Dealer Management

The Program

The McDonald Group Master’s Program in Dealer Management is a 3-day in-company workshop, customised for the needs of your capital equipment business. Highly skilled instructors guide your management team toward action plans to improve sales, profitability, and growth in each revenue centre.

Pre-tax profit improvement experienced by workshop participants ranged between 20 -35% increase over a two-year period.

The topics covered in the McDonald Group 3 day workshop

  • Customer Service & Retention
  • Parts Operations
  • Service Operations
  • Used & Reconditioned Machinery Operations
  • Rent/Hire Equipment Operations
  • New Equipment Sales Management
  • After-sales Marketing Strategy
  • Strategic Action Plans for Improvement

Case Study / Analysis

Many of the issues facing equipment dealers and distributors today are increased competition in a depressed economy, reduced retail margins, decreasing absorption rates, and tight skilled labour markets. Manufacturers are demanding even greater market share and we see surging customer demand for greater service.

The Institute for Dealer Development was established to offer a series of industry-specific management training programs, partnering in education with non-competing dealers and their manufacturers to meet challenges and maximize opportunities in this new economic reality.

Many manufacturers are now recognising that the stronger and more prosperous their dealer network, the more willing and capable these dealers are to invest in market share growth.  Historically, some equipment manufacturers limited their view of dealer development to the process of dealer recruiting and contract termination.

Today, numerous equipment manufacturers consider dealer development vital to their own market development and market share success . These OEMs know the stronger and more prosperous their dealer network, the more willing and capable these dealers are to make investments needed for market share growth and improved end user customer satisfaction.


Some recent McDonald Group manufacturers’ dealer development projects include :

  • Leading dealer management teams through the whole process of dealer business performance reviews, quantitative and qualitative assessments. This leads to the development of practical Action Plans to improve profitability, market share, cash flow and customer retention in Walter McDonald’s The Executive Program in Dealer Management.
  • Assisting dealers review and adopt Best Industry Practices from Walter’s recent 25 Problem Solving Tools for Machinery DealersStrategies, Tactics, Operations for Achieving Dealer ExcellenceAchieving Excellence in Dealer/Distributor PerformanceDealer Problem-Solving HandbookWorkbook and Study Guide to the Master’s Program in Dealer Management.
  • Creating a model dealer excellence program which illustrates best industry practices and performance benchmark goals for each revenue centre you have. This could include new and used equipment, parts and supplies, service and rental/lease programs.
  • Training factory field personnel on how to work more effectively with dealer principals/executives and their small business management teams.
  • Providing editorial support for factory and trade group magazines and newsletters on a wide variety of dealer development and operations improvement topics. To date, Walter McDonald has published more than 60 articles in dealer publications such as Material Handling Business, the MHEDA Journal and Construction Equipment Distribution as well as numerous in-company private publications.
  • Building the most comprehensive dealer/distributor training and development curriculum available in the construction equipment, material handling, fire apparatus, machine tool, GPS machine control, forestry equipment and heavy duty truck/trailer industries. We offer numerous McDonald Group workshop programs that can be customized for your organization. In addition, we have the skills and expertise to design, create and present workshops focusing on the specific set of performance deficiencies identified in your dealer organization.