The Mheda Journal

The Third Quarter issue of The MHEDA Journal is now at the printer! It’s been a long process of getting this issue together, but it’s also been a lot of fun. As in years past, we used our Summer issue to salute those MHEDA Members who received recognition from manufacturers. This year, though, we took it a step further by actuallyinterviewing 12 of those dealers and finding out how they were able to achieve such lofty goals despite what we all know was an economic stinker of a year in 2009. While all admit that the revenue wasn’t as high as years past, they still were able to make some sales and maintain profitability. I think many distibutors will find their strategies compelling.

Also in this issue are two safety articles. We haven’t covered safety from these angles before, and I really enjoyed learning a little more about the inner workings of a distributorship when it comes to making safety policy. Thanks to Wisconsin Lift Truck and Associated Material Handling for their help.

This is just a sampling of what’s in store in this issue. There are a few surprises, too, that I don’t want to spoil here just yet, but I’ll be looking forward to hear your reactions once you see the magazine on July 15! (For a sneak peek of one of the surprises, see today’s issue of MHEDA Edge.)

In my June 4 post about accountability in business, I mentioned, almost as a throwaway comment, that the BP oil spill is a reminder of the importance of developing and implementing a disaster plan in your business. In the days since, the storms and floods that have hit the Southern United States have brought the issue of disaster planning even more to the forefront.

You never know when Mother Nature will wreak havoc, be it in the form of a tornado, hurricane, wildfire, volcano eruption, earthquake, flood or who knows what else. Yes, I’m sure you have insurance to take care of short-term closures and pay for facility damage. But who’s going to take care of your customers if you’re forced to shut down for an extended period? Can your business withstand such a closure? Do your employees know how to react?

In the wake of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita in 2005, The MHEDA Journal offered a few tips for businesses to set up a plan for dealing with such natural disasters. We also published helpful suggestions for repsonding to a pandemic. You never know when you’re going to need it.

Do you have a plan in place? What is it? Leave a comment here to let me know!

Before we get too far into the month, I wanted to make note of the fact that June is National Safety Month. I didn’t know that at the time I started planning the Third Quarter issue of The MHEDA Journal, but it works out well because we’re hitting on the safety theme in this issue.

Two members of the MHEDA-NET safety group, David Hermann of Wisconsin Lift Truck (Brookfield, WI) and Rudy Cuevas of Associated Material Handling (Carol Stream, IL),  agreed to write articles for this issue. Safety is a topic that we’ve often focused on in the magazine in passing, but it had been a while since we’d done a focus on it. Thanks to David and Rudy for their help in doing so.

I don’t want to give away too many of the details before their articles are published on July 15, but I will say that Rudy’s article about creating a safety policy is a must-read for anybody looking to develop rules and regulations to promote safety at their distributorship. David’s article talks about an often underrated piece of any successful safety program–the employee. All the rules and regulations in the world can be put in place but won’t make a difference if the employees choose to ignore them. How can that be avoided? Read the upcoming issue of The MHEDA Journal to find out.

Accountability is one of my favorite traits. There’s not much I respect more than someone who makes a mistake and says, “Whoops, I messed that up. Sorry. I will do my best to make sure that doesn’t happen again.” When you think about it, that’s all you can ask. If what’s done is done, a little “I’m sorry” goes a long way. Of course, part of accountability is also following through on making sure that it doesn’t happen again.

In one of the most bizarre, most talked-about moments in recent baseball history, Detroit Tigers pitcher Armando Galarraga was deprived of a perfect game on June 2 when first-base umpire Jim Joyce incorrectly ruled that a Cleveland Indians batter beat out an infield hit when, in fact, he should have been called out. (For those among you who aren’t baseball fans, a perfect game means that nobody on the opposing team reaches base. No hits, no walks, no errors, no hit batsmen. 27 batters go up, 27 make outs. It’s one of the rarest feats in the game.) Galarraga eventually retired the next batter to complete the shutout and earn a victory, but was denied only the 21st perfect game in major league history and a chance at so-called immortality by a call that replays confirmed was blatantly incorrect.

