Nationwide Marketing Group’s Service Leaders Network recently hosted its fourth Virtual Service Conference, a unique event that provides training, education and networking opportunities for every aspect of a servicing dealer’s business. We sat down with Mark Pollitz, director of service for NMG, to see what he and the servicing community learned from the recent event.

---

 

Rob Stott: All right. We are back on the Independent Thinking podcast and diving right into it with Mr. Mark Pollitz, our Director of Service Leaders Network here at Nationwide Marketing Group. Mr. Pollitz, how are you?

Mark Pollitz: Rob, if I were any better, you’d have to call the police.

Rob Stott: I love it, man. It’s good to hear from you. Always good to hear from you. I know one of the most active individuals within Nationwide Marketing Group, running a service department, I know our members listening that have service departments know how busy it can be. I think in terms of doing that within Nationwide, you kind of fit the bill, man.

Mark Pollitz: It’s a challenge. I will say that it certainly does keep me and Carmine Dionisio, our education development manager, keeps us hopping.

Rob Stott: Yeah, so lots-

Mark Pollitz: And it’s a good thing.

Rob Stott: Oh, of course. Hey, better than the alternative, right?

Mark Pollitz: Sure is.

Rob Stott: No, that’s awesome. Well, lots to dive into in the run-up here. We’re just a few short weeks from PrimeTime and I know always a busy time for you guys with Service Leaders Network and we’ll talk about that in a minute, but we’re also not too far removed from the closing. And then I know there was the online access that was available for the virtual service Concert or… Concert. Yeah, I bet you wish it was a concert, don’t you? The virtual service conference that I know… Is it the second time you guys have ran that, is that right?

Mark Pollitz: That was our fourth annual.

Rob Stott: Fourth? Wow. Oh, my goodness. Has it really been four years?

Mark Pollitz: Where have you been?

Rob Stott: That’s unbelievable. That’s awesome, man. Well, four years running. Talk about the conference itself, what’s involved, and then we’ll dive into this most recent edition of it.

Mark Pollitz: Well Rob, just to give you a little background on the conference, COVID taught all of us a lot of things and it taught that we can have communication virtually, even though it wasn’t always the preferred method, but nonetheless, we all adapted. And to that point, in our industry, in the appliance industry, and specifically on the service side, there are several trade associations throughout the U.S., and they conduct and host in-person service conventions. And these are where all manufacturers come in and vendors and supporters and software companies and just anybody that’s anybody in the appliance service industry attends these service conventions. And they’re usually several days long. Obviously during COVID that ceased across the nation and a lot of folks went to virtual including ourselves.

So we took that philosophy, we took that concept because we know that when we attend the in-person service conventions, there’s usually maybe seven or 800 people that attend those. But Rob, there’s close to 30,000 appliance companies throughout the nation and most of them, a very small percentage of them have the opportunity to leave their business and go spend three or four days somewhere and do that. So we took the concept that everyone else did and we thought, “Let’s create a virtual service conference.” And we did, and we are the first organization and still the only organization to host this type of a virtual service conference.

Rob Stott: Well, the cool thing too, you mentioned the in-person attendance. Obviously a great opportunity for anyone that can, more than just that small percentage too. I think the other benefit there is usually you’re getting the owner, or someone high up in that organization that goes to those conferences. Whereas here when it’s virtual, anyone in the organization can attend.

Mark Pollitz: Absolutely. It’s a great convenience to be able to not have to leave your place of employment, not have to leave your business. As technicians that may be working for an owner, they can still continue to conduct business on a daily basis and just carve out those few hours during the afternoon that we host this convention.

Rob Stott: And correct me if I’m wrong too, looking back or thinking back about the agenda and how you guys built it, it was a couple of days, the conference itself, but you catered each day to a different type of professional within the service department, is that right?

Mark Pollitz: Yes, we did. We tried to create a focus, if you will, so that it would be more tuned into the audience that’s out there of all the various job descriptions that folks do. So the first day is dedicated to business owners and business managers and service managers. So we have a lot of business training, software solutions, things of that nature that help managers to do just that, manage their business, become more efficient at it by providing them with these vendors, these manufacturers, and their sessions that help to provide them with creating efficiencies in their business.

The second day we dedicated to appliance technicians because knowing that they’re out on the road and so many of the appliance servicers in today’s market are short-staffed, time is of the essence to them. It’s a very valuable asset to them. So to take technicians off of the road for an extended period of time, even when they go to in-person manufacturing training, where they have to spend literally about a whole day to do that. We focused it on technicians and we gave the opportunity, as we had many manufacturers, and vendors, and training organizations, and trade associations conduct technical training, seminars, webinars.

