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The Heavy Duty Parts Report
Each week Jamie Irvine and his guests have conversations that empower heavy-duty people. They discuss tips, tools, and technology that help heavy-duty parts manufacturers and distributors sell the right parts to fleets, repair shops, and truck operators.
The Heavy Duty Parts Report
How to Get the Right People in Your Parts Department
Episode 339: At the Heavy Duty Consulting Corporation, we have partnered with TRAITS to help you with your people and organization. Having the right people is so important when predicting the success of your heavy-duty business. TRAITS is a psychometric assessment tool that can help you evaluate your team based on their personality fit for their job.
In this episode, Mike Moreau, President of TRAITS, explains that each job has a personality and that when the best person from a personality standpoint is doing that job, the chances of success and happiness go up. You will also have the opportunity to take your personality assessment for free.
Show Notes: Visit HeavyDutyPartsReport.com for complete show notes of this episode and to subscribe to all our content.
Sponsors of this Episode
Heavy Duty Consulting Corporation: Find out how many “fault codes” your heavy-duty parts business has. Meet with us today. Visit HeavyDutyConsulting.com
Hengst Filtration: There's a new premium filter option for fleets. If you're responsible for a fleet, you won't believe how much using Hengst filters will save you. But you've got to go to HeavyDutyPartsReport.com/Hengst to find out how much.
Diesel Laptops: Diesel Laptops is so much more than just a provider of diagnostic tools. They’re your shop efficiency solution company. Learn more about everything Diesel Laptops can do for you today by visiting DieselLaptops.com today.
HDA Truck Pride: They’re the heart of the independent parts and service channel. They have 750 parts stores and 450 service centers conveniently located across the US and Canada. Visit HeavyDutyPartsReport.com/HDATruckPride today to find a location near you.
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You're listening to the Heavy-Duty Parts Report. I'm your host, Jamie Irvin, and this is the place where we have conversations that empower heavy-duty people. Welcome to another episode of the Heavy-Duty Parts Report presented to you by the Heavy-Duty Consulting Corporation. I'm your host, Jamie Irvin. One of the things that we are noticing as an ongoing trend at most of our clients is that, despite having to deal with a number of very difficult problems in their business, people and organization consistently ranks at the top of the list, and so we're dedicating today's episode to talk about real strategies that will help you to put the right people in the right positions within your company to get optimal performance.
Jamie Irvine:I hope you enjoy this extended conversation with our featured guest. He's a real subject matter expert in this regard and we are really looking forward to having that conversation. So I'm going to get right into the interview now, because this is a bit of an extended interview this week and I want to make sure that we dedicate as much time to the interview as possible. So I hope you enjoy our conversation with our featured guest this week. My guest today is Mike Morrow, President at Traits. Mike, welcome to the Heavy-Duty Parts Report. So glad to have you here.
Mike Moreau:Thanks for having me, jamie. Good to be here, good to see you.
Jamie Irvine:I think for people who are listening to the show and you think of the Heavy-Duty Parts Report, what are we talking about when we talk about traits? What are we talking about while we're talking about people? Mike, a long time ago, many, many years ago, my mentor said Jamie, the heavy-duty parts business is a people business always has been, always will be, and I think right now, as we record this, there's some unique challenges that our industry is facing when it comes to people, and so we're not really going to talk about parts today, but we are going to talk about the people who make sure that the trucking industry, which is the backbone of society, has the parts they need to keep those pieces of equipment rolling, and that's why I'm so glad to have you here today to talk to us about that. Would you say that it's fair that people is one of the most difficult challenges that businesses are dealing with right now, in late 2024.
Mike Moreau:Yeah, well, you're talking to the people guys, so yes, A little self-serving, but yeah yeah, you know this whole idea of whenever I think about problems inside of a business.
Mike Moreau:So many of those problems are solved by people or are caused by people, and so whenever you're sort of looking around trying to figure out why something's going wrong or what's happening, oftentimes just getting the right set of eyes, a different set of eyes on it is all that you need.
Mike Moreau:And to kind of give you a different illustration of that, it's almost like the restaurant business and we can have all sorts of people problems inside of our one little restaurant. And when somebody comes up to us and says, well, why don't you expand your restaurant? You do a fantastic job, and that owner just kind of shakes and quivers a little bit when you think about expansion, like I can hardly hold on to this right now. But you put a different person inside of that and now we have a nationwide food chain like Boston Pizza that shows up and is Canada wide and there are hundreds and probably hundreds of restaurants that are across the nation doing something like that and it's the same business. You just brought a different person to the table and now all of a sudden things are solved in a very different kind of a way the table and now all of a sudden, things are solved in a very different kind of a way.
Jamie Irvine:Yeah, and you know, when I look at our business, specifically the heavy duty parts business, you know, if you go back in the way back machine to when I started the industry, it was challenging to get people. Back then, I mean even 25, almost 30 years ago there was a challenge getting young people to be interested in our industry. You know, the dot-com bubble had just started and every kid I went to school with wanted to go and get involved in computers and so getting kids to think about trucks and truck parts that was challenging back then. I think it's gotten a lot harder today. When I talk to our clients in the industry, we talk about two main issues. One is recruiting, finding new people to join our companies. The second one is hanging on to good people. So when I think about that, I put it in those two buckets.
