The service department is increasingly important in the equipment dealership, making your role more complex and challenging than ever before. Companies that are your customers have seen tremendous change in the past decade. Thousands have gone out of business, and those left have grown dynamically. As we go forward, there will be fewer and fewer decision-makers deciding who services these customers.
Because of these changes, building a solid relationship with these companies will be vital to every dealership. Management contracts will be the norm, as customers outsource all functions that are not part of their core businesses. The success of these long-term contractual relationships depends significantly on you and your department.
The customer service you provide, the value of your services, and the cost and expense control you maintain will determine your dealership's success in the future.The purpose of this book is to prepare you for this opportunity and challenge. And the training and tools that go along with it.
"Service Management in an Equipment Dealership" is a book that will help you professionally manage your dealership's service department.
Our view of service and the service manager we present may differ significantly from how you currently view your position and department. In many dealerships, service has been considered a support function, not a profit center or department.
Here, we argue that not only is service of increasing importance and satisfying customers critical, but also as a profit center. Generally, we use the term dealership for either a distributor or the dealership.
Because of its increasing importance, examining service individually regarding efficiency, effectiveness, productivity, expense control, and profitability is vital. We have presented long-term objectives in several critical areas that you can use as guidelines for best practices. Your job will be to set short-term objectives based on your company's strategies and market.
Praise for Service Management in an Equipment Dealership
George Keen has written the go-to guide for service managers. Service Management in an Equipment Dealership cuts through the noise with practical strategies that improve profitability, technician performance, and customer satisfaction. It’s clear, direct, and highly usable.
Joe Wright, VP - Operations
Voss Equipment, Inc.
Running a service department in today’s dealership environment is no small task. Rising costs, technician shortages, and customer expectations put service managers under constant pressure. What George Keen delivers in Service Management in an Equipment Dealership is both refreshing and actionable—a clear roadmap for managers who want results.This isn’t theory written from the sidelines. The book reflects decades of first-hand experience and insight into how real dealerships succeed (or fail). Keen breaks down financial management, personnel development, marketing, and technology in a way that connects the day-to-day with the bigger picture of profitability and growth.What I found most valuable was his focus on building service into a true profit center. Too often, the shop is seen as a cost burden, when in reality it can be the engine that sustains the whole dealership. His sections on pricing, customer experience, and technician engagement alone are worth the read.For anyone managing people, processes, and profits in a dealership service department, this book is the playbook you’ll keep coming back to. It’s direct, it’s grounded in reality, and it will help you raise your service operation to the next level.
Joe Cahill, Corporate Service Manager
Virginia Maryland Tractor
For many years, our company's service center carried an asset, "work in process," on the balance sheet. Our definition of "work in process" is all labor and parts paid for or assigned to jobs, but not billed to our customers.
Over the years, our accountants raised questions about the validity of the asset, prompting us to investigate the matter. What we found was that our management was responsible for allowing tens of thousands of dollars to be lost due to a lack of accountability, organization, and follow-through. For example, a serviceman would spend an hour troubleshooting a forklift and order a part. The parts would be given to the serviceman, never to be dispatched again to complete the job. This is just one of the many scenarios that led to our enormous problem.
We made numerous attempts to resolve the issue ourselves, but were unable to make any significant progress or develop a long-term solution. We decided that we needed to make a significant procedural change, so we asked George Keen for his help and expertise. We described our problems to George over the phone, and he came to our dealership with a well-thought-out plan.
First, he helped us design a tool to measure our current status. We mounted a laminated chart directly next to our department door, breaking down the dollar values by age, separating our road from our shop technicians, and our customer billing from the internal billing.
Then George showed us how to get everybody involved in the sales, service, parts, leasing, rental, and warehouse planning solution by pulling computer reports and streamlining our approach, allowing us to hold dispatchers and servicemen accountable for their actions. Each unbilled job is reviewed weekly, and any job without a clear status is resolved before the Serviceman is allowed to leave the office.
George was instrumental in breaking the powerful paradigms that existed in our company. His experience, expertise, and patience were essential to our success. The results were tremendous. Our overall "work in process" has steadily decreased from over $200,000 to $65,000 to date. More importantly, our jobs that were open for longer than ninety days had dropped from $70,000 to $2,000.
In just one week, George helped us achieve results that we hadn’t produced ourselves for years. We greatly appreciate his efforts. All the pretty colored graphs don't mean much if you don't execute. It's one of those things you can never ignore.
Andy Levin
Owner, MHS Lift, Inc.