If there is one group that is most misunderstood by outdoor
power equipment dealership owners, it is service technicians.
They can be a hard group to corral, and sometimes that leaves
owners frustrated and confused. I have seen many dealerships
where there is a great divide between the front of the store and
the back of the store. Everything is rosy on the sales floor, while
there is disorganization and chaos in the service department.
There are many reasons for this, but I am going to give you five
tips on how to do a better job in the back of the store and with
your service technicians.
#1 Understand
the technicians'
learning style
I had the great opportunity many years ago
to go through the training on the "Seven
Intelligences of the Learner" by Howard
Gardner, and it has reshaped the way I
deal with people in all aspects of training/
teaching. People learn in different ways.
Two of the more common styles are visual
and linguistic. Visual means you learn by
watching someone writing on a chalkboard
or by watching a video. Linguistic learners
prefer to listen to someone speak.
There is one learning style that gets very
little attention in traditional education, and
that is kinesthetic learning. Those people
learn best by doing and by having something
in their hands that they can touch and feel.
I am pretty sure most service technicians
fall in this category. And doesn't that make
sense? Technicians get hired because they are
good with their hands and have an almost
instinctive desire to figure out how things
work. I have worked with frustrated owners
who think their technicians aren't listening to
them or aren't applying what they've learned
in a video training session, and they will
continue to be frustrated until they adapt
their training to a hands-on approach. We
tend to assume that all people learn like us.
The best owners that I've seen working with
technicians are the ones who were technicians
themselves. They know what needs to be
done to get their technicians trained right
because they probably have the same learning
style. Patience is the key. Trying to learn how
to teach using a different learning style takes
28 OCTOBER 2014 OUTDOOR POWER EQUIPMENT www.outdoorpowerequipment.com
Feature Story | Best Business Practices
Five tips on how to treat
your service technicians
■ By JeFF SheetS
Hartville Hardware (Hartville, Ohio), the largest John Deere dealer in northeast Ohio, provides its service
technicians, including Al Floom (pictured), with an excellent working environment with a clean, well-
lighted service department equipped with a variety of lifts.