Jamie Irvine:You know you as the people guy, you're working with people every day. We're going to get into more about what you and your company does in a little bit. But how do you see that? Is it actually harder today than it used to be in the industries that you serve? How do you see that Is it actually harder today than it used to be in the industries that you serve and that you deal with, because you have a bit of a wider perspective than just the heavy duty parts or trucking industry.
Mike Moreau:People always do have this struggle with finding the right people and having enough people to be able to do the work that they're doing, and it's something that exists for lots of organizations, but again exists in different ways for different organizations, because some people put a really high importance on being able to go in and find new bodies that can come in, and so that could be something that you know. You have one shop on the road that struggles with finding people, and then you start asking a lot of questions about okay, well, what are you doing to attract people to your business? Well, nothing, mike. What do you mean nothing? Well, you know we don't really have any job ads up or we don't have any hiring signs on the roadway. Well, how do you ever expect to find anybody?
Mike Moreau:And yet you know the person down the street can be going and actually be doing some pretty proactive work.
Mike Moreau:That way, they're out there in the community, they belong to different business clubs, they host different sessions at high schools or at vocational colleges and they get their name out there on a more active basis, and so there are lots of people that can say you know, finding and attracting talent is a tough thing to do and again, like anything, we sort of say well, it's just really important about trying to kind of, you know, figure out different strategies, some of which is important, some of which you know.
Mike Moreau:Some organizations will just say, well, I'll just post something and see what comes in, and and then and then deal with whatever sort of walks in the door from from that standpoint. But finding people is always hard Entry-level jobs, blue-collar jobs people can often put an inappropriate and negative sort of connotation to that. There's some amazing careers that are built in a lot of blue-collar jobs and people can go on to do your organization and getting out there in the world and attracting people, making yourself look shiny. That can take care of a lot of issues of trying to get other people to pay attention to your business.
Jamie Irvine:So two questions in a row. Now You've answered both of those questions by kind of highlighting both ends of the spectrum. You talk about same business, but one person reacts one way to the challenge. A different person reacts a different way to that challenge. What you're really highlighting there is that when you are in an industry or a business, you all have similar challenges to deal with, but there's really distinct differences in the way people respond to those challenges, based on who they are as a person. So let me ask you something when a business owner is approaching recruiting they're looking to hire new people for their business what are some of the common mistakes that they make? How can we do it differently? And a third component to that is if we're consistently having problems, how do we look inward at ourselves? So let's break that down First. What are some of the common mistakes people make when trying to recruit new people in their business?
Mike Moreau:There's probably all sorts of different angles that we can go down on that or different directions that we can take that, jamie, but sort of when you get to the place where you're actually taking a look at candidates. One thing I see over and over and over again is people put way too much emphasis on a resume. I don't know about you, but number one I've never sent out a resume to anyone that looks like I've messed up in any sort of way. In any job that I've ever been in, it's always a glowing resume, and so when we're using something like that to be able to evaluate candidates and whether or not they've done things or not, I just think people put way too much weight in there, and so we want to pick the nines and tens in terms of resumes. But we've all had the experience where you've hired somebody that is, from a resume or experience standpoint, maybe a five out of 10, maybe a six out of 10, but we taught them how to do the job and they perform better than the person that's been doing that job for the last 10 years. So that's one piece that I see over and over and over again just too much emphasis on a resume.
Mike Moreau:The other one that I see over and over again is this you know, kind of this orientation towards just, you know, evaluating somebody based on how much you like them, and so you know the age, old.
Mike Moreau:If I could sit down and have a beer with that person, then you know I want to be able to bring them on. Well, I don't know, I can sit down and I have sat down with a whole bunch of people in my life that are wildly different in terms of the jobs that they have and their personalities and their everything, and I can have a beer with all of them and I enjoy having a beer with all of them. But I do know distinctly that each one of those will do things in really different ways out there in the world. And so this likability piece that we have in interviews, it's sort of like you have an hour to sort of figure out if I think I can get along with you, and if I can get along with you, then I hire you. But I probably a lot of times figure out the other side of it, which is, boy, I hired this person that I had a good resume and that I really liked, but they're not delivering the mail every day, and so this isn't really working out.
Jamie Irvine:Okay, so if we're not looking at education, experience and skills and likability exclusively, what else should we be looking at?
Mike Moreau:Yeah, well, you know, we're just a massive believer in this idea of jobs have personalities and it's sort of an interesting thing to sort of think about. A job has a personality. So if I give you two very different kinds of jobs, let's call one position a data entry clerk and the other person in the other job a outside salesman. Go knock on doors and find new business. Jobs have a personality. That should kind of pop in people's minds and say, yeah, those are two really different personalities and so that's sort of doing the opposite sides of the spectrum there. But it's a truth that sort of exists that if you're not thinking about that in terms of the roles, a job has a personality and you're kind of using the old school well, I'm just going to hire somebody and I'm going to mold and manipulate and sometimes even torture a little bit to do the job that I need them to do, and as soon as I take my hands off of that person, they go back to doing the job the way that they know how to do it, and so that's the over and over and over again.
Mike Moreau:This performance performance issues that happen within businesses is sort of this idea around. Well, a job has a personality. A person has a personality, and when those two match up, then performance naturally has comes. It comes from it because people are naturally motivated to do the work. When those two have a disconnect, now all of a sudden we're forcing that person into doing something that they're not naturally geared to doing.
