[ALEXIS_DH]

so, this is how i feel lately.

my boss came to me a couple days ago, and asked me to determine the total cost of ownership (including any repairs, overhaul, tires, maintenance) for a machine we have never sold, for conditions which i have never seen, for a company which i do not know, for FIVE years for 10 units. this is for a, roughly, $1.5mill contract.

i told him, i dont have any data to make a regression from. he said "its your responsability, i dont know what you will do, but you have to put a price, otherwise we cannot make a bid".

so i told him.

the price is an X% of sale price (i pulled the % out of my ass, basically), which is a function of age, times the MARGIN he, as a manager, expects to make, minus the residual value of the unit.

i told him to be careful with the margin, and the price he expects to get from the used machine, once the contract is over... because it will make or break the deal.

he forwarded my email to the CFO and asked him to decide the margin, and residual value.... lol...
the CFO hasnt answered, and now he has been bugging me to bug the CFO for the prices...

just to have an idea... the other day he went down to the shop to talk to the technicians... and started asking questions about our ELECTRIC forklifts/reach truck, while pointing the AC motors... "are those the alternators????".

 

[Pesqueeb]

Yup, your fvcked. If your not familiar with it, I suggest googling The Peter Principal.

 

[DirtyMike]

Same boat at my shop/company... We have six shops altogether.... Owners came to me for suggestions and did not like what I listed
First was to close our divebomb that makes maybe a grand a day, and spends 1500..... next was for my store to get the hell out of my way and let me make money.

For his other stores, I told him to stop looking at what is being made were and start looking at the bottom line and shut the hell up, because nothing on how we sell means **** besides the bottom line of what we spent vs what we took in.............. I got another dollar an hour raise

 

[dan-o]

Ask your buddy with all the Kenworths if he'd consider buying a truck without an idea of the operating costs.
If you can't figure out basic cost of ownership for a simple $150k product say goodbye to fleet sales.

If maintenance is included in the lease how do you expect the CFO to figure out residual value/pricing without CoO info?

Look a similar existing products and work up some numbers.
Do you think Airbus operated a fleet of A380s for 20 years before selling them to airlines?

 

[ALEXIS_DH]

Ask your buddy with all the Kenworths if he'd consider buying a truck without an idea of the operating costs.
If you can't figure out basic cost of ownership for a simple $150k product say goodbye to fleet sales.

If maintenance is included in the lease how do you expect the CFO to figure out residual value/pricing without CoO info?

Look a similar existing products and work up some numbers.
Do you think Airbus operated a fleet of A380s for 20 years before selling them to airlines?

we do fleet sales, and i have calculated the CoO for certain machines for local conditions. i have no problems with those. i have collected enough data, i can now predict those within +/-3.5% up to 13000 hours...

the requirement is a long term rental (machine + preventive maintenance + corrective maintenance) for 5 years. its for a model which we havent sold yet, which is different (as in different capacity/engine/application/everything than 95% of our market) for which we have no frame of reference, (other than other distributors and Toyota-Japan, who i spoke to and wont share their data)

and we need the price to be A) competitive and B) not send us bankrupt, so i have to be within 3%-4% of the "ideal" price... otherwise, it would be too expensive (no sale) or too cheap, and we loose money.

considering the tight margins and lack of data... any price is pretty much a shot in the dark.

 

[dan-o]

(Toyota-Japan, who i spoke to and wont share their data)

THAT is retarded.
I would simply refuse to sell that model in my country if the parent company won't help you sell it with basic info (that, ultimately, they should be providing to distributors for every new model offered).