And it worked out just great, because these folks had the opportunity to sit, whether it was in their service vehicle, or at their home, or in an office, to have that convenience to be able to sit in on live training. And then the third day we dedicated to delivery and installation personnel, both managers and staff. Again, giving them the opportunity not to have to use a whole day, but to be able to take just a few hours and get training and resources, things of that nature for the delivery and installation technicians and staff.

Rob Stott: That’s awesome. I love how it’s curated like that too. There’s something for everyone. You guys built a program that’s three days, but not necessarily something that someone has to be at for three days. They could participate the couple hours a day to the sessions that pertain to them and even after the fact, if it’s something they weren’t able to attend live in-person, or they did but want to relive. I mentioned that it just wrapped up, it’s a virtual conference that was extended beyond just those three days. So the sessions were still available for an extended period of time after the fact, so it’s kind of a learn at your own pace, if you will, is how you set it up.

Mark Pollitz: Well, that’s the beauty of it, Rob, that we did record every session and we retain those recordings. And for our members, those are found in our service leaders network website in our video library. And they’re year round, literally, until the next virtual service conference when we record some new material. And of course, when you have as many folks that we had participate and contribute to that, I believe we had about 54 sessions altogether. We had 10 manufacturers, 21 product or service vendors. And of course, it was only a five-hour time span each afternoon. Three afternoons as I mentioned, focused on those particular groups and it would be impossible, whether you’re in person or virtual, to attend all of those in one day when you’ve got them stacked four and five deep for five hours. So that’s the beauty of the technology of recording the videos and having them available.

For the folks that did attend that were not Nationwide members, they did have to pay a cost. And I will mention that as Nationwide members, this was a free service to them. It’s part of their monthly membership. There is no charge, but for those that are not Nationwide members that did attend, they did have to pay a fee for that and the video content was available for just 30 days afterwards and they could of course bring in technicians or folks that were in their business that didn’t get to see or didn’t have the time to sit in on the live, now they have the opportunity to see it post recorded.

Rob Stott: I have to imagine, obviously there’s a lot for attendees to learn. As they’re going through the sessions and talking to vendors and receiving the training that they’re receiving, equal opportunity for SLN to learn as well? As you’re seeing the participation rates and things like that, did you notice any trends as far as what sessions were the most popular, or what topics generated the most interest out of attendees?

Mark Pollitz: Yes. And that’s one of the beauty of using a platform such as our events team has created is the ability to query or filter registration reports and attendance reports. And interestingly enough, it gave us a overview of what are the most attended sessions, and one of the highest attended sessions were the manufacturer round tables. These are 30-minute sessions that we had 10 manufacturers that participated and it was open forum. The attendees were able to ask questions during or at the end of that session live with the manufacturer. Those were some of our highest attended. So we can see already that members and non-members alike are very interested in hearing and seeing what the manufacturer’s state of their industry is. So those were the-

Rob Stott: Did you sit in on any of those?

Mark Pollitz: I did, yes.

Rob Stott: Was it a lot of back and forth? Just for the participants in those sessions. I imagine obviously a presentation up front, but then a very engaging type session?

Mark Pollitz: Yes, most of them were very well engaged. They give their presentation, their state of the industry as they see it within their world, but then the Q&A certainly opens up for a lot of that. And of course our members also submitted quite a few questions that we would pose, as a moderator, we would pose to the manufacturer national service leader to answer those. But for the most part, we had the manufacturers teed up and prepared, and they had already had answers for the prerequisite questions that we proposed to them.

Rob Stott: That’s cool.

Mark Pollitz: So it was a good efficient use of time and there was not a lot of time wasted with folks just rambling on or giving war stories.

Rob Stott: Right. A lot of content to get to. How often do you see those sessions that run long because of questions and stuff like that, so there might be a masterclass here with SLN in terms of how to run one of these events as well that we could learn from. That’s awesome. But I feel like I-

Mark Pollitz: Interestingly enough…

Rob Stott: Yeah, go ahead. Yeah.

Mark Pollitz: The other sessions that were some of the top on the list were business management sessions. And we know that business management is a challenge to any service manager or business owner, and so those were very well attended. We had one that was six key abilities of a great CSR that was presented by one of our training organization partners, master Samurai, that was well attended, that gave some basic teaching basic knowledge to CSRs. Those are your first line of defense. They’re the ones that answer the phone and take the call. And then we also had other sessions. How to Pay Your Technicians was another session that was highly attended. Understanding What to Charge the Consumer, Effective Labor Pricing. Those were well attended also. So we could see very quickly that the manufacturer round tables were very well attended and had a lot of interest. The business management, and then there were several technical sessions that were also highly attended.