Mike Moreau:And so I get the question all the time and I said to you sort of the old school way of looking at things, mike how do I train this person, prod this person, torture this person to do the job the way that I need them to do it? And always the answer is well, it's not the person that changes to fit the job, but it's the job that changes to fit the person. I'm going to change whatever job I jump into to fit me. I don't have any other choice. I can't do it the way that you would do it. I can't. I don't see the world the way that you do. So the job is going to change to suit me, and if my personality doesn't fit the personality of the job, we start to run into some issues.
Jamie Irvine:Okay. So if we add the element of looking at the ideal personality that would be best suited to do the job, does that mean we can ignore education, experience and skills?
Mike Moreau:No, no, not at all, I think. Well, you know, using a different illustration, we need to hire an engineer If your traits fit beautifully to the engineer's traits, to the job model that we have. But you're not an engineer, you know, then you're absolutely not starting in our business because we need an engineer to do this position. So it's just about the ordering that you start to look at how these pieces come in. I usually talk about five keys to high performance education, experience, skills, all things I think that you can find in a resume personality and intelligence, okay, and when all of those five things line up really well, then we see performance. That comes when you hire somebody. That's actually.
Mike Moreau:I had this experience years ago with a medical school who were looking at marks for the students that were applying and they actually came up with a number. I think it was like 3.2, they actually learned over and over again that from a marketing standpoint, if you didn't have a 3.2 average, you fell behind in classes, you couldn't absorb the material fast enough. But we also know on the other side, just because you're smart doesn't make you a good doctor. So you know, all of the medical professionals have gone through the education, experience and skills, but there's something that sort of stands out there called personality. That is a really important piece.
Mike Moreau:So when you're hiring people, I believe that you know there are things that I can change in somebody, things that I can't. Personality and intelligence are things that I can't change in people. Education, experience and skills are things that I can change in people. But as long as there's a reasonable enough fit you've got to fit the right traits to the job and sort of have the right characteristics to do it. And if you're missing a few things, as long as we're not way off on the education, experience and skills, I can often equip you with that kind of information so that in not too much time you can become really effective inside of that role.
Jamie Irvine:Okay. So, if I have this correct, you would hire somebody with sufficient education, experience and skills maybe not as much as you would like to see, but sufficient to do the job Well, like if you're going to be a technician, you're going to fix commercial trucks. There's a minimum amount of education, experience and skills you need, but you would choose somebody with that minimum amount, with a great personality match to the job, than somebody who has more experience, education and skills but a poor match to that profile to do the job. Is that what I'm hearing correctly?
Mike Moreau:Yeah, I think you've got lots of people that'll be listening to this Jamie. That sort of have gotten a bit of a sense of you over the years and so maybe they start to think about you and you know, maybe you have the education, experience and skills to do the heavy mechanic. You know heavy duty mechanic sort of work. But they know pretty quickly and sort of watching you through the years to say he's too talkative for that and he's too excitable for that and you know, if we threw him inside of that job he'd be going around and bossing everybody around in no time.
Mike Moreau:We're not going to ask him to do that job because his personality traits are going to cause him to kind of jump out of that and do other things. It doesn't mean that he hasn't done it sometime in his career. You haven't done it sometime in your career but you've moved on from that and I can't pull you back. And probably there are going to be some people that you sort of notice that are in some of your clients' businesses where they have somebody in their business that's been doing that job heavy duty mechanic for the last 15 years and they never want to do anything else and thank goodness we have them to be able to do that kind of work. The worst thing we would want to do is kind of pull them up through an organizational chart to make them GM of the branch, because that's not what they want to do. It's not the way that they're wired, not the way that they're motivated to do things.
Jamie Irvine:I hope you're enjoying my conversation with Mike Morrow at Traits. It's now time for our break to hear from our great sponsors. We'll be right back. Are you deferring maintenance because of filter cost or availability? Or, worse yet, are you trading down to no-name filters to try to save a few bucks? Either way, you're rolling the dice. The good news there's a new premium filter option for fleets Hanks Filtration. If you're responsible for a fleet, you won't believe how much using Hanks filters will save you. But you've got to go to heavydutypartsreportcom slash Hanks to find out more. That's heavydutypartsreportcom slash h-e-n-g-s-t Head there now At Diesel Laptops, they go way beyond diagnostic tools.
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Jamie Irvine:We're back from our break and now we're going to continue our conversation with Mike Morrow, president of Traits. Okay, so I got two questions for you then One early on in the conversation we talked about the owner of the business or the hiring manager, and one person in that position does well. The other person is struggling. So it's not just finding the right people for your frontline positions, it's also finding the right people for management and ownership. What do you do if one of your managers or you, the owner of the company, realize, after listening to us and after maybe working with us in our people and organization program, what do you do if you find out that you're not a good fit?
Mike Moreau:Yeah, well, good, good question. So so I'm not the right fit for my job, Jamie, Okay.
Jamie Irvine:But you're on your job, but I'm in my job and and so so I do.
Mike Moreau:We've got a small team and I do better with a big team. I do better with more things that are going on. I do better when things are up and running in a different kind of a way, and you'll often hear about leaders that sort of see that Maybe some of your clients will sort of understand that as well, that I'm better for this period of time in my business. And oftentimes that just comes out because the business owner says a long time ago I thought clients deserved something better and I thought I could do that, and so I started that and fast forward the clock 15 years later and I have this machine that just is doing something that's totally different than the real reason that I stepped out to do this. And so I think lots of people are can do the things that I don't naturally do and that I kind of get in trouble with because I because I know I see things this way and I do things this way I'm left to my own devices. We're not going to grow.
