The Elite Dealer Principal and the Three I’s Throughout my career as an office products industry service / operations executive and company president, I recognized my success was a function of two very special groups of people. The first group of special people I will be eternally grateful to are the great employees I had the pleasure to work with. Without great employees you will accomplish very little. The second group of special people I am forever indebted to are my mentors of whom I list three who are very special to me: Bill Davis, Peter Shoemaker, and Tom Johnson. I think most everyone in our industry recognizes Tom Johnson as the Industry icon who founded Global Imaging Systems and built it into the legend it became. Many who read this article will also know Peter Shoemaker as an Industry icon who took over the helm of A-Copy in 1983 and built it into the largest independent dealer in the United States, and then went on to senior executive positions at IKON and Global Imaging Systems. Bill Davis was the service executive at Xerox who gave me my first supervisory opportunity. Bill may not be an industry icon but for sure he is an icon in my life. All three of these men developed me. My definition of developed is similar to what a marine drill instructor does. They gave me knowledge, they forced me to achieve what I did not think was achievable, and made mince meat out of me when I thought of myself first before the welfare of my team. Today, I am partnered with Jerry Newberry and Jeff Kelly in the Pros Elite Group. Throughout the course of our time together, my partners and I have worked with hundreds of independent dealers to improve their overall operational productivity and profitability. Jerry, Jeff and I try to impart the lessons of Johnson, Shoemaker and Davis in our own way in our engagements with these dealers. Initially, we spent the majority of our time with service executives teaching and executing with them the disciplines that deliver 52% or greater Service GP. We then focused to making service the ultimate differentiator and began to teach their sales force how to sell that distinction within their marketplace. We then implemented results-based sales performance strategies that specifically show sales management how to manage their sales organizations with fact-based metrics, like we do in service, to make them more productive and effective. Today, we believe that the development of the dealer principal and CFO is equally important as the development of the sales and service executive. We now focus on broad based executive training during onsite consulting or in formal IDEA (Independent Dealer Executive Academy) training with the dealer principal and CFO to execute daily activities. The pillars of our practice surrounds the three I’s: Inspection, Investment, and Involvement. You get what you INSPECT goes the axiom. Inspection is as much about asking the right question as it is about knowing the right answer. The foundation of all execution is knowing how to ask the right question and comparing the answer to known performance metrics. The first company president interview I was ever granted was done by John Stuart at IKON. I prepared for that interview by filling my head full of facts and metrics that even the amazing Kreskin would have never known. Much to my horror, John Stuart began the interview with, “I expect that every company president knows the metrics that are indicative of strong performance in sales, service, finance and administration. What I am not so sure of is that all company presidents know the great questions to ask to get at the root cause of an issue before it becomes a problem. Based on that premise,” he continued, “What are the great questions you would want to ask your executive team?” I, like John Stuart, believe that great leaders must ask great questions, but Peter Shoemaker taught me to follow my direct report’s answers to my questions with the statement, “Please show me.” Jerry Newberry and Jeff Kelly teach service executives to have their supervisors do an 18 step post service call inspection. They emphasize the Pass/Fail scoring of these inspections. Company presidents do well to ask their service executives in their weekly meeting with them about the number of inspections that were performed that week. The company presidents do themselves an even greater service by asking to see (Please Show Me) those inspection documents to insure they are done. Elite Presidents do the same thing in the sales function. Nothing is more common in our industry than dealer principals who are frustrated by the lack of ROI from their CRM. Most CRM’s I have looked at have their good points, some better than others. But even the best CRM is held hostage to GIEGO (Garbage In Equals Garbage Out). There are very specific criteria—seven to be exact—that are imperative pieces of required information before any prospect/suspect should be entered into a CRM. This information feeds the pipelines and funnels that we all use to try to forecast our monthly sales. Elite Presidents review all prospects or suspects that were added to the CRM for completeness of the seven criteria during their weekly meetings with their