‘Any opportunity to challenge ourselves gives me a real buzz’

GGM GROUNDSCARE HAS been supplying garden and grounds maintenance machinery for more than 40 years. The company currently has two bases in the northwest of England – at Haydock and Colne. GGM Groundscare supplies leading brands of machinery such as Kubota, Baroness and Husqvarna into these areas. Chris Gibson, managing director, chatted with us about the business and the exciting progression of sister company PSD Groundscare.

Tell us about the business.

“Let’s take you right back to the beginning where the roots of the business began, which is in the 19th century. My great, great, greatgrandfather ran his own village blacksmiths in Melling, north of Lancaster.

“This was the beginning of our involvement in machines and from there it carried on from generation to generation, so our history goes back a very long way. In the 1970s and 1980s my father was instrumental in developing the business into a multi-depot Massey Ferguson business. In 1976 he purchased a horticultural engineering business called Ramsbottom’s that was based in Kirkham and GGM was formed.

and Hayter, they supported us well in our restructure. Over the last 22 years, we have built the professional business up and grown substantially. In 2016 we had the opportunity to expand our area with Kubota and that is when we opened our Haydock depot. Again, primarily focussed on groundscare but selling tractors up to 100hp.

“After the relocation of the business to Colne in 2004, the opportunity came to purchase the site and building next. It was something we couldn’t pass up and so we bought the site which enabled us to expand our stores and service areas. Around this time, we began development of a new side of our business, called PSD Groundscare, a company importing and distributing machines from different suppliers across the globe. We have continued to develop PSD over time and our sales director, Stuart Mercer, has been instrumental in building the brand.”

HAVING PSD PROVIDES US WITH THAT LITTLE BIT MORE STABILITY AND SECURITY OVER AND ABOVE OTHER DEALER BUSINESSES

“At this time my father became the first person to sign up with Kubota before they had their UK base established. Kubota remains the core brand in the dealership today.

“In 2000 we restructured the business, which saw us move out of agriculture and focus more on the professional groundscare industry to our base in Colne. We felt that we had always been heavily focussed on commercial groundscare and this was the future for GGM. Our two main groundscare franchises at the time were Kubota

Explain a little more about PSD and where it is today

“PSD was first established around 2004 and accounts for about 30% of our overall business, alongside our sister company GGM. It exists as a specialist distributor of innovative groundscare machinery to customers across the UK, backed up by our network of approximately 80 dealers nationwide.

“For the last 12 years we have worked with AS Motor, supplying their products which saw the PSD brand grow, however, following the recent buy-out from Ariens Co, we stopped distributing this brand earlier in 2022. We had anticipated after the take-over that changes were on the horizon, so we had been doing lots of research into what was out there.

“In September 2022 we relaunched our product offering to our dealer network at a focussed event we held in Coventry. We spoke with the dealers about the equipment line-up from brands such as Eliet (based in Belgium), Stella and Koppl (both based in Germany), Grin and EcoTech (both based in Italy) and Canycom (Japan). We know that each of these brands offers something unique to the market from ride-on brush cutters to green waste shredders and mulching mowing systems.

“The Canycom relationship is the most recent addition and one we are very excited about. Things began with a simple email enquiry on their website and since then we have welcomed a member of their management team to our site here in Colne and myself and Stuart have also travelled over to Japan to finalise things. It’s a wonderful beginning to what will be a positive working relationship for PSD and our dealers, and we feel that Canycom has confidence in us to get the product into the market.

“Our focus has always been to work closely with our dealers, get the equipment in front of the customers and ensure the end user is getting a quality sales experience from start to finish. We definitely feel that as a dealer ourselves, we understand things from their perspective and in turn that has meant we have a much closer relationship with our dealers, which has meant they trust us and have had the confidence to reinvest in our new business opportunities.

“We are hugely committed to Kubota and want to work with all our dealer partners. However, we feel that having PSD provides us with that little bit more stability and security over and above other dealer businesses. All the businesses we deal with through PSD are family businesses and we have good relationships with them. Our sales director Stuart is very proactive in sharing our values as a business with the dealers, communicating with them about our commitment and how important it is to work together as a team. The team aspect is very important for me, the business is so much more than just me. It takes everyone to make it work.”