Rob Stott: How do you take that information? Will that impact the next edition of the virtual service conference? Or what other learnings, I guess too, do you have out of the show that will evolve the conference the next time around?

Mark Pollitz: It does. We try to arrange or solicit manufacturers and vendors and service providers to present information that is value added, but as much as anything that’s practical and usable. It’s great to have a lot of seminars and we’ve all sat through seminars and webinars that have a lot of content to it, but at the end of the webinar, maybe not so much critical, valuable, useful information. So we keep that in mind and we try to develop and design these programs to do that. And we guide our folks, our participants to support us to bring that type of information to our members.

Rob Stott: Yeah. I have to imagine too, those top-attended… That shows where the interest is in the industry, so for what members care about. So even beyond the conference, for what you’re doing day-to-day at SLN, that has to influence, I’m sure, the things you’re doing as an organization within Nationwide to support members.

Mark Pollitz: It certainly does. For us, it’s an ongoing project I guess you’d say, or initiative really. We try to help our members become better business people. We call it BBB, Better Business Bottom Line. Because so much is lost in the efficiency of operating a service organization, but yet there are so many services and resources that are available to help members save time, and that is their biggest challenge. That is the biggest asset that they do not have, which is time and time management. So through that, we focus on better business for a bottom line. We do that through creating resources. We’ve got what we call the four resources of that Better Business Bottom Line, and one of those is the cost of doing business. Which believe it or not, the majority of business owners just don’t know their cost.

Now on the sales side, they may have a better handle on that, but on the service side, they really don’t. And there are plenty of resources out there. We have a resource through one of our trade partner organizations that has a cost of doing business calculator that’s free of charge. It has been made available to the Nationwide members free of charge through this organization. And that information, of course, is in Service Leaders Network. And that’s just the first step before to have a better business bottom line.

That the second step is two technology tools that we have created. And I’m pretty proud of this, because we’re the first in the industry to have created these and they are technology tools available in MemberNet and only in MemberNet, that a member can go into the database. One of them is called the service rate comparison platform, that gives our members an opportunity to fill in all of their warranty service rates. And actually, on their dashboard, once they complete it and submit it, they can compare those warranty rates to other members that have filled out the information.

Rob Stott: Wow.

Mark Pollitz: It gives them a snapshot of where they are and it’s color coded, whether they’re green, yellow or red. And you can imagine what those colors mean. And that gives them an opportunity to step back and say, “Maybe I need to negotiate my warranty rates.” And of course the thing is, how many business owners actually know how to negotiate a warranty rate with a manufacturer? So we created another program and it is a two-part series of video that we have within Service Leaders Network, and it’s in our video library. This is a two-part series that I recorded on how to negotiate your manufacturer warranty rates. And I did that from the perspective of my history, being that I have been a manufacturer rep for five different manufacturers. I was the guy sitting on the opposite side of the table from you telling you how much performance I wanted out of you, and how little I was going to pay you.

Rob Stott: It’s incredible. One, it shows just how lucky we are to have an asset like yourself within the walls of Nationwide working on behalf of the servicing dealers out there, just to be able to share that wealth of knowledge and information. It also too, everything you’re explaining… And I know there’s more you can dive into and probably will. We started this talking about the conference that you guys just wrapped up, but SLN has so much to offer. It’s a lot to digest in a podcast and hear from you and make sense of, I hope we’re doing all right. I think you’re doing a great job explaining it, and I imagine servicing dealers out there understand exactly what you’re talking about and they’re making sense of it.

The amount of resources available to our servicing dealers in this industry is hard to quantify, and you guys are hard at work expanding that and building more. All on behalf of this membership that to your point, time is such a valuable asset to them. Well, when you have one place you can turn to save yourselves time, make your business more efficient, and at the end of the day add money to that bottom line. Y’all are doing a top-notch job, it sounds like, to this non-servicing experienced individual that’s talking to you.

Mark Pollitz: Well, thank you very much. I will say that, as I had mentioned and you just confirmed, there are numerous resources and services out there, but they’re all over the place. And what Carmine and I do through our connectivity in the network, we’ve both been in the service side of the business, both of us for 40 years, so there’s 80, 90 years worth of experience within the service realm. But through our networking, our relationships with manufacturers and vendors and other partners, we are pooling all of this information together. And that’s the benefit to the member, is we bring it together and we utilize our service website to do that and makes it much easier. But there is just so much even that is within our website, it just would take an enormous amount of time to go through all of it.

