Maxim Messenger: December 2019

President's Message

Welcome to the December edition of our Maxim Messenger. We received lots of positive feedback from you, our valued employees, when we launched this format in June. Our continued goal is to be more interactive and user friendly and your comments were appreciated.

Every year it seems that Q1 and Q2 breeze by with our cherished summertime sandwiched in between them. I would like to thank everyone for your effort, dedication and commitment for the first half of the year. Thank you!

Unfortunately, our sales volume is well behind our forecast and is down 9% year-over-year. This has had a significant impact on our financial results and definitely did not meet our expectations for the half way point. 

That being said, there were some stand out performers, and we always like to recognize performance and our Top 3 Branches Year-To-Date (YTD) and our Top 3 Branches for year-over-year improvement. This year, they are:           

Top 3 Performing Branches Overall	Top 3 Most Improved Overall
1. Winnipeg Main	1. Thunder Bay
2. Prince Albert	2. Calgary
3. Winnipeg Trailers	3. Prince Albert

 

For our fiscal year 2019.20, our focus has been on Customer Relationship Management and maximizing the potential of our approach to sales growth through our Account Managers, sales tools, territory & account management and market segmentation.  We will work to ramp up the momentum for our efforts to win new business and conquest accounts in the second half of the year.

In my tenure, I have come to know that there is never a shortage of challenges in our efforts to sell and operate the business of trucks and trailers. That is why it is imperative for us to be diligent and ensure that we maximize each and every sales opportunity and keep a close eye on expenses for Q3 & Q4.

We believe in continuous improvement that allows us to sell more, work to create efficiency and contribute to our workplace environment. Our goal is “to be better today than we were yesterday” and keeping a focus on continuous improvement helps us achieve that goal.

The Christmas season is upon us, and on behalf of the senior leadership team, we want to wish all of you and your families a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.

 

Merry Christmas,

 

 

 

 

 

 

Troy Hamilton, President

 

Sales, Lease and Rentals

It has been a slower start to the year than we had anticipated for the Sales, Lease & Rental (SLR) team. 

Some contributing factors for this are:

• Alberta’s slower economy. The decline in the oil and gas sectors has impacted customers we have come to rely on to have their buying cycles dry up.
• Transportation segment sales were anticipated to be down as a whole across the country and in addition the owner operator market has continued to decline while large fleets continue to acquire smaller fleets to expand their business.
• Agriculture facing trade uncertainties as prices remain lower than average on most crops for the start of 2019.20.
• Construction sector as a whole across the country is going from a 3% growth last year to a 1.4% drop for this year.

Sales, Lease and Rental results are down 14% vs this time last year and our gross profit is below forecast and prior year which has our net profit results currently below expectations.

The top three branches for overall performance and our top three branches that have the best year-over-year improvement are:

Sales

Although our new truck sales are down, our potential business for quoting activity is higher year-over-year and that is great to see.  Our front line sales teams will continue to exhaust each and every opportunity to convert those quotes to orders and work to deliver as many stock units as possible. 

Maxim’s Excellence Club

We currently have five sales people on pace to achieve this goal. Three are on pace for Platinum status and two for qualifying level.  Good luck to all and let’s keep it up and grow this group.

My team is far from satisfied with our first half results and with some key metrics in place and a few sales initiatives on the go, I am confident we can improve our performance in the second half and finish strong.

I want wish you all a safe and happy holiday season and I look forward to reporting back to you at year-end. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Ryan Sapach, Vice President of Sales/Lease/Rentals

Parts

Parts finished behind last year’s net profit results by 21.2%. This is the first time in 9 years that we have not grown our sales revenue year over year. We are behind last year’s sales by 4%. The loss of sales is due to the increased competition, changeover in Outside Sales staff and the slowdown in the economy.

Top three branches this fiscal are:

We had some challenges this year with our Outside Sales team, but fortunately, we are moving forward with high quality replacements. We hired BJ Wilson (Br S) in June 2019, promoted James Ford (Br 1) in July 2019, hired Nolan Shurygalo (Br R) in July 2019, Herb Penner Fluid Filtration specialist in July 2019 (MB,SK, ON) and promoted Mike Mountain (Br 9) in October 2019. My optimism is very high for these new members to our outside sales team and I cannot wait to see where this year brings us.

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Moving forward we will be using GPS and Route optimization to ensure our outside sales team are optimizing their time with our customers to grow relationships and our share of wallet. Project completion date is December 2019. I am excited to see where these tools and strategies take us in 2020.