sales managers. It is a very real expectation for a sales representative to identify a prospect every day that will make a buying/leasing decision in the next 180 to 270 days. It is also a very real expectation that these prospect identifications are audited every week, by the sales manager, with the prospect to ensure that it is in fact a real prospect. The dealer principal should ensure a process is in place to expect and inspect (Please show me) that a % of those prospects identified are audited every week. Tom Johnson made huge personal Investments (the second of the three I’s) in people, particularly the people who reported to him. Jerry Newberry and I were lucky enough to be in his portfolio. The Pros Elite Group is frequently called in when the financial investments that a dealer principal have made in their business fail to pay expected dividends. No matter where the performance variance exists, we find the shortfall is related to a lack of knowledge or a lack of understanding of how to execute on the knowledge. We spend equal amounts of time in training as we do assessing and creating action plans with the dealers. When they engage us, these dealers make investments in training their people, their most valuable assets, to make them better. Although dealer principals show a willingness to invest in the development of their people, our observation continues to be that there is a lack of investment of the dealer principal in developing themselves and some key members of their executive staff. Some of this simply relates to the non availability of such training. In October 2011, we will provide the industry’s first real answer to this need. The Independent Dealer Executive Academy (IDEA) will be delivered to the Office Imaging Dealer network. A consortium of the Pros Elite Group, Strategic Business Associates, Growth Achievement Partners and Digital Gateway has assembled a week long training agenda of sales, service, finance and administration execution tools. This 5 day program will focus on the complete scope of the updated benchmarking model and how to execute and achieve it. There is one more investment dealer principals need to make and it is the most misunderstood of all investments and that is the investment of time with their people and their customers which leads us to the third “I”, Involvement. During the Pros Elite Group’s Leadership Skills and Goal Setting training, we provide the senior executive team of a dealership with the skills required to design and achieve a strategic plan. One of the foundations of this strategic plan will focus on 80% of their time being spent with either their employees or their customers. Bill Davis was overbearing about the need to be involved with a customer or one of your employees if you were in a leadership role. What made his message so different was that his expectation of that involvement was that it would never be informal or unplanned. When the Pros Elite Group works with dealer principals, we encourage the publishing and execution of a monthly Dealer Principal checklist that is executed with direct reports religiously. A sample above outlines a checklist which shows the functional area, the responsible party, frequency of the discussion, and what specifically will be expected and inspected. The results of every organization that we have observed which adheres to a similar process produces far superior results than the organizations that do not. Henry Ford is renowned for having hired a consultant to help him improve his personal productivity. At the end of the process, the consultant’s deliverable was the first formalized daily to-do list. This checklist may simply be a to-do list on steroids but for sure it will lead to the dealer principal becoming more involved with his/her people. Finally, we never cease to be amazed by the poor results the average dealer achieves in MPS / MDS. Today, only 15% of the office products dealers who have been trained in MPS feel they have successful MPS / MDS programs. I am amazed by the results but not at all confused as to what is the root cause of the problem. The Pros Elite Group was recently asked to address an executive forum on MPS / MDS. Our opening comments went right at the root cause. Very simply, only a few dealer principals have made the personal investment in time to inspect the execution of the MPS / MDS process and therefore the results are poor. We tell dealer principals who are floundering with MPS / MDS to get involved in the detail of monthly forecasts and inspect the number of proposals that go out without a printer survey. If even a simple printer survey is not mandated on every proposal and adhered to, the results of MPS / MDS will be at best disappointing. We can’t think of a better place for a dealer principal to invest his time than to practice the three “I’s” and get the ROI that this practice almost guarantees. Steve Rolla, the former president of various IKON and Global Imaging Systems companies, is a partner of the Pros Elite Group. For more information on the IDEA Training (Independent Dealer Executive Academy) or other offerings from the Pros Elite Group, call 813-713-3592 or email jerry.newberry@ProsEliteGroup.com