Rob Stott: How about this too, just the ability to tap into you as a member. So if anyone has a question or just wants to bat at an idea, the fact that you’re there, and you and Carmine have that… You mentioned, would you say 90 years of experience combined?

Mark Pollitz: 80 to 90.

Rob Stott: In that range?

Mark Pollitz: I’ve got 45, and I think Carmine’s the 40-ish.

Rob Stott: Wow. So just to be able to tap into that, and obviously you’re working on the programs and lots of offerings for them to take advantage of, but just as individuals too, just to bat ideas. And a way to segue too into some opportunities to be doing that in-person here in the not too distant future as we sit here early to mid… It’s closer to mid than early at this point, I think. We’re right on that cusp of mid-July as we’re talking. It will be mid-July when this publishes. But PrimeTime being there, a great opportunity to get some face time with not only you guys. I know you got a lot going on and I’ll let you dive into it, in terms of giving members the opportunity to connect with vendors at PrimeTime as well.

Mark Pollitz: And that we do. We certainly want to make every opportunity for our members to be able to have again, useful practical resources and services. And we choose our vendors carefully to be able to do that. We make sure that we vet them, because we have a deep understanding of what the needs are of the servicing member. To that point, all that we put together for our website and all these programs that we put together, we are not behind the scenes, we are in front of the scenes. To the point that one of our services that we provide is one-on-one business counseling with our members.

And we typically have weekly calls. Some members it’s every week for a period of time. Other members, it may be every other week or once a month. But we make ourselves available by phone, by video to be able to interact with our members, give them guidance, help them to determine strategies of which direction they want or need to take their business. So those are the things that we provide. I like to say that we provide services, resources, training, business management and member benefits through discounts and tech technology tools.

Rob Stott: That’s awesome.

Mark Pollitz: There’s a lot that goes on behind those.

Rob Stott: Yeah.

Mark Pollitz: Some of the other things that we do on an ongoing basis, we publish every Monday morning a newsletter that goes out to all of our servicing members. In fact, I think it may go out to all appliance dealers because we do have appliance dealers that don’t service, but some of what we do is a benefit to them. And then there are some members that don’t service currently but are interested in it. We work with several, even currently, that are looking at starting their own service business. So we’re helping them to develop the strategies and the steps to be able to do that.

So we’ve got our weekly newsletter that comes out every Monday morning. And then another thing that we do weekly, Carmine, being that he’s the educational development manager, he arranges and promotes training through our different trade partners. Whether they be manufacturers, parts distributors, training organizations, trade associations. And that Monday newsletter will typically list at least six trainings that are taking place each week, so he stays real busy in making sure that we provide the resources for our members to be able to keep up on the latest technology and be better, more productive, more efficient at what they do out on the road.

Rob Stott: How many-

Mark Pollitz: And then…

Rob Stott: Oh, go ahead. Go ahead. I’ll let you finish.

Mark Pollitz: We have so much to do.

Rob Stott: I know. It’s awesome.

Mark Pollitz: This is two hours, right?

Rob Stott: Yeah. Listen, if you’re listening to this, you can hit that play it three times speed. I don’t think we talk too fast, so you can keep up with how we talk and we’ll let you go. You can just go.

Mark Pollitz: Well, another thing that we do for our members, prior to Service Leaders Network being created several years ago by Ron Romero, Frank Santner, several others, there really was no representation from Nationwide for the service side of the business. And when they came up with the brainchild of creating the Service Leaders Network, one of the first things that was our challenge was to bring over 800 or 900 servicers together as a community. So that’s what we have worked hard to do, and I feel like we’ve done a great job because now almost every member who has service, if you ask them whose Service Leaders Network is, they have some idea, if not a very close and intimate idea of what we do. So we bring that community together. And in bringing that community together, one of the programs that we put in place was a monthly open forum, open discussion member to member meeting. You can see it’s my background, it’s a member to member appliance service forum. And even this QR code that folks are viewing right now is something that they can scan with their phone and register for that.

Rob Stott: And for those that aren’t, what we’ll do… If you’re listening to this instead of watching, one, you can go to YouTube and watch this. But if not, what we’ll do is put the link underneath the… I’ll scan it. I’ll make sure I scan it before we hang up here, and I’ll put the link underneath in the description to this episode so that you can click that link and get yourself signed up as a member.

