Charlie Bates. That was his name. It has taken me about six
months to remember the name to the (rather red) face that I am not likely to
forget! Relationships are everything in business, and I am glad to have a reasonably
good instinct when it comes to forming and developing key business
relationships. I have achieved that in multiple countries and across cultures,
making many good friends along the way. And where friendships have not
developed there has generally been the kind of connection and mutual respect that
leads other people to actively want to do business with you.
One of my longstanding clients once had a need to locate a
very specific type of woodworking machine and asked for my help. I had been out of the business for some years
but said I would see if I could find one through any of the machinery dealers I
used to work with. As part of that process I phoned a dealer in St. Louis USA.
I had not spoken to him for about eight years, yet he still had my name in his
phone and answered with a warm “Hey John! Good to hear from you!” It taught me
a lot about communicating and making your connections work. It’s something that
doesn’t happen overnight.
Conversely, it was poor communication and an inability on my
part to connect which ultimately caused my relationship with Charlie Bates to
break down! Charlie was a Sales Agent for one of our US distributors. He took a
commission on machines that he sold on their behalf. The woodworking machines
that we manufactured in Windermere were complex machines, albeit based on
simple principles. Charlie had understood enough to sell a machine line to a
woodworking company in Johnstown Pennsylvania. It was a high speed spindle
turning machine linked to an automatic sander.
The machine had developed a teething problem and after
several telephone conversations with both the distributor and Charlie, I felt
the best thing was to take an engineer with me to resolve any issues. That went
down very well and Charlie said to me that he felt it would ‘take the heat off
the situation’, which has something of an ironic ring to it! Everything was
very cordial, polite and positive and we had agreed to meet Charlie en route
from Pittsburgh Airport to Johnstown. It was late in the day when we arrived,
and being British we managed to get lost on straight roads. This all happened
pre-mobile phones, and as there was no way of contacting Charlie we drove directly
to the hotel, imagining that he would put two and two together and find us
there.
My only direct communication with Charlie regarding the
hotel had been to pass on details through the distributor of where we were
staying, and we knew that he had received that information. So we assumed he
would eventually meet us there. After an hour or so of settling into the bar,
we started to get a little peckish, and as the restaurant was scheduled to
close at 9pm we ordered. Still no Charlie, so we pressed on. About half way
through our meal, this incandescent, red-faced ball of fire appeared at the end
of our table bombarding me with accusations of giving him the wrong directions,
with a peppering of expletives thrown in! So I let Charlie rant on for a while
before eventually pointing out that actually he had been to Johnstown before,
he had been to see the customer to complete the sale, and he would have had to
drive past the hotel en route. Furthermore, I was British and had never previously
been to Johnstown yet I managed to arrive at the hotel several hours before
him. Poor Charlie wouldn’t let it go, and carried on with this endless and
illogical public attack for so long that by the time he had finished the
restaurant had stopped serving. When he realised, I offered him a French fry. I
expect that wasn’t entirely helpful.
Although we then didn’t share a table for breakfast the next
morning, we seemed to work well enough as a team to resolve the customer’s
technical problem and had the machine line running perfectly by the time we
left late in the afternoon. Yet if Charlie and I passed a dozen words between
us that day, it is probably an exaggeration. At least we were both professional
enough to know that the relationship that each of us had with our customer was
paramount, and hatchets can be buried whenever a job needs to be done.
These two extremes demonstrate that while people do business
with people, sometimes people just don’t get on. There have been instances
where I have visited customers and made a good impact where previous
salespeople have failed, and there have been others where I have failed where
others have succeeded. Relationships are everything in business.
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