Tuesday, August 16, 2011

ALL LINES -- means ALL LINES ..... update #2


The dust is settling and we are finding out that some sales staff at CARQUEST have taken 'stupid pills' and are making extremely BAD DECISIONS in rapid succession on the -- now political issue of stripping ALL LINES out of the Gen-2 E-Cat!

Calling the IT powers in Raleigh they tell us that the SALES DEPT has control on what lines are 'approvied' for inclusion into ALL LINES .... and that the 90% of the reduction in all lines showing is their efforts to throttle our ability to SEE the data. In fact - they seem more concerned on what lines we will SELL ( by adding X line data into
Exploris ) .... they are forgetting the BIGGEST AID to counter
staff in solving an e-cat look upproblem ... the ability to see how OTHER SUPPLIERS handle the problem ....

Once the SALES DEPT -- clears a line - it quickly shows back up in ALL LINES .... example on this image of an e-mail received yesterday ..... showing us that a couple of lines we support in secondary pages have been re-added to ALL LINES XKF= SKF Hub Bearings ......... XRB= Raybestos Brake ........ XLF=Luberfiner Filters ....XTP =ATP Transmission Filters. They have the gaul top ask us to LIST the lines we want back in -- at which point we just get so mad ... all lines means all lines .... not a pre-selected list!


Examples of why counter staff need ALL LINES to help solve problems :
Here is example from a USA jobber - it was part of a larger e-mail - but the point is well made - without ALL LINES ( not just some lines deemed OK by whomever ) we will lose sales on problem applications .... ( click image to enlarge )




Example #2 -- look up U-Joints .... the Neapco applications have been historically poor and confusing. Our stores staff often refer to Precision paper cat ( diagrams help - just like in exhaust ) and we are surprised to see Precision EXCLUDED from the ALL LINES as of today.... try looking up a 1 ton chev truck for U-Joints .... We can add hundreds of examples - but I think by now you get the idea -- ALL LINES means ALL LINES and any Sales Dept should be more concerned on the damage they are doing to their reputation by having this attitude on what they will ALLOW
US to see .... this is right up there with their political decision to BAN our ability for jobbers to move Worldpac to the Primary Page if WE decide that is the best decision for OUR AREA ... when people decide for us ... get worried about what other freedoms we are in the process of loosing.

CARQUEST builds a reputation by doing things right --and when they make these bonehead decisions they are dropping back steps ... hello ... anyone home ??? ... this will make an excellent Harvard Business School case study some day .... on the wrong way to built relationships!

Comments welcomed.


2 comments:

shawn said...

did someone in sales dept fall and bump their head???????? who's bright idea is it to say "hey we want to be number one in autoparts, but we want our front line counterstaff to say no far more often because of lack of catalogueing!!" what a dumb idea on their part. I for one would like to see these same people work in the stores for 6 months with the changes they have made and see how far along they get!! In our industry, information is king and with our ever increasing number of vehicle variances, we need all the manufacturing information and supplier information we can get!!! so please, powers that be, give your head a shake and quite pulling us out of the game!!!!

Anonymous said...

hi in regards to the missing all lines can you add them back in soon as possible the younger guys keep asking us older guys for part numbers in the other lines it is starting to hurt my mind to try and remember all those old part numbers as well as the new ones we want to do the best we can and you are hand cuffing us with taking important things out of the system joe from autobarn parts supply