Mike Moreau:But if I start to surround myself with the right kind of people that take the things on, that I don't want to do, that I'm not naturally gifted at, but they are then now, all of a sudden, that's where the organization starts to swell, and so I've seen business owners that literally have started a business that all they wanted to do was serve their customer better, never wanted to be an entrepreneur.
Mike Moreau:Now they have a $10 million business that they're running and feeling it every day From a stress standpoint, from a health standpoint. They're feeling all of the tension that exists inside of that and the ability to be able to go in and actually help people to find others inside of the organization that can actually take on more responsibility, educate the owner on how they get in their way and what they have to be aware of, and even sometimes helping them migrate over to more of an ownership role as opposed to a president role all things that you can start to have some discussions on. But having that insight about yourself and what sort of gets in the way and the impact that you make, those strengths and whether they're effective inside of the role I think all of that stuff is hidden away, but it's something that we can start to bring up for people and help crystallize, for them to have some more insight about what they need to do and ultimately build a roadmap for them moving forward.
Jamie Irvine:Yeah, I think, at the end of the day, if you are in a leadership position, and especially if you're in an ownership position, and you discover that maybe there's some need for change, if you can surround yourself with people who offset the areas that maybe you're not the strongest in but need to be to get the job done, you can find those people that can have a massive impact on not only the ability for the leadership group to perform better, but I think it has a trickle-down effect in the organization as well. I wanted to ask you specifically, Mike. We talked about recruiting, we've talked about leadership, but what about retention? What are some of the common reasons that people leave companies?
Mike Moreau:So I have a client that owns a machine shop. He's got all of these CNC lathes that he's got laid out all over his shop and he rebuilds diesel engines. And so he once said to me Mike, how is it that I could be hiring somebody that is impatient and putting them into a job where they have to be patient, sitting at a lathe all day punching in codes and then standing around and waiting? How could I hire somebody that's impatient and put them in the job where they have to do that? And he says I've done that before and they wander all through the shop and do all sorts of things, get into all sorts of trouble and productivity slows down because now the machine is done and we need to change everything over and that person is nowhere to be seen. And so we raise our voices a little bit and get them back to the station for a bit of time and then they leave again.
Mike Moreau:And so what's one of the major reasons that people leave is just not a good fit to their job. That's one of the big things that ends up happening when you take a look at that. Number two, I think, and maybe even number one, is this idea of that Number two, I think, and maybe even number one, is this idea of you know, why do most people leave their jobs? Well, because of their manager. Why do most people stay in their jobs? Well, because of their manager. And so when we do a better job of figuring out who are the people that are really wired to be managers and your resume doesn't tell you that, by the way, a resume doesn't tell you whether somebody is going to be a good manager.
Mike Moreau:You and your listeners have all seen that repeat itself over and over again.
Mike Moreau:Just because you have a good resume doesn't make you a a manager.
Mike Moreau:And when you get that wrong, when you hire somebody that's an exceptional supervisor, where they're managing the work every day, and you put them in a job where now they have to manage more systems and they can't oversee the work.
Mike Moreau:They have to leave that behind and go and manage the systems and deal with other problems that are facing them from a different direction. It's kind of like all they want to do is go back over here and they don't want to face all of these things that are up here and so that eventually creates turnover inside of businesses, because now you have a manager that's far too hands-on, barking orders about how things have to be done, which is exactly the way that he did them 10 years ago, or she did them 10 years ago, and those are no longer relevant for the business. And hey, aren't you supposed to be focusing on where the business is going, not harassing me? And so it just creates turnover, turnover, turnover. So yeah, two areas that job fit and not having the right manager in place, two areas that can cause a lot of turnover.
Jamie Irvine:Why do excellent frontline employees sometimes get promoted to supervisor or managerial positions and they actually get worse at their job?
Mike Moreau:and uh, and so not everybody is wired that way. And it's sort of the idea of, uh, you know, wayne Gretzky, who is one of the or the greatest hockey player, uh, you know, being Edmonton Oiler fans, we've got, we've got to choose between Gretzky and McDavid these days, but uh, um, you know, but put him into a coach's job. He's not a coach, and uh. And so again back to this idea of some hard wiring that exists inside of all of us that oftentimes the reason that your best entry level position is the best at what they do in terms of the group is because their traits match up most closely to the job. But it's the job that they're in, it's not the job. That's one up, or two up, and so you actually see that, or two up, and so you actually see that.
Mike Moreau:And a long time ago they wrote a book about this called the Peter Principle that employs.
Mike Moreau:Well, it was a study that was done, actually out of the University of Toronto, where they went and took a look at people and why people leave managers, and what they actually started to understand through the study was people will rise to the level of incompetence inside of an organizational structure where there they will stay because you're a nine out of 10. So we're going to promote you know best in the group, so we're going to promote you. Now you're a seven out of 10, still better than all these sixes so we're going to promote you again. You end up being a five out of 10 and now we can't promote you anymore and you're a five. So so you know, you may not be doing all the things that we need you to do, but we can't fire you because you're not that bad. So forever we're going to stay and live with mediocrity at that position. And what an awful thing for us as humans to sort of think about. But it repeats itself over and, over and over again. But if we had a better?
