Dealer Issue Extra: Terex MPS’s Spencer Kossl talks training, service

With Pit & Quarry publishing its second annual Dealer Issue this July, the magazine’s editors connected with a number of manufacturers for perspective on a variety of dealer topics. Spencer Kossl, manager of new business development and applications at Terex MPS, visited with P&Q to share his insights on training dealers, servicing equipment and more.

Spencer Kossl joined Terex MPS in 2018. Photo: P&Q Staff

What is Terex MPS’s footprint with dealers like?

We have approximately 20 distributors, and they’re located throughout the United States, Canada, Central America and South America.

What are some of your company’s approaches to educating and training dealers?

We are a global company. For our distributors, we hold annual service schools to update them on new equipment but also to get their input on what equipment they would like to see in the field for our engineering groups to develop.

We have an 18,000-sq.-ft. facility in Oklahoma City where we have space to bring in large equipment for training. So we can bring big, portable crushing clients in so people can walk around them in an indoor space – and we also have outdoor space there. We have an attached auditorium and several classrooms we use that are all multimedia capable. That’s where we bring our distributors, and we also hold internal training there.

A lot of our distributors have a pretty large territory. They could cover anywhere from one to five states, so they could have a significant [number] of people working for them and, upon request, we’ll train them individually. We can go to their facilities, and we will bring our service people in our [parts] and product management teams to do that.

With so many brands and product lines out there that dealers can actively sell, how important is it for dealers to be as complete as possible on your brand?

I guess that’s going to be dependent on the dealer. We have dealers [who] have been with us for quite some time, and they’re very familiar with all of our product lines. But as far as bringing new products to the market, it’s very important for them to understand what they are, how they work, how to maintain them and how to use them in the field. That is what the training is for.

We try to do online training. We are working on creating videos so they can just download it and then look at it themselves. We have an online training academy that’s available on our distribution network located on our dealer portal.

How do you prioritize training dealers when it comes to servicing equipment?

Right now, it’s very difficult. We rely heavily on our distribution network to service the equipment that’s in the field. And that’s why it’s important to have our distribution network trained on our equipment.

We also have our own service people we can dispatch from Cedar Rapids, Iowa, to assist in any service needs. We have internal service people on the phone, as well, so they can call our service help desk. They can call into that where we track all of our service calls, and then our folks are dispatched from there.