What’s your favourite part of your role in the business?

“Most of all I enjoy working with the team and seeing people develop within the business. We spend a lot of time explaining our values to all our team so whether it’s sales or service, I get a sense of achievement out of other people succeeding in the business. I also enjoy looking at where things have developed and where there are gaps, where we could offer new services. Any opportunity to challenge ourselves and develop gives me a real buzz!

“By far one of the most enjoyable activities we do is our fundraisers. We are passionate about giving something back where we can, so each year we choose a different charity to support, trying to keep it as local as possible. This year we chose the Northwest Air Ambulance, and our aim is to raise £10,000 for them. So, in August we did a sponsored team bike ride. We cycled the 60-mile route from our Haydock depot to the Colne depot along the Leeds-Liverpool canal. At the finish line, non-rider members of the team organised a barbecue for everyone, with lots of staff in attendance. It was a lovely day and great for team bonding.”

How do you find you compete against other groundscare dealers who sell direct online?

“In terms of selling competition, I don’t think that the online market is much of a threat because a large part of why our customers deal with us is our service. I do find that people use the internet more for price checking now. But fortunately, you cannot buy service online, so we don’t find that it massively impacts us.”

Congratulations on the recent award you received from Service Dealer for ‘Best New Initiative’. Can you tell me a little bit more about the process you have implemented?

“Thank you! It was a great conference and even better to come away with recognition for the new Service Contracts.

“We began plans to implement this new process during lockdown, the time really gave us opportunity to delve into our current processes and look at new ways of working.

“It all started because we sell a lot of our equipment to local authorities or similar style businesses. They would buy from us and we would benefit from the spare parts sales, but when it came to service, they had their own workshops, which meant we would lose out on that side of things. We knew that there was more value to be had from the initial sale and we wanted to find a way to maintain a relationship with these customers after the sale. The Service Contracts was a way that we could try and get the customer closer to us. It wasn’t just about the machine; we would work with them as a partner in their business and they might talk to us about other machinery we offer.

“Implementing this from a business point of view gave us a degree of certainty when it came to planning service income over a period.

“The challenge is, how do you sell a service contract? The traditional salesperson would go out and sell the machine and then, retrospectively someone from aftersales or at the point of delivery would go and attempt to sell a service contract and at that point the customer isn’t interested. So, what we did was get all the sales team together, we brought in external consultants, and we talked with them about the service contracts and discussed with them about what we were planning on doing, what the offering was, what the benefits for the customer was and for us as a company. Also, the benefits to them as a salesperson to show them that it can be a valuable part of the sale. That very much changed the way we talk about service with a customer. The conversation became less about the product and more about providing a solution. It has been a success for us!”

How did COVID effect you or did it change anything about your business?

“It changed us massively. It was probably one of the few days in my life when I felt a cold shiver going down my spine, sitting listening to Boris Johnson telling everyone to stay at home. When I had 40 people sitting at home thinking, should I go to work tomorrow? It was very surreal.

“We decided we weren’t going to close straight away, however, the safety of our staff and customers was always going to be a priority. Any of us that could work from home did and we kept the numbers on site at both depots to an absolute minimum and we were fortunate that we had IT infrastructure already in place to do that. Initially it was challenging but because we were at home, we had a lot more time to take a good look at the business, where we were at and what we wanted to achieve going forward. Some of the initial work on the service contracts project began in that period.

“One of the positive things to come out of it was making changes to become ‘more green’. We have always wanted to look more into how we can be better in terms of our environmental impact, it’s still an on-going project but we had some good progression in that period. We worked with the local chamber of commerce, who did an environmental report of the site, that resulted in gaining funding towards installing solar panels on the roof, put car chargers in and changed all our lights to LEDs. Had it been a normal spring, we would have never had time to be doing things like that, so COVID actually had a positive impact on our environmental mission.

