are large corporations (64 percent said negative), the federal government (65 percent), Congress (65 percent) and banks and financial institutions (69 percent negative).

So who’s on top? Small businesses.

Seventy-one percent of Americans say small businesses have a positive effect on the way things are going in this country. And when you look at the total picture of what small businesses do every day, it’s easy to understand why Americans feel the way they do.

Of course, small business owners start and build businesses, creating most of this country’s new jobs along the way, providing employment for millions of workers. And they support other businesses from which they buy goods and services, including, for example, the advertising that supports the media outlet where you’re reading this.

But small business owners are also frequently the lifeblood of the communities in which they live and work. Consider these facts from National Federation of Independent Business’ Research Foundation: 

• Ninety-one percent of small business owners contribute to their community through volunteering, in-kind contributions, and/or direct cash donations.
• The estimated average value of contributions is $6,600 per small employer, for a total of roughly $40 billion.
• Seventy-four percent volunteer the equivalent of 18 working days per year for community and charitable activities.

 Those contributions of time and money support a wide variety of groups, including schools, civic organizations, community groups such as Lions and Rotary clubs, youth sports and athletic teams, and many other organizations that help to make up a community.

Why do they do it? The most important reason, they said, is “personal satisfaction and fulfillment.” The least important reason was because they expected any kind of direct business benefits.

Small business owners also said that creating a better business climate and making the community a better place to live were important reasons to contribute.

So here’s the Pew survey’s real message to government, policymakers and others: If you want to turn around the public’s negative view of you, you’d do best to promote the policies and practices that support small businesses. We’ll be a better country for it.”

Couldn’t have said it better myself. Thanks, small businesspeople!

Made it back to the office today, and I have a lot of notes to go through. I will be diving into some of the topics I came across for the next several posts. First, I want to go back to a session I attended on Tuesday and make a few quick comments. 

I’m not in sales — and frankly have no real interest in being involved in sales – so I was surprised that I got so much out of Tom Reilly’s “Value-Added Selling” general session. I even had the chance to attend his breakout workshop, which he ran along with MHEDA Member Cary Roulet, VP/GM of Holt of California (Sacramento, CA), and picked up a few useful tidbits.

The official workshop title was “Crushing Price Objections,” and basically it featured tips and strategies for dealing with a customer who says “Your price is too high.” There was a list of about 16 different statements that salespeople hear from customers talking about price. One of Reilly’s biggest points was that most price objections aren’t really about price, they’re about the customer’s expectations. For instance, when a customer hears a price that he deems “too high,” he is probably not considering all the added value that comes with the product. He expects to hear a number that is close to what he has determined he is willing to pay, and if it is different, the natural response is to say, “Your price is too high.” The real problem, according to Reilly, is not necessarily with your prices but with what the customer is expecting.

I’m probably not explaining this very well since it’s not a situation that I run into every day. But it home when he said, “Money is a better conversation to have with customers than price.” I kind of considered them to be the same thing, bu they’re not.

Money is a bigger, long-term issue. Price is what you pay one time, a short term concept. Money is the total amount you spend, whcih includes the sales price, the service costs, warranty costs, etc. That, Reilly says, is how distributors can add value and drive profitabilty. The total cost of what distributors provide is really what matters. When explained well by your salespeople, no customer can argue with that. You’ll never hear, “Your value is too high.”

It goes to show that you never know what you’re going to pick up at a MHEDA Convention. Sometimes you find nuggets even when you’re not really expecting to.