Jamie Irvine:peek into again hardwire. I think we could save a lot of that from happening. Anybody listening to this in the heavy-duty parts industry. I'm just going to say two things Counterperson who becomes a parts manager and a great outside salesperson who becomes a sales manager. It doesn't always work out. They were great on the counter and they just struggle as a manager. They were great out on the road as a salesperson, but managing a team of salespeople just seems to be beyond them. I think on the road as a salesperson, but managing a team of salespeople just seems to be beyond them.
Jamie Irvine:I think on the entrepreneurial side of the equation we often see this where you have someone who is a technician and so what do they do? They start a mobile repair company or they get a repair shop and they start a business that does that. Well, that's two different jobs being a technician and running a business that offers that service, two completely different jobs. And yet oftentimes this is where people find themselves. So tell me about, for those who maybe know, they know where we're headed with this. For those who don't, what is a psychometric assessment and why is TRAIT traits specifically very reliable?
Mike Moreau:Yeah, so a psychometric tool is really, technically, it's the using statistical analysis to quantify human temperament.
Mike Moreau:To simplify that a little bit, it's sort of this idea of if you took all of the words in the English language that describe behavior and you wrote them down on a little sticky and threw them down on the ground, because there's about I think about 3,200 of them take a look at all of that pile of words.
Mike Moreau:And then you started to group those that sounded the same introverted, talkative, social, gregarious, um, quiet, all of those kind of sound the same.
Mike Moreau:So we throw them all in a box and then we do that with all of the words and then you're going to look and you're going to you're going to have fewer boxes that are spread out around the room and then you're going to go into each one of those boxes and you're going to start to put those words out and you're going to put extremes on either end of them and you're going to have probably very few of them on the edges and lots more of them towards the middle, and then you're going to assign some math to it and then, literally, what a psychometric tool is is all about sending it out to an applicant or to an employee and saying here are a whole bunch of words, pick the ones that best describe you or don't describe you, some sort of version of that, and then we'll put all of that back into a bit of a math formula and say, listen, we asked you a whole bunch of questions, we asked you in a couple of different ways about the way we were doing that, and you kept describing yourself as this as you were going through.
Mike Moreau:So it eventually gives us some data to be able to take a look at. We've worked with some PhDs and we have a PhD on staff here that spends a lot of time studying this and again trying to quantify this idea of people, but ultimately it gives a really, really accurate representation of the individuals that are going through this. Again, I've been called all sorts of interesting words Mind reader was the most recent one, or the Oracle from the Matrix or something like that, but all it is is. It was so simply put to me, mike. You asked me 120 times who I was, roughly how many questions we have, and I told you over and over again who I was. Of course, these are the results that come through, and of course this is going to tell me who I am, and so it just gives really really accurate, really reliable information on candidates, employees that go through the survey.
Jamie Irvine:So why should someone want to use this kind of a tool in their business?
Mike Moreau:Today you have employees that are walking in, they're doing a job, they're good at it, they're not so good at it, they're somewhere in the middle and then they walk out and you've captured no real data on the way that they're wired, how motivated they are to do certain things. So it's kind of like well, I want to hire somebody that's more like Bill or a little bit more like Sandra, and we're trying to like we're doing that, but we're not actually pulling or we're not actually measuring, getting any data off of them. What Traits allows people to be able to do is to be able to say let's go take a look at the last five people that have gone through this I think you said customer parts desk. Let's go take a look at the people that have been successful. And let's take a look at one scale called assertiveness, and the more people are over on this side, the more naturally accommodating they are. The more they are over into this side, the more assertive they are.
Mike Moreau:And when we take a look at the last five people in the job, we say, geez, we hired some people that are naturally more assertive and they came in, they thought they were the boss and then they left because we didn't have anything else for them and we told them they had to stick on the parts desk. We had some people that were really low on that characteristic and very, very accommodating and they weren't actually all that good at selling. But we had this group of three people that were right around here on the scale, where they just love the security of being part of a team and part of a job, that they could build some consistency and some reliability around, didn't have a lot of risk. They like helping people, serving people and guess what? All of those people came to them and they just got to help. They didn't have to do a whole bunch of sales stuff, like people on the other end of the shop and and and you know they were happy doing it.
Mike Moreau:So it allows us to be able to collect some data on on the people that are coming into our business and doing different jobs, and the more data we can start to collect, the more we can start to make some predictions of oh boy, I've, I've got somebody that's more assertive. I better get them into into a sales job. I'm, you know they applied for parts, but I'm going to suggest sales and oh boy, I've got somebody that's naturally more accommodating. Maybe parts is a place to start off, or service tech might even be a place that they could move over to, so gathering data and being able to make better decisions over time because of that.
Jamie Irvine:Okay, let's do something fun here. I want to talk about two positions first. They're both considered sales positions and I want you to really illustrate how those two positions are actually requiring different people. So let me give you the two positions. To start with, you got a parts person on the counter. They're in sales. They have people coming into the counter every day asking for parts. People coming into the counter every day asking for parts. They have people phoning them, texting them, emailing them. It's a very busy environment and they are definitely responsible for selling heavy-duty parts to those customers who are coming to them.
Jamie Irvine:Then you also have outside salespeople. Now, they're sales as well, but their job often entails a lot more of going and trying to convince people to buy more from them, right, so they're out there. They're going from business to business. Sometimes there's signs that say no trespassing, no salespeople without appointment. Not everybody is thrilled to see them show up. So both of these jobs are in sales One's inside, one's outside. Why does that require two completely different you know personalities to be able to be successful in those two positions. Walk us through that.
