Problem
Equipment retail is a surprisingly complex business. New machine sales depend on dealers being able to buy back and resell used machines. Service sales (which contribute the highest profit to dealerships) are a direct function of the number of machines sold and require a stock of parts, providing another revenue stream. Understanding this complexity is essential to make sense of the dealer’s world, to building rapport with them, and to give dealers useful advice about running the business.
Solution
The Retailer Experience simulation uses a large game board to represent the business, showing graphically with piles of chips the huge amounts of capital tied up in stocks of new and used machines. Participants compete in linked markets for sales of machines, service and parts. Calculations are automated digitally, letting participants focus on the cause-and-effect relationships between decisions and results. Calculating dealership KPIs by hand helps clarify how daily decisions drive results, and how KPIs support more profitable running of the business.
Impact
Jon Nixon, General Manager, JCB writes:
"We were aware that many of our dealer-facing team didn’t have a strong understanding of the complete dealer business (including sales, trade-ins, parts, service, warranty, financial etc), just the area for which they were responsible. Our aim was to improve this understanding and create increased empathy with our dealer partners.
We believed that simulation-based learning would not only help to retain the learnings but also to help our teams to use the learnings with our dealers (we also realised that this type of learning is very engaging and fun)
We were very impressed with the detail that PBS went into when designing the simulation with us and their trainers were eager to learn about our dealer model so that they were well-placed to deliver the training
This has achieved our aims of creating the understanding and empathy that we sought and our dealer-facing team are now much better placed to support our dealers."