We are making the above changes and more because it is important for us to be better than our competition. We need to give great value, top-notch customer service, follow up with any customers who show any dissatisfaction, and simply be the best. If we can continue to improve on this, I know we can back to where I know we can be.

I would like to thank our whole team for their efforts this past year and for putting their best foot forward so we can make sure we get back on track and make this another successful year for Maxim Parts.

Wishing you a great holiday season.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Steve Young, Vice President of Parts

Service and Operations

Included below are updates related to Maxim's Service Division, Maxim's Fleet of Lease and Rental Equipment and any operations/facilities updates since our last newsletter in June 2019.

Service

• Service finished the first 6 months of this fiscal year with financial results that exceeded the same period last year by 40%;
• We achieved these results by the hard work of our approximately 175 technicians in our 190 Service Bays across the country;
• The Top 3 Branches based on financial performance and the Top 3 Branches based on year-over-year improvement were:

Fleet

• Maxim’s Lease Fleet grew slightly over the first six months of this fiscal year, while our Rental fleet shrunk slightly;
• Performance of our newer-model trucks (LT/RH) and Navistar’s proprietary big-bore engine (A26) remain strong and our customers continue to provide positive feedback regarding their performance and fuel economy results;
• Maxim launched a revamped preventive maintenance (PM) schedule in May that is showing some early promise in delivering superior uptime for our equipment; and,
• Gillian Giesbrecht (Fleet Maintenance Manager) and her Central Fleet Maintenance (CFM) team continue to work with the branches to prepare our fleet for the tough winter ahead.

People

Included below is an update related to changes in key positions since our last newsletter:

• David Bacon: Promoted to Service Manager at Branch K (Winnipeg Southside)
• Tanner McEwan: Promoted to Service Manager at Branch C (Calgary)
• Tim Thompson: Named the Service Manager at Branch M (Mississauga)
• JP Guevremont: Named the Service Manager at Branch M (Montreal)
• Blair Haas Promoted to Parts & Service Manager at Tereck Diesel (Winnipeg East Side)

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Congratulations to all of you and we appreciate you taking on these new challenges within Maxim!

Operations

    

• The large renovation project at our Saskatoon location was completed on schedule and we held a “Grand Re-Opening” event early in October. Thank you to Todd Wilcox (GM of our Saskatoon and Prince Albert facilities) and his team for all of their hard work to ensure a successful re-launch into the Saskatoon market; and,
• Maxim is in the process of opening a second location in B.C.’s Lower Mainland (Surrey) and we thank Chris Crippen and his team for all their hard work in this regard.

Happy holidays to you and yours and thank you for your hard work and dedication over the first half of our fiscal year.

Thanks,

 

 

 

 

 

 

Kyle Cuthbert, Senior Vice President of Service & Operations

Human Resources

Reanna Brockman is in a permanent role as an HR Advisor as of April 15, 2019.  Reanna started with Maxim in a temporary role in April 2019. 

Breanne Caufield joined Maxim on April 29, 2019 as HR Coordinator covering Mae Dobson’s maternity/parental leave.  Breanne worked with Lowes/Rona for over 5 years in their HR Dept.

 

Technician/Sales referral program

Do you know an experience Technician and/or Sales Representative who would be a welcome addition to the Maxim team?  Refer these candidates to Maxim – if they are ultimately hired and stay with Maxim at least 1 year, you receive a FREE IPAD and $1,000 CASH. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Lisa Parent, BA, CPHR, Human Resources Manager

 

Staff Changes

With a staff of over 550 people, change does happen. Following are some notable staff changes including new hires, promotions and retirements.

Employee Long Service Awards

We celebrate staff years of milestones each year and this year we have 54 staff members from across the country celebrating a milestone. Congratulations to all.

Maxim Community Involvement

National Philanthropy Day Award

Ed Nolin (center), General Manager, Maxim Edmonton.

United Way 

Thank you to all the Maxim employees who donated to our 2019 United Way Campaign. Maxim raised over $45,000 this past year. 

I'm pleased to introduce a new online process for our 2020 campaign. If you click on the link below, you'll be asked to create an account (very simple process) and a link will be emailed to you. That link will take you to Maxim's 2020 United Way campaign page where you can donate either one time or per pay to the United Way in your city - across Canada.  

https://community.unitedwaywinnipeg.ca/maxim

Sincerely,

Harry Dornn & Steve Young

Maxim United Way Campaign Organizers

Lightning Round

With almost 600 employees spread across 18 branches from Vancouver to Montreal, it's hard to know everyone at Maxim. Each issue we feature two employees answering our fun Lightning Round questions so you can get to know Maxim employees from other branches. Be ready for when your turn comes for the Lightning Round.