Caring for employees takes care of business

Connie Liles, owner of Connie Liles Auto Parts, a one-location, independent parts store in Tallahassee, Fla., recently heard such a statement from one of her employees.

“We’re from a small town, and we hope we brought the small-town atmosphere with us,” says Liles. “Employees are crucial to our business. We have some employees on flex hours; some arriving early in the morning and leaving early, [and we work around our college kids’ schedules]. We spend more awake hours with our work family than with our families at home, so morale is very important to us.”

Connie’s son, Jarrett Liles, has managed the store for the 12 years his mom has owned the outlet. “Being a woman-owned store, my mom is very focused on keeping a good atmosphere in the store,” he says. “Many times you go into parts stores and everybody’s mean and grouchy. My mom is really focused on making sure everybody’s having a good time and is happy at work, [and that shows to customers].

She’s a businesswoman, he says. She doesn’t know about cars, but she does know how to run her business. “She does it all,” he says, referring to the business component.

Jarrett, who works the counter and the sales/automotive end of the operation, adds that the store benefits from a very clean inventory. He explains that they joined CARQUEST about three years ago. “Their reclassifying system is just heads and shoulders above anything I’d ever used before,” he says.

According to Jarrett, CARQUEST uses computer-generated movement codes to class items based on the popularity of those items in a certain geographical range. He says CARQUEST assigns numbers to parts based on how fast those parts/numbers move in the Liles’ geographic area.

“As numbers move in or out of our specified range, then our computer will automatically order numbers that come into our popularity range or send back numbers that are out of our range,” explains Jarrett, who says the system helps them keep in stock what they sell the most, or just as important, it helps identify popular items that they’re not yet selling. “If other stores in our area are selling a lot of a product, it might show up on my shelf before we actually have sales, and that’s the important part,” he says.

Jarrett explains that the numbers CARQUEST assigns range from one to zero; one being a more-popular item, nine being a less-popular item, while zero represents obsolete items. “CARQUEST went one step further [than the traditional method of classifying parts] … to give you a few more variables for figuring out what you can and can’t stock,” he says. “[We have] more areas to break it down.”

And the computer keeps Liles stocked on a daily basis. After Jarrett sets his stock criteria, if the store sells an item, the computer automatically sends a message to CARQUEST stating that the store needs another one. “Before we even look at it, it generates the order in the middle of the night, prints it, sends it to the distribution center, and it will come to me the following night,” he says. “We never even see it.”

So, in addition to keeping inventory clean and continuously stocked, another benefit of the system is time-savings. “In the old days,” Jarrett recalls, “you used to have to have buyers’ guides and all your sales records to figure out what parts you wanted or didn’t want to stock. I would spend, literally, every night for two weeks a year with a sales person from a warehouse going through our complete inventory, making sure we had what we needed on the shelf. And we didn’t do it very well, either. Now, we can do it in a matter of hours on the computer.”

Another thing the Liles do that benefits their business is get their infrastructure ready for new business before they actually go out and ask for it in the marketplace. Jarrett says instead of scrambling to get ready to handle new customers, they get ready for potential new business first. Perhaps they add delivery trucks or extra counterpeople, or even bring on additional inventory.

“I’ve found that if you go out and ask for business that you’re not prepared to service, then you only get one or two shots at that, and then [those customers] go elsewhere,” he says. “It costs a little more, but if you’re ready to handle that business before you go out and ask somebody for it, and you service them well the very first time, from then on, you can build some lasting relationships.

“I just feel that a lot of salesmen make promises they can’t deliver on, and if we’re going to go out and tell someone that we’re going to service them better than whoever’s currently servicing them, then I really want to be able to do it better.”