“As well as the environmental side of things, we also looked at the business as a whole. I wanted to look at finding a way to get the team to understand more of the figures of where they are on a day to day, week to week basis. We decided to set out a series of Key Performance Indicators and we would pull the data based on those straight off the system. We would do KPI reports for each depot on things like spare parts, workshop productivity, new sales orders, invoice tracking, etc. For me, it was more about the team having transparency into how we were performing as opposed to checking up on people. They wouldn’t have to wait to be told after the month end if a target wasn’t hit, they can see it and act upon it to rectify it before the end of the month. This has increased productivity no end.

“All of these projects evolved over the pandemic period, so in response to the question, it really did change us for the better in a lot of ways. We had the time to stop and think about it and the whole pandemic made me realise that I don’t have to be here all the time and you can trust the team to just get on with things which is important.”

How do you find supply of products and components now?

“Looking at our sales numbers, we are proud to have maintained growth each year and that includes the period of the pandemic so although there have been issues, we have still managed to grow which is great. The last 12 months has been the most challenging in terms of managing expectations with more delays from suppli- ers. I would say we seem to be over the worst of that now and we are seeing more products being delivered and stock levels are nearer where they need to be. However, it has been very challenging.

“From a PSD perspective, where our suppliers are smaller family-owned businesses, this has been a real challenge particularly with component supply, so they’ve had to be really nimble and switch production or part build products, and then finalise them when parts arrive. We worked with them very closely to get product over here but again, it’s all about managing expectation. To be honest, BREXIT has been a bigger issue but we’ve done everything we can to smooth the process. Hopefully we are through the worst of this now and we can focus on delivering for our customers.”

Where does GGM sell into?

“We have specified areas for certain brands, but we sell across the northwest of England and into north and west Yorkshire. Our team of six salesmen can all sell the whole GGM portfolio across the allocated area. With PSD, it is a national market.”

How do you find recruitment in the current climate?

“In short, very hard work! We are proactively looking at doing more with social media campaigns to really promote the good that a role in this industry can be. Young people are out there, and they are engaging with that content, so we are working more on this. We have also been working with local schools to try and get in there and chat with pupils about our industry, making it a more attractive place to be. When they see that we get to go to some really great places, football grounds etc, their perception changes, but we have to communicate this to them. We currently have apprentices within the business and every year we actively recruit for them, but this is an area we need to keep working on.”

Tell us about future plans for GGM and PSD. “For the next 12 months, our plan is to simply maintain our growth pattern. We really want to concentrate on working on the relationships that we have established with the PSD side of our business, there is a lot of scope within that area of our business and we have to continue ensuring that we deliver to our dealers.

“With GGM, we are always talking to our principal partners about new opportunities with them and making sure that we remain competitive within our area.

“We do want to look at introducing a new service this year which BAGMA will hopefully be able to help us with. We think there is an opportunity to offer LANTRA operator training to our customers, both GGM and PSD. Customers are asking for operator training, and we feel like there is a bit of a disconnect, we sell the machine, and install it but when they ask for training on how to use it, you must apologise because we can’t do that bit. It seems a natural progression for us really. One of our team is really interested in getting involved with this, so we are just working through the training process for that, and my next step is to speak to BAGMA to see how they can help with it.

“I am also fortunate that I have two great sons,

Thomas who is in the business currently and Andrew who is a chartered accountant. Both are keen to get involved in helping the business develop. Thomas served his apprenticeship in a large agricultural dealer, before going through the workshop here, so he knows the ropes which is a huge help when understanding the business and Andrew’s external perspective is equally valuable when looking at processes and results. My wife, Hilary, and I have worked together with Stuart running the business for many years now, so it’s hugely rewarding to see the boys taking an interest and being able to watch them grow and develop.”

How have you found being a BAGMA member?

“I definitely feel we haven’t used the services enough! I have always regarded being a BAGMA member as a quality recognition. Being part of an industry body and supporting a collective for us as dealers is important and powerful. It’s always meant a lot to me and still does. Recently Keith has got me involved with some monthly calls with other dealers and it’s been great to communicate with other dealer