Mike Moreau:So let's, if I can just to try and simplify this a little bit think about two traits, two scales one assertiveness and the other one detail orientation. When you talk about the parts counter, that to me is a lower assertiveness, naturally more accommodating. Why? Because people are coming to me. I get to serve the people that are coming to me and and and I like that sort of thing, I don't want to go out and sell people, press things on, press people that's too much risk. I'm not naturally assertive, I want to be there to service others.
Mike Moreau:It's also a higher detail-oriented job. So more structure inside of that position, more of a parts catalog that I have to sort of go off of, going into the back, finding where those things are, remembering where those things are, ordering parts, following up on them, naturally thinking about holy smokes, that part hasn't come in for Jamie yet. Why is that not here I'm going to call the supplier and thinking about the repercussions of what happens after an order is made. And, again, concern for others with the assertiveness scale. So that's what that to me when you describe that position and when I think about that role.
Jamie Irvine:Pretty accurate, you got it.
Mike Moreau:When you talk about outside sales, that's a higher risk oriented job. Nobody's coming to you asking for the salesman to come in through the door and holding the door open for you as you come in. Those are the people that need to have more of a risk orientation looking at a sign, seeing that there's an opportunity for me to go in there and knock on the door and to not sort of take no for an answer. So when I get a light sort of turn away at the door, then I say no. I think this is actually something that really would be important for your business to know about and to understand. I'm pressing more. I need more assertiveness to do that kind of a job and so on. That assertiveness scale, getting somebody that's higher inside of that position is really important. On detail and sorry, that also contributes to the resiliency of somebody more willing to kind of take the rejection. But they hold those opinions in their minds more firmly. They're like, no, maybe I didn't get it on this one, but I'm going to go to the next door because I know that this is a product that needs to get across to other people and I'm going to keep pushing on this.
Mike Moreau:Detail orientation would be the other one where somebody that's high on detail orientation doesn't want to make mistakes. That's what makes them so good at the parts desk. But when you put somebody at the parts desk high detail orientation into a sales job, they're overanalyzing all of the sales position, all of the sales calls, they're trying something, they're getting it wrong and then they're going back to their office and spending a whole bunch more time studying catalogs again. And that's not what you need. You need somebody that's lower on detail orientation, that kind of sheds the mistakes off of them, is more willing to try something, say something in a sales call just to get somebody's attention so that they can go in. And it's more about the bigger picture, probably walking into a client and saying what's working for you and what's not with your current vendor? Not, hey, I have this to sell. What's working for you or what isn't with this? I want to explore the situation as opposed to sell a product. So you can see pretty quickly when you put the opposites in.
Mike Moreau:When you take somebody that's low assertive, high detail parts counter and you put them into an outside sales job, they struggle with being able to build up the courage every day to do that job. When they do make a mistake with something or the client doesn't buy from them, they tend to kind of go back into their corner quite a bit more and they're less willing to try things in those conversations and sort of take that more personally as they're doing that work. When you take somebody that's high on assertiveness and low on detail orientation, you put them into a part service desk. They're kind of the people that it doesn't take very long before they start arguing with the client Because this is the fourth time you've come in asking for warranty on this and we're not doing warranty on this. So they start challenging back, they start pushing back. Or, oh shoot, did I place an order for that? I don't even remember you from the last Tuesday when you came. You came, are you sure you came in on Tuesday and you gave me an order? Low detail orientation.
Jamie Irvine:Oh geez.
Mike Moreau:I'm really sorry. You know, and and you know changing things up so you can see what happens when you kind of put the opposites into the opposite job.
Jamie Irvine:As you're. As you're talking about all that, what came to mind is is that, um, if someone says no, I'm not interested, the the person better suited for the parts counter would say something like oh, okay, well, thank you very much for your time, have a nice day. And the person with higher assertiveness would say something like uh, really, so you're not interested. Okay, so that's one rejection. What six more before you finally buy something from me?
Jamie Irvine:and there's that moment, yeah, a moment of awkwardness, and then they both laugh, yeah, and and, by the way, that's a true story. I actually have seen that in the real world. So, okay, let's have some fun here. Um, I want to. I want to give you another scenario two managers parts manager they're responsible for one counter and four parts people branch manager they were responsible for the parts counter, the warehouse, the delivery drivers, the outside sales people, the entire branch. Both managers, both needing to have a manager type profile, and yet two very different jobs. So help us see the differences in those two positions.
Mike Moreau:Well, you actually start to see when you think about structure of an organization and what traits are required structurally inside of a business. So when you talked about parts manager, maybe I'd argue a little bit that it's almost more of a supervisory kind of a position. The title might be manager, that's fine, but what am I doing? I'm overseeing the work of other people. I'm making sure that the work gets done every day and everything. All of the problems that I have to solve are all within this little bucket over here. And so you know, found a part, couldn't find a part, need to get something ordered. It's all about what happens inside of this area. Here A customer comes in and says, hey, I think I have an issue over here. Good, this is the part that you need. And so it's very much sort of focused downward inside of the organization, supervising, overseeing the people that are doing the production work.
Mike Moreau:And then when you talked about general manager, it's almost like, well, that's up a couple of levels where now the problems that you're dealing with every single day have got far more complexity and far more ambiguity to them and the answers are not as quickly available, and so a general manager just might have this issue that starts to arise.