Mark Pollitz: That’s great. Thank you, Rob. So in the Member to Member Forum, this is one of the few meetings or webinars we do not record. And we don’t record it for a reason, we want our members to be able to discuss amongst themselves openly and candidly without being inhibited by feeling like they’re being recorded, so you’ve got to be there or you’ve missed it. So it’s the last Wednesday of every month at 3:00 PM Eastern Time for one hour, and we have one of our members, Nick Dalton, we have tagged him as our ambassador for this. So he leads and guides the discussion of the group, and then it’s just open from there. And the topics may change three or four times during the course of that hour, but it is a great opportunity for members who we’re servicing to hear what’s going on outside of the sphere of their own little world. Because we’ve got members from all four borders that attend this.

Rob Stott: Well, a couple things come to mind out of that. One being we hear so often how important, again, talking about PrimeTime, the ability to network in person with each other is one of those. It’s just inherent. It happens at those events all the time. This though is another example of being able to do that beyond the four days of PrimeTime when we’re together and have those shared experiences and lean on a network of your peers that… As a dealer, you want to be able to talk to anyone. And the ability to say you’re a servicing dealer in California to talk to one that’s in Vermont about challenges, and you’re not necessarily fearful that it’s like a neighbor or something that you’re sharing local trade secrets with about, or the challenges you’re having. But to be able to lean into that network is awesome as a member.

But then too, again, same like we talked about with those well-attended sessions during your conference. This is another way for SLN to learn. And the message that Tom shared, I forget if it was at this last PrimeTime or maybe two ago. We’re constantly in dialogue with members, learning from them and seeing where their challenges are and adapting as an organization to answer the challenges they have, or help them in whatever areas it might be. Another great forum, these member to member meetings that you’re having to learn about that. So as important as they are for the members to be able to share those ideas and thoughts and best practices, it’s great for you too to be able to be part of those and learn from it, see where the challenges are, and then evolve your own offerings as SLN.

Mark Pollitz: It certainly is. The SLN leadership, myself, Carmine, Frank Santner and Ron will sit in on these meetings. Not to manage them because we don’t, we let the members manage that. But we listen and we take their suggestions, and this gives us action items to help us to meet the needs of what our members have need of.

Rob Stott: Awesome.

Mark Pollitz: And it’s a great forum for us to be able to have those learning experiences. And the monthly… I’m sorry, the PrimeTime member to member sessions that we host were born out of this virtual member to member session. So we’ve been doing the PrimeTime member to member for the last, I think, four PrimeTimes. And then we do it, as I mentioned, monthly here.

Rob Stott: Well, you said it, we could go for six hours. I’m this close to letting you, but I know that we both have busy lives and people that are probably trying to call us while we’re talking on this podcast. So I want to button it up though, because I got one last question for you and then we’ll bring it back together. You mentioned launching service departments with members, have you guys successfully done that with any members yet?

Mark Pollitz: We haven’t, because it’s a long process. It usually takes 6 to 12 months to do something like that, if you’re going to do it right. And of course, we work at the member’s pace, but we do have several members that have taken those steps. They’ve actually hired technicians. We help them as far as the onboarding. We help them in the recruiting, the onboarding, and the hiring and training process of technicians, as well as other service staff. But it does take time, so I guess you could say we have success in that we’re in the stages of where we are working with several members who have made progressive steps into doing that.

Rob Stott: That’s awesome. You talk about just finding a benefit of an offering within Nationwide, that right there speaks volumes in and of itself. And you could leave everything else off the table that we talked about today, the fact that you’ve helped just get the ball rolling, I think speaks volumes to what’s possible here. But also so much more to come, right? I know you’ve got another virtual service conference in the works. Maybe it’ll have some elements of a concert as well, since I threw that idea out there for you. But no, I joke. But February 25, right? February 2025 is your next virtual service conference?

Mark Pollitz: Yeah.

Rob Stott: So obviously, members be on the lookout for that and I look forward to getting together with you in just a few short weeks at PrimeTime and seeing you guys in person doing your thing. And continuing to follow the story, because you mentioned it, I spoke wrong, saying two. It feels like it’s only been two years, but the time has flown since this department launched, and this group launched within Nationwide, this network. It’s wild to see the days of just you at a booth, to now you got yourself and Carmine and a team supporting you, and a group of members that I know are benefiting tremendously from the offerings of SLN. So Mr. Pollitz, it was awesome to be able to connect and share some time and get you on here, because there’s always lots to talk about with Service Leaders Network.

Mark Pollitz: Well, thank you, Rob. Appreciate the opportunity and anytime you have a few hours to spare, hit me up.

Rob Stott: Hey, I think I’ll be right next to you at PrimeTime. So hey, feel free to pop on over and we’ll sit down and chat.

Mark Pollitz: Thank you very much.