Are You Planning For Succession?
By Deborah Lockridge, Editor in Chief
Last year, Midwest Wheel celebrated its 100th anniversary under a fourth-generation owner. Betts Spring is in its sixth generation and just promoted a sixth-generation Betts family member to vice president.

But many more small businesses perish with the death or retirement of their founder. What are these companies doing wrong when it comes to succession planning?

"The first thing they're doing wrong is they're not doing it," says Bill Wade of Wade & Partners, who's also executive director of the Service Specialists Association.

According to Wade, 88% of current family business owners think they will maintain control in the next five years. But only 30% of all family businesses survive into the second generation, 12% by the third generation, and 3% by the fourth generation.....

Why Distributors Might Want to Look into an Employee Ownership Plan
Employee stock ownership plans, known as ESOPs, are gaining in popularity. There even was federal legislation introduced earlier this year to expand their use.

An ESOP transfers some or all of company ownership to its employees. Typically, the company makes tax-deductible contributions to a trust set up to facilitate the plan. The trust then uses that money to buy stock from the current owners.

It takes time and money to set up, but has tax benefits, retirement benefits for the original owners and for the new employee-owners, and can provide a succession strategy.....

Incorporation Options: What's the Best Fit for Your Company?
When you started your business, chances are there weren't quite as many options for how to organize it as there are now. So whether you're looking at starting an offshoot business or want to reevaluate your current business organization, you'll need to know about the various types.

Each business structure, from simple sole proprietorships to C-corps, S-corps and LLCs, offers the owner a unique structure for building a company. It is important to weigh the needs of your company against the various advantages and disadvantages of different business types.....

HDAW 2012 Preview: Corporate Culture
What do online shoe sales and heavy-duty parts sales have in common? They both can succeed with the help of the right kind of corporate culture.

Corporate culture will be front and center during the seventh annual Heavy Duty Aftermarket Week, Jan. 23-26, 2012, at The Mirage in Las Vegas.

Co-chairs Ken Duval, president of Canadian Wheel Industries, and Mike Betts, president of Betts Spring Company, along with Vice Chairman Tom Stewart, president and CEO of Carolina Rim and Wheel, have led a planning team to develop an educational program surrounding the theme, "Corporate Culture: The Foundation for Success."....

Winning Corporate Culture
Commentary by Deborah Lockridge, Editor in Chief
When Tobin Cassels first told me about his philosophy of "servant leadership" at Southeastern Freight Lines, I must admit I mentally rolled my eyes a bit. I'm sure that, like me, in your personal or professional life you have known of more than one company that said such things in their mission or advertising or public relations, but discovered it was quite a different story in real life.

"Leadership is all about taking care of its people," he told me, "helping them to be successful, and to serve their needs." That was in 2009, when Cassels, president of SEFL, was being honored by our sister publication, Heavy Duty Trucking, as an HDT Truck Fleet Innovator.....

Service Sells
Commentary by Deborah Lockridge, Editor in Chief
I recently needed a new pair of athletic shoes. Not that I'm particularly athletic, but I took a spill last year and my orthopedist said I need to wear good, supportive shoes to avoid continued knee and ankle problems. My 5-year-old New Balances weren't cutting it anymore.

I could have gone to Discount Shoe Warehouse or Dick's Sporting Goods, or done some research and ordered online. But instead I went to The Trak Shak, a local business with three locations in the metro area.

The Trak Shak has a reputation in my area for being the place for runners to buy shoes. I quickly saw why.....

Smart Business: How You Can Use Brain-Boosting Strategies to Build Your Business
Commentary by Deborah Lockridge, Editor
I was reading an article in Newsweek about ways to boost brain performance, and it occurred to me that a number of key points could be applied to boosting business performance, as well:

No quick fixes: A 2010 evaluation of purported ways to maintain or improve cognitive function, conducted for the National Institutes of Health, shows that claims for cognitive enhancers such as vitamins, antioxidants, omega-3 fatty acids, a large social network, statins, estrogen, NSAIDs, or improving blood flow to the brain, are sketchy at best.

It's the same way in the business world.....

Selling Has Nothing To Do With Selling
By Deborah Lockridge, Editor
'People continue to sell as if they were in a quaint Norman Rockwell painting. That no longer works like it used to," said Rich Farrell, president of Tangent Knowledge Systems, during a presentation at Heavy Duty Aftermarket Week earlier this year. "The information economy has dramatically revolutionized the sales profession, yet salespeople continue to behave as if Google and the Internet do not exist."

Farrell, who's been doing sales and business development for 25 years, stressed a "non-selling posture" that allows the salesperson to play the role of a "change agent" rather than the more typical product-centric transactional approach.

Sales people have always been valued as a resource for information. But today, whether it's true or not, Farrell said, customers now perceive that they can get this information elsewhere, with a few clicks of the computer keys. "The value proposition salespeople have always relied on, that competitive advantage of having access to information others wanted, has been severely marginalized and compromised," he said.

That's why it's time for salespeople to create a new value proposition, he said. "That's no longer giving information, it's getting information."....

Talking to the Competition
Editorial by Deborah Lockridge, Editor
Bob Nuss has truck parts in his blood. His dad was a truck mechanic in Rockford, Ill., while he was growing up, and eventually became a Mack distributor in 1959. Nuss became parts manager in his dad's small dealership. "I can still write down the parts to overhaul a 1970 Maxidyne engine," he says.

Today, Nuss is president of Nuss Truck Group in Rochester, Minn., and the runner-up for this year's the Truck Dealer of the Year award.

The award from the American Truck Dealers association has been sponsored for years by the Journal's sister magazine, Heavy Duty Trucking. So each year I get to talk to the Dealer of the Year nominees about trends in their businesses and in the trucking industry at large. A recurring theme has been their increased emphasis on parts and service. This year, the general feeling was they would not have survived the recession without it.

Nominee Jay Ellison, president of French Ellison Truck Center in San Antonio, says dealers as a whole have become much more oriented toward the parts and service side of the business. And they're using technology to help.....

Make Training and Education Pay
By Chuck Udell, Guest Contributor
To be successful in today's heavy-duty aftermarket, you must have a clear competitive edge over your competitors. A knowledgeable, appreciated, motivated work force can give a company this competitive edge. Yet our research has found that employee training, education and development have taken a step backward at a time when companies need it the most.

An investment in training, education and development, or TED, is vital to both an employee's growth and to a company's competitive edge. In addition, what works well today often doesn't tomorrow, and the employer who fails to update their workers' "KASH" may find his business lagging behind competitors that are more progressive. KASH stands for Knowledge, Attitude, Skills, and Habits (as in work habits). Employees with in-depth knowledge, the right attitude, outstanding skills, and excellent work habits will provide that competitive edge.

It will also help you recruit and retain valuable people. Employees who receive ongoing training, education, and development perceive their employers as caring about remaining competitive, and also valuing them and their contributions to the company.....