Mike Moreau:The parts manager comes up to them and says clients are losing their minds because we don't have any of the product that are coming in from the supplier and things are going wrong. And that's where the general manager says, well, what's going on? I've got to dive into the situation, I've got to figure things out. But again there's lots of ambiguity and complexity inside of all of that to be able to say, well, is this a logistics problem? Is this a supplier problem? Where are the issues coming in from? And then how are we going to solve it? How are we going to come up with a solution to that? And trying to sort of guide things into the future a little bit more, at Parts Manager, in the way that I sort of describe the job overseeing the production, you can see and start to hear how that's just a really different. You know it's a manager job, but kind of the work that they're overseeing is really different than what a general manager has to deal with.
Jamie Irvine:And they not only have to deal with that.
Mike Moreau:Now they've got salesmen that's promised something that I'm not sure how we're going to deliver on that thing and that's going to get us in a whole bunch of trouble, but it's a great opportunity. So let's figure out how to flesh that out, and they're also having to, you know, think about whatever they're. You know the fact that the building is now starting to burst from the seams, and so now I have to start thinking about what is the, what's the next bit of real estate that we have to be thinking about? So two really different sets of responsibilities that come in that require two very, very different kinds of people.
Jamie Irvine:And the sad part is is a lot of times a really good counter person becomes the parts manager and then becomes a branch manager, maybe even then a general manager, and the Peter principle sometimes totally applies to them, other times not, you know. Other times people are destined to to have that. Why? Because they've got that general manager profile and so as they got more experience they actually get better. You know they may be worth the best parts person in the world, but by the time they get to general manager boy, they're really really doing well. Well, that's because they're oriented towards that. And now they have also the about that you know.
Mike Moreau:A good question to ask people and for them to sort of do some reflection on is when was I happiest in my life doing what kind of a job? And for a lot of people it's rewinding the clock a bunch of years to when I was doing that. When I was, when I was the supervisor man, I had it nailed and I'd sort of argue well, that person's still a supervisor, but now they have a title of manager and how do they do that job called manager? They supervise. I had a client that was, I think he was about 33 years old and his dad owned a national company and I think they were doing probably about $100 million in sales a year and he had sort of flirted in and outside of the company, never could really get along with dad, and so then he'd leave and he'd go and start up a company and kind of get that going and be in startup phase and then maybe he'd sell that off and something else would happen. And then one day his dad got sick and couldn't run the business anymore and at 30, 33 years old he got the job of president of this national $100 million business like pretty massive in terms of what he took on for the family and it was interesting as he was sort of learning about all of these things.
Mike Moreau:He said you know, mike, this is so interesting. He said you know, most people would be absolutely terrified of a job like this interest. And he said you know, most people would be absolutely terrified of a job like this. And this is the first job without the resume, the education, experience and skills to do this job. This is the first job I felt like I actually fit in and so that whole idea fit back to the supervisor in a manager job and where was I best and all of that type of thing. Again, there's a real something underlying inside of all of this that they can start to come out and when you, when you think about that, it's kind of interesting. And that business has gone on to continue to grow and do some pretty amazing things out there. But you know, again, traits that match up against that job. So I just wanted to kind of throw that story.
Jamie Irvine:I'm so glad you told us that story.
Jamie Irvine:So what we do at the Heavy DutyDuty Consulting Corporation for heavy-duty companies you know we really work with them in several different areas of their business People and organization is a big part of that, and we're so happy to work alongside you, mike, and you provide us with the tool that's called Traits.
Jamie Irvine:That allows us to evaluate people at this level. So it's really important for the listeners to understand that when we get to a place where we have created what's called a job model, which is where we've outlined the optimal personality traits to do a specific job at a very high level, we have that job model and we've got that really figured out. Then we take people, whether they are candidates applying and we're trying to recruit them, or existing employees, and we get them to take the assessment. So now we have that person's profile, their personality traits are there and we can overlay one on top of the other and we can look for a match or mismatch mismatch. When we get to that level, what comes next and how do we get access to information to help us make the necessary decisions Hire this person or not, promote this person or not, change this person's job description or not. Can you walk us through that?
Mike Moreau:I think a lot of that, a lot of it, just comes from knowledge that you have to build as you're working with something like this. Again, it's an instrument. It's a tool that you need to figure out how best to leverage it, and more knowledge is better. And so, I think, for your clients, I think contacting you and having some of those discussions, I think, is one thing. I think you can take a look at some of the reports that we've built with the job modeling tool. We're asking in terms of what we need inside of this job and then taking a look at the candidates' results and understanding who they are and then being able to see some of that. There's a graphical overlay. That happens.
Mike Moreau:That is probably the most magical part of this tool that we can really define what it is that we're looking for, again using scales, because people understand scales very well. If I say I'm six foot three and 190 pounds, boom, everybody can kind of picture me really quickly, because we all understand that scale and we understand whether Mike can dunk or not or whether he'd be a better hockey player than he would a basketball player. We can make some interesting assumptions on some of those things. And so when we're doing that. With these scales of behavior, we can start to see very quickly where is there fit, where is there not fit.
Mike Moreau:And we've just actually launched another tool that just came out this week actually that talks about when you are comparing a person against a job. It says, well, here's the job, here's the person. And then this report will describe here's how this person is going to do inside of this job. Here's how they're going to want to change it to suit themselves. Here's how they're going to want to, how motivated they're going to be in these areas. So lots of sort of ways to be able to dig in deeper. Overall, back to that knowledge statement, you need to learn what these traits mean and you have to be able to interpret these graphs. And as soon as you start to build that knowledge, it's like all of a sudden, you know, instead of pouring through a whole bunch of reports, we look at it like a doctor looks at an x-ray and says here's what's broken, here's what's right, you know, and off we go from there.
