Welcome: What’s your secret sauce?
By Clair Urbain, Editor, Publisher
One of my favorite must-ask questions in rental center interviews is, “What’s your secret sauce? What makes you different and better than your competitors?”
Invariably, it’s service related. Some say it’s their people; some say it’s their processes. But it all comes back to serving customers quickly and correctly.
That’s what I found on a Tuesday morning when I visited American Pride Rental and Sales in Sarasota, Florida, which is this issue’s cover story. It was mid-morning and equipment going on rent was flying out of the store. While its location isn’t the handiest to get into or out of, the staff of 10 at the facility were efficiently moving equipment around and checking out rentals. Most of its rental fleet is on rent by the day or the week, so that means quite a bit of activity day in and day out.
Fielding more than 100 calls a day, John Castoro, owner, says they don’t use voicemail. Every call gets answered by a real person in real time. When it comes to equipment maintenance and service, John and his maintenance staff are committed to fully going over incoming equipment and making repairs and doing maintenance proactively. That attention to detail in the shop has built American Pride’s reputation of having top-notch reliable equipment, especially high-maintenance items such as sod cutters and stump grinders.
They also hand-write rental agreements. Their processes still allow them to move an incredible amount of small equipment in and out of the facility on a daily basis.
Ask yourself: What is your rental center’s secret sauce? Once you identify it, leverage it. Let employees know what it is and how they are a key part of that. Then tell everyone about it. Secret sauces are the recipe for success.
PRO CONTRACTOR RENTALS MAGAZINE
Pro Contractor Rentals provides information of value to rental centers who focus time, resources and attention on meeting the demands of construction contractors and other equipment rental customers.
