Test Drive™ – The Dealership Business Simulation!

A Management and Leadership Development Course for the Heavy Equipment Industry

The heavy equipment business isn’t child’s play!

Does your dealership management team need to be more strategic, financially aware, customer focused, and business savvy?

Excavators and backhoes aren’t toys, and running a dealership is not simple. In fact, it’s like running many different businesses – equipment sales, parts, service, finance and insurance, and rentals – all at the same time!

In Test Drive, Teams are challenged to lead and manage a dealership in competition with other Teams. They must order and price new and used equipment, incentive sales, invest to develop an appealing retail space, advertise, providing financing, establish and staff their service department and set shop-rates, and run both their parts and equipment-rental departments.

But watch out for unintended consequences – like having too much inventory, staff attrition, or lost sales!

As they run their companies, Teams analyze Income Statements, Balance Sheets, and Cash Flow Statements, and manage their Short-Term Debt, Long-Term Debt, and Distributions. To inform their decision-making, they also analyze key dealership metrics including Net Profit, Department Absorption, Return on Assets, Return on Equity, Service Proficiency, Working Capital, and Customer Satisfaction and Lifetime Value.

The Test Drive course can be run as a live or virtual class over 2-4 days.

AED Test Drive presented by PriSim Business War Games
Will Ricketts talks about AED Test Drive.

Test Drive Dashboard PriSim’s Dealership Simulation Dashboard

  • Equipment Sales: pricing, profitability analysis, and inventory forecasting
  • Parts and Accessories/General Merchandise: ordering, inventory forecasting of slow and fast-moving products, lost-sales analysis, and profit forecasting
  • Market Segmentation: demand, price and experience sensitivities, and other demographics
  • Customer Satisfaction: CSI and customer lifetime value
  • Service Department: shop-rate, capacity, and staff assignments
  • Financial Statements: Income Statement, Balance Sheet, and Cash Flow Statement
  • Financial Analysis: department absorption, gross profit, overheads, inventory turns, and ROE

Sim Tip Videos Short videos highlighting specific dynamics within Test Drive

“In order to advance in the early part of your career you need to develop expertise in an area to differentiate yourself. In order to advance later in your career you must show that you have the ability to understand and act on the landscape of factors that impacts a company’s ability to grow. PriSim as a platform gives you the ability to learn by doing, test yourself based on measured results, and along the way requires you to debate and discuss with your peers the best path forward. If you are entry level or a CEO, you can take something away from this experience; and our Board did. We valued their professionalism, flexibility, expertise, and humor!”
– CIAB Board Member, May 2017