After the game, Joyce owned up to his mistake, admitting that he blew the call and apologizing personally to Galarraga. I give him credit for doing so, for holding himself to a standard of accountability, and most of America has been willing to do so as well.

How does all this relate to business, you ask? Well, accountability goes a long way in business too. Just look at BP and the current situation in the Gulf. While their CEO and PR team are busy downplaying the amount of oil spilling into the gulf (only 1,000 barrels of oil daily? Really, BP?), denying their level of blame for the initial explosion, and pointing fingers for reasons why each attempt to close the pipe is failing, the public trust in anything that happens from here forward is plummeting along with BP’s stock price. Some level of public discontent was inevitable given the severity of the situation, but BP could have mitigated the outcry somewhat by some old-fashioned honesty and accountability.

We made it a company exercise a few months back to read “Journey to the Emerald City,” a book  by Roger Connors and Tom Smith about how to create a culture of accountability in your business. It’s a good, quick read and it provides a good framework for setting goals and holding people accountable. I recommend it.

Just one more comment: The oil spill tragedy also is a reminder of the importance of having a business disaster plan in place. Be ready for the contingencies!

Thanks for reading and have a good weekend!

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.

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!

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.

Technorati token: B8X9XQUR3JHB

During the course of working on this issue (April) of The MHEDA Journal, a common element that kept coming up was the importance of customer service. To be sure, customer service has always been a hot topic of conversation among MHEDA members. They know the value of the service they provide and its importance in separating themselves from the competition.

As MHEDA focuses on how “The Rules Have Changed” during their 2010 Convention, it’s interesting that quality customer service is one thing that isn’t changing. Time and again, MHEDA members are telling me that “we’ll still provide the same service” or “servicing the customer is more important than ever” or “they’re not buying, so it’s important to focus on servicing what they’ve already got.” Comments like these have been common during our 2010 Industry Forecast and since.

As one distributor says in repsonse to the question of whether the explosion of Internet selling is bad for distributor relationships, “We are not burying our heads in the sand and are using the internet more and more frequently to market our goods and services. contracts will be tested, but customer service disappears with low margins and value can still be sold.”

Today I received a newsletter from a consultant who bemoaned the state of customer service from his newspaper delivery person: “I haven’t seen my paper on my porch in years.” Fixing that is a small step in fixing the newspaper industry’s struggles in general, he argues.

It’s a lesser example, but I keep seeing it all around. The more things change, the more they stay the same.

A recent article on emarketer.com outlines, with plenty of helpful charts and graphs, the penetration of different social media within Inc. 500 companies. The results were pretty fascinating. According to the article, “Adoption and awareness continue to trend upward, with 91% of firms using at least one social media tool in 2009 and three-quarters describing as ‘very familiar’ with social networking.” More than one-half, 52%, of companies report using Twitter in 2009, a phenomenal growth rate.

The survey results discussed in the article suggest that new media like blogs, wikis, social networking, video and podcasting are not merely fads. These are trends and are here to stay. I’ll admit that I was one who was a holdout from getting too excited about sites like MySpace, YouTube, Facebook and Twitter over the last few years. But the numbers are hard to ignore.

There are lots of MHEDA Members already using these social media sites already, but there are a lot more who aren’t. If you’re not there yet, you should be.

Read the emarketing.com article and charts in their entirety here.

Christmas is coming, and here’s the hot new video game sensation MHEDA members can feel good about getting their employees. A new application from Etcetera Edutainment called “Forklift Safety Sim” puts players through simulated real-world forklift safety training.

According to the Web site,

“Forklift Safety Sim delivers instruction in OSHA-based forklift safety standards and best practices by putting trainees through the paces with tasks that they would commonly find in a real work environment. This software gives users hands-on experience with inspection, traffic rules, load movement, and more, all in a virtual workplace filled with people, vehicles, and safety hazards that they must master. An exam mode lets trainees apply the lessons they have learned, tracks their performance, and gives them feedback so that they have a chance to learn immediately from the errors and mistakes that they made.”

Click here for the promo video.