Parts and Service Sales Representative or Equipment Maintenance Manager

Many equipment dealers utilize a person that conducts customer calls to assist in providing of the parts and service needs to support the customer’s fleets. The titles for this position has various titles such as PSSR (Parts and Service Sales Representative), PSR (Product Support Representative), CSA (Customer Service Advisor), and there are most likely a few other titles.

No matter the title, the roles and duties are similar:

• Assigned territory with an assigned customer list, expectations of establishing number of customer visits per day, and conduct cold calls to grow the business.

• Base pay with some type of a commission based on sales, gross profit, special program offering, customer growth, or other areas that are a focus the dealership has established as important to grow the product support business.

• Record the calls made into some type of CRM (Customer Relations Management) data base.

• Provide quotes based on customers request.

• Communicate work status of the work in process for each customer.

• Resolve customer disputes.

• Promote programs that keep the shops full, field service fully utilized, and promote the competitiveness and strengths of the dealership.

Another position that can play a key role in supporting product support business is an Equipment Maintenance Manager. The focus of this position varies considerable from a PSSR. The Equipment Maintenance Manager can provide strengths in supporting the customer and growing the product support business to a deeper level within the customer’s maintenance department, as compared to the PSSR. The primary focus would be:

• Regular review of the customer’s maintenance schedule. This could be daily/weekly/monthly- depending on the customer’s requirements.

• Coordinate the down time of the equipment within the customer’s maintenance and production departments, as well as the outside services needed to support the repairs. This would include scheduling support from the dealership, and other sublet services needed, communicating with the dealership’s rebuild shops to review the work in process, approval of parts reuse decisions, and repair criteria decisions, and final approval of the repair invoice before it is presented to the customer.

• “Walk around “of the fleet with the Maintenance Foreman, or technicians to identify repair needs and establish priorities based on production and criticalness of the repair is conducted on a regular basis.

• Review the various diagnostic tools such as oil analysis trending, warning alerts obtained from the GPS information (Komtrax/Product Link), review payload data, tire wear, bucket/dozer/undercarriage wear patterns. Utilize this information to guide the customer in modifying practices that will improve the maintenance and repair cost of the fleet.

Key difference:

• Equipment Maintenance Manager can only support a limited number of customers.

• Equipment Maintenance Manager will be onsite more often than the PSSR due to limited number of assigned accounts, and focus on managing the fleet.

• PSSRs typically are selling/quoting single events (PM Service, a hydraulic cylinder repair, filter agreement, hydraulic hose & fitting program.

• Equipment Maintenance Manager is balancing the repair needs with the production schedule and repair cost management.

• The PSSR would assist in selling the Equipment Maintenance Manager concept to the customer.

• PSSRs have a larger customer base and must conduct several customer visits per day.

Summary:


Both positions are critical in the growth and success of growing the product support business. Utilizing both positions can provide an expanded product support offering that adds value to the customers. The Equipment Manager position has been used in great success as Project Managers on mine sites, and can easily be adapted to the construction, landfill, and scrap yard customers.