Your dealers' market share is two numbers multiplied together. Do you track either?
In July I wrote a piece for dealer principals about their sales teams. The argument was simple market share is the product of two more useful numbers.
Participation rate × closure rate = market share.
Participation is the share of deals in a territory that your salesperson actually gets the chance to quote for. Closure is the share of those deals they win.
The response told me it struck a nerve. So this time I want to ask the same question one level up, of the OEMs who build and manage dealer networks.
Walt McDonald of The McDonald Group, whose selling skills framework I've used with dealers for years, puts the benchmark for the best machinery reps at 80–85% participation and 50–60% closure. That works out at roughly 48% market share.
Run it the other way and the problem is obvious. A rep who's in on only 20% of the deals and closes 75% of them tops out at about 15% share. Even a perfect close rate can't take them past 20%.
You cannot close a deal you were never on.
1. One share number, four very different dealers
Most OEM dealer reviews I've seen come down to units, share and maybe a quote count. Share is an outcome. Participation and closure are what produce it.
Split them, and dealers that look identical on a share report start to look very different:
· High participation, strong closure. A dealer with capability to spare. The candidate for more territory, more product lines, more investment.
· High participation, weak closure. They're seeing the deals and losing them. That's selling skills, finance packaging or product support credibility.
· Low participation, high closure. Usually a dealer working its loyal base, the familiar milk round, while the rest of the territory goes uncovered. Healthy margins, quietly shrinking share.
· Low participation, low closure. The territory is too big for the dealer's resources, or account planning isn't happening at all. That's a structural conversation, not a coaching one.
Same share figure. Four completely different fixes.
If your regional managers can't tell you which quadrant each dealer sits in, they're coaching blind.
2. Participation is a network problem, and you hold some of the data
No salesperson can drive fast enough to find 80% of the deals by canvassing alone.
The deals show up elsewhere first. At the parts counter. On a service visit. In a rental enquiry. Through a referral.
They also show up in data OEMs often hold and don't share. In the UK, registration data from providers like Systematics shows what machines were bought and where. In July I asked dealers whether their OEM was sharing it with them. It's a fair question to ask from the other side too.
· Are you giving dealers the registration and fleet data that lets them measure participation, not just guess at it?
· Do your dealers' parts and service teams feed whole-goods leads to sales, or does that rely on goodwill?
· In categories with no registration data, are you holding dealers to territory coverage and account planning standards as the proxy?
In my experience, the networks with the highest participation aren't the ones with the most reps. They're the ones where the whole dealership, and the OEM behind it, is looking for the next deal.
3. The first thing the customer buys is the dealer
Now the closure side, which my July piece barely touched.
What's going through a prospect's head at the first meeting. Can I trust you? Will you be there when I need you? Am I going to make a mistake with these people?
None of those questions is about the machine.
His answer is a short, factual introduction to the dealership. Parts held, off-the-shelf fill rate, number of certified technicians, first-time fix rate.
Here's the OEM problem. Many dealers can't make that statement, because they don't know their own numbers.
· Fill rate, first-time fix and technician certification are product support measures. That's OEM territory.
· If you hold that data, give it back to the dealer in a form a salesperson can use.
· If the numbers are weak, that's your aftersales priority list, not just theirs.
Product support isn't a back office function. It's the strongest closing argument a dealer has against a cheaper machine.
4. Telling is not selling, and that's a training question
People speak at around 125 words a minute but think at around 600. The longer a salesperson talks, the more time the customer has to build objections.
The best reps ask situation questions, then problem questions, then cost-of-problem questions. They listen and take notes. The machine comes later.
Most OEM sales training I've seen runs the other way. Product features first, selling skills a distant second.
· How much of your dealer sales training is product knowledge, and how much is questioning, listening and qualification?
· Do new dealer reps get a structured ramp-up (introductions, walk-arounds, product support presentations, formal demos) or learn on the job?
· Who checks whether the training changed anything?
A major international manufacturer that invested over US$1 million in an app to help dealer reps deliver better walk-around presentations. That's a serious signal of where the industry thinks the gap is.
5. A dealer's weakest skill sets its ceiling
A selling skills inventory can scores ten closure skills, from account profiling to finance options to getting commitments. A rep is only as good as their weakest area.
The same is true of a network.
· One dealer with weak finance packaging loses deals to competitors who make the monthly payment work.
· One dealer with no referral customers can't answer the fear of switching.
· One dealer with no follow-up process lets deals go cold after the demo.
In my experience, OEMs rarely diagnose these gaps dealer by dealer. They see a share number, set a target and move on.
What I'd be asking as a channel director
· Can we place every dealer in one of the four quadrants, with evidence?
· Are we sharing the registration and fleet data that lets dealers measure participation? → Are dealer parts and service teams part of our lead engine, or separate from it?
· Can every dealer rep state their dealership's fill rate and first-time fix rate with confidence?
· Is our dealer sales training mostly product, or mostly selling?
Which half of the equation is costing your network more share?
I'd be interested to hear from channel and regional leaders, so drop a comment or send me a message.
#DealerDevelopment #ConstructionEquipment #MarketShare#TerritoryCoverage#Profitability