- What is RentalMetrics?
- Where are you located?
- What makes you so smart?
- Are you really unbiased in your research and reporting?
- I'm a member of the industry media (trade magazine / newspaper), what does that get me?
- Can I copy and redistribute the content from RentalMetrics?
- What's the value proposition for industry technology solution/heavy equipment manufacturers providers to become clients?
- What products do you offer?
- What's included in my membership?
- What if I want logins for a whole bunch of people at my company? Is there a discount for that?
- How often and how much additional content will you add?
- Do you personally consult with your clients?
- How much does a RentalMetrics subscription cost?
- What industries/sectors do you cover?
- What scope of products/solutions do you cover?
- What languages do you offer?
- What audio/video/editing equipment do you use?
- Who is the voice of RentalMetrics?
- I can't remember my login to the ILE! What should I do?
- I'm having some audio/video quality issues. What are common causes of these problems?
- Will this site work on my browser or on multiple operating systems?
- Can I access the ILE from anywhere in the world?
1. RentalMetrics is a service firm dedicated to the equipment rental and construction sectors. We provide our clients/subscribers RedMeat. To us, RedMeat answers the question, "Yeah...so what does it do for ME?" It might be a spreadsheet that helps you calculate ROI on a GPS solution deployment you've been trying to get started, but just couldn't justify the expense. It could be a video that provides an in depth explanation of the solutions available in the market today, saving you months of research. Or, it just might be an interview you listen to with a CEO of a company who shares their own "case study" experience about their successes and failures with the same technology.
2. RentalMetrics is located in West Des Moines, Iowa. We're pretty darn close to the center of the USA. Some call it "The Heartland" while others call "Fly Over Country". For us, there's no place we'd rather be.
3. Our lead team profiles can be found here so we won't bore you with that again. What you should know is that we've spent years making technology solutions usable and profitable in the heavy equipment / equipment rental / construction sectors.
4. Heck yeah we're unbiased. RentalMetrics does not receive any payments for covering certain manufacturers or company's products, a.k.a. "Payola". We do ask manufacturers to purchase our services because we believe we bring great value in gathering the voice of the customer through our forums and through our product research on competitive solutions. Often there is a correlation between manufacturers we cover and those who are paying members. This is primarily because manufacturers that agree to interviews or proactively provide us with materials understand our value proposition and find our service to be an unbelievable bargain.
5. There's one class of people that we refuse to take money from...(no not you)...it's the media. The bottom line is that we believe our product research and analysis provide story ideas and angles that should be explored and we don't want publisher's tight expense rules for writers to make you miss out. So, welcome aboard media maven. Just contact us and provide the proper credentials and you'll be given the double secret sign up code. Shhhhhh. (Just kidding...tell your media friends they're welcome too.)
6. Are you kidding! No way, Jimmy. We're paying smart folks to create fully Copyrighted material and we reserve all rights as such. We don't want to make our attorney work for his retainer. Remember it's all fun and games until someone gets served with copyright violation papers. We take extra care to embed fun identifiers in our material that keep our attorney's rates low (i.e. he figures this stuff out pretty quick). Let's be buddies. Just use the content as intended and everything will be fine! Our website/blog content of course is fully available for linkage and reposting with due credit. We LOVE links. However, our subscription ILE content is the sacred stuff.
7. There are a few great reasons why manufacturers of big machinery and of technology solutions that serve the sector should become subscribers.
- We offer great content on Business Process Analysis that will help you run your business more efficiently whether you're making widgets or computerized nano-widgets.
- Our forums will offer insight and perspective on the true and unfiltered "voice of the customer." This is the stuff you pay market research and consulting firms big bucks for and we provide it at a bargain.
- Our live video/audio conference calls and live QA sessions will shed more light on the "what are people buying?" question. There's nothing better than hearing your target client ask questions that open the door for you to earn their business.
Products
1. RentalMetrics offers a subscription based Interactive Learning Environment (ILE) that provides a huge amount of relevant management consulting materials designed to make your business better/stronger/faster. This model allows us to be anywhere in the world anytime vs. the limitations and expense from in-person consulting.
2. The free trial membership provides sample courses across our categories. The full membership provides unrestricted access to the entire portal. We include "Open mic calls" for clients, providing access to the RentalMetrics team as well as continuously updated new content. Although we bill quarterly, we intend to keep you as a customer for life with new and useful content and tools delivered weekly.
