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The mission of The McDonald Group, Inc. is to help clients improve marketing effectiveness and operations profitability. We strive to maintain state-of-the-art expertise in four critical areas:

Aftermarket product support

For more than forty-five years we have worked to establish expertise in issues related to profitable, effective Aftermarket Product Support. Professional dealer parts and service management and even customer service is often a neglected stepchild in many dealer organizations.

We approach professional aftermarket management by providing tools and techniques essential to move from “transaction management” to “profitable business center management.” This move helps transform these departmental managers to integral participants on the Dealer Principal’s leadership team. Concerns are for current and useful cost-justified methods to improve people and resource productivity, design more effective marketing and sales programs, and create a roadmap to retain and build more profitable, long-term customer relationships. See more details on our Executive Program in Machinery Dealer Development page.

Industry best practices

We continuously update and maintain an extensive repertoire of “Best Business Practices” for each dealer revenue center, including new and used equipment, rentals, service, parts, and customer service. These 650 best practices provide an excellent guide for operations audits and qualitative performance assessments for highly successful equipment dealers. Substantial sections in Strategies, Tactics, Operations for Achieving Dealer Excellence focus on Best Practices for each Dealer Revenue Center. Dealers review these policies and procedures and select with are most applicable and appropriate for their individual business.

For example, a recent projection by Caterpillar, Inc published by Reuters, said that its dealers are “missing out on easy-to-capture incremental aftermarket revenue.” The article further quoted Caterpillar management as saying that the average Cat dealer “is only aware of 40% of his aftermarket opportunity. And, if best practices of high-performance dealers are applied to the other group, they automatically get 6 to 8% aftermarket share improvement.”

Fortunately, these types of benchmarks have been an integral part of our McDonald Group dealer development workshops for over a decade. Our clients will testify to the validity and usefulness of these performance goals. See more details on our Executive Program in Machinery Dealer Development page. The 48 critical profit variables for world class dealers are illustrated in our new Achieving Excellence in Dealer/Distributor Guide.

Critical profit variables

Critical Profit Variables are the crucial financial leverage points an equipment dealer uses to control his/her business. High-profit dealers work hard to do well in these areas. In my Achieving Excellence in Dealer/Distributor Performance text, 48 CPVs are identified and explained. These include such important quantitative measurements as parts inventory turns, fill rate and obsolescence, service labor productivity, sales mix, and revenue center gross profit margins.

These quantitative performance targets are essential to optimize profitability, market share, cash flow, and customer retention. They are used in our performance assessment activities in each workshop session. Our students compare their operations on several levels to highly successful dealers. They identify performance deficiencies and then create, with our coaching, practical, high-impact remedial action plans.

Executive education and development

Although virtually every McDonald Group project provides an element of executive learning, our significant strengths are in the development and presentation of customized management training workshops and seminars. Since 1975 Walter McDonald has created and conducted over 2,650 Dealer training sessions. We assist clients in identifying their crucial performance issues and work with them to determine if there is an appropriate training solution.

A unique capability of The McDonald Group, Inc. is our ability to structure training effectiveness measurements within the curriculum design to help ensure clients optimize the return on their training investment. We are now offering a comprehensive, private, personalized distance learning management development program, The Executive Program in Machinery Dealer Development. See more details on our Executive Program in Machinery Dealer Development page.

Marketing, technology and business strategy

Our strategy work begins with expertise in traditional market research, market and channel assessments, and customer perception study methodologies. In addition, we have a strong worldwide background in information technology management, customer satisfaction evaluations and competitive benchmarking.

We utilize our highly effective McDonald Group management discussion leadership techniques to help client managers assess the findings and implications of our studies. Then, we help build an appropriate strategic response or remedial action plan. Over the years we have developed a substantial list of “blue chip” client case histories and references. See more details on our Strategy page.

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