Jamie Irvine:Yeah, and we are now using this tool exclusively in our consulting service and I'll tell you the clients that are using it the insights that they're getting. We're helping them avoid making, maybe, what would be a poor hiring decision. We're helping them to make changes with people's job descriptions to bring better alignment. All of this contributes to increasing your success rate when you're recruiting, improving your retention rate, which is so critical. We've got to hang on to the knowledgeable people we have in this business. We can't have them leaving and going somewhere else because they're mismatched to the wrong job. So this is just such a powerful tool. We've talked about a lot of things. Mike and I always like to ask my guests if there's like one thing they want people to remember from this conversation. What's that one thing?
Mike Moreau:Sorry I'm going to ramble for a couple seconds here, but I think this idea of you know, if there was something that was out there that allowed us to be able to predict how somebody was going to do in a position before we hired them, before we put them in, why wouldn't we be doing that and getting some more insight about what we're going to do? So many of our businesses' problems and solutions lie in people, and so if there was a way that we could dial in and really understand how to predict how somebody's going to do inside of a position and how they're going to turn the job around, why wouldn't we do that Exactly?
Jamie Irvine:You've been listening to the Heavy-Duty Parts Report Today. We've been talking about people in the parts business. I'm so happy that we had you on. Mike Morrow is the president of Traits and if you'd like to see Traits firsthand for yourself, I want to encourage you to go over to heavydutypartsreportcom slash traits and that's spelled T-R-A-I-T-S, so heavydutypartsreportcom slash traits and you will be able to take an assessment for yourself. We will meet with you and we will review that. You'll be able to see firsthand how accurate it is and we'll also be able to demonstrate to you some of the features that you can use inside your business to make your business more successful. The trucking industry is the backbone of society and we need heavy duty people to thrive inside the industry so they can take care of the rest of us. Mike, thank you so much for being on the show and thank you for your ongoing support of our company, the Heavy Duty Consulting Corporation. I really genuinely appreciate everything you do for us.
Mike Moreau:Yeah well, thank you, jamie. The relationship is important to me, so thanks for having me on and all the best.
Jamie Irvine:What a great interview with Mike Morrow from Traits. We at the Heavy-Duty Consulting Corporation are certified facilitators for Traits, so we use this with our clients all the time. If you're interested in that, you should reach out to us. We'd love to have a conversation. Head over to heavydutypartsreportcom. Slash traits and you'll be able to get one free assessment done. So have somebody in your organization, take the assessment, we'll meet with you and we will discuss how it works. We'll show you the whole program. We really look forward to working with you on that.
Jamie Irvine:Now, just by way of a quick conclusion, I want to switch over to our final segment that's Not Heavy Duty. In this week's edition of that's Not Heavy Duty. I just want to continue the theme of people and organization and I want to highlight one thing that Mike and I talked about in the episode. To really drive this point home, it used to be the heavy duty way where we would just promote people who had stayed in their positions for a long time and they would just take the natural steps. So counter people would become parts managers. Parts managers would become branch managers. Sometimes branch managers become general managers. That wasn't necessarily because they were the best person for the job. A lot of time. It had to do with that they had won the attrition war, meaning they were just there. Everybody else had left, they were still there and so they got promoted. I saw that in sales as well outside salespeople. Oftentimes they come from the inside, they come from the parts department. They were on the counter. Then they go into outside sales. Then they become a sales manager, maybe a regional sales manager. Then they become maybe a director of sales, and it isn't necessarily because they're the best person for that job.
Jamie Irvine:Like we talked about in the episode, that Peter principle is a real thing and it's really important to understand that. Because, you know, we might have been able to get away with that in the past when there was lots of people available in the industry to choose from. But because things are completely radically different today, where there are so few people available to us to work in our industry, we just cannot afford to have the wrong people in the wrong positions. We cannot afford to take good people and promote them beyond their abilities and then lose them. This is not the heavy duty way. It can no longer be heavy duty. So the heavy duty way has to be that we use the best technology at our disposal to be able to identify the right people, whether they're internal, already they're people who work for us or we're recruiting outside. We've got to get the right people sitting in the right people, whether they're internal, already they're people who work for us or we're recruiting outside. We got to get the right people sitting in the right seats. Traits is that technology. So, again, if you want to take advantage of it, please head over to heavydutypartsreportcom, slash traits and get your free assessment done. One free assessment and we will sit down with you and we'll talk through the strategy for your company. This is the Heavy-Duty Way.
Jamie Irvine:Thanks again for listening. This was an extended episode this week, but the subject matter was very important. I hope that you enjoyed it. Thank you for continuing to support the show. If you haven't already, head over to heavydutypartsreportcom, hit that follow button. Sign up to our weekly email. We'll send you one email a week no spam. Sign up to our weekly email. We'll send you one email a week no spam. If you like listening to the audio version, make sure that you follow us for free, and if that app gives you the opportunity to give us a five-star rating and review, would you do that for us. We'd really appreciate it. And finally, if you like watching the video version, hit that subscribe button and the bell notification on YouTube. Thank you again for your ongoing support and, as always, I want to end today's episode by encouraging you to be heavy duty.