3. Sure. We can offer a discount for package deals on multiple logins. If you'd like to sign up your entire 6 Sigma team let's say...or maybe 3 managers at your firm, shoot us an email at membership@rentalmetrics.com and we'll design the perfect deal for your needs. We don't offer a stock "20% for 2 memberships," etc. because each situation is pretty unique. Give us a call or contact us via email and we'll get your whole company rolling if you'd like.
4. We usually add new content weekly. In parallel, we have a team working on larger projects that will roll out each month. Additionally, we're going to cover many more technology solutions available this sector along with specifics on how to deploy them and maximize ROI. Your contribution to our forums will drive "what gets done next." We're pretty smart, but we know our audience knows best, and we listen.
5. We do offer one-on-one consultation for companies that REALLY must have it. We use a lot of video and audio to really enhance our interaction. We plow the money we save on travel back into content generation and really "sticky" stuff that makes an impact. We find that through our collaboration software partner, Central Desktop (team membership to Central Desktop is included when you buy our ILE) we can give you the tools you need to manage your own projects without our team pushing you through. If you've paid other management consulting firms then you know the ballpark on our rates. If you haven't, you better sit down. No really...we believe that our services net big time returns for our clients and as such, they're priced appropriately.
6. Our subscription is $2500 per quarter. For a limited time, we're offering a 50% off charter membership FOR LIFE. That means if you subscribe and keep up your quarterly renewal, your price stays the same. If you let it lapse and come back, you're back at full boat. The bottom line is that for $1250/quarter (That's a measly $416.66/month) for what amounts to weeks of consulting and project management guidance. Not to mention the product research consolidation saving months of wasted Googling and hearing sales pitches. Man what a deal!
7. As our name implies, we're centered on the heavy equipment rental sector (RentalMetrics). But as you know, construction and equipment rental are in their own little ecosystem. Construction companies often do the exact same things as rental firms. They all move, service, and manage equipment fleets.
8. We're heavily focused on getting you key information on an extremely HOT topics, such as GPS. Everyone in the business wants GPS, but most are struggling to figure out how to pay for it. Many have deployed GPS already but are not getting maximum value from the solution. Do they even know they're missing out on 6-figure additional ROI opportunities? We're in the business of ensuring you everything out of your investment. There are plenty of technologies you're looking for and we're laying the groundwork on those too (Bar coding solutions, RFID, etc.). Our forums will drive the next generations of content we deliver so LOG ON and share your thoughts.
9. Currently our ILE is only in English. If demand pushes us to provide content in other languages, we'll do it.
Media
1. We use a lot of Camtasia Studio, Audacity, Any Video Converter, Skype, Call Burner...and a bunch of imagery from iStockPhoto. We also have quite a bit of custom music produced by Paul Gratton. We use Behringer B-1 and a C-1 mics with a XENYX-802 mixer. That mixer is piped into the PC via a firewire FCA202 Control Audio box and also via a USB UCA 202 (since Skype doesn't understand firewire...long story...cool result).
2. If you like the voice you hear, then it's that of Doug Mitchell, Founder and Chief Deliverer of Results at RentalMetrics. If you don't like the voice, it's some guy we hire.
Technical
1. If you're forgotten your username/password click here to access the "recovery" page . If that doesn't work, email us at membership@rentalmetrics.com.
2. If you're having audio or video quality issues it's most likely due to your Internet connection. We've created our material such that it works on a basic broadband connection. We have experienced some poor sounding audio when "Equalizer Settings" or the "Pre-Amp" settings have been tweaked on iTunes. If you're listening on an iPod or via iTunes, futz with your settings to get make things right.
3. As far as browsers go, our material will work and has been tested on Internet Explorer and FireFox. The technologies we use are cross-compatible with Mac or PC so never fear. If you discover an issue that doesn't look or work right, please grab a screen capture and send it our way to membership@rentalmetrics.com.
4. As long as you're not in a country that restricts your access you should be fine. The whole point of providing these services via the web is so we can provide global access day and night. We're on a mission that doesn't sleep.
RentalMetrics is the "in-sourced" management
consulting firm for the construction equipment rental sector. We're
headquartered in the heartland of America too. Please browse through our site
to gain some insight on how we think, what we do, and what makes us passionate
(some say obsessive) about extracting every last drop of efficiency from your
operations.
